Vivid, Fragile, Global: 2008-2020

Thoughts on the World that Was

Fireworks Over the Kremlin.  Photo David A. Westbrook

Comrades,

I hope this finds you well.

My latest photo essay, Vivid, Fragile, Global: 2008-2020, explores the era of globalization that ended with COVID.  Lest there be any doubt that those times are over, the Russians invaded Ukraine.  With tanks.  Tanks.  Really?  It has been generations.

On seeing a nearly final cut, a friend suggested that maybe I was slouching towards The World of Yesterday: Remembrances of an American – recalling Stefan Zweig’s Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen Eines Europäers.  Maybe a little, both here and in my experimental book Smith Lake.  I read the first chapter of Smith Lake in my first podcast, Points of Departure, and hope to have the whole book out, in both digital and audio formats, soon.  More importantly, I still hope, reasonably I believe, that our break with the recent past will not be so total, so violent, as the one that overwhelmed Zweig.

The war in Ukraine – so much to say, none of it sufficiently sensible (how could it be?), and so many more thoughts jostling and shouting.  Nothing polished yet, maybe ever, though I’ve posted a few notes elsewhere.  I may need to write seriously in the next weeks, despite my ignorance and confusions.  It would be wise to bow out and do other things, but we shall see what the muse bitch demands.  The fact that I’ve written for seven hours or so without a break today does not bode well.  My essays tend to be based on thinking done, redundantly, over years, and reading done and forgotten and dredged back up, and endless emails and talks with friends, and there has not been much time.  The water is unfamiliar; I am out of my depth.

Returning to the era just past, a certain kind of consciousness, of subjectivity, was afforded, almost demanded, by the times.  Such psychic demands were made upon me at any rate, and I believe of others of my class  A short note on composition, "Vivid, Fragile, Global" vis a vis "Pictures Without Subjects", considers how two photo essays, Vivid, Fragile, Global and Pictures Without Subjects, explore different aspects of that subjectivity, and can be understood in dialogue with one another.  As discussed, at one point I thought this was a single project, with the working title “Nothing as it Was.”  But “Nothing as It Was” didn’t go well, didn’t gel, so I divided the work into two pieces that engage one another, both substantively and chromatically, which is better, maybe good.  This little note thus analyzes/critiques my own process, a little like explaining a joke, maybe, but I like art criticism.

Realizing my mistake, of course I doubled down: another little note, The Impossibility and Delight of the Photo Essay is about this strange form in which I’m working.  Philosophy of a sort, about the strengths and limitations of showing and telling, and their interplay.  I love this stuff.

Just before the Russians invaded Ukraine, I had all but finished a podcast, “Recent Violence,” exploring two aspects of US warfare in recent years: the US use of assassination, occasioned by the killing of Soleimani, and the question of why we did not learn from Vietnam, occasioned by our withdrawal from Afghanistan.  For decades, I’ve thought and written about, if hardly resolved, many of the questions at issue.  Then the Ukraine War began, and other questions have come to the fore.  In light of my desire to be supportive of Ukraine, and of the admirable efforts of our government, and many others, to help Ukraine and to preserve the liberal order without broadening the war, “Recent Violence” will wait.

More when I can.  Until such time, be well.  And pray – or however you articulate hope and belief – for peace.

David A. Westbrook