31 August 2012

leaves


Last dance
For some.
The Autumn leaves.


30 August 2012

guests


After the meal
The guests leave
One by one.


26 August 2012

tomato


By moonlight
How lovely 
The tomato plants.

25 August 2012

crows


Ride the crows,
Smell the rain, 
Approaching storm.


24 August 2012

horse


He peed
Just as I was petting him.
The horse.


23 August 2012

Gotta love this gal # 7 (jesus restored to life!)


Botched Restoration of Jesus Fresco Shocks Spain


Naturally, I would love this version 

better than the original! 


(see the article in the New York Times 

about the 80 year old parishioner who 

did the job on her own initiative) 






Arles: #2 Rwanda
















Arles, again.


Here an exhibition by South African based photo-journalist Jonathan Torgovnik which chronicles the aftermath of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, specifically, the Tutsi women who bore children after being raped by Hutu militiamen. These are portraits of women,(with their children), whose bodies were brutalized, often over and over again during those few months of barbary. They are moving portraits which reduced the exhibition space to the sound of whispered murmurs and shuffling shoes. It's a tale of extreme poverty and of survivors who bore and raised children not wished for. Its also about how they are still coming to terms with what happened, and how many of them have learned to love these children eventually.

A text accompanies each photo describing how it happened for each woman. 

Curiously, in America, at this very moment we have politicians who actually use the term 'legitimate rape', whether by accident or slip.





21 August 2012

swallows


Isn't it swell
To watch swallows
This morning?


18 August 2012

foot


Morning adoration,
A massive horsefly
Works my foot.


15 August 2012

sunflower


Not one frown
In the sunflower field
This morning.


13 August 2012

wrinkles


Seeing an old friend,
Comparing his wrinkles
With mine.


12 August 2012

frog


For the stars!
A lone frog 
Beeping tonight.


11 August 2012

butterflies


I can't even count
The white butterflies, 
The morning field.


06 August 2012

hawk


Taut
The telephone line
And the midday hawk.


04 August 2012

neighbors


The neighbor's cat
Comes in through my window,
Leaves by the door.


03 August 2012

bamboo


The bamboo shoot
Stops running 
At the field.



02 August 2012

love


The moon's in love,
I can always tell:
Her golden skin.


01 August 2012

Sophie Calle in Arles

Pour la dernière et pour la première fois




























THE LAST IMAGE

I went to Istanbul. I spoke to blind people, most of whom had lost their sight suddenly. I asked them to describe the last thing they saw.

VOIR LA MER

I went to Istanbul, a city surrounded by water, I met people who had never seen the sea. I filmed their first time.


We went to see Sophie Calle for whom I have always had an envious fascination, firstly, because she dares to go places in her own life as well as in others in a way which seems to be without limits. I tend to keep myself very much behind my own work like a shadow of it in fact, as if afraid to impose myself upon the world.
Secondly, she is intelligent and full of charm, and I have heard that men fall madly in love with her at just the drop of a rose petal.

She reminds me of the proverbial phrase 'When  Life gives you lemons, make lemonade'.



Her projects have always seemed to follow her poetic sense first and foremost which is what I admire, but personally, I have often felt that at times her projects are too light-winded and superficial, but it might be because I was always too heavy.




In a chapel near the river (Chapelle Saint-Martin du Méjan.) are a few things from her latest project which took her to Turkey to see at how people have reacted to being blind.

They are beautiful and haunting stories, and she has treated the subject with grace and empathy. Many of the people documented lost their eye sight almost overnight while others lost it slowly over time, and several others were born blind. Some of these are terrible stories where Fate has played an uneven hand, so it would seem. There is the taxi guy who had his eyes shot out in a traffic dispute with a mafioso who pulled out his gun. Another, where a routine operation went horribly wrong and the woman awakened  blind. They go on and on, and I left the Chapel full of feeling for what Life has given me to date, and for what Fate has yet to take away. I love to be reminded of what a blessing Life really is, and I hate it when I feel otherwise in my smallest moments.

So, I recommend this show and I am glad that Sophie Calle is now pursues subjects which are truly worthy of her very talented artistic sensibility.