Once you allow figures into a landscape, it's hard to lock all narrative out. As Arthur Miller said on the set of the movie The Misfits in the Nevada desert: "The people were so little and the landscape was so enormous." It's hard not to see a story there.
Consider Darius Kinsey's 1906 photograph Felling a Fir Tree, 51 Feet in Circumference. Here Kinsey shows part of a large tree, mortally wounded and flanked by small men with axes and saws. In the mouth of the tree's fatal crack lies a man, alive, relaxed, almost smiling. He is a picture of true machismo, casual and radiant in the face of death. Kinsey, who was clearly aiming for a David and Goliath tale, must have set up the shot: "You, there, you crawl into that crack, and I'll pay you a buck!" Still, the man in the maw really must have been brave enough to lie there. So I'd say this is not so much a pure fantasy as a tale of true grit.
No comments:
Post a Comment