Langscape

Mouvances

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Since moving to Newfoundland and Labrador, the idea of slow travel has been buzzing around my head like the floor plan of some great novel. Usually opting for the more “agonizing” of modes like the bus and the ferry to move across larger distances, it is often striking how much time is given to reflection. One is not constantly bustled about from one checkpoint to the next, from the security clearance to the gate and so on.

There are beautiful passages on speed and movement in Alessandro Baricco’s, “Cette Histoire-Là”. But a few passages form a recent read are creeping into the thinking pattern. More about destinations that speed, but at the same time needing a certain lingering of motion to process.

“S’il s’en va, au demeurant, ce n’est nullement qu’il n’a pas été séduit par ce qu’il quitte; au contraire, c’est qu’il a tant aimé ce qu’il tient de connaître qu’il aspire à des contrées qui soient cela avec encore plus de rigueur, plus de consistance, plus de force: des contrées dont le pays des lacs ne serait en somme qu’un avant-goût édulcoré, une île ou un massif annonciateurs, un missus dominicus, un modèle réduit. Il aspire à l’original.” R. Camus, Loin, p.289

Studio work

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At the studio today, hard to believe that this is actually part of my job. I always feel like I am playing hooky or something when I come get some work done. Today, I am finalizing some work for a small showing of work around an upcoming talk by Gwynne Dyer from his book “Climate Wars“.

The work was chosen because of my tendency to photograph landscapes under reclamation. Reclamation landscapes is the term used by several landscape photographers who are interested in how the land eventually consumes and erases human passage. As usual, my contrarian manner of looking at things makes me turn this question into something else. For me it is more about our inability to see past a few dozen years into the future and think that if it exists after I am dead than it has existed long enough. We are such shortsighted animals.

The Clock of the Long Now is an interesting experiment in altering perceptions about duration (I tend to use duration instead of time, according to Henri Bergson it is a more accurate description of how we use the word). http://www.longnow.org/ Instead of writing 2009 we shoudl write 02009, that little zero will remind us of how recent of an apparition we are and of how short an influence we will exert on the planet. Chances are we will cause a whole bunch of harm, but in the scheme of things the planet will live on.

Still thinking of the title, images should be viewed in a horizontal line about 12 cm from each other.