Duane Michals once said something that I recall when I view nearly any photograph: Photographers never photograph what they can’t see, and of course the most important things are what you can’t see. It’s what you feel. What you feel is much more important than what you can see. And so that is why I had to write—why I had […]
Tag: BW
Brandon Flynn’s Armpits
At first, you think it’s a Brando experience… the whole Hollywood spirit come to life. But Flynn offers much more here. It is spirit, but the spirit is black. It is all in the black. Those Vanta Black armpits, dark jungles, the dark depths matching his beard, is upper lip, his eyes, his hair. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes talks […]
Healing Jungle, Lurking Snakes
I began 2020 by getting thrown off guard by this haunting and hallucinogenic film, Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo de la serpiente, 2015) by Ciro Guerra: Its double story, the ghostly black and white cinematography, and the theme of desperately seeking a cure in parts unknown. The Amazonian Shaman Karamakate bridges the two tales, two journeys which are thirty […]
