Wednesday 11 January 2017

A Crack in the World: Five Acres in Mariposa

Reading the title of this tome, I immediately felt reminded of Leonard Cohen's lines
"There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

The focus of the photographs in this book is indeed the light. But isn't this always the case when it comes to photography? For to photograph means, literally, to paint or to draw with light.

I must admit that I've never really understood what that means for I've always thought that one paints with a brush or that one draws with a pencil – but with light?

Needless to say, light is crucially important when one is photographing. So what is the photographer doing with light? Using it, and getting used by it, I'd say. And that, to my mind, is different from painting.

Barbara Kyne's photographs were taken between March 2013 and April 2016 not far from the small town of Mariposa in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. „This body of work ... imagines what the consciousness of plants might be. What do they know? How do they feel? How do they interact with other species?“ are the questions on Barbara Kyne's mind. And while I find these questions fascinating to explore and also understand that quite some thinking went into this project, I do wonder how a camera could shed light on such riddles.

For the full review, see here

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