HOLE IN THE SUN |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Perceval Press 2002, 2003, Perceval Press: A series that documents and abstracts the urban backyard swimming pool as monument. Color and black and white photographs are composed from late afternoon reflections on a still pool to the distressed architectural elements found inside the later empty and abandoned pool. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
FACTS AND TIDBITS
CONTENT:
|
With thanks to Hugh Anna and Kim
COMMENTS:
EXCERPTS FROM THE DISCUSSION THREAD AT THE FARTHEST OUTPOST MESSAGE BOARD
Orpheus, Posted: Aug 09, 2002
(..) It's SEALED into my memory. Who'd have thought that a simple kidney shaped pool like that could surrender to such incredible shapes, shadows and colours! The greens and the clash of the reds, stark like blood or the sign of decay like rust: so vivid... inviting a story to be told around every single image.
Now that i think about it, another absolute favourite is the photograph of someone's (Henry's?) foot plunged into water, blurred by white bubbles (the one after the dive). It seems like a birthing with just the foot vaguely visible. A birthing into the world of the pool, of the world within the pool.
(..)I leave reality behind and immerse myself in liquid jewels.
Pandora, Posted: Aug 09, 2002
Blue#7 and Blue#17 are two of my favorites. They are very strong pictures and really suck me in. Somehow I feel If you put them next to each other the similarities between them steal from one another. Apart they seem stronger and more special.
Orpheus, Posted: Aug 10, 2002
(..) My first reactions to HitS - and every one of these pictures i remember vividly, provided i have these notes to remind me what each one sparked in me. Hence the following...
A HOLE IN THE SUN -pure photograph paradise...
I was stunned and mesmerized by the colours, and the light within the colours of the water, making shadow magic and blinding sparkles. the calmness of reflections and the skyscapes/landscapes that shimmer upon the pool's surface -- stunning. familiar mermaids and feet and hands in the water, slicing the water, slicked by water. then the 'journey' underwater, when the pool is suddenly no longer just a pool but a different world of indigo and turquoise and cyan and too many shades that seduce the eyes so that they can no longer blink. and then, unexpectedly, black and white and peeking toes.
Orpheus, Posted: Aug 10, 2002
(..) I love the way he transforms the pool into an alien landscape. Like you've drowned into another world after the big splash. Fascinating the kind of colours that he finds in there. I'm really very curious about how he got the colours... ignorant about proper photography, so was wondering, is this an effect of lenses? Or when developing?
It's a journey, that book. and kudos to Pilar [Perez] for the way she's organized those photographs....
Orpheus, Posted: Aug 12, 2002
I'ts like the descriptions you read of in classical greek mythology, of Poseidon's realm. The calm blue of deep sea, an underwater world of myriad hues and stillness, unrippled by turbulence of air and storm. Thanks to a little angel for flashing the memory of this incredible picture before me... I remember telling someone... was it on the earlier page... Blue#20 stretched across a wall... and lordy, I'd enter the mists of dreamworld as soon as I walked in.
There's another picture in HitS, I think its Pool#17, which haunts me as well. There's something about it which reminded me of an abandoned altar. The waterless whiteness, as though, robbed, ravaged and left behind.
Hellcat, Posted: Aug 12, 2002
The Martian landscape idea comes from seeing lots of astronomers false colour picture of planets where the shades of blue represent different rock or dried oceans. I know far too many astro people!
Rain, Posted: Aug 13, 2002
So, I'm just going to comment on the whole project. Did I say "comment"? What I meant was "gush". Incredible. This book is everything that first made me interested in the arts. The audacity of the original concept -- an entire book photographed within the confines of a backyard pool immediately sparked my interest. And yet, confines is the wrong word -- a multitude of new landscapes are discovered in these images, endless possibilities are explored with each turn of the page.
The sequencing itself is incredible -- it adds so much to the images that it is a work of art in itself. It's a stunning achievement -- congratulations indeed to Pilar. Each image leads us further into this new world, created from nothing more exotic than a manmade pool, and yet appearing at times alien. Or magical. Or achingly familiar.
Think if I was to see these in a gallery, I would want them to be sequenced in a similar way, perhaps hung at intervals in a long corridor, so that we could walk the journey that the book takes us on.
Orpheus, Posted: Aug 17, 2002
(..)I'll probably collapse into a puddle if I see the pictures in front of my face in real life. Interesting point about the idea of the journey. I wrote this somewhere else, (was it at the other board? don't remember) but the book for me is a journey. A journey about the discovery of a magical world. I wonder if it was meant to be so but in the way the pictures are sequenced/organised/presented, it seemed like there was an "approach" to the pool, an immersion into it which was almost like being birthed into 'the world of the pool' and then seeing another world, the world in the pool, of the pool. The glimpses of familiar mermaids, recurring reds in dead but live-looking plastic, floating hair synthetic or composed of dead cells, the blues underwater... I felt like i was being taken by the hand and led into another world. A world now left behind, or crumbling away as red rubble comes to the forefront of Pool #25, contrasted by the blurred empty pool behind; its emptiness emphasizing in my mind, the memory of the water in the earlier pages.
Orpheus, Posted: Aug 23, 2002
(..) Just remembered another brilliant photograph... I think its called Pool #3 -- skyscape, reflections, the vivid transparency of the green... Like the slipping into the vision of mermaids and looking up with longing at the land... I'm reminded suddenly of the original fairy tale of The Little Mermaid, who didn't get her prince, who for the love of what she had looked upon had to lose the voice which whispered her love, who, in spite of it all, could live only underwater gazing through it at a land loved and lost.
tilly, Posted: Aug 29, 2002
But as for me I just love it. Seeing all the different images captured, the colours and textures at the moment my favorite would have to be Blue 20 , Blue 7, Pool 17, Pool 3, Blue 10, but that's changing every time I look at it.
Rain, Posted: Sep 11, 2002
(..) Pool#3 (Trees, roofs and sky reflected in pool) Anyone else get the idea of the sky as rolling surf, from the texture of the pool bottom?
Blue #4: My absolute favourite. Beautiful, dreamlike, extremely sensual. It's been referred to as Atlantis in this thread, which is perfect. The steps do indeed appear as though they're enticing you to enter another world. A flooded paradise, a real sunken garden. Gorgeous. Blue #26: Calls to mind everything from broken veins on fragile, aged skin, to the cracked glaze of a much loved piece of china, to blue cheese. Blue #14: It's all be said before - lunar landscape. Or our own planet from space. Blue # 7: The white of an eye, with a dark blue iris. Something about this picture is like home to me. I think it must be the colour. The blue is the exact shade of the Bristol Blue Glass that's still made here.
ngoliant, Posted: Sep 1, 2002
To me is a "snapshot " definition of what it means to be a true artist. An artist perceives the world differently than other people, is able to convey the perception to others and in turn changes others' perceptions. The artist first sees a generic backyard pool as the interplay of natural and artificial elements, of reflection and color, of substance and emptiness in varying proportions. He uses the medium of photography to capture what he sees and offers his vision to others. The results? First, the appreciation of the artist's particular vision - what each aspect of this particular Hole in the Sun conveys to us. Then, perhaps, a search for our own Holes in the Sun? I know that I have been looking at my own immediate environment with different eyes lately.
(..) I noticed something interesting in the organizing of the pictures, and their names. First of all the book opens with a sad poem: Give me more sun by Edith Campion. The pictures are then organized by year, the first third part is from 1998, except for two pictures. They seem to me to be colourful, vivid and with a lot of motion. The rest of the pictures are from 2002. Apart from the three last ones these pictures gives me a different feeling. They are beautiful, but a lot of them feels more "empty" or "barren" or more "bleak"... I don't know how to describe the feeling. (..) Then there are the names. In this part of the book the pictures are called Blue and Down. Of course, most of them are blue, so they should be called so, but I can't quite get rid of a feeling that there is more to the names then that. Is it only me or can anyone else see what I see?
Is there a story in these pictures? May be a sad story, as the opening poem suggests?
Hellcat, Posted: Apr 24, 2003
Must admit to being much more literal about the titles of the photographs.
The Down series, well the title seems to me to refer to Viggo looking down into the bottom of the pool when taking these photos. I might be getting mixed up here but I seem to remember the down series being almost like a journey down... towards the plughole in the bottom of the pool.
I don't really get much emotion from the photographs. It's more the colour and geometries that interest me.
Ingjerd, Posted: Apr 24, 2003
I agree (with) Hellcat, the Down series has a downward perspective, and there is one at the end that is named Up which has a "looking up" perspective. All the titles makes sense when you look at the pictures. It was more the organizing of the pictures that caught my attention, the quality (not in a "good" or "bad" sense), or the feeling I get from the pictures relative to the time they were taken that I thought was interesting. The 1998 pictures seems to me to be different from the 2002 pictures, and the way they are put together seems to tell a story in itself.
(..)To be honest I don't know if I would have seen the pictures this way if it hadn't been for the opening poem, which feels quite dark and kind of depressive.
Hellcat, Posted: Apr 25, 2003
Was reading the Edith Campion poem last night... I like the way it's talking about night and darkness sitting next to the only nighttime picture in [HitS].
The other thing the poem talks about is light and reflections. That seems to me to be the subject of Hole in the Sun, how light can take one colour of blue paint and turn it into so many different shades. Also the reflections off the water, e.g. of Blue#4 (Atlantis with the plants) and the photo with Henry jumping into the pool (can't remember the number of this one)
Errantvine, Posted: Apr 26, 2003
(..)It blew me away completely. It was like visual poetry. At first the colours and light and rainbows mesmerize. Then the mood of the individual photos, or some of them together sharing a common theme. Mermaids and Pool #8, Blue #9 and Blue #10. The next photos Pool #3 and Blue #4 have an Eastern feel. Then there is the "other world" look of Down #7 as if this was in red. It might be like peeking out the window on Mars somewhere. I don't know what kind of tea the man was drinking out by the pool, but its an exotic journey to say the least.
Ingjerd, Posted: Apr 26, 2003
(..)The fact that the poem is sitting next to the only nighttime picture; I hadn't noticed that.
It is also very interesting to se how people can see or emphasize different parts of a poem, or a picture for that matter, having different experiences from it. When I read this poem I see "GIVE ME more sun..." and "I LIVE on the dark side". To me the poem seems to be a cry for more light, a light she knows is there, but which seems out of reach for her.
Errantwine wrote: it might be like peeking out the window on Mars somewhere. I agree, this picture shows a very different kind of "landscape" then the 1998 photos, but to me that goes for most of the 2002 pictures. I also think it is interesting that in the tree last pictures he is adding more colour and a glimpse of light.
Sometimes I see, or think I see, things that reflects something inside of me. And I think, with this book, as with certain poems from Coincidence Of Memory, that happened.
Hellcat, Posted: Apr 29, 2003
Ingjerd, I can see why you find the Down series bleak, I do as well. I think this is because there are so many stark black and white photos. Without the softening of the blue colour everything looks harsh and un-welcoming.
Ingjerd, Posted: May 01, 2003
Yes, exactly, Hellcat. And many of them have a very special motive, a drain with litter, at the bottom of an empty pool (I think). But to be honest I find a a lot of the coloured pictures from Pool 17 and out, bleak, barren, "cracked" (?) too. And a lot of them has a "black hole" in them. Hole in the Sun?
To me those three (or four) series, (I think the last four(?) pictures has a more optimistic feel to them) seems to reflect different moods.
Oh, well, I guess it is all in the eyes of the beholder (I'm not quite sure what "Eyes of the beholder" means, but somehow it "sounded" right here)
CONTENT:
PHOTOS:
Pool 2 (cover) 1998 Last Night 1998 Passover 2001 Pool 1999 Pool 26 2002 Blue 11 1998 Pool 4 1998 Pool 2 1998 Green 2 1998 Green 4 1998 Red 3 1999 Mermaids 6 1998 Pool 8 1998 Blue 9 1998 Blue 10 1998 Pool 3 1998 Blue 4 1998 Pool 17 2002 Blue 8 2002 Pool 16 2002 Down 8 2002 Down 7 2002 Blue 15 2002 Blue 13 2002 Blue 19 2002 Blue 18 2002 Blue 21 2002
Blue 23 2002 Blue 25 2002 Blue 20 2002 Blue 26 2002 Blue 16 2002 Blue 28 2002 Blue 5 2002 Blue 7 2002 Pool 24 2002 Blue 14 2002 Pool 22 2002 Down 4 2002 Down 2002 Down 3 2002 Down 6 2002 Down 10 2002 Down 2 2002 Down 12 2002 Down 5 2002 Down 9 2002 Record 2002 Pool 23 2002 Pool 17 2002 Red 22 2002 Up 2002 Pool 25 2002
