u say tomato, i say sfumato
in praise of shadows
TL;DR: darkness causes us no discontent…
“Darkness causes us no discontent, we resign ourselves to it as inevitable. If light is scarce then light is scarce; we will immerse ourselves in the darkness and there discover its own particular beauty.”
Everything everything is so black white, left right, right wrong these days. Certainty certainly sells, but the tones and colors of fact, opinion and lived-experience actually shade into one another, creating hazy forms with edges of soft veracity.
All the quotations for this themed grouping are from Junichiro Tanizaki’s “In Praise of Shadows”. Written nearly a hundred years ago, the book examines Japanese aesthetics — subtlety and shadow, gleam not shine.
So, from The Window photographs, some sfumato and shadow shots…
“We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates”
“Patterns recede into darkness, conjuring there instead an inexpressable aura of depth and mystery, of overtones but partially suggested”
“We do love things that bear the marks of grime, soot, and weather”
“Yet the combination of that blurred old painting and the dark alcove is one of absolute harmony. The lack of clarity, far from disturbing us, seems rather to suit the painting perfectly”
“But render pitch black the void in which they stand, and light them not with the rays of the sun or electricity but rather a single lantern or candle…”
:…suddenly those garish objects turn somber, refined, dignified.”
NOTES:
-"In Praise of What We Do In the Shadows” is a book about vampire aesthetics, written 300 years ago by Gregor Starrcu, and translated into English from Romanian in 2017 by Laszlo Cravensworth. Many of its observations also apply to this post — for example, both agree that moon-viewing is acceptable, even commendable; however, while Tanizaki prefers tarnished to polished silver, Starrcu finds silver in either state… intolerable.
- The garbage man was fortuitously made majestic by the flickering lights of an ambulance at 4 a.m. A second photo has him caught in a red flash.
- “In Praise of Shadows” was given to me by a Japanese friend when I lived in Tokyo, and it was like slipping on a pair of cultural sunglasses amdist the neon blast.
- All images are from The Window, a 24/7/365 series of photographs from 1 location; many more of the images at my art site: nu4ya.com ; i.e. here’s “The Crosswalk” set:
A random earlier “Window” photo node:
