across coveted lands

Tamara Platonovna Karsavina, one of the greatest dancers of the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev, was born in St. Petersburg on March 10, 1885, the daughter of dancer Platon Karsavin. Tamara became a legend in her own life time. Her technical perfection, wit, rare intelligence, and deep feeling made her a prima ballerina for all times. 1

A whole day was spent in preparing for the journey, and when November 4th came, shortly before mid- night my provisions were packed upon my camels, with an extra load of fowls and one of fruit, while on the hump of the last camel of my caravan were perched, in a wooden box made comfortable with straw and cotton-wool, two pretty Persian kittens, aged respectively three weeks and four weeks, which I had purchased in Kerman, and which, as we shall see, lived through a great many adventures and sufferings, and actually reached London safe and sound, proving themselves to be the most wonderful and agreeable little travelling companions imaginable. One was christened "Kerman," the other "Zeris." 2 --A. HENRY SAVAGE LANDOR 1902

" ... the camera was carried on my way to work. Over the harbour in the ferry. Through the streets of Sydney with its old build- ings and its everyday scenes of life and bustle. By sunshine, in the rain and through fogs and mists!" 3 --Harold Cazneaux,
letter to Jack Cato, ca. 1920

From a Poem written to Mercedes de Acosta by Isadora Duncan in 1927, (quoted by Hugo Vickers in "Loving Garbo")

....A slender body, hands soft and white
For the service of my delight.
Two sprouting breasts
Round and sweet
Invite my hungry mouth to eat.
From whence two nipples firm and pink
Persuade my thirsty soul to drink
And lower still a secret place
Where I'd fain hide my loving face....." 4

what breaks

listen... you can hear it now....

THE WAVE

As when far off
in the middle of the ocean
A breast-shaped curve of wave begins to whiten
And rise above the surface,
then rolling on
Gathers and gathers until
it reaches land
Huge as a mountain and crashes among the rocks
With a prodigious roar, and what was deep
Comes churning up from the bottom in mighty swirls
Of sunken sand and living things and water —

So in the springtime
every race of people
And all the creatures on earth
or in the water,
Wild animals and flocks
and all the birds
In all their painted colors,
all rush to charge
Into the fire that burns them: love moves them all.

Virgil, translated by Robert Pinsky
The Threepenny Review

LETTER FROM CRANBERRY ISLAND

Today in a meadow beside the sea
I knelt among sea rocket
and lupine
as a deer I’d startled
flipped heels up
and bounded into the spruce grove.
Prebbles cove, the beach of stones
glistening and smooth from the pummel of waves.

And I, who understand pounding,
wanted to walk into the sea, to rock there.

At the far edge of my life
on an island four hundred miles
from home, I lean against
an uncurtained window,
and all my grief
for what is already lost,
for what it may ge too late to find,
jostles up against how much
I continue anyway to love the world.

I am tired of wanting to sleep beyond waking —
tired of the numbing that is no better than death,
But here on the sill,
stones oval as eggs —
blue, gray, black,
a whole row of them —
glow in the afternoon light
and here, across the meadow,
light enfolds even the least
small running creature.

And here. And here. And here.
More light, great sheets of saving light
surge and flash — green, coral, cerulean —
off the turbulent
white-capped waters.

Patricia Fargnoli

from Necessary Light

roundabout home

isn't it obvious?

does it remove anything from this stunning photograph by harold cazneaux to observe the clear influence of japanese design?

cazneaux is known as one of australia's finest pictorialist photo- graphers, but in no online discussion that i could find is that influence ever mentioned.

interestingly, though, i did find a really convoluted but fascinating 20-year-old discussion of the travel of that influence.

it's from the new york times, a review of a photography exhibition of the work of japanese-american artists.

What is now known, usually derisively, as salon photography, once represented the medium's best hope of being taken seriously as an art form, and Stieglitz was one of its leading practitioners.

But by the 1920's, its refined sense of beauty and its restrictions on both subject matter and composition conspired to make it an artistic backwater.

It was into this backwater that the twenty-nine Japanese- American photographers represented in the show dived headfirst.

From the evi- dence, they readily adopted its compositional tropes and its attention to chiaroscuro and texture, producing images with affinities to Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and sumi-e painting.

Ironically, the elements of Japanese style in these photographs come not from any inherent or native tradition, but from American Pictorialism's own Japonisme, which was largely inspired by the paintings of Whistler and the Post-Impressionists. 1

harold caz- neaux's work is being fea- tured this summer at the art gallery of new south wales.

i guess what must be happening is that all art is like jazz: people are always just riffing off each other. probably most never know where their influences come from because they're not analyzing, they're creating, being.

they're making art. and what do we care what pro- gres- sion got them there.

coincidentally, an exhibition coexisting with the cazneaux show is taisho chic.