Poppies in October
Inspiration
Posted by Evelyn (Berkeley, United States) on 26 October 2006 in Plant & Nature.
Kyoto, Japan
Poppies in October
Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly--
A gift, a love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God, what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath's poem has always been an inspiration to me, because although it is poetry, it is also photographic.
Allow me to explain that statement. Literary critic Roland Barthes talks in his book on photography, Camera Lucida, about the concepts of studium and punctum. Studium is what interests us in a photograph. This could be the exoticism of a setting, or a compelling set-up. You as a viewer of the photograph can relate to the photo because you have context: you know roughly what is happening in the Sudan, and you expect a photo taken there to look a certain way. Or, alternately, you see a picture and assume a context for it, whether it is correct or not.
What makes great photos great, however, is the punctum: The element of a photo that is unexpected, and suddenly jars you out of your carefully constructed studium when you notice it. A photo for article in the NY Times shows a bunch of Muslim women eating ice cream.
It looks like a regular girls night out, although a bit exotic. However, when you find out they are in Khatoum, the capital of the Sudan, the contentedness on their faces seems to have a whole different meaning. This is not what you expected to see in a photograph of Sudan. Where is the photo of a mother in rags holding her limp child at a refugee camp? Are you, yourself, implicated by the fact that their oblivious contentedness looks "normal" to you?
The punctum, as Barthes says, shoots through you like an arrow. I suspect he meant something more theoretical than my Sudan photo example--suprises that are purely aesthetic. But what I want to say is this: the final stanza of Sylvia Plath's poem is the punctum. She sets you up with a context with the title, then spins an extended series of metaphors that lead you away from it, until BOOM. The last stanza goes back to the image of those blood red poppies in an instant, and your head is reeling. The poppies can never again in your mind be unassociated with blood, with a contrasting landscape of an azure autumn sky and dull bowler hats.
Can I do that in a photograph? All I can say is that it's a learning process, and I am an amateur photographer. What matters is that you enjoy them--or not--and maybe sometimes, just sometimes, I will surprise you.
Canon PowerShot S80
1/200 second
F/4.0
9 mm