Wednesday 11 March 2009

self-portrait with crescent moon














When I take photos I float
on the verge of myself.
I am many.
Larger than myself
yet I enclose myself
no more.


















I who is otherwise
filled to the brim with the past
learn to walk through the things
of the present
soundlessly but not quietly
until I am
a body without a face
a heartbeat without a body
the thin edge of light.






































Stay with me, my fever,
dance with me, my pain,
swirl me into the shape

of what is being born

now.


















When I take photos I float
float to the crescent moon
the white moon
until the soft cloud that I am
I am
casts her shadow upon your face
your pale face
you look up
slightly bewildered
stroke your skin
that skin
as if you tried to guess
what has just touched your soul
that soul
you only catch a glimpse
of my hair
my dark hair
in the mirror
in which the world
meets the world
and that too will soon be
gone
is now
gone.


















When I take photos I float
on the verge of myself.
I am many.
Larger than myself
yet I enclose myself
no more.


I who is otherwise
filled to the brim with the past
learn to walk through the things
of the present
soundlessly but not quietly
until I am
a body without a face
a heartbeat without a body
the thin edge of light.

Stay with me, my fever,
dance with me, my pain,
swirl me into the shape
of what is being born
now.

When I take photos I float
float to the crescent moon
the white moon
until the soft cloud that I am
I am
casts her shadow upon your face
your pale face
you look up
slightly bewildered
stroke your skin
that skin
as if you tried to guess
what has just touched your soul
that soul
you only catch a glimpse
of my hair
my dark hair
in the mirror
in which the world
meets the world
and that too will soon be
gone
is now
gone.


(gratefully remembering how the first time I took the camera in my hands
felt like being born again)

57 comments:

  1. But, roxana, what is "being born now" was born some time ago as well. no?

    warf es einen Stock als Lanze gegen den Baum,
    und sie zittert da heute noch.

    Some great photos..er..you couldn't pass some on could you? Only joking :-) the taleban wouldn't let me anyway.

    Hope you have many more days where you are always born again.

    ReplyDelete
  2. omr.. such a beautiful creature..

    ReplyDelete
  3. did you say bired with black and white! hardly! this sequence reminds me of that calvino thing.

    nice text too. i like the contradictions. shame there's not a better word than 'photo' tho!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is, surely, a personal ars poetica (or photographica) of a high order, this recognition that the self is multiple and that one function of art is to explore (celebrate, maybe even prompt) this unfolding (petaling) of the multitude from the artist’s spirit. All this is perfectly embodied here (“body,” of course, spoken in the eroticism of the photographs) by technique, mirrors and the subtle caress of light, framing and the tension between manyness of self and the seeming simplicity of black and white --- which opens out into so many shadings when we look closer. The paradox that seems such an essential thread running throughout your work: that the reality (self, other, world), stripped to its most simple, is never simple, never either/or.

    I love the lines

    “I who is otherwise
    filled to the brim with the past
    learn to walk through the things
    of the present
    soundlessly but not quietly
    until I am
    a body without a face
    a heartbeat without a body
    the thin edge of light.

    Stay with me, my fever,
    dance with me, my pain,
    swirl me into the shape
    of what is being born
    now.”

    With their echo of Rimbaud (“Je est un autre”) and subtle almost-repetitions of theme and variation (“a body without a face / a heartbeat without a body,” “Stay with me, my fever,
    / dance with me, my pain”), these lines recall that the grounding of art is more in similarity than in identity, that the image is not the thing --- that it is, rather, the new state of being where the image and the subjective vision of the artist are swirled together, born together, now.

    "until I am ... the thin edge of light" --- is such a beautiful testament of the experience of taking pictures.

    But all the words are beautiful, all the photos are beautiful. Too much to say it all….

    And I am grateful for this memory of taking the camera into your hands for the first time and feeing born again. This is what happens, I think, when an artist finds her home, her right place in the art, whatever art it may be.

    ReplyDelete
  5. i'm assuming you're forgetting you're owing me a picture. why, you say? all will become clear shortly.... ; )

    ReplyDelete
  6. the moon is actually full today, as it should be
    I got a gift for you, get this. It is Susan Sontag's "On Photography", I hope you will find it entertaining

    ReplyDelete
  7. nr 2 si nr 9 sint excelente!
    au o doza de erotism aparte ,misterios... ca un cadru pe film...

    ReplyDelete
  8. You outdo yourself so often that I can barely keep up, truly amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Comprendre ; cependant n’a rien d’une attitude de passivité. La réalité humaine comme celles du monde physique est énorme et bigarrée. Une simple photographie , peut naitre souvent à tort et à travers de la souffrance d’une connaissance imparfait de la réalité…Ton autoportrait pose des exigences utiles ; mais c’est là simple supposition et la connaissance d’autrui est forcement incertaine ; en faite connaître, c’est pourtant prévoir…Noir et blanc amour-propre et de l’égocentrisme inhérent à la conquête de soi-même ; tu as un univers bien à toi .

    ReplyDelete
  10. senzationale ! felicitari !

    ReplyDelete
  11. pictures and lines are beautiful...nevertheless, I cannot concentrate on the aestetics of them, I cannot stop from trying to see through them...and wondering about this crescent moon, this hearthbeat without a body...I am doing a stupid thing, I sholdnot say if you don't say, I am aware of it, but for one moment, looking at the pictures, and reading, I thought...but of course, I will never know, I guess, so this is just to say that I thought, you know what I thought I guess, either happening metaphorical or not. In both cases...it is just great :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great shots Roxana, very well done and i agree with Peter.
    You are such a beautiful creature but, also inside you are beautiful :)))

    ReplyDelete
  13. What a beautiful post, Roxana. There is something intrinsic to your art that links words and images, in a way that is seamless and perfect like a masterpiece of carpentry.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Roxana, I like the second yourself most which I think it represents you most.. though all others are still more than amazing & awesome. I never know how you could draw your portraits in such lively and ethereal way.. maybe because you ARE.. :p

    ReplyDelete
  15. teribil set, ma dau in vant dupa granulatie!

    ReplyDelete
  16. b!
    of course, how could it be otherwise, the enemy of the modern soul has to defend some kind of myth of eternal return :-)

    can't you make an agreement with the talebans just once? :-P

    thank you.






    Peter, is this 'r' in 'omr' Ra, the ancient sun god or a new divinity? :-P
    how do you say 'god' in corean?

    re: pics, it's funny, you are the second one saying here that he likes the second one best, I wouldn't have thought that. perhaps my artistic self is 'lively and ethereal' :-)







    swiss, I didn't say that I was tired of black and white :-) but that some of my readers were, or so I had thought.
    re: photos, would 'pictures' be better? I hesitated a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  17. pensum, je te remercie de tout mon coeur.



    James, I am so overwhelmed by what you wrote, this entire analysis that I don't actually deserve - that I really don't know what to say. except that I was stunned by the coincidence - yes, once again, it's so funny - that you should mention 'je est un autre'. do you know that I am working now on some kind of project about alterity and multiplicity, that I had entitled 'je est un autre'?! I will start posting the pictures soon.




    sorlil, thank you so much, you are too nice :-)

    ReplyDelete
  18. eneles, I knew about the full moon, gentle had just told me that she couldn't sleep because of it. but I don't know, when I think about the moon, I always feel a kind of brokennes inside, and even when I look at it I seem to go blind and then I can barely make out a small fragment of it - thus 'crescent', and never 'full moon'. I don't know what to do about it, well I guess, 'ain't no cure for that', to paraphrase a famous Cohen song. do you like Cohen? tell me you do :-)

    and thank you.




    iosif bogdan, deci 2 si 9 - bine de stiut :-) multumesc mult, parerea ta conteaza tot timpul.




    Simona, am lucrat pe un Kodak TMZ 3200, si de acolo :-)

    ReplyDelete
  19. merc :-) if you say this, I can only smile and keep silent.




    siam, merci pour tes commentaires qui cherchent toujours a voir 'au-dela'. je suis d'accord que la connaissance d'autrui est toujours incertaine, mais la connaissance de soi-meme,
    ne l'est-elle pas aussi? et bien sur, l'effort de se connaitre soi-meme est toujours lie, au moins dans notre tradition europeenne, au mythe de Narcisse. et surtout chez l'artiste. Sarah Kofman, un philosophe francais, a parle de l'acte de creation comme d'un acte de "communication transnarcissiaque" - la contemplation de soi et l'ouverture vers l'autre.




    Bogdan, multumesc, imi pare bine ca ti-au placut!




    Marta!!!! this time you got me :-) - please, tell me more about your 'guess' in a mail, I seem to have lost your mail address otherwise I would have written myself.




    Marc., thank you :-) I have intended this post to be a kind of homage to Francesca Woodman...





    Neil, I am honoured. thank you. I like so much to look at the drawings and etchings you post and I find them to be a real inspiration.

    ReplyDelete
  20. "can't you make an agreement with the talebans just once? :-P"

    Er...depends on what you send!

    but no, it would be good for their morale to see such pictures, of what life is like out of the caves.

    no, not an enemy. I just thought the idea that we might be born again, in a different time and place, interesting. Like sometimes you bump into someone and say: I must have known you in a different life. And what if the future is a mirror of the past? Then, perhaps, we don't have any of your "modern": there is no redemption of time!

    ReplyDelete
  21. God in Corean is 신,神, sounds like 'shin', my family name. And I like your much intellectual guess over 'r' and I think you recognized it instinctively already.. :p

    Roxana, this morning around 7 o'clock, I saw a really big & half-transparent full moon over the west horizon while my new sun just started rising from the east.. I was at balcony of 21 floor high under -10C fresh temp. It felt good in standing just in the middle of Lunar & Solar system inhaling energies of both sides. Chao~

    ReplyDelete
  22. the text and pictures here have had a tremendous impact on me. it's so... self aware (obviously). just that the combination of the two in this series has really been married into something very unique and gorgeous!!! what a breathtaking journey. roxana is a breathtaking journey!

    er, keep up the good work :-D

    ReplyDelete
  23. oh, you pronounce it 'shin', Peter? I thought of 'chen' as it would be pronounced in english.

    and did you take photographs then? I would have liked to see it too, that "middle of Lunar & Solar system" :-)

    ReplyDelete
  24. joan, you made me laugh :-) thank you!!!

    and I guess you are fine now, obviously :-), that's good! but do keep drinking that gorgeous tea :-)

    ReplyDelete
  25. gosh Roxana, you're certainly swirled into shape there!

    a magical series - leaves me slightly bewildered trying to guess what has just touched my soul

    ReplyDelete
  26. Roxane ! nous prétendons aussi par avance savoir ce que nous sommes ! Nous avons des préjugés sur ce que le soi peut être. Si nous admettons de manière implicite qu'il est possible de donner une définition précise au sens du je suis, nous orienterons tout de suite la question qui suis-je? . C'est ce que nous faisons sans hésiter dans l'attitude naturelle.
    La question mais suis-je conscient de moi-même? C'est une chose d'être conscient en général, c'en est une autre d'être conscient de soi.

    Je ne connais pas grands chose dans la philosophie, mais les humains j'en connais un peu plus...

    ReplyDelete
  27. multumesc, Dungha!



    fff! :-) I am satisfied if I managed to do that, for sure! :-)



    Siam, tu dis que tu ne sais pas grand-chose de la philosophie, mais ta raison de t'interroger sur le monde et sur l'interrogation meme est certainement philosophique :-) je suis d'accord avec toi, mais justement, ce "pretendons" devrait nous inquieter: il y a des gens qui ne se posent pas de questions et vivent toujours dans l'illusion de la permanence et la stabilite du soi, tandis que, si l'on commence d'en douter, ne faut-il pas essayer d'aller plus loin et de chercher a connaitre davantage la-dessus? et de plus, chercher a s'interroger sur les conditions memes de cette connaissance du Soi: est-elle vraiment possible? dans quelle mesure serait-elle possible? mais c'est peut-etre une approche occidentale, au Japon le Maitre me dirait de balayer la maison, oublier le miroir et les questions et arranger des fleurs dans un vase - moi, j'oublie les questions et je fais des photos :-)

    ReplyDelete
  28. truth in it, sings, beauty... i am not going to think; all is story, dance, i just watched a dancing

    thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  29. yes, Mansuetude, it feels like it, floating, dancing with things...



    Marius, multumesc pentru vizita.

    ReplyDelete
  30. hullo hullo...you have been very busy in my absence! but aah roxana! your productivity is like a hungry tide in monsoon - so difficult to keep up, yet alluring enough to follow! one can never tire of B&W - its enduring quality is the ability to draw attention to forms and shadows (which colors often distract from, though in their own ways colors tell a thousand storys). Also B&W pictures somehow tend to have such a intimate feel to them, a familiarity that makes them so perfect for the study of the human figure . i love how the pictures (far better word - 'photos' sound suspiciously like the stuff in clicked on my holiday ;-)) evoke ethereal sensitivity and playfulness at the same time (the feminine ideal? or am i guilty of stereotyping?)
    on the topic of said full moon: I was camping in the desert that day...and the full moon was glorious and unchallenged and without fault. maybe that is where your 'fragmented' moon may be joined then? but a crescent is beautiful also, and so much more understated - i remember now a poem i wrote once, about hubris and other things. It had these lines;
    "Twenty seven moons in a month
    And only one of them is full
    Full of itself"

    ReplyDelete
  31. "hungry tide in monsoon", zuma, ah, if only that were true :-)

    I so agree about B&W, I can never get tired of it, but then, when colours come, they come as hungry as the tide in monsoon :-) still, I remember a time when I used only sepia.

    I don't know about 'archetypal' images, feminist theorists would say that this is of course only a cultural construct but there are also Jung and the entire French school of the Imaginary (Bachelard, Durand etc.), who defend the - nowadways heretical - view that there is such thing as pre-existing 'forms' or 'patterns' of the psyche.


    re the full moon, I can see why you would write about hybris :-P
    I can only offer this haiku by Issa:
    The vanity of men
    they would like to retain
    this passing winter moon.

    The connection with 'vanity' is also there, you changed the perspective a little bit and projected it onto nature itself... can't I read the whole poem? please :-)

    ReplyDelete
  32. The "one" reflexive self revealed, prisoner of our own bodies, beyond beauty or lack thereof ...we see ourselves through the eyes of the other, or so we seek...
    I know, I look at the "stamps" of you, over and over again, beyond the shots revealing thy true earthly self, beyond my reaction of true earthly self...I fear the sight and its power...and find myself lost for words...Beyond all those words and reflections, who are we to become...but mere mingled reflected in the other...parts

    ReplyDelete
  33. thank you, gabi, I am so happy that my pictures have touched you in this way.
    I guess there will always be this search, or quest, this longing for something beneath or behind the mirror, even then, when we have convinced ourselves that there is nothing there. still, I don't see '"one" reflexive self revealed', but a divergent multitude thereof, simultanesouly revealing and un-revealing themselves.

    ReplyDelete
  34. We just think we catch her. She is slippery. Slippery, but not inconstant.
    She is beautiful, of course. Even the moon knows it.

    ReplyDelete
  35. oh dearest gentle :-)
    I've got almost only water elements in my horoscope, I guess some would say that this accounts for the 'slippery' thing :-) or the floating one, for that matter.

    I think the moon used to know some things, but it has never mattered for her, after all, she is the moon, isn't she?

    ReplyDelete
  36. ca o poveste cu un singur personaj. captivanta poveste.
    ma plimba....
    ma las plimbat deci.


    ma inclin!

    ReplyDelete
  37. it would have been amusing to see mortals discussing ways of the moon, if they were humble enough not to use words "slippery" ;)

    otherwise, how would things not matter to a celestial body which has no own fire and just reflects, though weakly, the light of the others?

    ReplyDelete
  38. dan, mai traiesti? de ce ai disparut? multumesc de trecere, oricum...

    ReplyDelete
  39. eneles, I'm happy to hear from you again. in fact, I thought you had stopped coming here. but perhaps you came today only because you were lured by the magic of the High Priestess of the Floating Bridge :-) (do bridges have priestesses too? and if so, do they get messages from the kami in the same state of spirit possession (kamigakari), as the miko, the sacred maiden of the Shinto altar?).

    but I digress. anyway, let me point out to you that I think the word "slippery" used by gentle (I suppose you were referring to it) was meant to describe the feminine figure in the images, and not the ways of the moon :-P even if I think that mortals have always had the hybris to try to understand the essence of celestial beings.

    so after all these poetical musings about the moon that we have had here in the comments now we get the scientific view on it too, very interesting remark :-) I guess I might have learned this in my 4th or 5th grade and then forgotten. perhaps I would have written the poem differently if I had thought of this small detail (important detail, or no detail at all, you would contredict :-)

    ReplyDelete
  40. no, I have been to the mountains, shedding some light onto village of Heiligenblut in Hoechen Kaernten, meditating on a snow on top of the Big Bell

    I am not well-versed in shintaism, it is definitely a down-to-earth(and below) religion, but generally bridges are given to nordic knights, e.g. Heimdall, for protection

    as for your interpretation, despite the cleartext I accept it; to interprete human text is a work for mars and venus, not for a humble lifeless moon

    it was less scientific but rather a poetic remark, it is just a rare case when poetique and physique are in accord.

    I was also curious, how did the story with laptops develop?

    ReplyDelete
  41. oh, the story with the laptops :-)

    I have managed to sell them though I have indeed lost about 300 euros from the initial amount. now I have got the money and probably next week I will make the order. I am still considering: either the D300 (which all the photographers I talked to adviced except a certain anonymous here on the blog) or D90 and Sigma 50-150mm f/2.8. anyway, I will also have the lenses that I use now, they will work on the digital camera as well, won't they?
    I will have to pay extra to get the two, but I can do it. I am inclined to go for the latter, I am scared by the 2 kilos of D300, I have a weak back as it is. but they say that when shooting in poor light, one can see why D300 is better.

    thank you for asking.

    ps. 'humble lifeless moon' is a description I have to refute, no matter if poetic or scientific - the moon is neither of that, can't be. especially if viewed from the snowy mountain top.

    ReplyDelete
  42. anonymous people are also people, some of them may be hiding and some have lost their names.

    As someone who has d300 I might not be in a good position to advice for d90, but let us get the facts straight. according to most reviews I read, e.g. here say that image noise amount/pattern are the same (some mention that at 800 d300 is slightly better but i don't see that). This pretty much is all that matters to me. D300 may be sturdier, but you don't throw your camera around I assume. D90 can shoot HD video. Maybe not perfect, but I am certainly interested. You will get more respect from your peers sporting d300 though.

    another note, D300/D90 have DX sensor (half) so your lenses will have focus distance 1.6x bigger. Therefore, with your affection for indoor shooting I recommend sigma 18-50 2.8 HSM (which is what I bought recently and indoor pictures improved due to better composition options)
    so in a comparison D90+18-50+50-150 vs d300+50-150 there is no real discussion.
    and don't forget to get a large card from Transcend (my personal choice of CF/SD cards)

    ReplyDelete
  43. well I can't afford D90 plus both lenses, it is either D90 plus one lense or D300 just body, using it with my old lenses.
    I thought about the 50-150 since I have a Sigma 28-70 2.8 Af now which is very good and in this case it would be better to buy the D90 with the 50-150. or?

    ReplyDelete
  44. and all reviews say that the video on D90 is unusable, so awful.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I am not sure which reviews you read, maybe professional video?
    http://www.flickr.com/groups/828811@N24/pool/

    check this out, there is a bunch of completely not awful videos and I am sure you can figure out how to use it properly (well, you will fail at editing likely, though ;))

    28-70/2.8 AF I used for a long time with my digicam, but still bought the 18-50 for indoor so that you can feet more of a person into the frame. it is much less painful to buy it later (retails at 300)
    your 28-70 is AutoFocus, right? d90 won't meter (that is won't work) with non-AF lens.

    ReplyDelete
  46. ha
    it took me a while to figure out whether that Sigma is auto-focus or no :-)
    I shouldn't say it here because it ruins all my photographic credibility :-) but I never use the auto-focus anyway. and I barely remember what camera I have, except that it is a Nikon.

    anyway, it seems that it is AF. so the question remains: either D90 plus 50-150 plus my old sigma lenses for a while OR D300 just body using it for my old lenses for the time being? clear answer, please :-)

    ReplyDelete
  47. if i had to buy a camera now I would buy d90 (undesigned)(notarially verified)

    ReplyDelete
  48. thank you, eneles, you have been very nice bearing all these questions from me. I am glad that you asked about the laptops, it was a very good timing because today I have to make the order. I totally fell in love with some of the videos on your flickr link, so I guess this settles the problem.
    what does undesigned mean?

    I will buy it from here:
    http://www.f64studio.ro/det.php?id=412&pid=8652

    ReplyDelete
  49. it is when someone is trying to attend an urgent matter before finishing second pot of tea - should have been "undersigned"

    it is my pleasure.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Superba aceasta serie, Roxana. Felicitari! O combinatie reusita care depaseste granita obisnuita si socializata a autoportretului.

    ReplyDelete
  51. Multumesc Gabriel, pentru vizita si pentru cuvintele frumoase, imi pare bine ca tißau placut :-)

    ReplyDelete
  52. Roxana, your images are breahtaking. I am utterly inspired and in awe. Thank you for sharing them here. And of course thank you for sharing yourself.

    ReplyDelete
  53. dirtyhope, wow :-) visiting old pages of the Bridge, ghosts coming back to me now? thank you for coming, and for taking the time to tell me what you feel... it is very importat to me.

    ReplyDelete