Thursday, September 22, 2011

Road to Nowhere

I'm not saying it's all been done before because of course it hasn't. Nevertheless, in the great photographic soup certain themes keep bubbling to the surface. Today's Flak Photo, for instance:

Halong Bay, Vietnam, 2005 — from the series Certainty Principle
Michael David Murphy

Reminiscient of an old Joel Meyerowitz photo,

from A Summer's Day, Joel Meyerowitz

Which I unwittingly repeated a few years ago.

Armitage Park, 2007, Blake Andrews

Of course none of these are exactly new. Robert Frost beat us all to the punch, and maybe planted the seed. And there was surely someone before him. Something unconscious at work here.

Where is this road going? Forward, that's all I know...

...Through Colorado for the next few days. Return next week.
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5 comments:

  1. metaphysicalSeptember 22, 2011 at 10:29 AM

    Funny, I was hiking recently and came upon an unsigned fork in the trail and took a similar photo. In my mind, it's like choosing between unknown outcome A or unknown outcome B. But there-in lies a paradox - is it really a choice if you do not know what you are choosing?

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  2. SERGEI POPOVSeptember 22, 2011 at 10:40 AM

    IM iN CASTLE ROCK AMERICAN STATE COLORADO RITE NOW{ WE MEET THEIR NO? GET OFF INTERSTATE 25. I SEE YOU THEN.

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  3. AnonymousSeptember 22, 2011 at 2:54 PM

    Though unconscious factors and allegory may be at work here there is probably sheer aesthetic/compositional reason behind that motif. More specifically the idea of rendering a perspective (not unlike in classical painting) and to give a 3D sort of feel. I believe Atget uses that technique extensively in the streets of Paris - without the idea of 'road to nowhere'.

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  4. Мария ПоповSeptember 23, 2011 at 6:30 AM

    Сергей, пожалуйста, немедленно вернуться домой и прекратить преследование что приятно г-н Эндрюс вокруг США Морщины г-н скучает по тебе ужасно.

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  5. Robert FrostSeptember 23, 2011 at 7:35 AM

    Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
    And sorry I could not travel both
    And be one traveler, long I stood
    And looked down one as far as I could
    To where it bent in the undergrowth;

    Then took the other, as just as fair
    And having perhaps the better claim,
    Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
    Though as for that, the passing there
    Had worn them really about the same,

    And both that morning equally lay
    In leaves no step had trodden black
    Oh, I kept the first for another day!
    Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
    I doubted if I should ever come back.

    I shall be telling this with a sigh
    Somewhere ages and ages hence:
    Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.

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