Imagined versus Idealized
She imagined dystopia , but always
regarded it from the point of view
of the Garden of Eden
Fink Lendvai- Dircksen
on the works of Diane Arbus
Strange effect seen – by naked eye the clouds are not well seen – but in photograph there is this effect like a canopy over the landscape- with the frozen river below
As we reviewed the photo – diaries of
2020, earlier perspectives and current
times of Covid19 merged.
We spent some time on Brant street, the Promenade was slippery, walked back to the parking near Scotia and recalled last year’s trip to Dundas ( July 2019) . The Christmas lights around lakeshores of Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington
Why is the mask not covering your nose
in the picture- is a comment I get often.
In the beginning of the year we visited the Forks of Credit area – Caledon
Around Father’s Day – after the lockdown was lifted we went to Hamilton area – and I told the family about the works of Leonardo Sciascia -the Italian writer whose statue is on Immigration square of Hamilton Ontario.
Street photography exhibitions in Art Gallery of Ontario – made us look at Diane Arbus in a more intimate way. For our family we have intimate memories of walks and street photography in Tripoli, Malta, Istanbul and now Canada
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Let us look at – Child with Toy Grenade in Central Park – New York City – 1962.
Fink writes – about Arbus’s approach
“ The grenade, grimace and claw-like hand seem to point to a desperate future, hysterical and militarized. The picture works because the strangeness of the boy is staged with the kindly natural scene ; there is even a rhyme between those paired tree trunks and the child’s spindly legs . Arbus ‘s subject, here and elsewhere, is the discrepancy between imagined and idealized worlds represented by trees , sunlight, in the park and the violence apparently promised by the child. She imagined dystopia, but always regarded it from the point of view of the Garden of Eden.
APPLICATION- THROUGH EARLIER
PERSPECTIVES – 2017 Copleys at
Art Gallery of Hamilton and
Missing Chapters – at Art Gallery of
Mississauga
⁃ The Copleys exhibition of 2017 told of the lives of immigrants who worked in the factory and how this institution has evolved over the decades.
⁃ Sara Angelucci – the artist – remembers her parents generation and pays tribute to their struggles through this unique exhibition
THE LAST FOLIO-1942-SLOVAKIA-
MISSING CHAPTERS- 2017-Special exhibition in Art Gallery of Mississauga, in collaboration with Royal Ontario Museum, depicting the missing years in the lives of families- of loved ones lost, of migrations, wars and many unspoken realities
ART GALLERY OF ONTARIO
REMEMBERING RAGHUBIR SINGH
The AGO has interesting sections on the art of photography. We added – Modernism On the Ganges- by Mia Fenman – to our home library. Raghubir Singh interrogated Jaipur, Ganges, Calcutta in transcendent ways.
Swami Shardanand Bathes at the source, Gaumukh. 12770 feet. Uttarakhand
In the essay – The Ganges side of Modernism , Mia Fineman tells of how Raghubir Singh found on his parents’ bookshelf a copy of Cartier Bresson’s book – Beautiful Jaipur ( 1948). Those lyrical images of Singh’s hometown “ stoked the youthful fire” in him . Singh first met Bresson in 1966 April at a dinner hosted by fellow Magnum member Marilyn Silverstone at Rambagh Palace Hotel in Jaipur. Both photographers were in town to meet India’s new Prime Minister , Indira Gandhi, who had arrived for a Congress Party meeting.
For Singh, then twenty three, it was the opportunity of a lifetime: for several days he accompanied Cartier Bresson around Jaipur and witnessed
“ first hand his quickfire intuition attached to a clarity of eye and a surety of stance.”
DYSTOPIAS
As we went through our photo diaries and reminisced on the associated trips – the journeys of “ forced democracy” in Libya, walks on streets of Malta and recent years trips to Ontario smaller cities came to mind
streets and corners.
Prashant Bhatt's notes 