“Would you suggest writing as a career?” one of the young students asked me.
“Are you trying to be funny?” I asked him.
“No, no, I’m serious. Would you advise writing as a career?”
“Writing chooses you, you don’t choose it.”
And so it goes.
From Tales of Ordinary Madness.
Summer 2008 was capped-off traveling three weeks in Brazil. My trip started and finished visiting friends in Rio de Janeiro.
You may recognize the statue of Christ the Redeemer atop the Corcovado, probably the best known image of Rio. Rio also has some truly odd modern architecture on offer as well and the Museu de Arte Contemporanea in Niteroi is as good as it gets. Getting around in the hilly neighborhoods of Rio is made easier by crowded trams. Brazilians have developed their own martial art, Capoeira, which is much more like art than war and there was an exhibit of some of it’s paraphenalia; the pictured hat is wicked. Old churches come a dime-a-dozen in Rio but none are more beautiful than the Igrejia de Nossa Senhora da Gloria do Outeiro. The public art and monuments in Rio also run to the bizzare as with the Monumento do Mortos na II Guerra Mundial. Last and without a doubt my favorite place in Rio, are their equally internationally famous beaches; here is seen Copacabana.
On a quest for photobooks I came across a wonderful little booklet on the scientist Luigi Galvani. It was had for a song from a local used book store.
Luigi Galvani discovered that electricity applied to the muscles of a dead frog provoked a twitch in the muscles. The phenomenon we now know as galvanism in honor of the discoverer. Four etchings were made by an unknown artist diagramming Galvani’s experiments. The drawings from which the engravings were made remained undiscovered until 1937. In 1971 the drawings were published in Luigi Galvani by Bern Dibner as a supplement. Each drawing is reproduced on a well-considered three-page foldout to exhibit their superior quality. There is an as-yet undiscovered fourth drawing. This drawing has it all: a tile floor to display the artist’s skill in perspective, several mysterious apparatus, a dissected frog and disembodied hands directing the show.
I can’t let this topic go without mentioning one of the more bizarre experiments in the history of photography. I referr to the French neurologist Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne. Duchenne used photography to document his experiments with galvanic response on live humans. He would stimulate various parts of the head to re-create facial expressions in his research to map the muscles used in those expressions. What I find most interesting about the Duchenne experiments is his presence in every image. He is there as if to say “look what I did”!
But wait! There is more! Two more in fact. Look for them soon.
Hotel room in Hua Shan, China. The worst hotel room I’ve ever slept in. The main problem could not be captured with a camera; only by smell-o-vision.
One night was one night too many.
Alec Soth’s website was down for a while. I was happy to find it back among the series of tubes and with new work posted. This body of work commissioned by Carleton College is simple, moving and beautiful.
Content © 2002-2008 Glenn Twiggs. All Rights Reserved.
