A PHOTOGRAPHER’S SOUVENIRS FROM A NOCTURNAL, BIG-CITY FORAY
by Edward M. Gómez
We’re not lamenting the inevitable arrival and frigid unfolding of winter, with its stingy allocation of achingly short days and its too-generous helping of long, black nights, but the truth is that we just can’t get enough of that bright, fleeting, soul-warming stuff: light, light, light, precious light — the more and the brighter, the better.
To venture outside on a cold winter’s day when the sky is clear, and the sun is shining is to revel in the reward of nourishing, spirit-lifting natural light. Bring on the vitamin D!
Fighting off a tendency to give in to the winter blues and blahs, and feeling doubtful about the effectiveness of those electric lights that are sold to help fight the effects of SAD (seasonal affective disorder), we’re reminded of a famous work by the French Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. (Our good pal, the artist and brutjournal contributor Steven Hirsch, tried one of those anti-SAD light gizmos but got rid of it, for he found that his brightly colored painter’s palette delivered faster, longer-lasting cheer.)
Poetry buffs will recall that Verlaine (1844-1896), who was well educated and served in the administration of the Paris Commune, left his wife and son for his fellow poet Arthur Rimbaud, becoming his lover and his partner in poetic experimentation and a tempestuous affair.
It was Verlaine who penned the classic “Il pleure dans mon coeur” (“Tears fall in my heart”), a poem school kids in France still learn to recite by heart, as much for its flowing rhythm as for the soothing melancholy of its lines.
Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon coeur ?
In English, this verse says:
Tears fall in my heart
Like the rain falls on the town;
What is this languor
That penetrates my heart?
Recently, in New York City, brutjournal’s visual director, the photographer Bill Westmoreland, who doesn’t go anywhere without toting his camera — to the park for a walk, to a supermarket, to the dentist’s office for a teeth cleaning — stepped out into the night. His goal: to capture nocturnal offerings of light, precious light — all artificial, of course — and bring them back home like a haul of ineffable treasures.
Verlaine’s atmospheric lines came to mind when we examined the photos Bill brought back, each one a luminescent souvenir of a nocturnal winter world — all puddle-wet and gently aglow.
Bill observed, “My main intention was to try to capture some images that looked like paintings, an effect that depends not only on the subject matter but also on how the photos are cropped. It’s something I’ve been doing for ten years with the photos in my ‘Drive-by’ series, rural landscapes that are shot from the window of a moving car; I try to make them look like paintings, too.”
Squeeze the light out of these photos — and savor it, too.
[Scroll down to see more of Bill Westmoreland’s winter night light photos.]
