It's been quite awhile since I've blogged--nearly a year in fact--and it's high time to start again. I must say that I did not think to start up again on my own, but reading the blogs of some friends from grad school has inspired me, and, at the very least it gets me writing something other than comments at the bottom of papers I am grading! In fact, I will admit to you, and you only, dear reader, that part of my impetus for blogging again is to start thinking aloud [blogging aloud] about ideas for my new project. So, sometimes you will see commentary on the life in Maine I am enjoying so much, and other times, you will probably see random musings about the modernists I am working on. If you have ideas or suggestions on either my life in Maine, or my modernists, do let me know.
It's late, and I should be getting to bed soon to rest up for an early morning US 1800-1900 discussion of Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, BUT, before I do that, I wanted to just muse a bit on an exhibit I went to see this afternoon at the Portland Museum of Art. I'm very glad that I am a member of this museum, and I can say that since becoming a member this summer I've been at least four times--twice to see Susan Danly's O'Keeffe and the Camera show. Today I went to see the new Impressionist show traveling from the Brooklyn Museum of Art [two thoughts: if you've seen one impressionist show, you've seen them all; why does the Brooklyn museum have such a large collection of French impressionists] but after a quick perusal of a well hung but slightly boring group of pleasant plein-air pieces from the 1880s, I ventured up to take a look at the smaller show, Andre Kertesz, "On Reading." Kertesz was a Hungarian born photographer who, like Henri Cartier Bresson and others, really made street photography into an art form. This show is a collection of his photographs from all over the world, spanning three or four decades, simply of people reading. Not people reading and posing, but just people lost in books, newspapers, magazines, in all sorts of positions. Men on park benches, far away views of people caught on rooftops sunbathing with their books, women on trains in Japan, backstage glances of a clown reading a book before going on stage, boys reading newspapers while sitting on piles of newspapers, etc. None of the photographs were overly large, some were only a few inches tall, but I was hooked from the first one I saw. Why? Well, I've been thinking about that very question all evening.
I think partially it's because I love his angles, the street photography, the unposed snapshot quality, the black and white prints. But more than that, I think it's because I love to read and I love to read wherever I can, so what really made me like this show so much is how it resonated with me. I caught myself smiling at grown men sitting against a tree in a park reading in the middle of a day, or women looking at bookstalls in Paris while walking their dogs. I thought of all the places over the years that I've been caught reading--on a bench in Belgium, under the trees at Hovey House when I was in grad school and Andy Bunie remarked on how great life was when all you had to do was sit under a tree and read [he was right], on the beach, on the T, on bleachers while waiting for track meets to get over, in the back seat of the car when I was little and trying to escape from a house crowded with five other siblings, in bed, on the couch, in the backyard, at my desk, in the basement of Bapst in college.....This list could go on forever. It also really struck me at how universal the act of reading is. Kertesz caught unsuspecting people lost in words all over the world. And the exhibit also made me sad. These images were mostly from the 1940s and the 1960s and I was thinking that if I set out to do a similar series these days, I wouldn't catch so many people reading. I would, instead, catch them texting on cell-phones, typing away on their laptops, pecking away at their blackberries. And, while I think that would be an interesting series, I think I'd rather catch people reading. I'd rather be caught reading. Midnight approaches and it's time for bed. If you find yourself in Portland, go see the Kertesz show, it's up through November. If not--just look for some of his photographs and lose yourself in the very mundane nature of the subject matter.
