Hello Folks,
Drove out to and hiked into Fischer Towers yesterday. The adventurous set rock climb these towers with para-glide chutes and then jump off and sail on the winds for a while. The towers themselves are monolithic and always seem to me to be on the verge of doing or saying something – and whatever that would be, it would be ominous. The trail was serpentine and if it wasn’t snow covered it was muddy and slippery – a good work out.
On the drive back the local radio station was playing a classic album from 1974 – Okinawa by the group OHO. Imagine Frank Zappa meeting Captain Beefheart and then being influenced by King Crimson and Yes and then they visit Syd Barrett in an insane asylum, and record the album there – and you are getting close.
Okinawa had me of me of course thinking about WWII and soon I start thinking about the war in the Pacific and that leads to Iwo Jima.
As I write this, on the 23 February, one of the better iconic photographs of all time was taken on Iwo Jima in 1945. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, took the photo – actually he took three photos- the first would become the most reproduced photograph in history and win the Pulitzer Prize.
Mount Suribachi is the highest peak on Iwo Jima – whoever controls the peak, controls the island. On the 19 February 1945, the US marines started their assault and after 4 days of arguably the most bloody fighting of the war, they gained control of the peak.
A flag was initially raised by the first marines at the peak but a few hours later, more marines raced up with a larger flag. Rosenthal literally ran into them on the way up the slope and accompanied them to the peak. As they raised the second flag, Rosenthal captured the act in a series of two photos plus one group photo. The first photo showed five Marine and one Navy corpsman in the act of placing the flag, already mounted on a standard, in a cairn of rocks. None of these men would not survive the remaining struggle to take complete control of the island, which when controlled, was to become the turning point in the Pacific war, allowing a stage for air and naval operations against the Japanese homeland - here's the photo ....
So what is point of this? Well, it’s really very simple ....
A great photograph can’t be staged or Photoshop’d – a great photograph is, and of, the moment. I am sure Rosenthal knew his equipment – but I am willing to bet he didn’t even know how the camera was set up at the moment he took the photos. He was carried along by the emotion of these men and he captured a perfect moment when the emotional release and the shutter release coincided.
You can’t help but be moved by this photo – every time I see it, my hair stands up on the nape of my neck. It proves once again, that in photography, it’s great to have the best equipment and all the Photoshop knowledge in the world – but the most important factor, is to be ‘out there’ with your camera in hand – if you do it often enough, your pictures will start to tell a story – and if you are lucky – one or two pictures just might change the world.
My pictures are words right now – I need to get to sentences, then to paragraphs and then to stories. I don’t know if I have enough time left to get to stories – but like the men who gave it all at Iwo Jima, I have the belief that I will survive long enough to get there.
Which now have me thinking of kamikaze pilots and of course that leads to the upside down, dive bombing, winged menace. He followed me out of Moab but did not dare enter Fisher Towers for some reason. Could this be his Achilles claw ... when I returned to town he and his friends were dive bombing the local landfill .... a feeding frenzy I guess ... when a large number of crows are congregating it is referred to as a ‘murder of crows ... when group of crows and I get together, it will be called a ‘slaughter of crows’ ....
To quote from verse 391 of the Krome Koan,
‘Abandon the search for truth; settle for a good fantasy’
More later,
Phil
No comments:
Post a Comment