Camera

 Will pictures bring it sooner the birdsong

Was not for him a question heard or unheard:

Best equipment got the moment referred.

The twentieth century went so long,

He had all morning to get the light

Glassy cliffs, frond angle, stream trick, side glows.

Sounds scintillate, but his frame was composed

To relive stories in the dark room’s night.

We peer childlike into gumleaf-brown lens

Upsidedown cascades of patterned still-life

Where there are no questions of right or wrong.

We hear what we wish to hear of birdsong

And faintly sense his calm, how his eye on life

Seizes the day that buried so many whens.

This week I have revisited photographs of my great uncle John Henry Harvey (1855-1938) held in the State Library, for posting on Lost Melbourne. Here is an undated photograph of forest at Eltham, with a Heysen feel to it. Also a sonnet about someone who would cart great cameras around the place in order to take a lasting image.

Composition (December)

[Seven of seven in B&W] Body comes out that way, out of the body. We’ve no say in it. Hungry from the first, thirst for water, always more water. Stand in the street, weave across a field, body a survivor midst natural colours. What we could do without a body: nothing. Body goes that way then this way. December is delirious a month, a drug, dreams come true. Others take photographs to pass time, or the pain. It’s like watching  shadow draw. It never ends, extending and withdrawing given the light of day. What we could do without photographs: anything.

Niépce (December)

[Six of seven in B&W] The first photograph, that has survived, is of that form beloved of French artists, the roofscape. It was taken in 1826 or 1827, let’s say December, to remind us that cities like Melbourne exist entirely inside the photographic age. The image was made on lithographic stone coated in bitumen that was dissolved in lavender oil. Through the murk we discern not a face or natural shape, but geometry. Nicéphore Niépce was behind it all, or ahead of it all, coating it all, it an end product of other experiments he called heliography, or ‘sun drawing’. 

Brownie (December)

[Five of seven in B&W] Brownie was carefully boxed up, wall inside wall, eyes front, and easy to use, which made it easy to sell. Snaps, the negative rolls enlightened for positive ends, developed into bits of squares recalling every occasion. Carefully our ancestors measured black corners, fitted the squares into corners on grey felt paper. Ephemeral minutiae time turns into talismans. My father stands on a rock outside Bright, the caption in fountain pen ‘Sir Edmund Hillary’. Mother, on same rock, ‘Lady Hillary’. Dad with his Eliot: “The evening with the photograph album.” Mother carefully stores them for posterity.

Hasselblad (December)

[Four of seven in B&W] In my twenties I absorbed great photographers. An hour with Cartier-Bresson left me seeing everything as a decisive moment. After Ansel Adams no landscape came up to scratch. Kertész pictured my absorption in books. I was captured by their erudite talk about Leicas and Hasselblads. Warhol though made sheets of famous friends at Studio 54, his dachshund dressed as the pope. I couldn’t like looking at other people’s breakfasts January through December, themselves somewhere or other, no light check. Photography was art from the start, but I lived in denial. It was always social media.

Selfie (December)

[Three of seven in B&W] Me with bestie. Me with pyramids. Me with camel. Signatures of all things I happen to be in front of at the time. Me explores my space. Me conquers the world. Been there, done a selfie, with my bestie. Who am I, sending selfies, to my list? Or there’s anti-selfie. A full frontal of the hand that serves the selfie. An aerial shot that’s mostly hairdo. Angle centrally the nose-ring me inserted with help from bestie. Me refuses the 24-hour happy. Me knows December is Advent waiting, then Christmas given. Me looks beyond camera’s wants.  

Written for Talitha Fraser and in honour of what I call her anti-selfies. Also written for Kate McAll in response to her invitation to the B&W challenge.

Instamatic (December)

[Two of seven in B&W] The lightweight camera was light. The press-down lever pressed, destabilising the camera. Images gave objects three or four outlines, a selfie was a miniature Muybridge. Blur occurred, was default, unless the camera was secured through practice. We would call it a design fault. Instamatic was unwrapped on 25^th December. Light found its way to the hole where the mind wandered. Beach cricket at Queenscliff was never ever so dazzling. Faces were shiny and even shadows had traces of silver. And it really doesn’t matter if I’m wrong I’m right. We would call it so Sixties.