While we were away in Istanbul, the Putney Post arrived in the mail. Out daughter went to school there, graduating in 2011. I love reading it, especially love to see what graduates, old and new are doing. It is always interesting, inspiring and surprising. One of the class notes (’70) was from photographer Alex Webb. The title of his latest book, The Suffering of Light
I got pretty curious about his work (including this photograph from the streets of Istanbul), and found an article – 10 Things Alex Webb can teach you a bout street photography.
The ten things are:
- layer your photographs
- fill the frame
- walk . . . a lot
- look for the light
- realize that 99.9% of street photography is a failure
- work on projects
- if you are stuck try something new
- follow your obsession
- capture the emotion of a place
- travel
It is worth a visit to this page to see how he explores each. I found these to be very much the way I proceed with my own choreography, especially numbers 6-10. What was fresh for me in thinking about dancemaking was the idea of layering and filling. Layering had to do with depth – foreground, middle ground and distance. Filling the frame is about taking things out to their edges. That reminded me of how my Aunt Pearl, when I visited her at the farm in South Dakota, insisted that I butter toast right out to the edges – it was about tasting things all the way out. I like thinking about more ways to layer without losing clarity, to fill things to their edges and yet guide the viewer’s attention, about my dance practice as walking, and about how to look for light in a dance. That has a lot to do with finding the light in myself, and about the heat and light of the obsession that drives the movement.
Looking for the light is what I am doing now, in these late October afternoons, when the light is rich and golden, the angle of the sun amplifying everything, breaking open the heart of what color remains. Looking for the light is also being available for creative and spiritual downloads from the universe. Like the Alex Webb piece, like the coat I found wandering in Cambridge that has become a costume, the piece of music I heard playing in a store on Martha’s Vineyard in August that is weaving its way into a dance, like the writings of the brilliant Peter Levine, whose books on trauma have been transformative for us. Opening to the moment, receiving its unexpected gifts.