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Negative In Process
The final image is not the process, but a result of discovery. The process involves digging and bargaining, scavenging and stealing, cutting and pasting; it is antiquarian mysticism. It is the fabrication of memory. Narratives are lost, mixed and jumbled into shoe boxes or crates; their precise language has been confused. They make their way from attics and living rooms into parking lots and online auctions. At the flea market, the sellers of these orphaned stories barely understand the language. Their artifacts scream over the pavement and under the sun. Ron is one of my dealers. He has green sores all over her skin for which I cannot discern a disease. Mr. Chang’s items are overpriced, but he accepts checks, telling me that this or that is “very very old…19th Century.” He also tries to sell me vintage porn, and sometimes, I buy that too. Robert is generally high when I visit him. The smoke that wafts out of his van is probably why he gives me such good deals. Of course, there are others involved in the trade, for these are just a few who set the stage. It doesn’t start with them, nor are they exclusive to the business. They are somewhat like me, scavengers who deal in other people’s memories; the relics left behind are unintelligible, yet alluring.
I get dizzy-anxious as I claw my way through the boxes. I can smell the stale fixer baking in the heat as it turns my fingers old-orange, but I keep digging. Pulling out a pile of negatives I hold one against the sky. It is a picnic, or no, maybe it’s a funeral? Either way, I like the way her face is soft out-of-focus and the trees sharp, so I take it. But it’s not that simple, not that calm, it is frightening. The obsession is overwhelming as the collecting continues. Only after every image has been inspected will I stop; it can only be equated with famine and the hunt for food, or so I imagine.
At home, on the light table as a surgeon, the dissection begins. Stories emerge against the backdrop of silver and scotch-tape. He who was once at war in black and white finds color. She, now divorced, is married again. Her name is… His name is… they find their own names, or, they find their faces scratched out, their world scratched out; reconstruction is not always pretty or kind. Intimacy is revealed in the fragments found and cut, remembering the 1/60th of a second when the shutter clicked.
Anthony R. Vizzari, Chicago 2008
I get dizzy-anxious as I claw my way through the boxes. I can smell the stale fixer baking in the heat as it turns my fingers old-orange, but I keep digging. Pulling out a pile of negatives I hold one against the sky. It is a picnic, or no, maybe it’s a funeral? Either way, I like the way her face is soft out-of-focus and the trees sharp, so I take it. But it’s not that simple, not that calm, it is frightening. The obsession is overwhelming as the collecting continues. Only after every image has been inspected will I stop; it can only be equated with famine and the hunt for food, or so I imagine.
At home, on the light table as a surgeon, the dissection begins. Stories emerge against the backdrop of silver and scotch-tape. He who was once at war in black and white finds color. She, now divorced, is married again. Her name is… His name is… they find their own names, or, they find their faces scratched out, their world scratched out; reconstruction is not always pretty or kind. Intimacy is revealed in the fragments found and cut, remembering the 1/60th of a second when the shutter clicked.
Anthony R. Vizzari, Chicago 2008
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