11/26/10

The Windswept Landscapes


                                                    
The Windswept Landscapes & Memorials  2008-09



                                                    Who can sound the depths of the wind?
                                                    When the wind is blowing
                                                    we must expand & swell else we be blown away.
                                                                        
                                                                                                                Charles Burchfield



Windswept Landscape 18x26”   Click on image to enlarge


My wife and I live on the edge of a meadow where we are often vulnerable witnesses to not only multiple forms of human folly, but also very strong winds that howl and sweep through that space.  The wind shakes our house...and our sense of well being; we then experience the wind as an uncontrollable and at times terrifying force in the natural world.  

Indeed many of the Windswept photographs look and feel apocalyptic; others reveal a beautiful, intricate web-like vibrational structure.  In this series I strive to give visual form to that sense of awe and wonder I feel in relation to this potent though invisible transforming power of Nature.   

There are two sets of Windswept photographs.  Set 1 focuses on the Natural Landscape; Set 2 , which focuses on the Cultural Landscape is entitled Windswept Memorials.



               Sometimes

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,
Or the wind sweeps through a tree,
Or a dog howls in a far off farm,
I hold still and listen a long time.

My soul turns and goes back to the place
Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,
The bird and the blowing wind
Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,
And an animal, and a cloud bank.
Then changed and odd it comes home
And asks me questions.  What should I reply?

                                                                              Hermann Hesse  
                                                                              (trans R Bly)  from News of the Universe  



                    Windswept Meadow   18x26”   



                   Windswept Meadow    18x26”            



 
                   Windswept Landscapes   Canal   18x26”




                  Windswept Hill    18x26”



                Windswept Lake   18x26”



        Windswept Hudson River & Mountain  18x26”



Windswept Hudson River & Mountain  18x26”

















   


                        The Wind!  Motion is life.  All is dead that stands still.
                                                                                  
                                                                                                 Charles Burchfield



Windswept Memorials

Set 2 of the Windswept photographs focus on the Cultural Landscape--especially places or memorials having to do with human conflict and tragedy.

Wind is often related to breath and spirit.  My fantasy or magical thinking in regards to this series is that each windswept photograph--with its transformation of the image--breaths a healing or purifying life into the painful, tragic historical memory embedded in the earth, place or object that was photographed.



                
           Windswept Vietnam Veterans Memorial    18x26”



          Windswept  Monument to Slaves   18x26”



         Windswept Gettysburg Monument to Soldiers   18x26”



         Windswept Death of a Colonel, 1781 battle, Hudson River Valley    18x26”




         Faint, Windswept Pompeii Piazza   18x26”



  *


straw, feathers, dust —
little things

but if they all go one way,
that's the way the wind goes.





Posted by Steven D. Foster at 5:24 PM