POWER
is a photographic essay. To call it an essay is to name
the rising agent in this photographic series.
If
it is an essay it is a type of physical and self-conscious
trial.
All
these photographs are such a wavering setting-out. They embody
risky reach.
Gear
change: at the extreme of such wavering, setting-out gestures,
at their maximum promotion, there is the echo of Doubting Thomas’ reaching
into the space between his and Christ’s once pierced side.
His is a great Western original pointing, at glaring
deficiency.
Thomas’ five-second
act: the West’s greatest essay.
So
back to the POWER series that you can saunter by or re-read
and think about again and again.
POWER
is a jump out and across that has all of the unfolding
cadence of a walk.
Patrick
Reynolds’ essay is not something signifying belief and disbelief.
Neither was Thomas’ probing at the body of the newly spacious
god.
You
can see it. The original essay was not a fact-lover’s enquiry
to downplay doubt and restore or confirm a previous order.
Thomas was without doubt. In his reaching out, in his addressing,
in his famous action Thomas was least himself. He was at the
edge of something; absorbed within and conscious of his as
a surprising motion in the middle of something. And what was
this something that the Saint was on the edge of and
reaching into? It was a state resembling Thomaslessness.
Heck.
So
too with POWER which is a series of photographs that you can
spend a lot of time with. They appear to be pretty uneventful
images at first. Then you can see that they repeat one discovery
gesture all the time. But it is a discovery that is indistinguishable
from something that you do when you are becoming lost.
It
is incredulity’s reflex, this repeated leaning of the Hasselblad
toward the river.
An essay then,
and in particular this photographic one: it is a gesture that
responds to a call, performed thoughtlessly and before the
burgeoning of a gap where a gushing is now taking or has
taken place.
POWER
is the record of an exchange conducted in the face of a river.
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