Voxpop #4: “Pictures from Poetry”

Presented by M. Solav

Voxpops are experiments in which abstract photographers of the Hintology community either have their work engaged with specific audiences or come to discuss particular topics related to their practice.

This voxpop article has been separated into two sections. To read the part about poetry written from pictures, please click here.

“Abstract photography and creative writing — and especially poetry — share this language that is deeply based in a shared, grounded reality. As opposed to painting and other forms of “generative art” which essentially start from a blank canvas and allow the artist to explore an infinitude of possibilities, these artforms seem more constrained: a “random” photograph still depicts light as we might see it, a “random” sequence of words still contains references to a concrete world.

It takes a concerted effort — of deconstruction, of letting go of safe and familiar notions — to achieve results that speak at a more abstract level. Given this shared language, the idea that a photograph can inspire a piece of text and vice versa seems rather intuitive.

This is why we have decided to explore this relationship by inviting 20 artists to compose texts and capture images on the basis of one another’s work. The images and texts were attributed at random, with the possibility of choosing between four pieces. We hope you will enjoy those results as we enjoyed producing them!”

— M. Solav

Photographs selected or produced based on the texts and poems featured in this article in the presented order.

TABLE OF CONTENT

[ 01 ] M. Solav / @m.solav
[ 02 ] Keon Wong / @keon_wong
[ 03 ] Jay Burton / @jayburtonphotography
[ 04 ] Milan Radovanovic / @newfotoromantic
[ 05 ] Karolina Sholokhova / @nothlngbutlove
[ 06 ] Jeff Tung / @jk_tone
[ 07 ] Matthew Fertel / @digprod4
[ 08 ] Susan Sancomb / @susansancombphoto
[ 09 ] Celia Strainge / @celia_strainge
[ 10 ] Amy Aiken / @amyaikenphotos
[ 11 ] Kelly Schulze / @kellyschulze_photography
[ 12 ] Tim Gentle / @atimosabeart

[ 01 ] M. Solav — @m.solav

Photograph by @m.solav based on the poem below.

PLEASE

A poem by Hector @poet_hector_59

If I had my way I’d be a piano or cello, or something without these dumb hands and ears; I’d breakfast on a hurricane and rewrite old letters, or maybe straddle lightning and gather the doves and chain myself to a growling river

The sea’s ribs were meant to be licked, the bones of its song memorized in multiple keys; please, let me cook for you these damp pages; pretend that they’re a feast and that we are in the middle of the night, under unnamed stars

Call on me in this sorrowful castle, I am no king but I hoard keys that miss their doors; beg me to come to you and I will disavow this fiefdom, if only you’d listen to me tell you a story that you’ve heard before; please, be the sunlight that breaks the glass of my skin; please, sit beside me, here

[ 02 ] Keon Wong — @keon_wong

Photograph by @potatolerance based on the text below.

DRY MISFORTUNE

A text by Dordzhi Dzhaldzhireev @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi
Translated using Google Translate

tėpp•śәr*
: The kinetics of expansiveness is infinitely diverse :_: — / : [in relation to the radicality of the mode : /(of discovery)/ — /recombinations of diversion/-/|:surpassing the surroundings:|]; -/-
:|| : | (:) | — /|the trajectories of restoration are infinite in their deviations|/

/ it is the lightness /:/./:/-/ anticipating the blinding of silver| |:::|
1-room, 29 sq. m.
appreciate the dream of mercury
and the heavens still exist
so that no one can grasp them

what better could speak of defeat

I became convinced of this
when birds began to heal

and clusters of white acacia
taste like Adam’s childhood

Tėpp•śәr* (Russian: типшар) (literally translated as “dry misfortune”) — a traditional form of suicide by hanging or self-immolation with the purpose of seeking revenge against an enemy or asserting one’s own innocence.

Original text by @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi.

[ 03 ] Jay Burton — @jayburtonphotography

Photographs by jayburtonphotography based on the poem below.

TRAFFIC BLEEDS

A poem by Jack Thompson @jackwritess

It’s as if again Traffic bleeds
It’s as if again enjambment
follows me around
Disrupting my
thoughts

The smoke and exhaust
Is more welcomed
Than a thought
Lost

Oh mighty car horn
Blare to me your solemn voice!

[ 04 ] Milan Radovanovic — @newfotoromantic

Photograph by @newfotoromantic based on the poem below.

REVELATION

A poem by Anni Rannisto @reveries.of.atlantis

Shunned revisionist —
the locusts have forsaken the augury of blackened sun,
and June gently molts the skin from your back,

as you slumber against the ocean’s rib
and dream about your father leaving
the family home in reverse —

birdsong re-rising from the grass
to crown the yard tree, and a quiet torch
suddenly igniting at the gates of Tartarus.

There is nothing wonted about you
nothing of causeways.

Come morning, you rush to tell the brown hare
hidden among the ferns, and to its hunter too,
that you have found a stone

softer than forgiveness.
You tell them — the stone’s calm
in the fever of your palm —

how you will never let
this impossible thing disappear.

[ 05 ] Karolina Sholokhova — @nothlngbutlove

Photograph by @nothlngbutlove based on the poem below.

INFINITE STARS

A poem by Arnab @living.self

Infinite stars on your skin
like the infinite skins under the stars.
Gracefully alive, peaceful in another form,
Whither the universe carried you in her arms.

[ 06 ] Jeff Tung — @jk_tone

Photograph by @jk_tone based on the text below.

METAL INITIATION

A text by Dordzhi Dzhaldzhireev @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi
Translated using Chat-GPT

Metal initiation is liberated by the ecstatic nature of diverted inherentness, the perspective of connections as a memory of beginnings, into spontaneously contorted hermeticity (capable of being positioned only as unorientable) while denying movement towards fixation, communicating with itself through the defects of separation, the positional directionality from its manifest executability revealed in distance (balance of memory) (amnesia of perspective) they constitute forecasting as the first form of hybrid communicativeness discovered in regeneration (plasticity) (sense of suppression) (search) with matter the decipherability of the plane (surface) perceived as foreign substance disintegrating.

Transference | link of kinetic equilibrium | a relic of translation the pain recognized by the organism its universality of indifference through the extraction of solitude adjacent to (accompanied by) birth desynchronizing the principle of explicability (intentions) into an apology of hermaphroditism (stability) — (reactivity of deviations) | feverishness innate experience of silk | (unfolding) | the standard of observability and measurement | covered by the absorption of ambient recognizability through the totality of resemblances affectation of periodicity | counter-mobility | into a frozen flash | hysteria of lightness | facade of unassimilatedness | Lotus in motion | anti-cupola of discovery | elasticity | illusionary storm | entwined in the absence of voice | in the penetrative nature of focus (revelation of self-oblivion) | quivering of obviousness in the most concentrated intervals of disappearance | reaction to presence the possibility of space as a means of communicationthe incompleteness of existence | the delusion of conduciveness of observation |
the newfoundness of the object | the remaining is the fancifulness of noise

decay
the impossibility to drop from the earth
that which will not produce sound

the height of the flower’s speech
spoken by hearing.

Original text by @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi.

[ 07 ] Matthew Fertel — @digprod4

Photograph by @digprod4 based on the poem below.

HOLY WATER

A text by Apollo Spencer @apollothescribe

There is blood on the hands we dare to wash in holy water.
There is plastic in the deepest parts of the oceans.
We turn a blind eye as animals wash up on shore choking to death on our sense of entitlement.
But water is pure,
it must be,
for we bathe our children in it.
And still we forget the rage in her depths,
the jagged coastline she carved with nothing but patience,
the souls she beckoned to oblivion.

Are you remembering now?
Why there is no running from a tsunami
or why men lost at sea are never searched for?
We play with fire only because we have learned to put it out.

We shouldn’t anger the water.

[ 08 ] Susan Sancomb — @susansancombphoto

Photograph by @susansancombphoto based on the poem below.

SANCTIFIED MELLOW

A text by Cassie Fielding @rhombus_head_twinned

salt-hardened sternum
lone pillar weathered
under rough palms
of overworked seas
seas over-glossed
overturned seas
heavy
steady dream
no less than
least-ladelled
no more than
spoonfully
saltily
meltingly eyeletting
sanctified mellows

[ 09 ] Celia Strainge — @celia_strainge

Photograph by @celia_strainge based on the poem below.

INVISIBLE CITY

A text by Paul Rowland @pauljonathanrowland

Look at the spaces between things,
without which there would be no things.

Look in places you have not looked,
which are not really places at all.

Look for the places with no names,
the places the signs don’t point to.

Look for places where nothing is,
the places your eyes can’t focus.

Look from a something to nothing,
try to see nowhere as somewhere.

Look for the city that is not there,
the shape of where the city is not.

[ 10 ] Amy Aiken — @amyaikenphotos

Photograph by @amyaikenphotos based on the poem below.

MIDNIGHT PASSING

A text by Keon Wong @keon_wong

How peculiar, the slowness
Of night, a flock of inkblots
Taking flight across pages, across

Passions which pepper this iron hull,
These nails and rebar, hammered in like sermon
And song again by an incantatory beak

Of some man, something bigger
Than the ripples within these calm hands
Where only holy water and rain survive

With its jagged frequency
Standing still, standing tall.
O’ bright unrelinquished sun

The strangeness of your silence
Staggering down into
Mere sedation

In finality
And delicate moire
Our oddity

[ 11 ] Kelly Schulze — @kellyschulze_photography

Photograph by @kellyschulze_photography based on the text below.

DREAMS INHABIT SHORES

A text by Dordzhi Dzhaldzhireev @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi
Translated using Chat-GPT

The plane unfolds |through the axis of substitution| : /Symmetry [(as well as velocity)] is attractive: : (-/Appearing as a mnemonic model/ : |(including for death)|)/-([The kinetics of repetition is conditioned by resistance recombination]-/Communication manifests/ : |The imitation of corporeality|- (/ Processual bodies are accomplished/-) : [On the contrary] : (-/They happen expansively/) : :|The body is based on the form of reflection| : (I see how clusters of fruit-like bunches ooze from my blisters); -/Functionality: the ability to orient/ : |Space seeks its center within us| : /In the absence of givenness, it acquires sensory qualities: irreducibility of the latter to material fabric: (The proportion of its position reduced to waiting) : thus reproducing potential access/- / signifying a process of states/-/expressing itself as uncertainty/)/-/A component of disposition : |at the extreme limit of distance, turns into noise| : (the random property of exclusion) : [perceiving the revealed anticipations only as a form of proximity]; _ /An algorithm of extractions is stable in pattern/-/Delicately lays through: the furrows of slaughtered cattle/-/

Dreams inhabit the shores
And before touching the water,
Make sure that silence is almost deciphered by the perfection of exhalation
But only almost
For something must remain

Original text by @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi.

[ 12 ] Tim Gentle — @atimosabeart

Photograph by @atimosabeart based on the poem below.

FIRST SPARK

A text by Apollo Spencer @apollothescribe

Wailing songs of the winter
Heard through the hollow tree
Rest sleeps in the silence
Of warm dreams, till eternity.

One with the earth,
back to the roots of its being.
Waking up to the first spark
On the snowy leaf, sun shining.

Rising from the Earth
Regal, as it reaches the sky
Blossoms of the winter song.
Spring, rhythms of new life.

▲ Closing word:

“We hope this experiment inspired you with the endless possibilities that a creative use of our semantic and visible worlds allow — and if you are yourself an artist, that it made you want to try incorporating words and thoughts along your pictures, or vice versa: picture along your words.”

— M. Solav

Thanks to the writers for providing their texts:

@poet_hector_59, @dzhaldzhiireevdordzhi, @jackwritess, @reveries.of.atlantis, @apollothescribe, @rhombus_head_twinned, @pauljonathanrowland and @keon_wong

And to all the participants:

[ 01 ] M. Solav / @m.solav
[ 02 ] Keon Wong / @keon_wong
[ 03 ] Jay Burton / @jayburtonphotography
[ 04 ] Milan Radovanovic / @newfotoromantic
[ 05 ] Karolina Sholokhova/ @nothlngbutlove
[ 06 ] Jeff Tung / @jk_tone
[ 07 ] Matthew Fertel / @digprod4
[ 08 ] Susan Sancomb / @susansancombphoto
[ 09 ] Celia Strainge / @celia_strainge
[ 10 ] Amy Aiken / @amyaikenphotos
[ 11 ] Kelly Schulze / @kellyschulze_photography
[ 12 ] Tim Gentle / @atimosabeart

Voxpop conducted and edited by M. Solav.

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…about Hintology

Hintology is an abstract photography magazine project created in August 2020 which strives to create a community where every artists are given a chance to broadcast their voice, the aspiring just as much as the established. We are a small team of volunteers who rely on the passion and contributions of their community to help spread the beauty and diversity of abstract photography. If you share our vision of inclusiveness and inquisitiveness, you can make a difference by tagging your work with #Hintology on Instagram, or by following our page and joining our group on Facebook. If you appreciate our curative work and the interviews we conduct, please do consider donating via this link; all funds will go towards bringing our magazine to the physical world.

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