topography of a life

i'm fascinated by maps. on pinterest, i have a board called topographies, that's full of interesting and inspiring art people have made of maps. but maps are art in and of themselves. they are a representation of a place, not a duplication - a map can never truly capture all that is about a place (borges knew this). they remain but an incomplete illusion. i think it's what makes art featuring maps so fascinating.

just as it's impossible for a map to truly represent a place, it's completely impossible to fully blog a life. for one, no one would want to read it, for another, it's simply impossible to put words to it all. that, of course, doesn't stop people from trying. there are those who blog their breakfast or nightly dinners and then publish books of the photos, in case you missed one of those prosaic shots. there are people who take a photo at the same time every day (or was that just a plot device in a midsomer murder?). or people who simply take a photo every day (i read about a guy who did that for like 30 years).

me, my life and my blog, are all over the place - sometimes it's a craft blog, sometimes a travelogue, sometimes it's about perfume, or raising a child, or living in self-chosen exile, occasionally it's even about politics. but mostly, i blog to think things through, work them out and make sense of the world around me. and it feels pretty real to me. but you can never truly convey what it's all like (especially not the bits inside your head). you can only sketch the outlines. map the topographies of a life, if you will.

i don't share everything, but i do think that because of the immediate kind of person that i am, how i'm feeling is pretty obvious - good and bad. of course there are things i don't blog "out loud" - because they might hurt someone or burn a bridge or get someone (usually me) in trouble (the tales i could tell you of several big corporations would make your toes curl). i also don't blog every worry i have, because to an extent, i want this to be a mostly positive space. but i do blog about those things on my secret blog, because blogging is how i think. or rather, writing is how i think, and blogging is my medium of choice. there's something about that little blogger compose window that just gets the words flowing. and the impossible mapping of a life continues.

documentary photography

i learned something yesterday on my usual wednesday afternoon trip to the henie onstad art center (i'm going to miss that place). they had a new exhibition up of contemporary norwegian documentary photography. the photos were all recent ones by norwegian photographers. mentioned in the notes on several of the photos were that they harkened to the traditions of american documentary photographer walker evans (1903-1975) and german august sander (1876-1964) and i intend to look into their work a bit and learn more. i suppose another name for documentary photography is journalistic photography, but it's about depicting snapshots of life as it is. and i suppose it's where the notion that a picture is worth 1000 words came from.

most of the photographers in the exhibition had little interaction with their subjects, they just tried to capture moments without interference, but there were several where they had posed the subjects. one of those is above, where a russian woman is posed on a train (the trans-siberian railroad, to be exact), tho' she is, in a sense, posed in her natural habitat. i had to snap it with my iPhone and i love how my own reflection is visible in the photo, which for me, further underlines the documentary nature of the piece...me documenting myself seeing the documentary photograph. that strikes me as powerful on some level, tho' i'm not sure that at the moment i can explain it. it somehow shows how the things we see, especially something like an exhibition, which is intentional on every level, creep into our own topography and become part of us in what we take away.

i think blogging goes well with documentary photography and many of us are amateur documentary photographers, showing our daily lives and the topographies (there's that word again, but it's on my mind of late) of our lives. maybe contours would have been better, but i love the notion of mapping inherent in the word topography. i wonder if blogs will be future source material for sociologists or historians looking at historical moments? or are they so ephemeral, they will just fade away? interesting thoughts to ponder on a grey and dark northern day.

when i can't sleep

i'm thinking of topographies. maps. cosmologies. is it possible to map a life? to create a topography? is that what blogging is? or is becoming? a topography of a life? is it even possible to come close to even a faint outline of a life? can you preserve the topography of a life in cloth? felt? stitches? fibers? are we able to read the map of that life even if the person who created it and left it behind is gone? do the memories and even more so, the meaning remain and can it be read? do they penetrate the fibers and can we access them? can i make a topography of sabin's baby and toddler life using the clothes she wore then? and will it retain its meaning for years to come? these are the things i'm pondering when i can't sleep at 4 a.m.

what do you ponder when you can't sleep?

today's story people story of the day is so appropriate for this post.