1.1 Light works on objects over time.
1.2 This gives us the photo and its negative,
an image in duplicate and reverse.
1.3 The photographer must be lying
on the ground, flat as the grasses,
for the bull’s nostrils
to engulf the frame.
Two oxen, gray and muscular,
tense in the photo’s upper third,
the matted grass
an undulating blur.
Behind, a wagon caravan
transports cured fish
from sea to river port.
The caravan shapes the horizon.
2.1 The photograph determines the scene.
2.2 The frame establishes the terms of engagement.
2.3 On the factory steps,
management scowls in starched whites,
shadowed by skilled workers
in vyshyvanki laced to the neck.
Absence scalds the boundaries
of fact; nowhere, therefore, the miners,
nowhere their coal-streaked faces.
3.1 Such a photograph does not exist.
3.2 Scaffolding surrounds the thatched hut;
limewashed walls; a mangy dog
gnaws at a chicken bone;
dusty chickens peck at seed;
Marya Ivanovna rises
to milk the cows; she ties
a white kerchief over her hair —
all in black and white.
The house is white
and green, the fence green too;
the chain tethering the dog
to his house gleams in the sun,
creating spots of white
on the film. When the archivist
colorizes the negative,
the dog is red
and the fence posts blue.
4.1 The idea is of the spectacle: Invent
photography to sterilize
our battles — to preserve artifice in silver
gelatin and fixities of light.
4.2 The European comes
to break his mind
upon a novelty and invent
war photography. Despoiled
hillsides, ravaged trenches, conscripts
with faces motion-blurred.
The ruins are cacophonous.
They clamor over and inside the frame.
The landscape is a stage
for interpretation:
The cannonballs
are on the road or off.
Both cases suggest
the artist’s preference
for control over truth.
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