Alysia Kaplan

Moving Towards a Phenomenology of Home

Moving Towards a Phenomenology of Home

 

Alysia Kaplan

Alysia Kaplan is an interdisciplinary artist based in Rochester, NY. She has exhibited her work both locally and nationally. She holds a BFA in Contemporary Illustrative Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a MFA in Printmedia from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an Assistant Professor of Photography at Hobart William Smith Colleges. Language of image, juxtaposition, layering, and re-recording expand meaning and perception. I immerse myself in this concept and apply in my art encoded information, and the creation of non-linear and abstract associations involving the “perceptual event” of experiencing signs and signifiers—as static and moving images.

Ache

A word was written on an overpass, 20 feet above the splashing cars, and rising diesel exhaust. Tucked beneath the shelf of the roadbed, it’s large letters sulked in the shadow of a rainy day. They were cored in black, outlined in white, and framed below the girders of green scissoring iron. They stood as tall as a man, rising, and presumably illustrated, from a slippery narrow flange.

My car was eastbound, traveling at 60 miles per hour, and a random look caught the tag head-on. But only for an instant. The dark wing of the overpass slipped across my hood and rooftop and quickly receded into the narrowing V of my lane. But I suddenly felt strange. I’d been nicked under that bridge, some small penetrating injury, and was trailing a thin line of guilt.

Ache was the word. Not ‘fuck’, or an angry scrawl. Not some unintelligible inside encryption. And not masterfully executed. But, amplified by these stylistic inversions the word stuck. And its placement on tired ‘60’s infrastructure was like a glimpse of an SOS.

It lodged perfectly, the proper screw for my specifications. In my professional life I have had a hand in a series of bland assaults: pooling of wealth, dimming the sun, warming the earth. A part of a collective worldwide lean. But, outside the muffled backslapping circle of industry, the sound of struggle still carried. It was in the headlines and sprinkled among the homeless tents in their tiny off-ramp wedges. It was in the storm drain run-off of needles, bottles, lottery tickets, and pain pill blister packs. It flew with monarchs and swam with salmon, chased receding snowlines, and sat quietly beside silent springs. All sounds of a world aching.

I don’t pretend to know what the tagger intended with this word. It could be a nickname, an inside joke at the local high school or an homage to the Irish tag artist, Aches. But I do know this: Someone identified a spot perched high above one of the busiest freeways in town. Then, under cover of darkness, felt the way over a guard rail and shimmied along a potentially wet, two-inch flange lubricated with bird shit and sheaved paint chips. Scrabbling blind above quivering calves and speeding lines of traffic, they clutched spray cans and reached out in broad gambling sweeps again and again, until the four tall letters stood, fully formed and outlined. All under conditions many free-climbers would never attempt.

My thoughts on poverty, environment, and the future are churning. But at their heart is a spectator’s wonder and guilt. Because one of us acted. Threw a leg over. Gripped and teetered in the footlights of vans and trucks. Then vanished into the night leaving the word to shimmer high above in an invisible haunting resonance. Leaving their work to be captioned by their risk and our conscience.

Michael Parker

Michael Parker is writing while living in complicated times, in Portland, Oregon.

Anatoliy Anshin

In Meigetsuin Temple, Kamakura City, Japan

In Meigetsuin Temple, Kamakura City, Japan

 

Anatoliy Anshin

Anatoliy Anshin ( www.anshin.art ) is a fine art photographer who excels in the use of camera for depicting the beauty of Nature in a deeply symbolic way. Born in Russia, he lives permanently in Japan and his main work sites are old Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines where he can wander around for days in search for the picturesque blend of traditional culture with natural environment of perfectly maintained Japanese gardens. Some of the peculiar features of his works are breathtaking perspectives, extremely vibrant colors, nonstandard techniques such as blurring or shifting photographic subjects from the frame center that make his pictures all the more enigmatic and mesmerizing. Anatoliy’s distinctive personal style is based on the belief that postprocessing in photography is unnecessary – Nature has enough to offer us for appreciation and a beautiful photograph can be taken right in the moment the photographer triggers the shutter. His creativity is inspired by his profound scholarly background and physical training. A former university researcher, Anatoliy holds a Ph.D. in pre-modern Japanese history, is an author of a book and a number of academic articles, and is a teacher of Japanese swordsmanship, Kendo.

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