A Walk Among Snaps

A walk among snaps

An essay bout some Angilee Wilkerson´s photos

       The walking among Angilee Wilkerson’s photographs, The Pencil of Nature, had many interesting pictures; nevertheless, some of them made me stop for a little to appreciate them better. Those were Cat Tails, and Into the Flood Plains.

        The first time I saw Cat Tails, I couldn’t stop thinking that the cat tails, viewed from that angle, seemed to go forever; it was a feeling of continuity, a feeling that there is something eternal and that they know how to get to it. The photography even in its simplicity (yet the angle which it was taken, reflect a group of cat tails growing and reaching up to the blue sky, surrounded by the lawn that only seems to captive them), gave me a feeling of comfort and kindliness. The picture, combined with the square frame, redirects the eye where there is a little clearing showing a little concave-like shape in the lawn, where you can see the light-blue sky slowly merging with the dark-blue one and becoming even much darker as it grows in altitude. The photo invites us to see the bottom of it to later start elevating our eyes and try to see if we can see the end of the cat tails, which in my opinion seemed impossible to human eye. The message it conveys to me is that there is, indeed, something infinite and they can by reaching the sky obtain it, or that only they can afford it to.

        The second picture, Into the Flood Plains, tells the opposite story. The light covering the trees gives me the impression that I’m walking into another, lonely world. The effects that Angilee used give the photo uniqueness, and transform what might have been a simple photo of woods into a magic, dark world. The picture seems almost lifeless, just like if a flood had just appeared and now was gone leaving desolation behind; a place hoping for new life to begin all over again
      The effects, plus the shape of the frame induces us to see at the center of the photo, like I did in the first mentioned photo. The leaves covering the ground give the impression that there is not soil at all but instead that there it might be a swamp. We can see some trees standing straight, and others a little inclined towards the left. The almost imperceptible circle-shape at the center of the page, helps us to focus only in that point as we start to see how what was digitally blurred by the artists is starting to distort a little more; everything else is disappearing except for the subtle suggestion of a circle-shaped clarity in the woods
     The almost lavender sky behind the trees gives you a feeling of kindness. Probably that whatever might have caused this sad environment was finally leaving, but no without leaving a sad view. Is not like a tragedy, it seems to be more like a suspense-angst story waiting to be told but instead was recorded in a photograph.

The unity in both of them is quite different from one to another, yet they appear to have some similarities. For instance, when light changes appreciated in both of them. In Cat Tails, we start at the bottom with brown then a little of pale yellow, to later suddenly change to sky blue, and finally at the upper part with a darker blue, almost black. You can clearly see the imaginary lines created by the artist in her photo. If you happen to trace a vertical line at the center of the picture, you will note that it roughly looks like a mirror effect.

In Into the Flood Plains, we have the same line effect to, though a little more subtle than the first mentioned. In this case, the artist used the blur to help her a little more; at the bottom of the photo, we hardly can clearly see the branches, she also used some shadowing in the corners too. Latter, as we move deeper, the image recovers its clarity. I cannot recall the effect of a magnifier over what I’m seeing. The trees are not fuzzy anymore, instead, I can openly see them, and the much deeper we go the image recovers its fuzziness, and a new darker line appears. This line is formed by the trunks of the trees and their branches; but then, there is this new other line, one that is totally different from the others. This is lavender and is the sky.

The first picture went up to the sky; the second went deep into the forest. The sky reflected something infinity, the deepness of the woods the unknown, a mystery. Probably both of them wanted to tell a story that was recorded not in words but in a picture.

Lastly, both of the pictures helped me to understand a world seen by other’s eyes. That there are different versions of the same place; before this, I would have never thought about the cat tails in this way, or that the clearing in a wood could seem so depressing to me. It is amazing what a little blur can do to your vision and the conceptions you have regarding some matters. We don’t see this, or at least we don’t know how to appreciate it yet, but because photos like these I still can feel there is still beauty in a world we cannot reach nor we can perceive. We can only encounter a different vision of the same world through other’s eyes.

________________________________________

I did this for my Art class a couple of weeks ago; somehow, in the way I decided to publish the essay here, I never did another proofreading, so if there are any mistakes, which is more likely to be, I would be appreciated if you are so kindly to tell me. I took some photos when I was trying to do my work, there was an exhibiton at my College so the teacher decided to, well, give us an assignment.

I have others as well; probably I will publish some of them later, and if I want I will be translating them, but I have some many things going on that it'll take a time to accomplish that.