When Poetry Interprets Photography

I am not a scenery and outdoors photographer. Perhaps I do not have the patience to find the right angle and wait for that split second when the light is just right. Yet, I cannot go anywhere without a camera hanging from my neck.

During a memorable hike in the Cedar Breaks National Park in Utah, I could not resist taking a few photos of the half-mile deep geologic amphitheater. I used a 1970s Vivitar Series One 70-210 mm variable zoom to reach down the amphitheater. And then a 1948 Rolleiflex TLR for a few photos of subalpine forest trees surrounding the mouth of the amphitheater.

I was looking at these photos and wondering why I took them. The few pine trees gathered in the otherwise barren amphitheater were a striking contrast to the lush forest half a mile above. And, in a strange turn of things, these two photos made me think about lines of poetry from various poets.

First, the bristlecone pine tree in the forefront of aspen trees reminded me of a line from Rumi:

“May be you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.”

Was I? Was it why I could not figure out why I took that photo?  

Hiking such grand and open spaces often makes me feel part of the space while at the same time very alone. Not lonely though, as I feel like the countless others who have taken that hike before me have given that space a name. It is a welcoming name – in fact I think of it as a room. A vast room with no walls and no ceiling.

And that made me recall lines from the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer who suggested in his “The Half-Finished Heaven” that:

                                               “Each man is a half-open door

                                                leading to a room for everyone.”

So, was I a half-open door during that hike? What was behind the half-closed door in me? Would I have opened my doors wide if I knew they were half-open?

… Feeling alone makes me look around me. Perhaps to check if I was really alone. But that impulse allows me to see more than perhaps others notice. And what I notice stays in me, sometimes dormant for a while. And then seemingly unrelated events or moments, such as looking at photos I took and not understanding why I took them, make these dormant impressions manifest themselves.

And that is when my favorite lines from Slovenian poet Tomaž Šalamun made me understand why I took these photos.

                                               “Alone,

                                                 alone.

                                                Glug glug glug I drink gulps of light

                                                and I brush.

                                               So I shower and put myself back, alone.”

That was it – I was trying to put myself back, alone.

June 21, 2016

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016