Night
Noise GARY DWYER
Night
Photographs and Text By
NOise GARY DWYER
Published by Angstrom Unit Works Text and Photographs Copyright Š 2010 Gary Dwyer. All rights reserved. No Part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. This book was composed using: Univers LT Std Minion Pro, Acid Label, A Font with Serifs, disordered, Cracked and Cocaine sans My Sincere thanks are directed to all the talented font designers of this world who have helped make this book engaging and interesting. Warning and Disclaimer This book is designed to provide information to photographers, curators, arts administrators and students Every effort has been made to make this book complete and accurate as possible, but no warranty of fitness is implied. The information is provided on an as-is basis. The author and publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arising from the information contained in this book. ISBN 978-0-9819987-3-2 Cover Photograph: Monument Dog, 2003 Š Gary Dwyer Gary Dwyer Photography http://www.calpoly.edu/~gdwyer/ http://stores.lulu.com/dwyergc
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This book is dedicated to anyone who has read my book called “Between the Dog and the Wolf,� and wondered what really comes after sunset. It is dedicated to my loyal publisher, Angstrom Unit Works, who has been assisting me since longer than I want to say, and to HAD and Qubert and that French girl I hang around with.
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”Don’t make the mistake of knowing that you or I or anyone else knows how the world is meant to work. The world is a miracle unfolding in the pitch dark. We are lighting candles.” Barry Lopez
There is a bar in Portland called ‘A veritable Quandary’ and although I have never been there I know what it means and it has never been my problem. Quite the contrary, to the idea of quandary, my position has always been Gusto rather than finesse. Gusto comes from gust - a sudden blast of wind - out of nowhere. If darkness was my cover, I sure have been mean to it. Seeing me peeled back and staring, it never let me go. Seldom does night saunter, mostly it sits on chairs with spindly legs. It often runs. Night can be defined by lack. Lacking light or heat or warmth. The ‘Heat of the Night” is a powerful phrase, but it is seldom true. Night is mostly cold. Dank, dangerous, dubious, diseased, discarded and derelict are not likable terms and yet they are associations based in fear because night has density and opacity. Nasty, nimble noxious and naughty. Night is opportunity. I don’t dare let it go by unnoticed.
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FIRST, You, Yes, you were supposed to have at least looked at the other book, you know, the one proceeding this one . The one with Sentimental Sunsets
(
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Between the dog and the wolf
In this book , you will see something entirely different.
Perhaps.
(Entre chien et loup) Remember ?
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Nights ARE longer than days. (Night)
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Night is seldom quiet. It is as though noise were invented there. It is the darkness that makes us see the sound. Having very little light in the black racket always puts us on our toes. My nights have a lot of noise. Talking about noise is like making paintings about concerts and one of the things that darkness brings is an enhanced and focused desire to see. When it is quiet, you can hear the smallest sound. When it is dark you can see the smallest light. And you lock-on to that spot because it is the only thing there, except for the noise in your head. Yes, if it is too loud, you are too old, and the corollary is that some things just aren’t worth listening to. The old tapes running around in your head, always having to do with what you should have done or what you wish you did. How you could have responded. Night is the land of regrets and it is when we listen to our own endless tape loop. I listen to it less if I am looking at something in the night. Seeing in the dark is mostly through a melancholy or voyeuristic window, a tunnel with a small and distant focus at the far end. Scattershot illumination, made concentrated by the surrounding blackness. Late night is always darker than evening and whatever you are looking at three thirty in the morning is best left alone. Most of us lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Some walk around with a camera. I do some of both and it seems to keep a few of the demons at bay. The results are Night Dreams: not nightmares but imagining and wonder. They are often sloppy, indifferent and surprising. I am unsure what they mean. Awareness of noise implies listening and it is harder to listen than it is to make noise. Listening may be the hardest thing to do. These images are as much thinking as they are about seeing. Some of them may even listen.
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View from the inside of my head, late at night Anywhere, All the time
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The night is a little like electricity. We know how to use it but we don’t know what it is.
Quiet If you expected
, this is the wrong place to look.
And it feels right as you lock up the house Turn out the lights and step out into the night And the world is busting at its seams And you’re just a prisoner of your dreams Holding on for your life `cause you work all day To blow `em away in the night Bruce Springsteen - Night
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Night
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Noise
Night is the left hand of the day. La Sinestra - the sinister, lurking and hidden. The edge between darkness and light is unnamed and yet where all our decisions are made. Even though there is not much contrast it is where we are able to discern friend from foe, good from evil, assuming mere silhouette is enough to guide us. We call this edge discrimination. Yes, it is the act of deciding in favor of one thing, person, or group and against another, but it is also the ability to draw fine distinctions. It is our ability to discern that allows us to choose a bottle of wine and also tells us the difference between a harmless drunk and a real thug. When it gets really dark we loose enough light to see the edge of things. We loose ourselves. We are lost.
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Vacant apartment across the way Central California
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Camera store with Crucifiction tree Central, California
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vast
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Long ago, sitting by a campfire with friends, the architect Mike McDougal gave me a little window on his extraordinary life. His grandfather had fought in the Boxer rebellion and his family was evicted by the Chinese and they moved to Singapore only to be eventually evicted by the Japanese. They attempted to emigrate to Great Britain via the Suez Canal and for unexplaigned reasons were turned back and ended up making several crossings of the Indian Ocean in their attempt to get to Britain. Mike made a long pause, looked into the fire and then tilted his head up to the dark sky and said, “One time, in the middle of the Ocean, the ship’s engines broke down and they stopped moving. Fortunately there were calm seas as they were stopped there for a week. At night, there were so many stars in the sky it seemed crowded. You have never seen night until you have seen it from the middle of an ocean.” A tear gathered in the corner of his eye as he said, “Then you really begin to understand the meaning of deep, black and vast.”
Cruise ship at anchor Southern Croatia
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“Cold hearted orb that rules the night
Moonrise over the Sierra
Removes the colours from our sight
Lone Pine, California
Red is gray and yellow, white But we decide which is right And which is an illusion...
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va s t
...Pinprick holes in a colourless sky Let insipid figures of light pass by The mighty light of ten thousand suns Challenges infinity and is soon gone
North Star (Stella Polaris) and friends - autumn midnight Central California
Night time, to some a brief interlude To others the fear of solitude.� Moody Blues
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Oil refinery, 3AM San Ardo, California
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va s t
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Midnight on the San Andreas Fault Line Elkhorn Scarp, California
va s t
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Fork Lightning (not seen in this region for 25 years) Shell Beach, California
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va s t
Moon rise over Cerro San Luis San Luis Obispo, California
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The house from the studio Squire Canyon, California
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va s t
Autumn Moon Rome
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va s t
Adrift in the moonlight no running lights. North of Albania
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(Entre chien et loup)
CLOUDY Intimate BUT The view from the terrace Ispoure, France
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Familiar, perhaps even a habit, but there is always another story nagging in the background. It is our knowledge of these places that allows us to become cavalier and distracted, seldom thinking about where we are. Blindness and susceptibility all are part of the well worn path but we continue to stumble down it anyway, concentrating on whatever story is playing in our head. There is a good chance that darkness is only the tangled terrain of intimate remembrances. Night is always about the past but it is wrapped in mist and smoke.
(Entre chien et loup) Stairs on the Gianicolo hill Trastevere, Rome
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Hotel room St. Paul, Minnesota
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cloudy
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Artist’s studio Central California
cloudy
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Silhouette on Dana Street Etienne de Silhouette, a French finance minister who in 1759 was forced by France’s severe credit crisis during the Seven Years War to impose severe economic demands upon the French people, particularly the wealthy.[1] Because de Silhouette enjoyed making cut paper portraits, his name became synonymous with these portraits and with anything done or made cheaply. Prior to the advent of photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person’s appearance. -Wikipedia
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San Luis Obispo, California cloudy
Raging Looking out at the road rushing under my wheels Looking back at the years gone by like so many summer fields In sixty-five I was seventeen and running up one-o-one I don’t know where I’m running now, I’m just running on Running on, running on empty... Jackson Browne Squire Canyon, California
cloudy
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County Fair King City, California
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cloudy
This bar has changed its name so many times no one remembers what it is called now. What you notice when you walk in is that this place is looking back at you. California
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(Entre chien et loup) Laissez les bons temps rouler, (but ...There’s a man with a gun over there, Telling me I got to beware...) Buffalo Springfield
Almost the very last Mardi Gras Parade San Luis Obispo, California
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cloudy
Madamina, il catalogo è questo Delle belle che amò il padron mio; un catalogo egli è che ho fatt’io; Osservate, leggete con me. In Italia seicento e quaranta; In Almagna duecento e trentuna; Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna; Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre. Don Giovanni - Mozart California cloudy
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It was all she could do to stand up. After that it was pure grace. Prague
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I was writing a story and my computer changed the format. Things like this only happen at night.
hepure andNharp they might break, oresthe It was like what light wishes it could be. deepening ripped and ragged long fisearing mean punchesI think they were men. themost . He was facing toward the beachmanraisedmangulped the dense angry storm waves breaking on the beach in this sceneNone not a at all trying to do I had to stand there and wait. I don’t know why. I just did. None of it made any sense.man l a a clown would make, in front of him s at his sides. The fall didn’t really seem to have hurt him very much. tilting the raft forward one of the sit it moved.It was the front one, the one closest to the front. Itmanhis ,his His silent iquickly new brokestruckmanhimejected by the sea.over the waves whentoward the beach d that lse to slow down. My eyes were seeing in slow-motion me standing on the beach. was He had nHe had become an impossible lesson from a physics class. He was a human vector at the edge of theSomehow,a sawed-off shotgun or The of the refrigerator edand it still rockedback and forth Othesplintered on the front, dangled the shredded upper half of a man.recognized the turn. My head throbbed as I bent over, heaving. A question kept me from passing out. W on the raft, trage? I looked to the sea as the wind rose higher. Out there beyond the breakers, to that black place. It was still there. It was even blacker. The raft was gone.º
cloudy
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