Between the Dog and the Wolf

GARY DWYERGARY DWYER

(Entre chien et loup)

Photographs and Text By GARY DWYER

Published by Angstrom Unit Works

Text and Photographs Copyright © 2009 Gary Dwyer. All rights reserved.

No Part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any formby any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permissionfrom the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

Th is book was composed using: Univers LT Std Minyon Pro, Acid Label, Sidewalk, Mistral, Stencil, A Font with Serifs disordered, Zapfi no, KarabinE, Cocaine sans, Lucida Blackletter, Evanescent, Celtic Eels, and Ruritania

Warning and DisclaimerTh is book is designed to provide information to photographers, curators, arts administrators and students Every eff ort has been made to make this book complete and accurate as possible,but no warranty of fi tness is implied.

Th e information is provided on an as-is basis. Th e author and publisher shall have neitherliability nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arisingfrom the information contained in this book.

ISBN 978-0-9819987-2-5

Cover Photograph: Monument Dog, 2003 © Gary Dwyer

Gary Dwyer Photographyhttp://www.calpoly.edu/~gdwyer/http://stores.lulu.com/dwyergc

Other books By Gary Dwyer are available on lulu.com and blurb.com and on amazon books

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Between the Dog and the Wolf

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Th is book is dedicated to anyone who has taken a picture of a sunset and later on, wondered what the hell they were trying to do by taking another stupid sunset picture. Odile, Heather, Chelsea have been around

when I was taking a lot of the same dumb sunset pictures. Some of which even made it into this book Th anks.

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In order to photograph, we have to be able to see ourselves.

Everything presented here is a form of secondary witness. The reader is the third. In the production of this book I have come up against a philosophical dilemma. It is involved with distinctions of quality and the different levels of quality that are available through original verses second-hand perceptions. Part of the reason this is a dilemma is that images are second-hand percep-tions and rather than faithful, they are either impressions or abstractions for what was actually seen. This is particularly oner-ous when it comes to photography. Of course photography has the capacity to hint at some aspects of truth, but seldom have photographers been interested in truth. More often the inten-tion of the photographer and the accidents of technology are the things made visible.

With the realization that visual truth is probably impossible, and that second-hand is all we ever get, what is the source of the upset? Even if I see something with my own eyes it is fi ltered through my history, my values, my meanings before it ever has value. And I guess what I am addressing is value. The question is really, whose value?

The television interview of the happenstance passerby provides evidence of the low level of ordinary perception and the inter-view, by broadcasting, presents this perception as though it were truth. However, visibility is not validity.

A television travelogue produced by a destination resort or a ministry of tourism is not programing about travel or what one might learn from travel, but rather boosterism and promotion. And while we have come to accept the term info-tainment, we might better call it by its real name: advertising and lying.

So, b

efor

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o Any

Farth

er

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Certainly some photographers set out to lie. They make seductive postcard images which are impossibly more pretty and attractive than anywhere we have ever been. We count on these photog-raphers to feed our illusions. The value we assign these images is attendant to how we wish the world was rather than how it is. By extension, the more horrifi c the images, the more truthful and honest we assume them to be. Commercial TV News is based on the idea that if it is horrible, if it is bloody and tragic, it is news and it is truth. Or at least it is presented that way.

Viable imagery, meaning images of value and interest may be found somewhere between the extremes of the postcard and television news. It probably has aspects of wit, surprise and craft. It probably shows us something we have looked at a thousand times but have never truly seen. It may even show us eloquence. And if we are very, very lucky, it shows us grace.

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Salt fl ats and coastline

Trapani, Sicily

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Shelley’s grave Protestant cemetery, Rome

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An understanding of the world as a process rather than as a series of facts, has always eluded me.

We might as well get this out of the way right now.

This is a book of photographs of sunsets.

Of course it is potentially the most trite, stupid and amateurish topic in the history of photography but grace, fi nesse and tact are qualities I fi nd hard to come by, so here goes.

Emerson thought the art of writing consisted of knowing what to leave in the inkwell and it turns out he was speaking directly to photographers. Especially photographers who feel compelled to photograph sunsets, and that includes most of us. A recent televi-sion program told me that seventy-six thousand years ago, we hu-manoids discovered how to store information outside the human brain. (They made xxxxx patterns on a stone in South Africa.)

You could see those XXXX marks as a lot of kisses or an elegant diagram for a bridge. But regardless of the signifi cation, someone had to decide how many of those marks to make and how many to leave out. In the end, it matters little if you are Emerson struggling with words or Charon shoving passengers into his boat, or merely a tourist with photographs from a vacation. The problem common to all is not which ones do you take out, but which ones do you feel you have to leave in and why? And the undercurrent I mean to address here: Why do we feel compelled to always include photo-graphs of sunsets?

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(Between the dog and the wolf) Is not an expression one hears every day. It originated in France, but it is archaic and you don’t even hear it in France very often.

The expression already existed in Antiquity. A second century text tells us: When man cannot distinguish “Between dog and wolf” it signifi es evening or early morning, the moment of the day when it is too dark to differentiate a dog from a wolf. The dog would signify the day because, like him, he can guide us. The wolf would signify the night, representing a menace, as well as nightmare and fear.

Apparue en français au XIIIe siècle, (Entre chien et loup) l’expression existait déjà dans l’Antiquité. On peut ainsi lire dans un texte du IIème siècle : “quand l’homme ne peut distinguer le chien du loup”. “Entre chien et loup” désigne le soir ou le matin, moment de la journée où il fait trop sombre pour pouvoir différencier un chien d’un loup. Le chien symboliserait le jour puisque tout comme lui, il peut nous guider ; alors que le loup serait le symbole de la nuit, représentant une menace, mais égale-ment les cauchemars et la peur.

Sunset is our expression for the same time of day, but it has completely different connotations. Technically sunset is the daily disappearance of the sun below the horizon as a result of the Earth’s rotation. The atmospheric conditions created by the set-ting of the sun, occurring before and after it disappears below the horizon, are also commonly referred to as “sunset”.

Sunset should not be confused with dusk, which is the mo-ment at which darkness falls, when the sun is about eighteen degrees below the horizon. The period between the astronomical sunset and dusk is called twilight.

We will come to a deeper understanding of these terms soon enough, but fi rst we need to set the scene.

My eldest daughter was once given the task of curating an exhibi-tion of photographs taken by the employees of a large corporation. Mister Eastman, of Rochester, New York - (Remember the guy who thought his camera made an unusual sound when the shutter release was pressed - Kodak.) He said that ninety percent of all photographs were taken of people and he was probably right. So you might think that most of the photographs my curator daughter had to sort were of people. I am sure there was a preponderance of kids, babies and dogs, but I remember her saying she was sur-prised by the number of SUNSETS.

Why so many sunsets?

Because people like the warm colors, because it seems normal to look at a sunset and say, ooooh my! Because we associate sunset with positive circumstances and this turns out to be a relatively modern idea. The earlier concept of the setting of the sun was a lot more sinister. Why? Was it fear that the sun would not return or fear of the cold or fear of the beasts and danger roaming the dark streets? And yet now we think of sunsets as gleeful and merrily click away.

However, from a visual standpoint, most photographs of sunsets are terribly boring.

They are boring because they have almost no subject. Except for the sun and all those warm swirly colors there is nothing really there. No wonder my daughter had trouble sorting out the sunset pictures. They were pictures of nothing.

We can’t see the place, or the participants. Almost the only thing we know is the time and the direction. They captured color but it was not relative to anything. It was only relative to the people who took the picture and those who remembered that particular time. The people who took all those pictures thought they were taking pictures of beauty and splendor, but what they left out was the context.

BETWEENGary Dwyer

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After capturing all those bright colors, we discover that photo-graphing the meaning of sunset is an entirely different task and it is the marking of one concept of time and space and being forced to trade it with another. Especially the edge of the unknown, the unseen and unwanted. And it always goes one direction, darker.

It is this between that we don’t see in all those snapshots. It is what I have been looking for in the images that follow. Someplace between comfort and danger.

The sun isn’t going anywhere. It is we who are turning our backs to it for a while. And while we might love the moment of sunset, the oncoming night scares us. We always speak of the falling dark when we know we are the ones falling.

The most spectacular aspect of a sunset is called the Rayon Vert or “Green Flash.” I have only seen it once and have never photo-graphed it. It is not included in this book and may give the reader something to look forward to. All you need is a brilliantly clear day, an ocean and some time to think. They are the same tools you need to understand this book. Berthold Brecht thought a play was “a fi nite collection of very short moments.” This book is just that. But they move between laconic miasma and thoughtless fl ashes of panic.

Perhaps I have never seen the Green Flash. Perhaps it is just an-other imagining at sunset. There might be joy at seeing the vi-brance of all the colors at sunset but they are inevitably accompa-nied by the twin sisters of sadness and foreboding. In this light, between things are seen by inference, where vision is fi lled with hint and surrounded by implication.

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Tack Holes, wood wallDordogne Valley, France

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Orange is the color most commonly associated with sunsets. Orange is also my favorite color and the word doesn’t rhyme with much of anything but before going off on the color of sunsets, we might better understand what a sunset is.

This photograph,

this (SUNSET) was

taken from the deck

of Patsy Wilcox and

it is the last

Sentimental Sunset

you will see in this book.

Well, maybe.

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Hanalei, Kauai, Hawaii

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(Nice, Huh?)

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Ponto Sisto,

Rome

Nostalgia is from nostos (νόστος) and it means home. To which we always try to return. We even speak of temporary residences as ‘home away from home’ because that longing is so great. At sunset, going home at the end of the day is what we have always attempted.

This bridge was here for a long time before Pope Sixtus had it rebuilt in 1471. Raphael had a mistress on the other (Trastevere) side, and used the bridge to get to the Gianicolo hill.

For far too short a time, this street and bridge was my route home at sunset.

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Lac d’Annecy,

Haute Savoie, France

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Solitude, serenity and refl ection are qualities automatically associated with sunset. Beginnings and endings are the place of the pause. What have I learned today? What will tomorrow bring?

“The Italian Mafi a’s second-in-command, who had the son of a informant dissolved in acid, has been arrested in a dramatic police raid.

Domenico Raccuglia, 45, known as “the veterinarian” for his love of animals, was on Italy’s 10 Most Wanted List and had been on the run for more than a decade.

The 11-year-old son of informer Santo Di Matteo was snatched in 1993, on the orders of mobster Giovanni Brusca and Raccuglia associate, to force the father to retract his testimony - but he refused. After more than two years in captivity, Guiseppe was killed in January 1996 and his body was dissolved in a barrel of acid to destroy the evidence.

Raccuglia has been given multiple life sentences for murder, including one over the kidnap and killing of Giuseppe Di Matteo.

Italy’s chief anti-Mafi a prosecutor Piero Grasso said: “(Raccuglia) is one of Italy’s most wanted criminals and, even during his time on the run, he was still

able to maintain his infl uence as a boss over the Trapani area.”

November 16, 2009 Nick Pisa - Sky news

Take a moment to refl ect on the peaceful character of the sunsets

on page 6.

They are near Tripani on the west coast of Sicily. The

windmills have been used for centuries to pump sea water into

evaporation basins to collect the salt. The birds (Flamingos?) in

silhouette are on migration to Africa and the coastline has seen

the famous Spada (Swordfi sh) and Tuna fl eets arrive near Tripani

since Roman times. The Tuna are now depleted the fl eets have

vanished. But while I was photographing the sunset, just over

the hill behind Trapani something else was going on. Our ability to

block some and concentrate on others is a major tool of our visual

and emotional survival. Like our cameras, We have such terribly

narrow fi elds of vision.

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Without getting too terribly far into the territory of psychoanalysis, it seems that the obvious tendency for photography to be voy-euristic becomes much more pronounced when the sun is setting. It is the time when windows change direction and become things to be looked into rather than out.

Windows become light sources, indices of change and direction.

Their bright lights in contrast with the increasing darkness make their surroundings into automatic mystery and intrigue. We want to know what is going on in there and are compelled to look, even if only to see the light inside or a refl ection coming back at us.

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Temporary toilet building with Green light

University parking lot, California

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up) If a Window is small enough, isolated enough, the voy-

eurism vanishes and the solitude of monasticism becomes un-avoidably attractive. The color of the light becomes important as it is often the warm glow of candle or fl ame we fi nd so inviting. Even the tint of incandescent bulbs can be enough to draw us in. Kipling called fi re “the red fl ower” and thought it to be the only thing that ever separated us from the animals and the discovery allowed us weak hairless humans to survive.

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“We’ll leave the light on for you.” - Tom Bodet

Local church, West country, England

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Th e sky El Greco always wanted and Magritte always had. (Aft er Mt. Pinatubo erruption, 1991)

Sculptor’s studio, Central California

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One window bounces back

Dubrovnik, Croatia

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Any idiot can make a wall. To make a giant wall is an amazing ac-complishment. To make a hole in that wall and still have the wall stand up is an effort worthy of even greater applause. I have no idea what it really means or why it effects me in such a powerful way but if the wall stands for centuries and if the opening an-nounces itself with the sharp edged clarity of horizontal light, I am stunned.

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Th ey never called it the Coliseum until Nero put his “Colossal” statue of himself in front of it.

Bus stop, Rome

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Portara to the destroyed temple of Apollo (Baths of Ariadne)

Naxos, Cyclades, Greece

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Villa Romana del Casale

Piazza Armerina, Sicily

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Arco Solar Electricity Plant (One mile on a side. Each individual panel is thirty-fi ve feet tall.(It was built around 1982 and the entire plant was dismantled and removed around 1997)

Carrisa Plains, California

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Bounced sunset on warehouse

Chelsea District, New York City

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Skyline from Th e Bay

San Francisco

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Th e fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

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South Bay and San Mateo Bridge

San Francisco Bay

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up) Rainbows happen because of water in the air and the

angle of the light so I guess it is technically possible to have a rainbow at any time. But when the sky is darker and the back-ground more intense, like at Sunset, the drama is wonderful and stops us cold every time. (At least it does me. That pot of gold at the end is another matter.)

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Apartments

Agrigento, Sicily

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Th e view from the terrace

Ispoure, France

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Lac d’Annecy,

Haute Savoie, France

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A light line is often imprecise and uncertain. Before lasers, we were used to the idea that light moved. Like a slack rope, there was nothing intense about it. It wiggled and shimmied. Most often it was not light, but rather a refl ection bouncing off moving water.

Not always.

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Aqueduct adjacent to Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard(He didn’t think the desert should be irrigated.) (Or paved)

Taliesin West, Arizona

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East toward Taft or McKittrick, just elsewhere, just not here...

Highway 58, California

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Container ship heading westward

Kitsap peninsula, Washington

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Remember that sunset from Patsy’s lanai on page 11?Th is is the same sunset, only closer.

Hanalei, Kauai, Hawaii

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If Obscured by distance or atmosphere we get no-tions rather than images. Our imaginations fi lling in the details. The vague and unsure distance attracts me more than precision. Technique and craft always move toward clarity, but almost never toward allure.

Intimacy can cloud our vision just as surely as fog.

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Tack Holes, wood wallDordogne Valley, France

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Th is city is incredible on its own. Th e fog just makes it more so.

Matera, Italy

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