Last week I told you that Yayoi Kasama proclaimed that we are all colorful dots, and we are all connected.
Difficult to ignore
I have a confession to make. While I wrote about it last week, I didn’t think especially hard about it. Not as hard as I might have. I thought it was cool and all, don’t get me wrong.
But then…
Sometimes connections pop up in astonishing ways. Although I’d never encountered Yayoi’s work before March 24th, we met again about three weeks later. Not in San Francisco; this time it was in Pittsburgh, at a place called the Mattress Factory. I can’t imagine a place being less like SFMOMA, but there her work was. Even more surprising, the Factory was never in our plans. It’s an off-beat place that we’d never heard of before. It just showed up in a google search while we were looking for something else. We’d fully intended to be at the other place that afternoon. But on a whim (seemingly) we decided to drive by and check out The Factory. We had no idea what was inside.
Was this serendipity?
Connectedness?
I wonder, but I don’t know.
I do know this. Once inside I felt an urgent need to record my presence, standing among Pittsburgh’s collection of her representative dots. My black-clad self among all the dots. It was such a winding road that took us here.
“Slow down, I see spots, the lines on the road just look like dots!” - Commander Cody
Were those lines that we followed to get here, or dots all along?
More on dots and connections in a moment.
You might reasonably ask: Why were we in Pittsburgh begin with? Well, because it was on our path to another place we’d never heard of before: Napoleon, Ohio. We’d chosen Napoleon, from among the multitude of available locations, to experience the total eclipse.
Really? Why Napoleon?
Napoleon is home to some very nice people, but it’s not long on tourist-worthy attractions. It boasts a large Campbell’s Soup facility, countless farms, and a tiny city center. It’s not a bucket-list location for your typical world traveler. But we wanted to be by ourselves. We wanted to hear nothing but birds while we watched the astronomic show. We wanted to feel the eclipse. That search for solitude led us to Napoleon, and therefore our possibly serendipitous, possibly fateful, side-trip to Pittsburgh and its Yayoi exhibit.
The exhibit reminded us of the idea that everything and everyone is connected. Connected, despite our intent to be physically isolated for the eclipse.
We continued with our isolationist plan. But in truth we were not alone, sitting on the ground beside our car in an unmarked cornfield. On the way to our rural location we’d passed many gatherings of people in public places closer to the center of Napoleon. We knew that we’d be sharing this experience in some fashion, watching and listening from just a few miles apart.
Indeed, while we were being enraptured by two celestial dots aligning in one way, we were joined by millions of smaller, colorful Yayoian dots in our own way. Joined by people who were themselves aligning, in a fashion. People of all ages and backgrounds, in a huge swath across North America, thousands of miles long, joining to experience this most uncommon event.
Dina Litovsky prepared a beautiful little photo essay on the New York experience, from the perspective of many viewers. It’s worth a look.
I’m sure we were a lot like those New Yorkers, in our own way, in our little cornfield.
The event
I won’t attempt to explain the experiences of millions. This part is my own.
If you’ve never experienced a full eclipse in person, and I hadn’t, there are moments which are surreal and difficult to describe. When you get near to totality (95%-ish), you don’t know what’s behind the unnatural light, and you can’t directly process the vibe as you look around. The world just feels abnormal. There’s still what looks like a full globe in the sky, to the naked eye. But everything looks a little bit off. Creepy. It puts you on edge. I can understand why ancient civilizations were freaked out, and thought eclipses represented very bad omens. I tried to capture the mood below.
There were wispy clouds over Napoleon as the light changed. It was approximately 3:11 in the afternoon. And then, totality arrived.
You may find it strange, but I didn’t plan to make photographs of the celestial bodies. I photograph all kinds of things, but I’d intended to abstain.
I was just going to watch and enjoy. I knew that many photographers, people possessing superior equipment and passion for this kind of work, would be on the task. And I’d wanted to be present to the whole experience, rather than thinking about image-making. So I’d planned to leave it to them. But when the moment arrived I could not resist. As a result I was shooting hand-held, with a modest (but lovely) camera. And I had to wait for totality to shoot at the sun, because I didn’t buy a special filter. No crescent shots, or any other partial eclipse views, would be possible.
Those best laid plans! Once I changed my mind, it was a bit of a scramble. I had to change settings and shoot quickly because there were less than two minutes of totality at our cornfield. Since I was almost intentionally unprepared I realized this could not possibly become my best technical effort. And still, it was a wonderful set of moments. And these shots are special to us, because we were there, and they are ours.
These images are ours in that we were there in that moment, and we will remember it for a very long time, and every time we look at them. Personal photographs have that power.
But while they are “ours”, these images also belong to everyone. They are yours, mine, all of ours. For those who saw something similar, and those who did not. All us dots. All connected. In ways we understand, in ways we can’t imagine. And in ways which can astonish us, in how surprisingly they appear.
From one dot to another, I hope you had a great week, and have a better one coming up.
Until next time,
P.S.: I said these images belong to everyone. If you’d like web-sized and/or high-res copies of these images just contact me and I’ll send them off, no charge.
Limited Edition Prints for Sale
Another channel of my photography. Oof. But as promised, I’ve got this new set of Limited Edition prints available for purchase. Any unsold African wildlife images from last fall, as promised, have been retired from circulation.
Each edition consists of ten Numbered Prints and two Artists Prints, 16x24” silver halide, with certificate of authentication. As before, these are limited both by number and duration of the offer. If you’d like one or more for that special person, don’t hesitate. You wouldn't want to become he who is lost!
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Those solar flares are amazing. Glad you took the photos.
Loved this article!
Chris and I saw the eclipse in Mason, TX
Truly an amazing spectacle!