Saturday, April 24, 2010

Urban Pastoral: Post-Industrial Buffalo

The dictionary on my Mac defines “pastoral” as an adjective “used for or related to the keeping or grazing of sheep or cattle: scattered pastoral farms.” As an extension of that meaning: “(of a work of art) portraying or evoking country life, typically in a romanticized or idealized form.” A few years ago I wrote an essay (with links) on the urban pastoral:
It was in graduate school, I believe, that I heard someone call Hart Crane a poet of the “urban pastoral,” referring, I believe to his long poem, “The Bridge” – which I’ve not read. That was the first time I heard the phrase, “urban pastoral,” and it has stuck in my mind. But it hasn’t done much until the past year when I began wandering my Jersey City neighborhood, camera in hand, in search of wild graffiti. I photographed the graffiti, of course – lot’s of it – but that’s not all. I photographed other things as well, close-ups of bees and flowers, panoramas of this or that neighborhood view, of the Manhattan skyline from Jersey City, and even sunrises and sunsets.
It’s not at all clear to me just what the urban pastoral is, but, as they say, I know it when I see it. And I see in in Bruce Jackson’s wonderful photographs of Post-Industrial Buffalo. When you’re done with those, check out his astonishing w-i-d-e, very w—i—d-e, photographs of Cummins prison – not urban pastoral, not at all, but you’ve never seen anything like them. While you’re there, check out all his photographs.

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