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The road away from Storm King

Lake Crescent, Olympic National Park, November 2007

Most weekends now I am spending scanning in prints and negatives. The digitization process takes a toll on the spirit of sloth, but only peripherally. I have honed a mild stupor for use when on the computer that’s relaxing on mornings after a particularly strenuous day of hiking. But it’s taking some doing to introduce any sort of productive workflow to it. But I can still drink a lot of coffee, and cycle mindlessly though my favorite spots on the web while the scanner is ticking and whirring.

Seeing a familiar print on a screen can bring mixed blessings. There is of course the immediacy of good LCD backlight, but still what’s missing is the remarkable range of a good silver print that seems to exist in it own spontaneous swale of otherwordly light. The silver seems to wink, a buckle perception.

Then there’s the niggle of its complete lack of the object. Digitization beggars the irony in a comical realm of a representation’s representation. There are no shiny bits to fondle and wax atavistic over, no apparent roots in the caves at Lascaux. I’d like to resist drawing parallels in evolution, but I will most likely succumb to the obvious abstractions of worth and possession that digitized notions like credit and online personae seem to fall under.

But posting this is a solemn commitment that I do have a print of this around here somewhere.