Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 12

Thread: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

  1. #1

    Join Date
    May 2006
    Posts
    1,817

    Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    I have seen many beautiful sunsets in my life. Few of them have stayed in my mind. The sunset Nabokov fastidiously painted is one of them:

    "I recall one particular sunset. It lent an ember to my bicycle bell. Overhead, above the black music of telegraph wires, a number of long, dark-violet clouds lined with flamingo pink hung motionless in a fan-shaped arrangement; the whole thing was like some prodigious ovation in terms of color and form! It was dying, however, and everything else was darkening, too; but just above the horizon, in a lucid, turquoise space, beneath a black stratus, the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the spare parts of this or any other sunset. It occupied a very small sector of the enormous sky and had the peculiar neatness of something seen through the wrong end of a telescope. There it lay in wait, a family of serene clouds in miniature, an accumulation of brilliant convolutions, anachronistic in their creaminess and extremely remote; remote but perfect in every detail; fantastically reduced but faultlessly shaped; my marvelous tomorrow ready to be delivered to me."

    Over the years, as a landscape photographer, I always wonder what kind of lenses he used to capture his sunset if he happened to make that picture as a photographer. Wide, normal or long? Very hard for me to figure it out. I think I have an answer now. He used a zoom lens. The sunset he painted vividly from his memory is beautiful and I have to admire his mastery of words. I have to use a zoom lens to enjoy his sunset.

    However, his sunset is vastly different from Adams Moonrise in its way to impact our imagination and emotions. Adams Moonrise is a direct black and white image which gives the viewer very strong visual and emotioinal response. You don't need much imagination to enjoy his moonrise. It is just there right in front of you. Maybe here lies the difference between words and images, as two different forms of art, they affect different parts of our brains.

  2. #2
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    Quote Originally Posted by Hugo Zhang
    the eye found a vista that only a fool could mistake for the spare parts of this or any other sunset.
    here he demonstrates why words are a better medium than cameras for capturing sunsets.

    today, 70 years or so after the invention of color photography, it's a miracle to find a sunset picture that doesn't look like "the spare parts of this or any other sunset." the pictures remind us of other pictures, which remind us of other pictures, which probably remind us of the sickening sweet feeling in our stomach that came on when we finally saw one sunset pic too many, around when we were twelve years old or so.

    words still seem to have some life in them, at least in the hands of someone like Nabokov. especially in the sense that they can express a unique revelation of character THROUGH the sunset. So we get a fresh look at a character (or idea), not an overworked, cliched image of the same old thing.
    Last edited by paulr; 25-Jun-2006 at 18:39.

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    San Joaquin Valley, California
    Posts
    9,599

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    I agree that words can capture certain things better than a photograph. Nabokov's words about a sunrise remind me of a gal I knew in college who captured the image of pizza better than any photographic endeavor I've ever witnessed. Her words still stick in my mind:

    "Pizza is like sex, when its good, its very, very good and when it only so-so its still pretty good."
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  4. #4
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    ha! i've heard the pizza line a lot of times, but always from frat boys ... most girls i know disagree ...

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    San Joaquin Valley, California
    Posts
    9,599

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    Paulr:

    Disagree about what? Pizza or sex? I was referring to pizza!
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  6. #6

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    San Joaquin Valley, California
    Posts
    9,599

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    While I'm still awake, let me add one more carrot to the kettle---
    While words can often express a picture better than a photograph, I think a photograph, like all good art (ok I used the word "all" so I'll probably incur the wraith of the "art zeus"---whatever) which relys on visual rather than words has a richness more widely appreciated by a great number of people since translations, more often than not, won't relate 100% of the nuance to the recipient language. Reading a translation from French, Russian or Spanish into English always suffers. While the story still translates much of the finer points are lost because not all languages have words with identical meanings. Even within a language the meaning of words change dramatically over a period of time---especially today in the USA where language seems to be taking a nose dive into chaos. With a visual image, all that chaos is avoided (unless you're shooting abstracts )
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  7. #7
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    Although I might suggest that elements of visual language, including symbolism, iconography, semiotics, and cultural ideas about color and form, etc. (wow ... all these ugly, ugly words used to describe pictures ...) are fluid just like words ... they change from culture to culture and from era to era, and to some degree from individual to individual.

    A couple of examples ... in many asian countries, white is the color of death. 500 years ago, mountainous regions were seen as evidence of God's wrath, not his glory ... if you could take some of Ansel's yosemite pictures back to 15th century Europe you might get some reactions you hadn't bargained for!

    At any rate, I wasn't trying to be so general as to say words make better pictures. Just better sunsets. Just because we've all seen so, so many interchangeable pictures of sunsets. But probably not as many poetic descriptions.

  8. #8

    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Port Angeles WA USA
    Posts
    115

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    "Tradition" -the petrafication of fire; fire -the willingness to risk self-emblazement.

  9. #9
    Senior for sure
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    Southern Ontario
    Posts
    222

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    Ok, Nabokov I understand. I even think I have that image around somewhere. I still don't get "Moonrise". Without the story, I wouldn't ordinarily give it much more than a passing glance. My head has multiple recollections of what Nabokov's version of "moonrise" would be, if he'd wrote about it. I just didn't have the camera with me to make it an icon.

  10. #10
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    brooklyn, nyc
    Posts
    5,796

    Re: Nabokov's Sunset and Adams Moonrise

    Quote Originally Posted by Paul Coppin
    My head has multiple recollections of what Nabokov's version of "moonrise" would be, if he'd wrote about it. I just didn't have the camera with me to make it an icon.
    If it involves the bare bottom of a 14 year old, be careful

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •