Postcards 4

Some pairings are made in Heaven...

I've been trying out some dummy "postcard" layouts. Any resemblance to Ghirri's Kodachrome is entirely intentional. I suppose I had better use my own photographs, though... [1] I have been studying Ghirri's sequencing quite closely, and have come to the conclusion that whereas the facing-page pairings are cleverly made, and often very witty, visually, the sequencing, as such, is non-existent. Sure, sometimes one pair leads to the next – a repeated shape or motif links them together – but there is no through-sequencing beyond that mild formal linkage. At least, nothing that reveals itself to me. In the best sense, Kodachrome is a book of random associations, a strange dream conjured from the sensibility and sub-conscious of an individual with a remarkable eye for the poetry of those spaces where the "natural" and the man-made are brought into dialogue with each other. So, yes: a tough act to follow.

Others are made elsewhere...

I confess I had never before read the textual content of the book, or, if I had, I must have abandoned the attempt after a paragraph or two. In the effort to better understand Ghirri's intentions, it seemed like Piero Berengo Gardin's introduction might be a good place to start. However, I have rarely felt so impatiently Anglo-Saxon as when grappling with his impenetrable slabs of Rococo Italianate gobbledegook, poorly translated into a funhouse-mirror style of English. Sample:

The elements composing the work are a large quantity of communication data and a large quantity of ambiguity. While the communication data are direct and immediate, the ones of the ambiguity are mediate by the presence of a very important element: the time going by and its progressive consumption till the limit point of the image congealment and its cancellation.

Well, obviously. And this was especially helpful:

The Author, paging its picture-cards lets a large white space around the image. To all people asking the reason of a so algid, iconographical isolation I answer, in agreement with the Author, that the photograph has been deprived of a superfluos [sic] space. I mean the one where it is collected and filed the direct, explicit datum. The subtraction of this space is so corresponding to the cancellation of any possible presumption of truth.

I have grappled with that explanation for what seems a not especially bold design element (lots of white page?), but to no avail. I do love that final sentence, though. Truth? Pah! Va funculo! It's still a great book, though, if you stick to the pictures.

One little problem (oh, all right: challenge) is that the aspect ratios of my photographs vary quite considerably, not just between camera brands, but also depending on the shape I happened to favour at the time, not to mention the severity of any cropping. This was at its most extreme with that perfect little camera, the Panasonic LX3, which features an external dial capable of switching the picture proportions between 4:3, 3:2, and a very tempting "panoramic" 16:9, all without changing the chosen angle of view. I suppose I could crop everything into a consistent 3:2 ratio (the classic 6" x 4" postcard), or only pair up images of a similar ratio, but I'm not intending to. The difference is most obvious in "landscape" pairs, but I think this is exacerbated by the flatness of an on-screen mockup: in a real, curvy magazine held in the hand this will look less odd. Probably. So much depends on the limit point of the image congealment and its cancellation, doesn't it?

1. I think most people, these days, are aware of the story by Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". If not, you can read about it here. I must guard against becoming "Mike Chisholm, Author of Kodachrome"...