[I'm taking a great class this semester called Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry, taught by Anne Spirn. I'm supposed to keep a journal every week as I start doing explorations of photography, architecture and urban planning. The first couple weeks are focused on noting light.
Qualification Statement for Ann - Since I didn't decide to take the class for credit until Wed 9/12 and I haven't been able to make any of the lectures, this first journal set of entries is pretty bare. I started doing the light studies and hope to catch up on the reading this week!]
9/12
I’m a big fan of light in my photos, as an agent to make them more provocative than just snapping tourist sites or daily antics. So starting to watch the light 6 times a day seemed silly at first, especially since I couldn’t just pull out my little digital camera and take a photo of it.
10am – My Intro to Introduction to International Development Planning class is in this amazing classroom in Building 1 that faces the Charles River. At 9:30am, the sunlight does amazing fracturing on the small waves that distract both myself and the lecturing professors. We’re sitting in a circle and the poor students that are facing away from the river are cast in shadow with the glow of the morning sun around them. But I notice they don’t appear to me like the Latin Christ paintings, because the glow is only on the periphery of their profile, not coming from within. The angle of this same sun off the professor’s faces, because they are in side profile, is almost like a natural spotlight, especially when they turn to the left toward the windows.
2pm – I was sitting in the CRN in Building 9 of MIT and looked up and realized that there was this diffused light from the ceiling and of course from most of the walls and doors being made of glass. I suddenly realized that’s why all these houseplants seemed to be thriving in what could be a really inhospitable environment. I wondered if they knew the fake light from the real sun.
5pm – I’m walking from the other side of campus to Kendall T stop and run into the hotel to use the bathroom. When I emerge to see Main St from a different direction than when I went in, I realize that the red and orange flags lining the street seem to be glowing. I stared for a while and realized it was because the late afternoon sun was beaming down the street between the buildings, almost focusing the light on the flags’ warm colors. The color of the flags, heightened by that angle of the sun, popped out like a recolored black and white photo, against the gray angular buildings
6pm – Inside the bus, the light is harsh like we’re inside a fluorescent lit office space. As if riding the bus wasn’t halting and jerky enough, the light washed out the soft light of twilight outside and brings out yellowy jaundice in my fellow passengers. I wonder if this choice of lighting is due to economy or a push to have folks not ride the bus all night.
7pm – My friend Ben calls my cell and I tell him about my light journal. Ben’s a pretty amazing amatuer photographer himself, as well as a mathematician/computer geek, so he tells me to notice the angle of the new autumn light. He explains something about the rotation and angle of the earth make the shadows act differently, the sky crisper, and the contrast outside much higher. I try to notice this a bit on my walk home through Tufts to Medford, but the cars and cell phone conversation are distracting.
9/13
5 am – I wake up to a gray morning but I love that I’ve combatted this phenomenon by painting my bedroom walls a soft yellow/orange, described by my brother as “you’re inside the yolk of an egg.” Even with the low contrast outside and the lights off, this shade still feels warm and southwestern.
8 am – The morning has brightened and so has the warmth of my room. I give myself a pat on the back for choosing it and complementing it with a bright red bedspread. People think I’m nuts because my last room was painted a green/yellow called “Lemongrass” by the paint company. I loved that room for five years, because although it only had one window, it always felt like spring. That room did wake me up with its brightness however, while the new one tends to embrace me and snuggle me in more.
2:30pm – While sitting in the 4th cafe at MIT called Steam, I realized that the name totally didn’t fit the lighting of the space. Steam is not hazing or humid, but rather full of light from high long windows that shine down from high above onto the coffee drinkers.
5pm – I’m holed up in the Rotch Library most of the afternoon and I hate how big the space is for studying. When I say hate, I mean it has such high ceilings and tons of light but no corners to hide and put my head into the studying sand.
7pm – At a meeting in the DUSP Common Room, I realize that we’re lucky to have such a space with the almost floor to ceiling windows. Will they make it cold in the winter or will all the light make it warm? It’s weird to me that they mixed these lovely windows with hanging fluorescent lights and painted blue pipes in the ceiling. But then I realize it’s a huge step up from the hole in the literal brick wall that was my offices at UMass Boston. Rumored to be designed after prison structures in the 70′s to discourage student gatherings, the Wheately Building at UMB always seemed to suck my lifeforce and any natural light into its painted over cement walls. I look around the crowded Common Room and realize that even though we’re not on a street, there’s still natural light and I don’t feel like a human rat in the maze.
12midnight – I don’t end up heading home until midnight, so the walk through Powderhouse Square is dark but lovely. It’s a tiny park, near an awful rotary, but it’s almost entirely a hill, with the powderhouse piller hanging off the side of it. So although it’s not large in square feet, it has winding paths up the hills. And along the paths are old fashioned looking lamp-posts, who in this humid night are crowned by soft blond bubbles that seemed contained but still shine light on the grass below them. I especially light that they give warmth to the park this late at night, and although deserted, it seems very inviting (complete with a relaxing sheep iron sculpture along the path. I think about that autumn light Ben clued me in on. I see what I think are brown shadows on the pavement which are really patches of humidity.
9/14
8:30am – On my morning walk to the T, I notice those patches again and they look more like stains from a night gone awry. Even the cheerful reflections of the morning sunlight off the still green leaves doesn’t make the patches less menacing. It rained a big overnight, so the park looks watered and saturated and man that grass looks an unreal green. Little puddles still remain, even on the wooden bench plank. The sky is very white in the reflection in this tiny pond, and flat despite the grain of the soaked wood around it.
9am – I watch as the subway car pulls in and at that second another train pulls in on the opposite track. It’s a strange repercussive reflection, especially when both silver trains were moving at once.
9:05am – A woman has her midnight, long haired dog on the train and she sits next to me. She talks to him a lot and rubs him with her foot. The dog begins to get attention, rubs and ah’s, from fellow riders, so she gets excited and looks around to all of us. When I look the dog in the face, I notice the bright white rectangles of light in her eye, which seems like a water bubble because it is so moist and spherical. I wonder how the light looks off my eyes to dog.
1:30pm – I pass through the big atrium at the beginning of the Infinite Hallway, I notice what looks like tourists taking photos of the pillars. I decide to head outside to the big lawn to do some reading and pick a spot under a tree. I go for one that has both patches of shade and patches of light. I’m silly because this changes radically in the hour I sit there, leaving me further and further into the shade. I look up every once in a while to admire the big pillars (see the same tourists taking more photos) and wonder if the architect designed them perfectly that way to catch the light of the Charles through the wide span between the buildings.
7pm – I end up dining with some Brazilian take-out at the first floor apartment of my new friend Holly Jo. What’s interesting about her place is that is the first floor of a house that is a cooperative on the second and third floors. So the names are vast on the mailbox next to hers but only three beside her own. The reason I give all this detail is that I notice right off that the house is tall but surrounded by very large evergreen trees. The evening light is nice on the porch, cheered by a single porch light bulb. But when you’re inside their apartment, the windows seems blocked somehow – maybe because I’m there at night. And you can almost feel the energy of many people sharing space looming above them, almost accenting how much space they see to have. Or the shape of the apartment is all off a hallway artery and I’m only sitting in one shared vein. They’ve fought this darkness with warm, lemony colors and multiple ethnic fabrics, wooden furniture and accents. I wonder why what is basically the exposed bowels of a tree could be warm, but it is.
9/15
10am – Another grey morning and I’m late for a MIT event so I jump in my car and loose my walk (which usually leads to lots of observation). I do notice a complete lack of contrast, that I attribute to rain and lack of coffee.
11am – The auditorium where the even is being held seems lopsided to me because only one side has full windows and the other is a wall covered in brown carpet.
2pm – I return to my car and it’s a bit sunnier but there is still wetness all around. I do admire the natural car wash that has occurred on my car. There’s charming drops on the emerald paint and windshield that seems to be tiny microcosms of light reflection activity. Too bad I have to wipe them off to see to drive.
3pm – While studying in a cafe with a few fellow DUSP students, I admire how they’ve used brown in a warm way that doesn’t feel cheesy or repetitive as it might be in an establishment that serves mostly brown drinks. The tones are inviting, milky like my latte and doughy like the cocoa brown of the worn leather couch.
10pm – The week has been long so I’m in bed by 10pm on a Saturday night, watching DVD’s in bed. I have all the light off but I realize that there’s still light coming from the ceiling. I’ve forgotten about the plastic and sticker glow-in-the-dark stars the former young resident of this room has left me. I wonder about the science of something that is basically white in the regular light, sucks it in, and reflects back an eerie green in the dark, so much so I don’t need a night-light.
9/16
3am – Yes, I’m up this early reading (what I get for going to bed so early) so the morning light is very new, delicate and still seeping black from the night. I’ve got a great window right at eye level when I’m laying down that looks into a fence only a foot away covered in ivy. I hear it rustling most nights and see any light reflected off the slick heart shaped leaves. Right now, it’s pretty grim and dank.
6:30am – Aw the dawn. It brings pale apricot patches onto my ivy leaves and projected onto my white linen drapes. They range from blood-orange to tangerine…all these citrus tones mean I’m thirsty for my morning.
8am – The light is full on now, and with white patches that dance when my friend the squirrel walks along the top of the fence and shakes the ivy.
12noon – I’m studying in the kitchen and I look up to admire the clean white light (I don’t look down at the not so clean floor), even though the walls are bright green and the counters are grey granite. The white is so strong, it washes out the details whatever it hits first, such as the numbers on the oven’s digital clock or the fine edges on the wooden table.
3:12pm – I look up again and the angle of the sun has dramatically changed on me. Since the sun is higher in the sky on this side of the apartment, the angle is much steeper, beaming intensely mostly on the sink now. Each drop out of the leaky faucet gets its own treatment.
10:11pm – Writing up my light journal back in the common room, I notice folks are very tired around the eyes at the end of their weekend. They’re casual sweatshirts, glasses and hat don’t seem to reflect the shine I remember off everyone on the first week of orientation. We were so eager, and probably wearing new, unfaded clothes that reflected the light in the fancier digs at the Faculty Dining room very differently than this room and the library. I’m wearing my favorite brown sneakers, that have definitely dulled around the edges, but the bright pink accents of the Converse logo buoy my spirits in the face of more reading.
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