Finding magic behind the lens (in your backyard)

I was really taken by Bradley’s final anecdote about learning to take photos in your own backyard, and how humbling that can be. Often our everyday blurs into the mundane. Holding a camera, I think there’s always an initial desire to capture something fresh and new; something you’ve never seen before. But I believe the most empowering kind of photography requires using your lens to kindle the magic of your mundane.

Robert Frank and Thomas Neff found beauty and truth within the unhygienic, unpolished realities of their everyday. This reminds me of all our conversations about how Shange adorns the mundane, creating magic out of everyday rituals.

In “Sweet Breath of Life,” Shange transforms a pregnant woman into a kind of ethereal angel in her choreopoem “Lord, I’m Blossomin.” She adorns the sky with descriptions like, “thunderin” and “gleaming water on our skin”; rainwater is “leaving us without shame.” She personifies the heavens as a woman, who has “decorated us” by lending “us her jewels of gentle defiance.” A shower under rainwater transforms into a religious experience:

pum’kin we gotta sky full of blessings rainin / down on us & all we had was the courage to reveal our naked selves to the horizon & her wonders

Water showers the body with courage as the sky empowers.

Shange’s words bring the photograph to life. Without the text, the photograph still stands alone beautifully. However, the poem provides texture, movement and breath. With words that adorn, Shange transforms a beautiful photograph into something that is holy and alive.

*Sidenote: Photography is one of my hobbies; and now thinking about it, my favorite photograph I’ve taken I took in my house. I never really thought about that as more than a coincidence. Until today.