C’est Tout by Jan Smith
There is a certain glory in what is constructed being defeated by the forces of time. Void of human habitation, a patina of self-identity emerges from the structures and substitutes the original man-made baptism of name and function. These spaces anthropomorphize when they are empty.
When we enter them, they die. With our presence they become shells for the purpose and habitation of our consciousness, and their essence retreats and surrenders its intangible namelessness. Such structures exist for themselves only when they are abandoned. Without stewards, they achieve this transformation in exchange for mortality and disappearance from our memory.
They live in a realm that shows itself and at the same time withdraws from us. Their acquired consciousness is like a horizon that defines itself by what we see, but also more largely by what remains veiled. The threshold of our arrival in these spaces leaves them balancing between the resurrection of our memory of them, and the renouncing of their own identity. In between these moments what remains is a subtle taste of time because it withdraws just in approaching us.
Gunkanjima, Japan
Its name translates as “Battleship Island” and is the nickname for Hashima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture. It functioned as a Mitsubishi owned under-sea coal mine from 1880 to 1974, and was key in shaping Japan’s industrialization. It holds Japan’s first large concrete housing project. At its peak it was home to over 5,000 workers and their families. At 1,391 persons per hectare it holds the record for highest population density ever recorded. Travel to Gunkanjima is prohibited.
website: www.smithjan.com
bob/b/homer…
if the above is true (and i must say it makes me a bit sad if so, for even though your elliptical, mind-numbingly long paragraphs were sometimes difficult for my too-small brain to absorb, they most frequently held nuggets and gemstones of knowing) you should henceforth be known as pheonix….for your comments have been absorbed by the Burn and yet your essence will rise from the ashes…
~~~
That’s life. An audience falls out of sync. The author goes to improbable places that later become certainties.
b.b.
“more of a variety, a balance between both stillness and disappearance. Entropy impacts so much because we know it came from solid forms and will again return to solids…make sense?? :))…”
Makes a lot of sense actually, and on various levels: from the technical to the emotional. It is technically harder to achieve and control–I like the challenge. I understand how this can strengthen the presentation, and most importantly I can relate to it. I may have arrived there on my own, but you certainly helped accelerate the process and time saved is a blessing. I’ll be playing around with this for sure. Thanks.
If Jim were happy with everything he saw here, would that make him a gruntled Texas conservative editor, I wonder? There’s not much about gruntled people in the newspapers these days, just as you hear very little about ept people being whelmed by a situation. There must be a reason for this, although I imagine it’s because the times being what they are, no one is interested in eptness.
This is so far, one of the most astonishing photographs i’ve seen of Gunkanjima. Impressive contrast between flesh and concrete. I was there one morning of June 2007, actually the place is weird and a dream for many photographers.
Good job Jan.