“Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

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On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on.

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Say for be said. Missaid. From now say for missaid.

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Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into. No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still.

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All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

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Samuel Beckett: Worstward Ho | It all started with a visit to Hamburger Kunsthalle. They had a small but inspiring exhibition entitled “Fail Better”. A short introduction to the show quoted Beckett. The words “Try again. Fail again. Fail better” have been with me since, and I soon found out that they come from one of his last texts, Worstward Ho.

Enters the philologist: What’s the context of this line? What is Beckett’s text all about? I read the text, or, frankly, the first half of it. It intrigued me the way good poetry does. At a point I paid attention to the pictures it evokes. Could I  actually make any such pictures?

Which was when I stopped reading any further. Instead, I went back to reading the first couple of pages again and again, looking for cues that triggered certain images. With them in mind, I set out for a walk in the nearby meadows scattered with apple trees. I took my camera. I made these pictures.

This is part one of five.

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A Year

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E2

BF1

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Made pictures of monuments. Visited an airfield. Contemplated a modernist chapel. Displayed photos from the Airlift Memorial, Frankfurt. Played with eggs. Tried a breakfast table. Was haunted by bunkers. Visited ironworks. Found a way to photograph Wiesbaden’s Monopteron. Was fascinated by structures of a Colombier, a trickle of water. Intrigued by the cliffs of Fécamp. | Please klick the photos for larger images.

Plato’s Cave Revisited. (Ironworks.)

Tobias M. Schiel5 Comments

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“I look and sometimes I see,” writes Siri Hustvedt. That could be a good start for a photographic process. When and if I see, I sometimes use my camera to report it. Occasionally the resulting photograph resembles what I saw (it is then a good photo in my eyes). And sometimes it succeeds in making those who look at it see something too: What do you see? I wonder.

Unexpected Encounters

Tobias M. Schiel4 Comments

Pays d'Auge VI VascoeuilOnce I started tracking the unexpected for the Weekly Photo Challenge, I came across a couple of fairly different subjects. In this case, I’d already planned to combine the two (very different representations of femininity) but lacked a good title – the challenge took care of that. I found these statues at Les Jardins du Pays d’Auge (left) and Château de Vascoeuil (right).

Fragmente einer Sprache des Schreckens [2]

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While it was bright and sunny in Longues-sur-Mer, visibility in Arromanches-les-Bains was poor (as BBC Weather would put it), rendering most of my pictures a harsh, almost rough black and white that reminds me of Capa’s D-Day pictures. So I pick smoother pictures here, asking myself if they might be too pretty for the subject. (Top: Arromanches; bottom: Longues)

Fragmente einer Sprache des Schreckens

Tobias M. Schiel12 Comments

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Batterie Longues-sur-Mer. People killed here. People died here. A tractor tows a plough over the fields, back and forth; birds sing, gulls scream. I smell the sea.

I know the guns reached far and were not easily destroyed. However, I’d like to imagine that after the first destructive blows the remaining soldiers realised that their chances dwindled. And ran.

People run around and photograph the cannons. I don’t want cannons; they are not appealing, not even visually. I try to make a picture of this space that stifles me.

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[This week’s photo challenge reminded me that today might be an adequate day for posting this.]