August 24, 2019
I’m reluctant to mention I have any form of OCD. It’s an overused word for something that I know people have been diagnosed with where symptoms are far more serious and life-blocking than one might assume. At the expense of sounding a little too politically correct, I’ll instead note that I do have some endless mental review process which forces my immediate environment to a certain level of sickly neatness.
You can imagine visiting my flat and finding many, many right angles—eyeballed measurements and micro-adjustments between every object. And I mean every. From the tilt of the teapot to the alignment of batteries in the drawer.
This is to say that when I endeavor to create something such as this personal collection of texts (the word blog feels too brutish), its public nature pushes my instinct for unfounded correctness even further. I’ll admit there is even some odd form of persistent pain in its maintenance.
It has been difficult and time-consuming to move between writing portfolio platforms and feels like an act of adultery to switch from one to another, especially after falling in love with the story of each platform’s creation and the beautiful minds behind them. Blot, which you are reading on now, comes after years of using Carrd by AJ. Carrd was and continues to be a brilliant option for micro-sites. But it was too open-ended for me, and an itch for perfection mixed with lack of design knowledge rubbed my brain raw.
Here are the two problems I hope to solve with Blot.
Editing
Because of my endless mental review process, it’s extraordinarily hard for me to tuck something away and consider it finished. I’d be a fool to think this is unique to me and am sure it is a common plight among artists. Knowing when to stop sounds so simple. Yet the backwards type of self-discipline required to do so is hard to pin down. For me, discipline exists in other parts of my life so that when it comes time to expel words I can do so without restraint. Writing becomes the exception.
Blot allows me to write and publish directly from my absolute favorite piece of software, Oliver Reichenstein’s iA Writer. It’s dangerously fun to use. And because I can access posts so quickly, the possibility to edit is always there. Published posts are just dormant text files, not printed pieces. But this is all well and good. If writing is my allowed impulse, so be it. This is my namesake website and I’ll edit to my heart’s content. As a result, though, it may be a bit useful for you to know that nothing you read here is artifact. The date stamps are lovely and accurate, but they don’t mean I haven’t been snooping around past files fixing tidbits—unless I’m dead, of course. Even then, beware editorial seance.
Organization
Change of mind is important. It’s a very human trait, allowing us to adapt to our environments, adjust for intake of new information, and become more efficient overall. It’s discontent with the present state of things that leads way to updates and improvements—and organizational upheaval.
I plan to recycle my writing portfolio here. Old articles and essays are doing no good sitting in some folder on my machine. And while I readily accept that no one gives a damn about them, they are a manifestation of time and energy and deserve to at least be accessible if not for the sole purpose of public archive. It’s nice to see progress anyway, and just as nice to chuckle at the bullshit of yore.
This will lead to, as mentioned, some organizational fuzziness. It will take a lot of time to gather my many essays, articles, poems, and other scraps, and then to format them for this medium. They mostly all exist right now in some modicum of Markdown (thanks John Gruber), but it will still take time. And then comes the shuffle. Will folders be best? Pages? Organized by date or topic or keyword, quality, or genre? Who’s to say. I know I’d choose a method only to imagine later how it could be more structurally efficient. So for now, at the beginning, it will be a long stream of texts in tandem.
This longwinded post is to say that you, faithful reader, should expect changes to posts and page structure. I admire those bloggers who can keep consistent, alas, I cannot. Maybe it’s a bit like finding a lifelong partner—when it’s truly good, it will just stick. Until then, the shuffle.
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August 23, 2019
This is my next first post. There are a million ways to die, and a million and one ways to publish.
For a while I’d experimented with various ways to present my writings online, but they all resulted in an existential business card—pretty useless. And uselessness is no good.
David Merfield’s Blot feels right. It’s a lovely little place to host a mish-mosh of content in a minimal package. So here I am.
Typing now from Kyiv, I’ll gradually build this collection to a level of personal satisfaction and hopefully weasel into some niche along the way.
Let’s see where it goes from here.
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May 1, 2018
A photograph pauses time from the single perspective of a spatially located point. Photography, collectively, presents a series of such perspectives, enabling entire historical entities such as the sacred city of Angkor to be accurately documented, historicized, appreciated, and relived. Cambodia’s Angkor is a dynamic place whose story was not at once told and closed shut—the site remains alive so long as it is shaped by nature and its many visitors. While we cannot know exactly how Angkor looked as the thriving capital of the Khmer Empire, we do have photographic evidence of how the site appeared over 150 years ago. Early pictures were captured using a method called wet plate collodion in which chemicals developed over a span of
fifteen minutes within a portable darkroom. Every snap of the shutter had to be painstakingly intentional, meaning what preliminary images exist today are likely only those perspectives which the artists deemed essential.
Apsaras at Angkor Wat by John Thomson
This photo taken by Scottish photographer John Thomson highlights four apsara reliefs found at Angkor Wat in 1866. Being one of the earliest photographers to document Southeast Asia, Thomson’s goal was to capture the region on behalf of Western eyes that had only held imaginative, exotic views prior. With shots limited in number, quality, and color, not every angle could be brought back with him to Europe. Thomson astutely focused on not only up-close detail but big-picture landscapes as well. Below is a view from the front of the complex.
Frontal View of Angkor Wat by John Thomson
Significant details are discernible such as the Khmer prangs, corbeled archway, foliage, and a human for scale. Compare this photograph with the one below of a different angle of the same site by a contemporary artist, Émile Gsell.
Rear View of Angkor Wat by Émile Gsell
The jungle overgrowth in Gsell’s image encroaches upon the site, providing a contrasting narrative to that of Thomson’s. One who only viewed Gsell’s photo set might infer that the site was set deeper in the jungle or perhaps was uncared for longer than it was. While later photographic ventures would add perspective to the history of Angkor thereby filling in certain gaps of understanding, what views were captured early on are still pinnacle samples for use in ongoing preservation efforts. As heritage scholar Colin Sterling notes, “These images provide a further visual dimension of critical analysis toward the overarching theme of how an ‘ethical’ relationship between photography, preservation, and heritage at Angkor might work.” It is so that the site could never be truly returned to its prime state of use. In light of this arises the ethical dilemma as to whether or not use of early photographs as
blueprints for restoration is appropriate. Perhaps a clarification of photographic purpose is in order. Consider the following photo by American photographer Steve McCurry.
Child, Man, and Dog at Angkor by Steve McCurry
McCurry captures a more modern Angkor in full color. A banyan tree drips over the side of ruins, its tentacles caressing sunken rubble as a native boy sweeps the sand and an elder man plays with a dog. This photo, without context, stands as an artwork of its own and was taken with that intention. According to McCurry, “What is important to my work is the individual picture […] of course they have to be put together coherently. But what matters most is that each picture stands on its own, with its own place and feeling.” Photographic purpose, or intentionality, is integral to understanding the history of cultural sites and implementing photos as tools, whether for restoration, documentation, or marketing. Thomson’s early photographs unintentionally showed, “the inability of the inhabitants of Angkor to care for their surroundings,” a clear indication of the white man’s burden to take Angkor under their wing for research rather than providing aid and agency to Cambodia. McCurry, on the other hand, humanizes Cambodians in his photography by showing them inhabiting and caring for their landmark site.
Man Wrapping Lotuses by Steve McCurry
According to research by Eric Heikkila and Philippe Peycam in the Journal of Planning Education and Research, the largest contingent of tourists to Angkor in the last decade has been Cambodians themselves. According to their study, “[Their visit] amounts to a kind of pilgrimage mixing religious and national sacredness attached to Angkor. More than simple visitors, they now represent the bulk of real estate investors as well: those who stay but also own hotels, villas, and apartments.” Photographs then are more than travel incentive—they are notions of national pride. While on the surface photographs appear as nothing more than instantaneous art, they are in fact symbolic artifacts unique to the time and context in which they were taken. If we consider Angkor to be alive, photographic depictions of it are no less different each day than photographs of ourselves. And it is indeed alive.
Despite Angkor’s heyday being hundreds of years in the past, political upheaval in the late 20th century has brought great change and concern for its protection to the forefront of UNESCO and the local Cambodian government. It was only until February of 1995 that the Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap, APSARA, was established. In the years leading up to this formation, archaeologist Thierry Diwo and photographers John McDermott and Kenro Izu arrived at the site to document it expressly for preservation and with respect for the Cambodian people in mind. McDermott’s specific aim was to produce images that would transcend the paused-time nature of photography by creating timeless images.
Gate at Angkor Thom by John McDermott
This gate at Angkor Thom harks back to the early, 19th-century photography of Thomson and Gsell. It was taken in sepia tone and features a corbeled archway topped with a Bayon Buddha face and surrounded by jungle foliage. Of such timeless artwork, Sterling notes: “The desire to depict a ‘timeless’ Angkor, and the continued popularity of such photographs, has important ramifications for any ethical engagement with the site, not least whether the implied musealization works for or against disenfranchised stakeholders.” Does a musealized Angkor hurt its meaning to the world outside of Cambodia? Certainly some without proper background might assume that the site has been forsaken as a forgotten relic. The 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider fetishizes Angkor by appropriating it as a mystical destination that might as well have been dreamt up. In this way, photography can be more influential than textual research in its portrayal of the truth. Luckily, modern photography allows us to capture unlimited angles and with such profound detail. Use of videos, three-dimensional models, and even virtual-reality experiences are burgeoning in the field. These formats enable sites like Angkor to be scrutinized and recorded from the omniscient angle of satellites down to the very molecules that make up the Bayon’s smiling lips.
Angkor Temple Complex via Apple Maps
Photography at Angkor over the decades has shifted dramatically in terms of meaning, medium, and morality. Early colonizers without appropriate understanding of the site only captured it for their own aggrandizement. This stage should be appreciated and not demonized, however—without initial amazement and unknowledgeable appreciation, we may not have the early images we do today and one thing might not have led to the next in terms of preservation efforts. In contrast and decades later, photojournalists like Steve McCurry snapped scenes at Angkor to artistically tell its story—or allow itself to tell its story. Now, projects such as Living with Heritage at Angkor, “[Focus] on development of open source […] spatial information-management systems designed to provide access to heritage management information at a local agency level.” The tool of the photograph as it allows for the
presentation of multiple diverse perspectives has proven invaluable to many if not all fields, not least of which is art history. Cambodians can celebrate and learn about their own history through photographs and international guests can indulge in and be inspired by the awe that is Angkor—as they do, by the thousands.
Visitors at Angkor Wat by Mahesh Krishnamurthy
Written for a college class. Exact date unknown.
School
April Littrell