Monday 26 December 2011

Local

The more I understand my own writing practice, the more I'm grateful for the first three words (after a colon) of W.C.Williams' Paterson: "a local pride". The closer we attend to the local--a landscape, a socio-political context, a history, an interior system--the wider our work will reach.
Lots of artists have worked out (of) their own local. In the case of Williams, it was the New Jersey city of Paterson, his lifelong local, which spreads behind his hilltop perch in the photo opposite the title page in my edition of |Paterson. In the case of Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog, it's "Granville Street from Granville Street", "CPR Pier & Marine Building", "Hastings at Columbia 2" and so on.
My son Tom's an artistic guy--an improviser, sketch comedy writer, performer and producer who in many ways digs the local in Vancouver. He and I caught a Herzog show in Vancouver last year, and I thought he'd like Fred Herzog Photographs for Christmas. The grit and colour aesthetics of it, the reading of an entire world in a pair of orange cars on Powell or a tableau of real estate ads. I ordered the book for him.
So there we were yesterday, Christmas morning. Tom handed me a present the size of a large box of chocolates, weight of a tray of drinks. I had no idea what it was until I got to the cover--a wide view of an Asian couple about to cross Alexander Street in Vancouver--of Fred Herzog Photographs.
A gorgeous book. Thanks, Tom!

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