Description
“Now, and Then” is a nice elliptical phrase, never standing on its own — inconclusive in an expansive kind of way. It can be read to mean “occasionally,” as in — now and then I have a craving for raw oysters. It can be understood comparatively: this is now and that was then or it can be read as a double state of mind, considering what we are doing now and what took place then. This is the way in which our topic for the current issue came to mind. It might also serve as an anchor in our rudderless time, to be consistently nautical, in that we can be engaged in the unavoidable present but we can also be assured that there is a history behind us — both bolstering, and dreadful, some of it we can draw and build on and much for which we ask to be forgiven.
The easy sentimentality of nostalgia enters when we think of “then” and the good old days when every major event came with a corsage or a lapel flower — the jaunty, quick-to-yellow boutonnière. Or “then” can represent real and early innovation and daring — new things were achieved in every field, including fashion photography which we touch on in this issue, or the ageless wisdom of Susan Sontag whose writing remains as crisp and current today as when it was written more than three decades ago, reflected here in our new section, “Archive.” Or the impossible eccentricity and energy of British artist Rose Wylie who has been making art for so long she, now in her 91st year, is both “now” and “then.”
Czech born, Canadian artist Jana Sterbak literally shocked the world with her work. Meat Dress, from 1987, pointed out, well in advance of our recognition of the destructive activities of factory farming, how grotesque it was to see and use animals as material objects. If the dictum, “you are what you eat,” well… . And I Want You to Feel the Way I Do…(The Dress) was a woman’s garment that said both come hither and touch me at your peril.
If being well-dressed is a topic, no one represented it better than ground-breaking fashion photographer Lillian Bassman, who began her career in 1941 working for Harper’s Bazaar in the early days of real glamour.
A trip back to “then” was taken as a personal pursuit by photographer Arni Haraldsson when he completed an unfinished project he’d set for himself years earlier. Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time became his search too as he retraced Proust’s journey from IIliers-Combray not far from Chartres, to Cabourg, a small city in Normandy. He took his own photographs along this route, testing what he saw against the vivid text in which Proust had described the journey.
If we advance to “now” nothing speaks more poignantly than the current state of animals — hapless, helpless and innocent to alter the world we have ruined for them. American artist Eric Fischl has curated a remarkable exhibition titled “The Ark” which shows us very simply what we have wrought. Animals are beautiful, guileless and true. We are destroying the world — theirs and ours, “now.”
And Crossovers is always a rich, lush, broad section of reviews — mostly “now,” some also looking at “then.”
Now, read this timely issue.