The poem A Thank You to the Wonders of Photography is currently one of the Challenge Poems during the National Poetry Month celebrated in the United States throughout the month of April. It could not escape my attention for a number of reasons. It celebrates memory, and it celebrates photography, but above all, the author mentions the “erasable” state of modern incriptions, which is what I found the most valuable. Now, when I write this blog, I usually do so through a platform’s interface. But when I write poetry, it best comes out when I am out there with a pen and paper. This is not to say that I do not organise my writing with the help of a computer program; or that I never edit my writings once they were transmitted to a Word document. But when I said what I said in this post about Petrarch’s lamenting the state of his manuscripts, I meant just that. And what saddens me the most is that with more and more people using word processors to compose works there is little room left for palaeography or in depth literary criticism – precisely because we cannot see and review the editing process.
Click on the link to read 
Ode to Memory — a Challenge Poem for National Poetry Month by Sheri Fresonke Harper.
A poem about the way photographic memories have been and will be stored and praising the technology.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1690448/ode_to_memory_a_challenge_poem_for.html
I reacted to the final stanza:
The future is calling with memory sticks
and all worry erased with many neat tricks,
will I haul on my neck more memory so slick,
that never will I doubt a thought arrived with a flick,
of a switch and all sorrow will diminish in time,
as set into blocks more rigid than lime,
my words and my touches my senses sublime
can compete with the fading marches of time
for memory will never fail and arrive so quick.
It brings to mind many thoughts and references. First, of course, is Barbra Streisand’s Memories: “can it be that it was so simple then, or has time rewritten every lie?” While we undoubtely capture a moment with the help of a camera, one cannot fail to agree with some photography critics that the art of photography is the art of choosing. The choice may not be seemingly affected by any rational effort, but it still manifests itself in the choice of angles, models, lighting, etc. So what gets stored on our memory stick is the history of making choices, and it may be particularly interesting to ask ourselves: how do we choose what to remember, when it comes to capturing a moment on camera?
Which makes this a fitting post to reflect on the recent Capture Manchester competition and exhibition at the Cube Gallery. My personal “problems” with the entries have been, as follows: 1) digital art not being distinguished from photography; and 2) the truly narrow focus of entries. The competition invited the photos of any area in Greater Manchester; on display, there were innumerable captures of Manchester’s Town Hall, the Manchester Eye, and other well-known city centre locations. Among the winning entries, the majority were collages or artwork – quite against the suggested focus on photography. But what this ultimately illustrates is how people understand and respond to their own city. As a cameraman myself, I cannot disagree that the Town Hall is an enviable spot to commemorate on film. So is the Manchester Eye. But what about the University? Or Bridgewater Hall? Or indeed, many smaller and less media-savvy areas of Greater Manchester that are poetic in just the same way as the better-known locations? Is Manchester’s best asset in its Edwardian Gothic edifice in Albert Square?
This may have to do with how we understand Beauty, Art, and Poetry. Apparently, as the Textfestival website tells us, in Britain “art” and “poetry” are often considered two different entities. I can relate to that, having once confused an academic with my all-embracing usage of the word “art” in a talk about an individual’s response to an artistic exercise. But we actually deprive the language and our understanding of things by lumping “art” and “painting” together, or by extending the notion of “fine arts” on Art as a philosophical category. We also miss out on an important link between Beauty, Poetry, and Art, thus ending up asking questions whether a mathematical formula or a programming code can be a specimen of Beauty. The title of the film, A Beautiful Mind, is a good insight into if, and how, something seemingly unpoetic can be beautiful and have the state of the art. I am sure many mathematicians and scientists would agree.
I am hoping to visit Textfestival this Saturday, but just for now it is really striking to see how we select places to remember (=capture on camera) and how we then proceed to explain our choice. And the choice seems to be more often described in such terms, as “dazzling”, “lasting”, than “poetic”. We therefore seem to attribute a quality to an image’s impact – but not to the image itself. Undoubtedly, not all is gold that glistens, so a visually impressive (and maybe digitally processed) image is by no means a good image, let alone a poetic image. The question that rises from the above is: can it be that our choice of what to remember bedazzles us and confuses our actual memory? How much are the angles from which we look at different objects belong to our own vision and how much – to what we have seen before?
Below is a slide show of my photos of Stockport (which is to this day a disputed area for Greater Manchester and Cheshire). For my photos of Manchester, visit this link.