Crystal Clear Eyes

#31

01.31.10

Photo

Saturday is Book Club day.  I meet with my good friend and colleague K.A.B. most Saturdays at different coffee shops around South Anchorage to discuss literature, et al.  Some days there is more discussion of 'et al.' than literature, but that's the beauty of our club.  We started informally with Haruki Murakami's masterpiece The Wind-up Bird Chronicle when we worked together in 2003-2004.  We formed the formal Book Club by reading The Life of Pi in 2004 as a way to stay in touch when I left his group to join the Alaska Native Medical Center.  Since then we've explored almost every book by Neal Stephenson, several books by Nick Tosches, others by Junot Díaz, Will Self, Ron Carlson, and many more.

It was K.A.B.'s turn to pick a book (he always picks the best ones, anyway), and happily he selected Descartes' Bones by Russell Shorto.  He even went so far as to gift me a hardbound edition of the book.  What a guy!  It is an exploration of the battle between Faith and Reason, centered around and paralleling René Descartes' dilemma between mind and body.  It also unveils the mystery surrounding Descartes' bones being scattered around Europe where they were employed as relics.  I will not describe the book any further, other than to say it is a very interesting and enjoyable read.

Aside from meriting a read, the book has two superb images on the inside of both the front and back covers.  One image is the portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals in 1649 and which I have seen with my own eyes in the Louvre, Paris.  The second image is today's featured iPhone photo subject, Descartes actual skull.  The dust jacket on my book indicates the photo of the skull was taken by Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet, and the skull has now been moved from the Musée de l'Homme to Descartes' boyhood school, La Fléche.

There are inscriptions on the skull dating back several centuries; one inscribed in Swedish documents the actual "stealing" of the skull, and the other is a poem in Latin extolling the virtues of the man who once resided within and around the skull itself.  I think it is just a rich, fascinating photo; and my task today was to capture it with the iPhone.  

Taking a photograph of a photograph printed on paper has the challenge noted in blog entry #29 when I photographed the buffalo nickel on various surfaces.  The paper wants to reflect light, and I don't have a light box.  Just now I realize my sister-in-law who authors a wonderful photography blog (much more serious work presented there!) mentioned something about a "diffuser" to give soft light... I think she shone a flashlight through a tissue when she didn't have her regular gear with her.  Hmm... something to try in the future.

For this photo I had to put the book standing almost straight up (perpendicular to the light source above) to keep a big shiny ball from reflecting off the image.  I then increased the contrast greatly because I wanted the image to look Rembrandtian (did I just make that word up?).  Additionally, the image on the inside cover of the book makes the bone look gray; and in my personal experience having worked with cadaveric bones for many years, they are much more yellow.  So I increased the temperature, "warmed it up", a little on Photogene, too.  Another reason to do that is Rembrandt painted orangey-yellow tones on dark backgrounds, and again, that was how I wanted my photo of this photo to turn out. 

In the end I think it's a intriguing image that is worthy of a blog entry; an image which ends up asking more questions than it gives answers.  For example, what were the circumstances surrounding the fracture of that small piece of bone between the left orbital cavity and the supraorbital foramen?  Perhaps there are loftier questions out there... but that is my unsophisticated brain's question.

Here is the portrait of Descartes I've tried to make Rembrandtian (there... I've used it twice, so it's officially a word now and you can promptly add it to your daily lexicon):

  

Here is an unprocessed photo of the two images on the inside front and back covers of my book with the ever vigilant and Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha presiding:

Finally, I thought I'd throw in a photo of my real human foot bones next to the photo of the skull to demonstrate the yellow hue I was trying to recreate.  The only processing was to increase color saturation to show the gray more gray, and the yellow more yellow:

Music

Chan Marshall goes by the name Cat Power, and I've been a fan since I heard this featured track Cross Bones Style off the 1998 Moon Pix album.  She has a very distinctive voice, and her music usually ranges from melancholy to downright depressing.  A later album, The Greatest, actually does have some upbeat material.  Guess who her drummer is?  You got it, Steve Shelley who is also the drummer for Sonic Youth.  (All of my circles collide and interconnect, always.)

This track is haunting.  The sound is haunting, the lyrics are haunting, and the inspiration for the song is haunting.  It deals with the orphaned children of diamond mine workers in Africa.  Pairing this song with the photo of an old human skull, dark eye sockets staring back at us, which belonged to a man who challenged the establishment in the name of Reason by looking at the world in a new way, with 'crystal clear eyes', was a comfortable fit:

oh, how time flies, with crystal clear eyes 

and cold as coal, when you're ending with diamond eyes

oh, come child, in a cross bones style
oh, come child, come and rescue me

'cause you have seen some unbelievable things 

Parting Comments 

Much like my neighbor J.B. referenced in #30; K.A.B. is another Renaissance Man whom I am fortunate to know here in Alaska.  Not only is he a brilliant physician and surgeon, but he has also summited Denali, toured many countries on bicycle, won many competitive bicycle races, and goes heliskiing several times per year.  The man has sailed around the Galapagos Islands, for crying out loud.  Just this morning he was downhill skiing in Alyeska, Girdwood, then met me for Book Club at Terra Bella, and then headed straight for Kincaid Park where he was to cross-country ski.  Just writing about his life makes me want to take a nap.  He is truly out of my league mentally and physically; yet being a consummate gentleman he allows me to hang around him.  Perhaps I am his personal project?

Until tomorrow... thank you for looking, listening and reading.  CCE