Darcy at Union Hall

Darcy at Union Hall, originally uploaded by Lindsay Beyerstein.

Last weekend was a busy one for Darcy and Secret Society. On Sunday, the group played at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

In this picture, Darcy prepares to conduct the first tune of the evening.

Comments

[Chris]

I don't know how he keeps track of all those musicians. It looked like trying to herd cats!

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

I know. I get tired just watching it.

[Doyle Saylor]

In terms of aesthetics this is a strong image. Since it's not in color, I'll just make a quick observation, vision, visual awareness has two distinct paths to the brain. One is mainly color and the other is b/w.

Color is peculiar in a lot of ways. For example Blue like sky blue tends to be indistinct compared to red and green. Western Culture developed b/w images via printing as a mass culture. But the aesthetic of b/w appreciation runs counter to how people see.

B/w is somehow expressive then of 'loss'. Of impoverishment of thought. I don't mean you are trying to say that, but rather a much larger impoverishment the printing culture always had about it.

One of the strangest examples of that is Ansel Adams opposition to color photography in the mid twentieth century. Married as he was to the 1930's and 40's printing market for photography, one has to wonder at why his career never went 'color'.

Adams shot some color. But for example HDR sensibility which is quite like the zone system never seemed to inspire Adams.

Oliver Sacks explored the cultural meaning of total color blindness more recently, and that sensibility about color and no color I think resonates for me when I see b/w photographs.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor