Slow Seeing

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A few years ago, I had strolled past these photographs in their more conceptual version, with tiny footnotes in the ripples corresponding to a long series of accompanying texts, and I'd strolled through this new exhibition as well, but the images didn't seep in until we lingered with them. Around us on every side as we sat on the concrete floor and read aloud and talked -- not so much looking at as coexisting with these photographs of the green surface of the Thames -- they came to life, throbbed and churned with power, pressed in on us, alluring and threatening.

There's a political aspect to this, naturally: Factory workers used to protest or strike with a work slowdown, a refusal to keep pace with the management's profit pace; as the world comes to resemble a factory more and more, every act of lingering, of deep engagement, of doing nothing, of neither producing nor consuming according to any marketable rate, is a metaphysical work slowdown. A good consumer should have a short attention span, forever requiring the next thing. But beyond politics is pleasure, and perhaps this slowness is the discipline of pleasure.

Rebecca Solnit is a recipient of the 2003 Lannan Literary Award. Her project with photographers Byron Wolfe and Mark Klett is the subject of a forthcoming book. From Orion (Nov./Dec. 2003). Subscription: $35/yr. (6 issues) from 187 Main St., Great Barrington, MA 01230.

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