Cézanne’s Mountains
I disappeared last week. I found a thread, couldn’t stop pulling, but in the end I set the project aside. Every so often you have to do that to understand what the hell it is you’re doing. So it was all a bust—for now.
You may be wondering about the title of this post and its relevance to the images below. It’s inspired by an interview in Ken Burns’ new Hemingway documentary. I’m not even through the entire first episode yet, but this stood out: a mention of the importance of Cézanne’s work on the author. Specifically, on the act of repetition and how a single subject can sustain inspiration through variations—“landscape, landscape, landscape…then mountain, mountain…the SAME mountain…”, the person says.
For years I have obsessed over repetition. I’ve seen it as a failure of imagination: is there not a point that should signal the end of a cycle? A required move from blue period to pink?
But perhaps I’ve been wrong and this is a necessary exercise—a reminder of the need for reinvention. The mountain will always be the mountain. Our eyes, however, our soul and inner struggles, are perpetual agents of change.
So on Sunday I picked up the camera again. I looked at the same four walls again, the same roads. I tried to forget who and what they were.
Again.
“Landscape, landscape, landscape…room, room, room…”.
