TIME'S TRACES

in many cityscapes, there's the sense of the tourist swept away by the apparent magic of being somewhere other than their point of origin. consequently, it's all surface since physical space usually won't allow penetration by the len's eye. since the tourist is usually rushed for time the ghosts of a city or a place can simply refuse to reveal themselves, content w/knowing time is on their side. what i like about this guy's work is it's patience, especially in the st petersburg pictures. if you doubt he's tracking down the ghosts that make a specific site feel as worn & comfortable as old tennis shoes or as uncanny as a waking dream, he can be more explicit:



of course, ghosts are simply time's traces in the field of human existence. if time is what god invented to keep everything from happening at once, then the ghosts that inhabit time keep us from getting too distracted from its passing. the ghosts alert us to the physical passing of time & are, in turn, alerted by our struggles to make sense of them & their place, which then becomes a shared space.

"that forever the geography

which leans in

on me I compell

backwards I compell Gloucester

to yield, to

change

Polis

is this"

charles olson