We Grow Accustomed to the Dark (excerpt)

We grow accustomed to the Dark -

When light is put away -

As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp

To witness her Goodbye -

A Moment - We uncertain step

For newness of the night -

Then - fit our Vision to the Dark -

And meet the Road - erect -

And so of larger - Darknesses -

Those Evenings of the Brain -

When not a Moon disclose a sign -

Or Star - come out - within -

The Bravest - grope a little -

And sometimes hit a Tree

Directly in the Forehead -

But as they learn to see -

Either the Darkness alters -

Or something in the sight

Adjusts itself to Midnight -

And Life steps almost straight.

— Emily Dickinson

In this exhibit, the curtain rises on a miniature theatre, like a veil previously separating our world from a dark and playful afterlife. Here, I explore a version of still life photography using artifacts from my own version of a “wunderkammer” (German for “cabinet of curiosities”).  In the 16th and 17th centuries, such cabinets were popular because the worldview of that time saw linkages among such things, and among things and spirit and nature.  According to art historian Barbara Stafford, cabinets of curiosity encouraged this kind of understanding.  Juxtapositions of objects in the wunderkammers served to simulate conversation. She suggests that a “system of sideways looks” characterized these displays, and that artifacts “cacophonously ‘chatted’ among themselves and with the spectator.” (https://medium.com/@lubar/cabinets-of-curiosity-a134f65c115a)