This time last year (how to make a picture)
ReadingRoom, Naarm / Melbourne
9 November – 7 December, 2024
This time last year
Erik Jensen
Emma says she drew the wind. It happened very quickly, in a single weekend.
*
In Emma’s phone there is a painting by Milton Avery. The mountains are all white and their peaks are bent like the wings of a seagull in a drawing.
*
Sometimes a ballet flat can look like a dead swallow. Emma was thinking of buying a pair. The ballet flat she painted was from Kmart but it wasn’t the one she wanted.
*
Louise Glück said we look at the world once, in childhood. She said the rest is memory. You don’t say her name the way it’s written. The difference is the sound of rain.
*
Nothing on a boat is square, especially not the upholstery.
*
Sometimes the cat gets paint on her. She has a blue paw and a little streak along her grey flank.
*
There is nothing fast about a photograph, except taking it. The rest of the process takes forever.
*
The first picture is eight pictures, pinned together like a hopscotch court. Olivia found it in a drawer. The path back to childhood is taken on one leg.
*
Emma paints on a drop sheet in a room with a plaid sofa. Each time the sheet gets dirty, she folds it over. The more she paints the less space there is to paint.
*
Mud Island isn’t made of mud. It’s made of sand.
A dress doesn’t have to be worn to look as if it’s dancing, but it helps.
*
Milton Avery didn’t talk much. “Why talk,” he said, “when you can paint?”
*
Occasionally Emma looks at a picture and all she can see is complaining.
*
Walker Evans said a photograph should never be made of motherhood or anywhere near the beach. The first time Emma heard this was in an argument.
*
It’s hot now. There is no breeze and the air has the quality of a dog’s breath.
*
Emma has seen the same dentist her entire life. Driving home from her last appointment, she took a picture of a bent and naked tree standing in a roundabout.
*
Emma’s first memory is not an image; it is the sound of water lapping.
*
When Emma makes a portrait she looks for the small details. She looks for the hands and feet.
*
Today it is raining and it will rain all day, the slow, insistent rain that wets the light and sits like blisters on the window.
*
Emma paints on jibs and spinnakers. She paints the wind on broken sails. The scraps that are too big, she cuts up.
*
When she started making portraits, it was to get used to other people. Without knowing why, she drove back home.
*
Emma seems happy when she tells me James Agee stayed with the sharecroppers. Walker Evans slept in a hotel.
*
Writing a poem and taking a photograph are not so different. They are never quite what is in front of you.
*
Erik Jensen is an award-winning journalist, biographer, screenwriter and poet. He is the founding editor of The Saturday Paper and editor-in-chief of Schwartz Media. His first book, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, was made into an acclaimed feature film. He is also the author of On Kate Jennings, Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel and the poetry collection I Said the Sea Was Folded. His latest book is Angry at Breakfast.
ReadingRoom, Naarm / Melbourne
9 November – 7 December, 2024
This time last year
Erik Jensen
Emma says she drew the wind. It happened very quickly, in a single weekend.
*
In Emma’s phone there is a painting by Milton Avery. The mountains are all white and their peaks are bent like the wings of a seagull in a drawing.
*
Sometimes a ballet flat can look like a dead swallow. Emma was thinking of buying a pair. The ballet flat she painted was from Kmart but it wasn’t the one she wanted.
*
Louise Glück said we look at the world once, in childhood. She said the rest is memory. You don’t say her name the way it’s written. The difference is the sound of rain.
*
Nothing on a boat is square, especially not the upholstery.
*
Sometimes the cat gets paint on her. She has a blue paw and a little streak along her grey flank.
*
There is nothing fast about a photograph, except taking it. The rest of the process takes forever.
*
The first picture is eight pictures, pinned together like a hopscotch court. Olivia found it in a drawer. The path back to childhood is taken on one leg.
*
Emma paints on a drop sheet in a room with a plaid sofa. Each time the sheet gets dirty, she folds it over. The more she paints the less space there is to paint.
*
Mud Island isn’t made of mud. It’s made of sand.
A dress doesn’t have to be worn to look as if it’s dancing, but it helps.
*
Milton Avery didn’t talk much. “Why talk,” he said, “when you can paint?”
*
Occasionally Emma looks at a picture and all she can see is complaining.
*
Walker Evans said a photograph should never be made of motherhood or anywhere near the beach. The first time Emma heard this was in an argument.
*
It’s hot now. There is no breeze and the air has the quality of a dog’s breath.
*
Emma has seen the same dentist her entire life. Driving home from her last appointment, she took a picture of a bent and naked tree standing in a roundabout.
*
Emma’s first memory is not an image; it is the sound of water lapping.
*
When Emma makes a portrait she looks for the small details. She looks for the hands and feet.
*
Today it is raining and it will rain all day, the slow, insistent rain that wets the light and sits like blisters on the window.
*
Emma paints on jibs and spinnakers. She paints the wind on broken sails. The scraps that are too big, she cuts up.
*
When she started making portraits, it was to get used to other people. Without knowing why, she drove back home.
*
Emma seems happy when she tells me James Agee stayed with the sharecroppers. Walker Evans slept in a hotel.
*
Writing a poem and taking a photograph are not so different. They are never quite what is in front of you.
*
Erik Jensen is an award-winning journalist, biographer, screenwriter and poet. He is the founding editor of The Saturday Paper and editor-in-chief of Schwartz Media. His first book, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen, was made into an acclaimed feature film. He is also the author of On Kate Jennings, Quarterly Essay 74: The Prosperity Gospel and the poetry collection I Said the Sea Was Folded. His latest book is Angry at Breakfast.
Send me a lullaby
Published & commissioned by PHOTO Editions, Naarm / Melbourne, 2021
Design by Ziga Testen
Published & commissioned by PHOTO Editions, Naarm / Melbourne, 2021
Design by Ziga Testen
Too much to Dream
ReadingRoom, Naarm / Melbourne
13 March – 27 April, 2019
Too much to dream
Emma Phillips
Questions to ask R.
1. what is his middle name
2. how funny is he on a scale of 1 to 10
3. when he blinks does he see the world upside down
4. does he ever tag on instagram
you’re uncomfortable it doesn’t get any better
hahahahahahahahahhaahahahhaha
i am always sincere
dont you have a face
this isn’t a narrative, its a primary life that breathes breathes breathes
words are stupid sounds with shadows
i am not intellectual. what i write is a fog.
Thinking About Starting a Web Show soon and doing it once a week. Not Sure when
It’s the best night yesterday i’ve ever lived
i don’t know how to water the dying plants without boiling them alive
things have no reality in themselves
What’s another word for demon
photography cant do that
love it love it love it love it
You’re my favourite painting
I touched a central place where I have never touched before. I wrote from the margin.
She hates that photo she thinks she looks old
I am very emotional about certain things
my mystery
It looks too tight first of all
can you private message on that
facts are hard rocks
I am proud of myself for moving out of home living out of home glad i have good friends family and boyfriend. I would love to get into modelling sometime next year. or even learn guitar. I would love to get into acting and improve my singing and to make movies and learn to take photos and learn not to be so shy around people.
can you text me
All I need now is a job to complete my life
ill slap bitches
girls are just little sluts
someone bring me a ciggie
I wash myself with nature
is there anywhere thats hiring besides maccas and shit
the moon is changing
ive only just realised i don’t have a best friend
I have a passion for the void.
Cheap tearjerker
All I had to eat today were cold coffee
Your pictures are still on my wall
vague nausea
When they ask if i’d like to leave early i always say yes
take flash & tripod
a melodrama
it aint so mysterious
totally metaphysical
what happens to water when you put your hand in it
The Devil is an image. Imagine Hell. We grab the book, and run.
do you miss the rats?
I’m still working out how to photograph this
the map is not the terrain
is your camera heavy
beyond a look
the great pretender
still haven’t found a way to photograph people
live in the word of the photographs
I forgot to mention I read nothing, I look at nothing, I listen to nothing for fear of polluting my mind.
my mother asks if you want dinner
you look like shit
everybody wants to be in the mainstream
i walked past target but didn’t go in there
dimension & the way film describes space + light
Always is the house
they’re really cute
hahahahahahahahahhaahahahhaha
the most beautiful music in the world is the interstellar silence.
i lost the will to look
A sensibility for what is outside the image
How do you give a spirit form
i really wish i could synthesise my ideas for the presentation but i cannot
The Golden Record
A word in the back of your head
Look at her she’s so happy with all her toys
periphery of space and made to look
whats @ stake?
a house is just a house
remember how stoned we got in portland
Cartier-Bresson woman in water photo
the spectacle is a distraction
I killed a mosquito
hallucinations hallucinations hallucinations
I’m a little teapot
I introduce you to myself, visualise you in snapshots.
im trying to work out what planet she’s on
Getting my braces off today after 3 good long years
It is girls from which stories begin.
24 days until i turn 22
nup
i got a new camera
how do you grab anything in 2 minutes
you didn’t find those dream diaries i guess
haven’t really done anything
ReadingRoom, Naarm / Melbourne
13 March – 27 April, 2019
Too much to dream
Emma Phillips
Questions to ask R.
1. what is his middle name
2. how funny is he on a scale of 1 to 10
3. when he blinks does he see the world upside down
4. does he ever tag on instagram
you’re uncomfortable it doesn’t get any better
hahahahahahahahahhaahahahhaha
i am always sincere
dont you have a face
this isn’t a narrative, its a primary life that breathes breathes breathes
words are stupid sounds with shadows
i am not intellectual. what i write is a fog.
Thinking About Starting a Web Show soon and doing it once a week. Not Sure when
It’s the best night yesterday i’ve ever lived
i don’t know how to water the dying plants without boiling them alive
things have no reality in themselves
What’s another word for demon
photography cant do that
love it love it love it love it
You’re my favourite painting
I touched a central place where I have never touched before. I wrote from the margin.
She hates that photo she thinks she looks old
I am very emotional about certain things
my mystery
It looks too tight first of all
can you private message on that
facts are hard rocks
I am proud of myself for moving out of home living out of home glad i have good friends family and boyfriend. I would love to get into modelling sometime next year. or even learn guitar. I would love to get into acting and improve my singing and to make movies and learn to take photos and learn not to be so shy around people.
can you text me
All I need now is a job to complete my life
ill slap bitches
girls are just little sluts
someone bring me a ciggie
I wash myself with nature
is there anywhere thats hiring besides maccas and shit
the moon is changing
ive only just realised i don’t have a best friend
I have a passion for the void.
Cheap tearjerker
All I had to eat today were cold coffee
Your pictures are still on my wall
vague nausea
When they ask if i’d like to leave early i always say yes
take flash & tripod
a melodrama
it aint so mysterious
totally metaphysical
what happens to water when you put your hand in it
The Devil is an image. Imagine Hell. We grab the book, and run.
do you miss the rats?
I’m still working out how to photograph this
the map is not the terrain
is your camera heavy
beyond a look
the great pretender
still haven’t found a way to photograph people
live in the word of the photographs
I forgot to mention I read nothing, I look at nothing, I listen to nothing for fear of polluting my mind.
my mother asks if you want dinner
you look like shit
everybody wants to be in the mainstream
i walked past target but didn’t go in there
dimension & the way film describes space + light
Always is the house
they’re really cute
hahahahahahahahahhaahahahhaha
the most beautiful music in the world is the interstellar silence.
i lost the will to look
A sensibility for what is outside the image
How do you give a spirit form
i really wish i could synthesise my ideas for the presentation but i cannot
The Golden Record
A word in the back of your head
Look at her she’s so happy with all her toys
periphery of space and made to look
whats @ stake?
a house is just a house
remember how stoned we got in portland
Cartier-Bresson woman in water photo
the spectacle is a distraction
I killed a mosquito
hallucinations hallucinations hallucinations
I’m a little teapot
I introduce you to myself, visualise you in snapshots.
im trying to work out what planet she’s on
Getting my braces off today after 3 good long years
It is girls from which stories begin.
24 days until i turn 22
nup
i got a new camera
how do you grab anything in 2 minutes
you didn’t find those dream diaries i guess
haven’t really done anything
