Quatrain #1: The Four Seasons

This posting launches a collection of visual poems that I am releasing throughout the remainder of the year; one per week, for sixteen weeks. Each poem is composed with four images to form a quatrain, which in the literary world is a style of poetry limited to four line stanzas of any kind; rhymed, metered, or otherwise. Without a doubt, an image holds potential for poetic expression all by itself, but when held up to other images the possibilities of expanding on ideas and even storytelling become really compelling.

In October 2010, I began to consider in earnest my humble iPhone to be the iWitness of my relentless wanderings, wonderings, and the found. This gadget has revealed itself to be one of the greatest partners of my photographic life, since the work that I have produced with it absolutely defines the essence of this blog. I fell in love with the act of seeing unlike any other time of my life, and I am grateful to the forces that kindled this crucible of creativity. A physical and creative process that lends itself entirely to the immediacy of the moment, and the ability to share even the simplest of forms with someone else, who I think can value it. The process has become just like shouting down the road to a friend, "hey, look!... I wish you were here to see this with me because this event is going to disappear in just a few minutes (seconds)."

I should mention that I get out to walk my dog, Zuzu, two to three times a day, so the effort of getting out to think, wander, wonder, and find... it's just part of what I do. What I respond to in any given situation is difficult to put a finger on. There is no rule, and any one image is a response to a huge range of possibilities. An image can be triggered from what someone said, to being a visceral response of current events. In the end, what ultimately gets found are the intangibles; feelings, memories, dreams, and reflections.

The quatrains then, are larger assemblies of ideas. Each image removed from its original intent and made part of a new whole. I like to think that unconsciously, I was putting these all together from the beginning, but that is a bit of a stretch. So I'll just say that a quatrain is purely a manifestation of intuition, and what they mean to me, they most likely won't mean to you. Allow yourself to interpret a quatrain the way you see it, and how it speaks to you via your life and experience.