Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

The portrait of Tolstoy on the right was my first encounter with the work of this Russian photographer (1863-1944), who in 1909 or so set out on a mission to document the Russian Empire in color. His technique involved three separate exposures using different color filters, which had to be recombined later to create a full color print. He also had a portable dark room with which he travelled around Russia, taking pictures of people and landscapes. Because of the long exposure times necessary, all of his photos of human subjects were posed. However, they are exquisitely detailed and intensely colorful, and I find it fascinating to look at such vibrant images from 100 or more years ago. They come from a time and place that are in some ways very difficult to imagine, but they also show signs of modernization, and at times it is hard to believe that they are so old.

Pretty peasant girls.

Jewish children studying with their rabbi in central Asia.

Uzbek prison.

Alim Khan, last emir of Bukhara.

Bridge over the river Kama.

On parables

Yesterday was a dark and rainy afternoon which seemed like the perfect time to relax and reflect but I never got around to it. Today is quite dreary and gray but just a tad too bright and the drama of downpour has been replaced by a tedious drizzle.
Lately I've been thinking about parables a lot. I recently bought a volume of Kafka's short stories in which I encountered a very brief piece that I thought was so cryptic and sweet I just decided I'd reprint it here:

"Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: 'Go over,' he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid all of your daily cares.

Another said: I bet that is also a parable.

The first said: You have won.

The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.

The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost."

When I read this I just had to smile. I find the genre so compelling, I think, because of it's ability to pack so much meaning into so few words (almost like a poem in that sense), and because a well executed parable or allegory or fable or whatever you want to call it somehow points toward the incomprehensible, the void of signification, but at the same time communicates a sort of pre-lingual sense of awe. Its paradox is that in dissecting the impossibility of transcendence (of transcendental meaning), it at least points to where meaningfulness might be found (might have been found) if such a thing were possible.

I think this piece really spells out the paradox, but it does so in such a playful way that doesn't seem to conform to the conventions of the genre. After all, transcendence (death) is serious business. And Kafka, a writer known for his depictions of angst and alienation and despair (see sketch above), here seems more interested in wordplay and wit.