Book review Crisis tapes Photography: Charlie Simokaitis Reviewed by Sara J. Winston “Charlie Simokaitis’s crisis tapes have been sitting on a side table in my library for several months, first puzzling me, then speaking directly to my nervous system. After a personal loss left me bereft, my dearest friend began contacting me regularly and asking, “How is your nervous system?” The response was not good for weeks…”
Photography: Charlie Simokaitis
TIS Books, 2024. 144 pp., 70 three-tone images, 9½x11½”.
“You’ll never be the identical again. Longing
is to be clean. What you get must be modified.
With each passing minute, an increasing number of
through which infinity intertwines,
also forgetting, in fact, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here he’s together with his hands filled with sand, letting him sift it
within the wind, I look and say, take it, that is it
what I actually have saved, take it, hurry up. What if I listen?
Now? Look, I didn’t say anything. It was only
something I did. I could not find the words.
Of course I am unable to return. Not for this. Never.
It’s a ghost posing on my lips. Here: never.”
—PrayerJorie Graham
Crisis tapes Charlie Simokaitis’s book has been sitting on a side table in my library for several months, first puzzling me, then speaking on to my nervous system. After a private loss left me bereft, my dearest friend began contacting me commonly and asking, “How is your nervous system?” The response wasn’t good for weeks. In this delicate time, back to Crisis tapes repeatedly he helped me achieve stasis.
The book begins with a portrait. The portrait appears on the duvet and is one in every of the few graphic images among the many book’s 70 three-color reproductions. It’s a resemblance to a lady we do not know. He wears glasses. Her eyes are closed. Then we set off on a journey. Often quite dark, describing the decay of the industry. Forest at night, geometric shapes, a Dalmatian without each eyes, a lady whose head can’t be seen, floating into unknown depths.
This highly formal book gives the reader the gift of a physical space during which to contemplate each photograph. Minimalist design elevates each image, first on a deeply individual level after which experienced as a cascading whole. Moving through the pages is like walking past a series of ruins, feeling confused, after which slowly, figure by figure, or moderately image by image, moving forward to feel a brand new awareness of spaciousness in your chest. It is a journey from the mundane to the sacred. A door or portal that creates the opportunity of one other world. At the top of the trail, transformation.
The plot of the book just isn’t easily known. I’m not convinced we’d like to know the story behind all of it, and yet humans are narrative-seeking creatures. The publisher, TIS Books, describes that “Crisis tapes — the debut monograph by photographer Charlie Simokaitis — is an account of his daughter’s gradual lack of vision. . ” With that said, most symbols and geometric shapes point to the anatomy of the eye, the anatomy of the nervous system, and the presence of the Dalmatian poignantly symbolizes the indisputable fact that this breed can lose its sight on account of quite a lot of eye conditions.
By the top of the book, I had forgotten in regards to the tension and strain of my very own nervous system. I consider that the experience described on this book allows for the length of grief and the continued growth that grief brings. It illustrates the depth of loss: once we lose something, we gain something. We feel the echoes of change. A change to remind us that emotional healing takes for much longer than physical healing. But we are going to never be the identical again.
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Sara J. Winston is an artist based within the Hudson Valley region of New York, USA. He works with photos, text and book form to explain and reply to chronic disease and its ongoing impact on body, mind, family and memory. Sara is the photography program coordinator at Bard College and a college member of the Penumbra Foundation’s long-term photobook program.
