Rx 22 / Slant of Light
Elizabeth Pedinotti Haynes, “There’s a Certain Slant of Light,” 2010. Courtesy of Slought Foundation.
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral TunesHeavenly Hurt, it gives us —
We can find no scar,
But internal difference —
Where the Meanings, are —None may teach it – Any –
’Tis the seal Despair —
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air —When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows — hold their breath —
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death —Emily Dickinson, “There’s a certain slant of light” (320)
Someone, perhaps the individual pictured, has placed medical gloves on their feet. We do not know whether this is a playful gesture, or if some sort of grief, pain, or anxiety has precipitated this discomforting scene. Here, the photographer provides a glimpse of intimacy and internal monologue—an embodied sense of isolation from the life of another. The obscure and reductive visual field is devoid of people and signs of community, contributing to the pervasive disquietude. The work’s ambiguity leads us to assume only that something has gone awry.
Taking both its title and composition from Emily Dickinson’s poem, Elizabeth Pedinotti Haynes’s photograph centers around a narrow “slant of light” which delicately illuminates the subject’s feet. A strange and stark beauty emerges from the nondescript setting, which is enveloped in shadow and darkness. Whether signaling the imprint of this or that particular moment, or the extremities of the body, the photograph calls our attention to a minor moment in an otherwise impenetrable life.
Pedinotti Haynes’s photographs often stage everyday experiences of solitude and melancholy such as this one. Playing with light and shadows, time and perspective, her work invites viewers to reflect on the particular relationship between photography and loss. In attempting to visualize something that evades representation, Pedinotti Haynes has also presented us with a meditation on the nature of photography itself. As photographers try to capture a person or moment, preserving or fixing a memory for posterity, they also reduce their subject to a particular moment in time, dismembered from familiarity.
reflections…
Pedinotti Haynes’s subject has taken a familiar object—a pair of medical gloves—and used it in an unfamiliar way. Although they have a defined function in a medical setting, here the gloves have been assigned a less determined meaning. What can a decontextualized medical object teach us about the medical gaze more broadly? What kinds of assumptions do medical professionals make when visualizing everyday scenes and even artworks such as this one? Is the subject in this photograph, for instance, positioning or playing with their extremities in a non-normative manner, or are they exhibiting an abnormality? Does this photograph depict a work of performance art, a distressing condition, or both? How does this photograph invite us to reflect on the tendency in medicine to pathologize beyond the clinical encounter, and the ways in which the medical gaze frequently ascribes values and assumptions upon others?
This photograph gives form to a melancholia that perhaps reflects loss, severe isolation, or the burden on those who provided care and service during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a medical community and a society, how can we become more comfortable with the public expression and reception of feelings of grief and pain? How can we, like Pedinotti Haynes and her subjects, find solace in the expression of our discomfort?
The staggering scale of loss of the COVID-19 pandemic has touched families in innumerable ways. Many have found themselves acutely aware of someone who is missing. In what ways do images—even those simply remembered—persist? How does this photograph embody the solitude and despair depicted in Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light” and help us reflect on the melancholy of this moment?
sources
Copeland, Colette. Big Death, Little Death. 2010. Slought Foundation. https://afterimage.ucpress.edu/content/ucpaft/37/6/23.full.pdf.
“Elizabeth Pedinotti.” Artspace, www.artspace.com/artist/elizabeth_pedinotti.
“There’s a Certain Slant of Light.” Slought, slought.org/resources/slant_of_light.
