From the Sequence "Ezra Pound" 1981 - 1982

Dieter Appelt made this gelatin silver print, “From the Sequence Ezra Pound,” and it feels like a dreamscape, doesn’t it? A bare room, reduced to these hazy black and white tones. It's like Appelt has bottled a memory, the kind that hovers just out of reach. You can see the chair smack dab in the center. It's almost glowing, as if the artist coaxed the light itself to sit for a portrait. Then there’s this circular form, hanging above, like a portal, or some kind of weird halo. I imagine Appelt in his darkroom, coaxing the image into being, pushing and pulling at the shadows. There's a sense of stillness, but also of something deeply unsettling. It reminds me of Ralph Eugene Meatyard's spooky photographs of his kids dressed up in masks, or Clarence John Laughlin's architectural ghostscapes. Artists are always responding to each other in strange ways, even across time. Photography, like painting, can be a form of embodied expression, where the image emerges from a long process of discovery.