This date in 1939 marked the beginning of World War 2. To accord with that, here's a picture from this past Saturday morning at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. You're looking at Charles Umlauf's cast stone sculpture "War Mother," which he created in 1939 and which now sits on a pedestal in an outdoor alcove along an edge of the museum's central garden courtyard. At the right time in the morning, light from the unclouded sun reaches the beams of an overhead lattice and casts striking parallel shadows onto the Umlauf sculpture and adjacent walls.
In commemoration of today's date 83 years ago I invite you to read W.H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939," with its memorable ending:
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
(I hope you don't mind today's change of pace from nature photography. Long before I specialized in portraying native plants I made photographs more like today's than the ones you normally see here. That said, the earlier styles came to inform later and current ones. Ah, continuity: we still are what we were.)
© 2022 Steven Schwartzman
No comments:
Post a Comment