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the photography
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No doubt,
the complex work of William Ropp allows for other interpretations. But nobody will deny that these images leave an indelible impression on the soul.
The profundity of William Ropp’s work, though, should not have us overlook that we are dealing here with the art of photography in the first place. And there is no doubt: William Ropp’s photography is a photography of the highest rank!
For it cannot not escape our attention that the expression derives from the light in the first place, and not so much from the body on which it is cast. Take, for instance, the photos in which the effect is achieved precisely by casting a shadow over the eyes - by hiding them from view:
And that holds true especially in that marvellous photo with which we began our exploration in this text. Surely, it shows the anxious eyes of a boy. But, on a closer look, the expressiveness derives from lighting in the first place: the eye seems to be turned in one giant pupil, and it is the shine upon that wide-open pupil that lends the gaze its fragility. The effect is further enhanced through the shadow below the nose, that opens as it were a third opening in the skull.
Again, in the photo below, it is only what from the woman is disappearing in the darkness of the shadow, that lends the image its force. It is as if the seated trunk is unfolding into one giant vagina wherein a fathomless void is emerging
In other photos, it is, conversely, the light that seems to transfigure the subject. The body of the woman below seems to have become luminous. And that is made possible in that the void is driven out of the centre, upwards and downwards, where the hands and the fingers of those two centrifugal arms continue to perform the movement around the void, that has meanwhile become all too familiar to us:
In still other photos, it is the grainy structure of a rather evenly lighted surface that lends the body a kind of spiritual immateriality – and the paper on which it is printed that unheard-off sense of tactility:
Not to mention, finally, the mastery with which all those mortal bodies, as well as the light and shadows cast on them, are arranged within the frame of the rectangle. It suffices to refer to the highlights, such as the head in the title of our text, or the limbs of that couple entwined surrounding the lighted head in the centre. And it suffices to revisit all the images above from this angle, to persuade ourselves of that remarkable mystery of William Ropp’s photography: that the pains of incarnation, so poignantly portrayed in this images, are inversely proportional to the perfection of their embodiment in the image.
Such photography is the very opposite of what it is commonly held for: to be a mere reflection of the visible world. If anywhere, here Klee’s saying applies: that art does not render the visible, but makes visible.
Granted: few painters or sculptors of the twentieth century fathom the same depths, and equally few reach to the same heights.
© Stefan Beyst, February 2004
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