Third wave

I have stumbled upon two comments about authenticity and photography lately. Here they are.

I like the comment of the anonymous responder to the weak article entitled 'deja vu'.

Seeing the lids of a box with transparent lids

It's from this hotch potch of crap that I bought a very useful grey plastic toolbox/tackle box with two transparent lids.

When I scanned the neg and printed a small test I became convinced that I saw the lids, in ink on the paper print. It wasn't on the table because I had purchased the box prior to this photo being made as a gesture of goodwill towards the static little community who waited patiently for passing guttersnipes.

It's the same sort of quandry which Ivan Vladislavic addresses in my Milnerton Market book when he quotes Andre' Breton:

'André Breton, considering De Chirico’s fascination with certain objects (artichoke, glove, cookie, spool), writes, somewhat cryptically, ‘As far as I am concerned, a mind’s arrangement with regard to certain objects is even more important than its regard for certain arrangements of objects, these two kinds of arrangement controlling between them all forms of sensibility.’ The patterning of objects rests not only with the things themselves but with the disposition of the mind of the observer.

Denzel Willemse wanted what I have

On the dug-up, frayed edges of a wilting, forgotten town called Wepener I encountered this gentleman. He was driving in circles of ever decreasing size around my car whose boot was open to reveal mountains of road trip paraphernalia and over-designed German camera equipment. Finally Denzel and his mate stop suddenly and his friend says, 'Do you have drink?' 'No, I just have water' 'Give it to me'.

The driver snatches the bottle, downs my water(the weather is scorching) and tosses the large 2l bottle onto the dug-up, frayed, forgotten edge road of Wepener.

I ask DW if I can make a photograph of him and he says yes, but before he steps out of the car he makes a quick call. I set up the camera and as if by magic a second shoddy taxi appears carrying two equally dodgy men in the front with Okapis on then brain.

'Are you travelling alone?' asks DW. 'No, I have my dog Cressida.' I whistle loudly and Cressida come sprinting down the dug-up, frayed, forgotten edge road of Wepener.

'Have this nectarine before you go'

Raptor and locust

I found this raptor sleeping quietly in its own down near the Gariep Dam. Strangely the corpus lies near the feathers and if a car caused the damage then it makes no sense. The body would have been flung far from the impact zone. Ed R's 'Royal Road Test' springs to mind. I have always admired this guy's errant genius and incontrovertible taste in roofless cars.

My expert friends from the department of birds tell me it's a Pale Chanting Goshawk which sounds non sensical, pale not being a logical qualifier for a chant. But the name is beautiful. I thought it was a Gabar Goshawk. Either way it's immature. I mean what nut would try and eat a locust off the tar when I car was coming, or...not?

Find a crop attached. The lighting is subtle and a fly can be noted on the fluffy bum of the bird - wings and two big eyes.