Word: flamingly
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PHOTOGRAPHS THAT are just "nice" or which attempt to shock or "tell us something" are inherently weak; the photographic sensibility is at its height when it picks out the realities which are known to be significant to our lives and gives them coherent visual expression. This "Flame of Recognition," to use Nancy Newhall's description of Edward Weston, is what lies behind any great photographer. The absence of Friedlander, Winogrand and their co-workers from the Whitney's show is emblematic of Doty's failure to comprehend this, but his miscomprehension of what makes for good photography also shows...
...film, after the last flame has been doused, Paul Newman surveys the ruined hulk of his skyscraper. He suggests allowing it to stand as "a monument to all the bullshit" of our age. Probably The Towering Inferno should be placed on permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian for the same reason...
...with a reminder that progress--which they like as little as Renoir does--hasn't leveled all distinctions yet. The bum pockets the leftovers from their meal, shows up some patronizing rich folks who think they know all about poor people, waltzes through an imaginary chateau with his old flame, and lies down beside her to die in the snow. It's wonderful, except maybe because Renoir seems to expect you to follow his characters in just denying that they're poor--a little like some new, more sentimental Marie Antoinette, whispering a "Let them eat love," to the accompaniment...
...tunnel where the coal is actually extracted. During the four-mile journey, the beams from the lamps on the miners' hats bore through the darkness, picking up eerie, abandoned passageways, diggings of another day. The foreman carries a small naphtha lamp; if the lamp's flame flares up, it indicates the presence of flammable methane gas and the threat of fire; if it goes out, it means that the oxygen has been depleted to dangerous levels. Each man has clipped to his belt a small canister with an hour's supply of oxygen...
...Ulysses, sleeping under a pile of leaves, like an ember buried beneath ashes, a small seed of light from his previous work has survived. The bright, animated fires of Catch-22 have died down, but now a new fire has sprung from its still-hot coals, burning a blue flame of discontent and throwing dissonant shadows...