Suburban Splendour

Suburban Splendour de Graham Miller

"Suburban Splendour materialised from encounters observed while driving, from the direct observation of daily life, from eavesdropping and casual conversation, but more often than not the photographs were inspired by literature and cinema. Films by Paul Thomas Anderson and Ray Lawrence contributed, as did writing by Richard Ford and the paintings of Edward Hopper. But the background soundtrack that remained constant was the voice of the American short story writer Raymond Carver. Carver's vivion depicts ordinary blue collar people living lifes of quiet desperation, people who are feeling their way in the dark with the hope that maybe next week things will get better,", Graham Miller. o resto aqui.

Tomorrow

Raymond Carver

Cigarette smoke hanging on

in the living room. The ship's lights

out on the water, dimming. The stars

burning holes in the sky. Becoming ash, yes.

But it's all right, they're supposed to do that.

Those lights we call stars.

Burn for a time and then die.

Me hell-bent. Wishing

it were tomorrow already.

I remember my mother, God love her,

saying, Don't wish for tomorrow.

You're wishing your life away.

Nevertheless, I wish

for tomorrow. In all its finery.

I want sleep to come and go, smoothly.

Life passing out of the door of one car

into another. And then to wake up!

Find tomorrow in my bedroom.

I'm more tired now that I can say.

My bowl is empty. But it's my bowl, you see,

and I love it.

..

uma entrevista, aqui.

"My partner is a writer and she introduced me to Carver's work about 13 years ago. What struck me about his writing then (and now) was how he conveys so much emotional weight by sketching out the bare outlines of a story with telling details and simple dialogue. He lets the reader's imagination embellish the rest. His stories are lean but powerful, taking fragments from the lives of regular people and putting a magnifying glass on them for a brief period of time. They are stories of loss, broken relationships and struggle, told in a way that pulls at your gut. His work led me to read other short story writers, like Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford. There's something deceptively uncomplicated in their fiction that I particularly like.

Carver's stories are often unresolved, leaving you hanging to try and make sense of what has just taken place or what was about to happen. I do try to include some of these aspects in my own work, but I don’t profess to be able to convey the complexities or the progression of narrative that is possible in the written short story within the single still image. What I try to evoke is some of the "feeling" I get when I read his work. It doesn't necessarily translate in every picture, but more as an overarching sense for the series of pictures."