Childhood influence

I grew up in a nomadic military household with few books and parents who had little patience for reading. "Get your head out of that book and do something useful," my mom often shouted. But my friend Laurie, talking about her childhood, mentioned that she grew up with The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, specifically the Victorian paraphrase of the Persian by Edward FitzGerald. That reminded me that my mom also had a copy of that, and I remember sneaking it into my bedroom to read under the covers by flashlight. It was not just the poetry that drew me; I would gaze into the illustrations endlessly imagining.

I went to Powell's this afternoon and found seven editions of the Rubaiyat, including the exact edition my mother had owned, the one I had spirited away to my room. I turned the pages almost automatically to this illustration by Edmund Dulac and realized with a gasp that it had a profound influence on me. Hundreds of pictures I've taken are an attempt to reproduce the effect of this book illustration, though I did not consciously remember the image till today. As recently as the blip I made two days ago, and as extensively as this whole set on Flickr, I have taken pictures of water and of trees, leaves, and buildings reflected in it. I think it has to do with the softening and distorting effect water has on the hard edges of our world. I wonder what book illustrations moved each of us when we were young and our brains were still receiving pictures for the first time and building daydreams around them.

One more wonderful thing I found at Powell's: the Spring 2012 Aperture has a major feature on the work of Paula Luttringer. See it if you can.

Edit: surprised to see that a year ago I posted a similar image.