Today I visited “Into The Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West” at the MoMA. I went with my friend Diana, an actress and playwright currently writing about a girl named Laura who longs to go west and take photographs. (This is just one of the many bizarre synchronicities which unite us). Diana just returned from Phoenix a few days ago and, like me, her heart is still rolling around out there like a tumbleweed. The exhibit seemed like the perfect setting to meet and catch up – for months I’ve been looking forward to what I assumed would be wall-sized sunsets, rock, and cacti. Perhaps Dorothea Lange’s “The Road West, New Mexico, 1938″ (above) best illustrates the endless calling in my heart – the limitless possibilities on the road to the sun.
I went to Central Park before meeting my friend, expecting to see some budding flowers on this gorgeous spring day. However, like most expectations, mine were disappointed. Aside from some forsythia things were still looking pretty brown. There’s no rushing the natural process, I guess. After enjoying the sunshine for a little while, I headed to the MoMA for a dose of color…
… and again, I was greeted by my expectations. The exhibit contains a wonderful collection of photographs from 1850 to present, both black and white and color, but very few were aligned with my romanticized view of the West. Some where downright painful. As Diana and I discussed our dwindling desire to be in New York – to escape the congestion and concrete for the mountains, endless horizons, and purity of the West – photographs of wasteland, housing developments, and freeways provided the backdrop. Sure, there were a few natural beauties to the exhibit, but most photographs didn’t directly support my fantasy, and therefore I had a difficult time absorbing them… in fact, as I write now, I feel like I haven’t even seen the exhibit. My preoccupation with what I thought “Into the Sunset” should look like blocked the actual images, like clouds blocking the sun. Interestingly, when I exited the museum it was no longer a sunny blue-skied day, but rather overcast and chilly.
And so I headed back underground, beneath the clouds of my expectations. The first step is to clear them away, and then repeat, repeat, repeat. They always return, like the rain – sometimes they drizzle and other times they downpour. But the light eventually burns through. This is why I revisit certain works of art again and again, inviting the pieces to gradually reveal themselves as I open to receive them, gradually revealing myself… Art is an intimate experience, like the blossoming of forsythia and sunlight on skin. And by art I mean life.
