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By Raymond Meeks & George Weld.
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Photographs by Raymond Meeks.
Text by George Weld.
MACK, London, England, 2023. 172 pp., 8½x11¾".
Chosen as the sixth Immersion laureate, the French–American Photographic Commission established by the Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, American photographer Raymond Meeks’ brief was to create a book and exhibition based on his residency in France during the summer of 2022.
“How should we let them know we were here?”
At first, just looking and making no photographs, Meeks immersed himself in Calais and the Pays Basque near the French-Spanish border. Although a stopping point for endless caravans of migrants braving perilous obstacles to get to Europe and the U.K, there are no caravansaries here offering respite and safety.
While volunteering with the aid organization Care4Calais, Meeks soon discarded his original plans to make portraits of the migrants. In a conversation with David Campany at ICP, Meeks said he realized that formal portraiture would take him out of encounters and experiences, out of the complexity of being lost, out of being available to what he was witnessing. Instead, he followed the traces left by the migrants, focusing on the places they inhabited, however briefly, on the evidence of their presence, human detritus, and on the land itself, seemingly as impregnable as their access to asylum. Without a single migrant’s photo, The Inhabitants nonetheless carries the feeling of a journey of displacement, bewilderment, of being a stranger in a strange land.
To bring other voices into the latent narrative, Meeks engaged poet and writer George Weld, . Their collaboration, The Inhabitants, is a tour de force of the marriage of photographs and poetic text, each powerful in its own right, but transcendent together. Weld’s months of research and writing drew inspiration from such varied sources as Homer’s Odyssey, Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, Agnes Varda films The Wasteland, The Road, and Children of Men. Always in the first person, whether experiencing or observing, his extended poem envelops the reader in closely intimate conversation with voices of lament, of wonder, and longing. When asked about whose voices, Weld responded, “The voices here are all invented . . . They come together not to document a reality but to create one.”
Despite their independent work and previous discussions about how the text and its many voices could interact with the pictures, both Meeks and Weld agreed that the actual form of the book, it’s meaning, came together during the editing and physical collaboration in Meeks’ studio in the Hudson Valley. Having no prior experience of these places other than Meeks’ archive of over 4000 photographs. Weld said he had “lived in Ray’s world” for those months as they shaped the book.
Slip-cased, The Inhabitants’ textured off-white cover and barely visible debossed title hints at the tenuous traces of what’s left behind. Opening immediately to a white field and simple but propulsive line by Weld, the book’s tone is signaled by the shock of the following page: a full bleed, dark and formidable landscape. Thus, the journey begins.
Primarily in black-and-white, Meeks’ photos of mysterious dark forms, dense foliage, and broken industrial remnants convey unsettling undertones and elicit feelings of menace and disorientation. Is that blackened entrance a place of shelter or of danger?
With contributions by Meeks, Weld, Morgan Crowcroft-Brown and Michael Mack, the cinematic design underscores Meeks’ restless framing: up, down, near, far, oblique, direct, and the deft and generous use of white space cradles the weight of Meeks’ photos. Midway, a run of subtle color images provides a brief pause in the black-and-white, perhaps a glimpse of a land of promise, a hoped-for future. The choice of a small, italicized font elevates the sparsely distributed text which often rests in isolation on the page and adds counterpoint to the photos. Every decision supports their intention.
There are many ways to read The Inhabitants, photos first, text first, both together, but in order to absorb its layered richness and depths, I would recommend slowly and repetitively. Flowing as tide and current in contrapuntal movement, the pictures and words, neither taking dominance, weave together a fully resonant experience.
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Cheryl Van Hooven is a photographer and writer based in New York and often working in the California Mojave Desert. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints & Photographs, Imagery Estate Winery Permanent Collection at Sonoma State University, among others. She is currently working on a photo/text book.
“The edge of the water, the edge of land . . . beyond this, what?”
To bring other voices into the latent narrative, Meeks engaged poet and writer George Weld, . Their collaboration, The Inhabitants, is a tour de force of the marriage of photographs and poetic text, each powerful in its own right, but transcendent together. Weld’s months of research and writing drew inspiration from such varied sources as Homer’s Odyssey, Rodin’s Burghers of Calais, Agnes Varda films The Wasteland, The Road, and Children of Men. Always in the first person, whether experiencing or observing, his extended poem envelops the reader in closely intimate conversation with voices of lament, of wonder, and longing. When asked about whose voices, Weld responded, “The voices here are all invented . . . They come together not to document a reality but to create one.”
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Despite their independent work and previous discussions about how the text and its many voices could interact with the pictures, both Meeks and Weld agreed that the actual form of the book, it’s meaning, came together during the editing and physical collaboration in Meeks’ studio in the Hudson Valley. Having no prior experience of these places other than Meeks’ archive of over 4000 photographs. Weld said he had “lived in Ray’s world” for those months as they shaped the book.
“I carry seeds with me, sewn in the hem of my jacket.”
Slip-cased, The Inhabitants’ textured off-white cover and barely visible debossed title hints at the tenuous traces of what’s left behind. Opening immediately to a white field and simple but propulsive line by Weld, the book’s tone is signaled by the shock of the following page: a full bleed, dark and formidable landscape. Thus, the journey begins.
 |
Primarily in black-and-white, Meeks’ photos of mysterious dark forms, dense foliage, and broken industrial remnants convey unsettling undertones and elicit feelings of menace and disorientation. Is that blackened entrance a place of shelter or of danger?
With contributions by Meeks, Weld, Morgan Crowcroft-Brown and Michael Mack, the cinematic design underscores Meeks’ restless framing: up, down, near, far, oblique, direct, and the deft and generous use of white space cradles the weight of Meeks’ photos. Midway, a run of subtle color images provides a brief pause in the black-and-white, perhaps a glimpse of a land of promise, a hoped-for future. The choice of a small, italicized font elevates the sparsely distributed text which often rests in isolation on the page and adds counterpoint to the photos. Every decision supports their intention.
 |
There are many ways to read The Inhabitants, photos first, text first, both together, but in order to absorb its layered richness and depths, I would recommend slowly and repetitively. Flowing as tide and current in contrapuntal movement, the pictures and words, neither taking dominance, weave together a fully resonant experience.
Purchase Book
Read More Book Reviews
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