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The Crisis Tapes by Charlie Simokaitis.
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Photographs by Charlie Simokaitis
TIS Books, 2024. 144 pp., 70 tri-tone images, 9½x11½".
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed.
More and more by each glistening minute,
through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words.
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words.
I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.”
The Crisis Tapes by Charlie Simokaitis has been sitting on the side table in my library for some months, first puzzling me, and then, speaking directly to my nervous system. After a personal loss left me bereft, my dearest friend began to check in with me regularly to ask “how is your nervous system?” The answer for weeks was not well. During that tender time returning to The Crisis Tapes again and again helped me to reach stasis.
The book begins with a portrait. The portrait is the frontispiece, and one of very few figurative pictures of the book’s 70 tri-tone reproductions. It is the likeness of a girl we do not know. She wears glasses. Her eyes are closed. Then we are on a journey. One that is often quite dark, descriptive of industrial decay. The forest at night, geometric shapes, a dalmatian missing both of its eyes, a girl whose head we cannot see, swimming down into the depths we do not know.
This highly formal book gives its reader the gift of physical space to consider every photograph. The minimal design elevates each image, first on a profoundly individual level, and then felt as a cascading whole. Moving through the pages is like walking by a series of ruins, feeling confusion, and then slowly, figure-by-figure, or more aptly, image-by-image, moving ahead to feel a new awareness of spaciousness in one’s chest. It is a journey from the mundane toward the sacred. A doorway, or a portal, that creates the possibility of a different world. By the end of the pathway, transformation.
The narrative of the book is not easily known. I am not convinced we must know the story behind it all, yet humans are narrative seeking creatures. The publisher, TIS Books, describes that "The Crisis Tapes — the debut monograph of photographer Charlie Simokaitis — is an account of his daughter’s gradual loss of the ability to see. . .” With this fact now known, most all the symbols and geometric shapes point to the anatomy of the eye, the anatomy of the nervous system, and poignantly the presence of the dalmatian becomes symbolic of the fact that the breed can lose their sight due to a number of eye conditions.
By the end of the book I have forgotten the tension and tightness of my own nervous system. I find the experience of the book to be one that allows the length of mourning and the subsequent growth that mourning brings. It depicts the depth of a loss: when something is lost, something is gained. We can feel the echoes of transformation. A transformation that serves to remind us that emotional healing takes far longer than physical healing. But never again are we the same.
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Sara J. Winston is an artist based in the Hudson Valley region of New York, USA. She works with photographs, text, and the book form to describe and respond to chronic illness and its ongoing impact on the body, mind, family, and memory. Sara is the Photography Program Coordinator at Bard College and on the faculty of the Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.”
—Prayer, Jorie Graham
The Crisis Tapes by Charlie Simokaitis has been sitting on the side table in my library for some months, first puzzling me, and then, speaking directly to my nervous system. After a personal loss left me bereft, my dearest friend began to check in with me regularly to ask “how is your nervous system?” The answer for weeks was not well. During that tender time returning to The Crisis Tapes again and again helped me to reach stasis.
 |
The book begins with a portrait. The portrait is the frontispiece, and one of very few figurative pictures of the book’s 70 tri-tone reproductions. It is the likeness of a girl we do not know. She wears glasses. Her eyes are closed. Then we are on a journey. One that is often quite dark, descriptive of industrial decay. The forest at night, geometric shapes, a dalmatian missing both of its eyes, a girl whose head we cannot see, swimming down into the depths we do not know.
This highly formal book gives its reader the gift of physical space to consider every photograph. The minimal design elevates each image, first on a profoundly individual level, and then felt as a cascading whole. Moving through the pages is like walking by a series of ruins, feeling confusion, and then slowly, figure-by-figure, or more aptly, image-by-image, moving ahead to feel a new awareness of spaciousness in one’s chest. It is a journey from the mundane toward the sacred. A doorway, or a portal, that creates the possibility of a different world. By the end of the pathway, transformation.
 |
 |
The narrative of the book is not easily known. I am not convinced we must know the story behind it all, yet humans are narrative seeking creatures. The publisher, TIS Books, describes that "The Crisis Tapes — the debut monograph of photographer Charlie Simokaitis — is an account of his daughter’s gradual loss of the ability to see. . .” With this fact now known, most all the symbols and geometric shapes point to the anatomy of the eye, the anatomy of the nervous system, and poignantly the presence of the dalmatian becomes symbolic of the fact that the breed can lose their sight due to a number of eye conditions.
 |
By the end of the book I have forgotten the tension and tightness of my own nervous system. I find the experience of the book to be one that allows the length of mourning and the subsequent growth that mourning brings. It depicts the depth of a loss: when something is lost, something is gained. We can feel the echoes of transformation. A transformation that serves to remind us that emotional healing takes far longer than physical healing. But never again are we the same.
Purchase Book
Read More Book Reviews
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