Through the Looking Lens

[ streets ]

[ wandering views ]

A few images from my day in Phildelphia. With very little money to spend and no one with me, I barely spoke all day, and wandered the city center for hours. The one thing I did splurge on (other than lunch) was a visit to the College of Physicians Mütter Museum, where photography was not allowed. The museum was fascinating, super crowded, and creeped me the fuck out. I have a pretty high tolerance for the macabre, but this was like a slow build of squick. After an hour and a half my head was spinning, my stomach felt densely queasy, and I sped through the last room (which was the most grotesque, natch).  

[ microscopic watercolors c. 1835 ]

Easily my favorite experience of the day was stumbling upon/into an exhibit at the American Philosophical Society called "Through the Looking Lens" - an installation in a single tiny room off the sidewalk of the works of Cornelius Varley, a naturalist, scientist, and painter. The collection of his watercolors at APS (above) ranged from dreamy landscapes to pastoral portraits to depictions of plant matter as seen through his microscope. Swoon.

Stepping into Varley's work was lovely. The reminder that we must make our own work, for ourselves, for our passions, to pursue a question or a fascination, regardless of recognition or immediate impact, was a necessary source of self-reflection. I think about what we leave behind when I think of N's journals; dozens of books filled with his thoughts, processes, drawings and charts, only ever seen by him (and occasionally me, over his shoulder). All of it is vital, for him - some of it is brilliant. Two hundred years from now, will his journals be on display to be studied and inspire? Or will they pass to our children, or to thrift, or be lost in a fire? Does it matter? His love of them and his studious commitment to this kind of private art makes an immediate impact on his own life, and on mine.

What's amazing to me then is to think that everyone has that potential for some private brilliance. Sometimes we're witness to it, but overwhelmingly not. Any person, every person - that bus driver or neighbor or dude yelling in the street - has their own collection of microscopic watercolors.