Yellow Guide Me in a time of turbulence
+ HARMON STUDIOS, a new offering
I have known for a couple of weeks that I would write of yellow in this substack post, I didn’t know quite how it would unfold. All the early flowers of our 1/2 acre paradise have been yellow blooming. Forsythia, of course, but also marsh marigolds by the pond and yellow blossoms on a matt of green I don’t have a name for. Daffodils and narcissus, tulips.
I want to share wonderful projects which come my way. I am not a very dedicated substacker because I don’t charge and subscribe to very few paid subscriptions. You have to do the first to afford the second. Instead, this is an opportunity to bring light in from the outer world.
The Marginalian, Formerly Brain Pickings, Maria Popova’s long-running marvel is my favourite newsletter, full of links to art and writing on topics so needed in this time of great uncertainty and fear. Maria has just introduced Marginalian Editions: Extraordinary Books Brought Back to Life. Maria says, of this endeavour:
In nearly two decades of reckoning with my reading in writing, it has been my ongoing lamentation to see works of enduring beauty and substance perish out of print — because the ideas they conduct are not the easiest and most marketable, because amid a culture that reduces literature to a commodity and binds readers in a moral paradox they ask us to think more widely and feel more deeply.
As a former publisher, myself, I have always regretted that the focus on new releases dooms many books to one season in which to capture hearts and minds of readers.
My own new project, soon to be released, will be a new website, HARMON STUDIOS.
It will feature collections of mountain images by Byron, Don and Carole Harmon—a century of mountain photography, 1905-2005, by three generations of Canadian Rockies photographers.
Why a new website? Because I have never before managed to combine work of all three generations online and I no longer have a gallery. I want to present that continuity. It will have a blog: MOUNTAIN TALES from the cameras of the Harmon family (in no particular order). This will allow me to play with history. And, it will have an easier way to order prints than I have offered in the past.
Why now? Our cultural narrative is constantly evolving. Frequently, (usually?) the past is either re-contextualized in an unfavourable light or simply forgotten. I am aware of the uncomfortable and often tragic colonial past in North America, one my family has played a part in. (I am also writing about that in a separate project). Nevertheless, now, perhaps more than ever, humanity needs concrete ways of connecting to nature and I believe my family’s photographs make a contribution in their own small way.
My grandfather’s photographs, wildly popular in his own heyday, 1905-1925, were almost forgotten after WW2. I keep resurrecting them, every twenty years or so another project, because they have moved me deeply, and I know they have moved others as well.
MORE TO COME IN FUTURE ANNOUNCEMENTS. For now, a sneak peak.
I admire your returning to the body of work which moves you. A counter to that very idea of only focusing on new releases. Both your project and Marginalias don’t just look to repromote and share it again, you’re looking for new, present ways to engage in them.
Thanks Jim