Just in time. What brings this phrase to my mind when first confronting this powerful sequence of photographs by Mariana Cook? Just in time for what? What is the hurry? What scene did we just happen upon here with these clues, remnants, whispered warnings, or intimations? What world just this instant is in need of such focused attention, perhaps even rescue? What justness or justice comes about as a result of this miraculously timed arrival of ours? And do we even “arrive” at the sill of these images? Or is it perhaps these images which reach towards us with instructions for the journey. How they impart them—and how we part from our present moment to enter the new moment they provide like a room to step into—is the question. What Lifeline is being cast out? However quietly, the questions build with their own suspense, because a great deal that brims over with crucial information in many of these clues depends on our not knowing (at least for a moment) what it is we are seeing, what it is we are meant to see as we watch these images, what it is they ask us to do in that watching.
Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham is a poet who lives and works in New York, USA.
Mariana Cook, Lifeline
May 30 – July 15, 2017
Ivory Press Space
C/ Comandante Zorita 48
Madrid 28020
Spain
