Two books that might have escaped notice this holiday season are worth doubling back for.
“A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer” accompanied the exhibit by that name that ended Nov. 6 at the Tacoma Art Museum.
If you missed that compelling show, there’s still this book, which contains essays by Margaret Bullock, Christina Henderson and David Martin and some 200 reproductions of Haffer’s work.
Haffer (1899-1974), a Tacoma native, was more than an internationally recognized photographer: She was also a printmaker, musician, painter, sculptor and writer.
Many of her black-and-white photographs are coolly erotic; as a reader of Marx, others fall into the realm of social realism.
Haffer, — raised by forward-thinking parents, including residence at the Home utopian colony on the Key Peninsula — dropped out of school at 15 and opened her own studio in 1917 at age 18.
As she once put it: “The ultimate success in life is when one’s work becomes as compelling a force as a hobby. I think photography. I live photography. I love photography.”
Haffer’s was an inimitable life, and this book restores to us a neglected Northwest artist.
“A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer,” by Margaret Bullock, Christina Henderson and David Martin. University of Washington Press. 144 pages. Paperback, $19.95.
A poetic marker
A new book of poems by Duane Niatum is always an occasion. His latest, “The Pull of the Green Kite,” is another marker on the path of a distinguished career.
Niatum, a member of the Klallam Tribe (Jamestown Band) born in 1938, earned his doctorate degree from the University of Michigan in American culture and has been a respected teacher at the high school and collegiate levels in these parts; his awards and recognition extend to Europe.
To his credit, Niatum is difficult to pin down. His poetic masters include Theodore Roethke, Nelson Bentley and Elizabeth Bishop. As a Native American, his poetic practice is often channeled through the western, canonical tradition.
“The Pull of the Green Kite” looks to Europe for many of its settings, with subjects ranging from Picasso to Van Gogh, Monet to the Mediterranean.
Here’s a poem, “On the Balcony in Late August,” set closer to home that brings the universe alive and gives a glimpse of Niatum’s singular touch:
Clouds hide, reveal, hide/the thin white tail/of dog salmon moon. Wind bounces and weaves,/up and down and in and out/of the salvia branches;/ night, faint dabs of red. I gather petals for tea/before the darkness drinks me.”
“The Pull of the Green Kite,” by Duane Niatum. Serif & Pixel Press. 90 pages. Soft cover, $14.95.
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