Tristan Tzara (Sami Rosenstock)
[Writer and artist, b. 1896, Moineti, Bacu, Romania, d. 1963, Paris.]
When everything that is called art was well and truly riddled with rheumatism, the photographer lit the thousands of candles whose power is contained in his flame, and the sensitive paper absorbed by degrees the blackness cut out of some ordinary object. He had invented a fresh and tender flash of lightning.
But let’s speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera.
Is it a spiral of water in the tragic gleam of a revolver, an egg, a glistening arc or the floodgate of reason, a keen ear attuned to a mineral hiss, or a turbine of algebraic formulas? (On Man Ray’s first photograms, 1921.)
gloomy procession oh mechanics of the calendar
where the synthetic photographs of days appear
the doll in the grave
where the synthetic photographs of days appear
the doll in the grave
A photographer passed. How do you dare to gallop on the fields reserved for syntax? He asked me. The word, I answered, has fifty floors, it’s a godscraper. It was true, for the photographer was only a parasite of the amalgamated itching business.
The photographer turns the spit of his thoughts to the sputtering of a poorly greased moon. (1922)