Liminal was the clever word of 2009. (Metonym was last year.) It’s one of those words you think you know the meaning of, have used in various contexts, have heard lots before, and then find others using it slightly differently, so one begins to think that it might mean something else. There wasn’t a single photographer at Durham University’s DCAP Conference this year whose work wasn’t liminal this or liminal that, or at least that’s how it seemed.
My mind has it as the gap between light and dark: dawn or dusk, or the moments when you’re nearly asleep, or nearly awake. It’s always been about light, linked with lumen, luminosity. I’d been using it in that specific context. So ah almost, but that is only one definition.
From Wikipedia:
Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold” ) The liminal state is characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed – a situation which can lead to new perspectives.
People, places, or things may not complete a transition, or a transition between two states may not be fully possible. Those who remain in a state between two other states may become permanently liminal.
Examples therefore could include states of transitional time like engagement before marriage, remand before trial, and spatial transition like building sites, no-man’s land in war zones, transit and holding camps. What is interesting here is that people or places can be in states of permanent liminality. The very fact of being on a threshold or cusp doesn’t have to imply that it is going to be crossed.
Snow, in this temperate climatic zone will always melt, so it might be considered to be liminal in all of its many states, from fresh fall to grey slush. Is Palestine destined to suffer decade after decade of liminal statehood? Is Iraq?
What happened to these cluster bombs, watched being loaded from Gate 10 at Fairford back in 2003? Are they in an unrealised state lying in a field somewhere, ready to blow off some child’s limb?
Echolocation. Bats do it. Maybe also dolphins and whales. And think of the scene in Lawrence of Arabia with TE played by the magnificent O’Toole lolling along on a camel, whistling his way through the wadis.
If you have no electricity, and live in a place where there are no street lights, do you use echolocation to find your way around? Is it dark enough to need whistles or clapping? Do you need to throw stones down an alley, or bounce balls off some unseen wall? If you’re in familiar territory, your own house, when there’s a power cut and the whole village is suddenly plunged into darkness, can you see to navigate to a torch, a candle? Do you need to be able to ’see’ in the same way as you can in the light?
Say you’re in a derelict building in the middle of nowhere, is there a full moon, any moon? Can you see shapes by starlight? Paths, potholes, ditches, hedges? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Sounds at night, or in the otherwise darkness, and whether or not they are useful. Are we more likely to whisper in the dark? If so, why?
A final thought for 2009. Here are rather a lot of yellow slips. If you’ve had one, and certainly if you’ve had as many as this, you’ll know what they are.
One thing for 2010 could be to publish a set of photographs, maybe several sets, which can no longer be taken. See if you can do it too. Photographs we are no longer allowed to make, of things, of places where we’re bound to get arrested/de-arrested, stopped, searched, cameras confiscated, all or any of the above. Photography may not yet be a crime, but it is prohibited many times over in many small incidents all over the world every day.
On the threshold of 2009-2010, warm greetings to all my lovely readers. There are nearly 100 of you looking at these posts using RSS readers. Doesn’t sound like all that many, but I do cherish every single one of you. Thank you.
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5 Comments
Always a pleasure reading your posts, Brenda, and I look forward to your activities in 2010! I especially enjoy your exploration of these themes within photography, because they come from the viewpoint of the practitioner, not the theorist.
(And… 100 readers? My word, congratulations!)
Much appreciated. Glad you’re getting well. Reader numbers? 97-99-89-92-83-52-89-88-92 it goes something like that. No idea why. Can the fluctuations really be people subbing and unsubbing? Maybe.
But the important question. Pete, if you’re somewhere without electricity, do you use echolocation, or your own night sight?
As I found out climbing down the five-hundred odd steps to the island of Sark’s bay, I have terrible night vision. But on the odd occasion that I have found myself somewhere dark and uncivilised since that unusual trip, I normally have enough gadgetry to supply my own light.
Loved reading this, Brenda – and all your posts – they always make me think. And thinking is good.
Liminal – good word. I shall teach it to my children in 2010. And they can go out into the world and surprise their parents with it.
Pete: most people do seem to come prepared for the dark when they go out in it, don’t they? Sounds like a very scary experience notwithstanding torches etc. How many of your 9 lives is that?
Jac: Out of the mouths of the babes of Houghton. Would love to overhear that, on the bus, maybe.
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