"City of Light"

Worshiping the rising sun near Asi Ghat.

C ~IRI STOPHER JAMES "City of Light"

Photographs of the holy city of Benares by Christopher James and Jane Tuckerman. Text by Robert Cardner. Looking at photographs often awakes a sense of privilege. with what it might mean to seem to be looking at reality (a They seem to give you, aparr from other enjoyments. an as photograph or even a film) and not actually confronting it. surance that you are in [he presence of something with abso About a year ago, Benares, India, was for three months the lute authenticity. What you see, trapped in particles of silver, subject of ambitious transcription to both film and photogra is, after all, the very light that illuminated the moment in phy. I had returned to Benares to make Forest of Bliss, a film question. No doubt almost everyone born in the last half of over which I had pondered at length since an initial unsettling the twentieth cencury knows how to take a photograph and visit ten years ea rl ier. Jane Tuckerman, associate studio profes even the rudiments of its photochemistry, but on ly a few peo sor, and Christopher James, tutor in Harvard's department of ple have begun to inquire into what the photographic transac visual and environmental studies, accompanied me to do still tion really means. Stanley Cavell is one. About it he says, "A photography. Akos Ostor, senior research fellow in the depart photograph emphasizes the existence of its subject, recording ment, was our anthropological guide and conscience. These it, hence it is that it may be called a transcription." Harvard's efforts were undertaken through the Film Study Center and Cabot professor of aesthetics and the general theory of value, are the most recent in a series that began 2S years ago in what Cavell is concerned with such questions as the nature of reality was then known as Netherlands New Guinea. That year Eliot and experience, and so he is genuinely, promisingly distressed Elisofon, Michael Rockefeller, Peter Matthiessen, Samuel

MARC H-APRIL 1986 33 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 "CITY OF LIGHT" continued

Putnam, Ka rl Heider, and I produced, quite apart from a num by a municipality concerned with the po ll uted ness of the sa ber of books and the nonfiction feature film Dead Birds, more cred Ganges. than 25,000 color and black-and-white stills documeming an Cavell has said, "One may also think about photography as authentic Stone Age society. Those images are now the best transfiguration. " I have tried on occasion co do this and find it available substitute for the reality of that time and space. As a is no easier than thinking about it as transcription. I sometimes maner of fact, they are almost the only surviving witnesses to wonder, though, if images li ke James's and Tuckerman's don't an episode in history that time has now wholly transformed. go a long way to making the point on their own. It seems to Looking at them is to watch what Susan Sontag calls photogra me that what these photographers may have done (without, phy's testimony co ucimc's relentless melt." Every nan scription it's been speculated, even knowing it) is to grasp certain frag in photography and film is a reminder of the continuousness of ments of experience which they see as speaking for something life, as long as life continues larger than the fragments them (and, if it doesn't, it is a remind selves, perhaps during what er of its mortal nature), Cartier-Bresson calls "decisive Each of my journeys to Be moments." I think Tuckerman's nares in the past ten years has dogs do this and so do James's been connected to the idea that funeral litters. The dogs and the religion, which always per litters have been "transfigu red" plexed me by its seeming re by photography exaccly because moteness, can be understood as they are not and cannoc be reali a way of dealing with certain ty (or even particularly or neces elemental matters, in particular sarily realistic) but can and do with death or with what my sis suggest or stand for more and ter Isabella called in one of her ocher than the reality they once poems "IT. n "IT" is a prevailing were. presence in Senares and is sedulously, even crassly, culti Editors' note: A selection of pho vated. Forest of Bliss might be tographs by Christopher James, regarded as a ninety-minute Jane Tuckerman, Ned John compression of this most recent ston, and Robert Gardner will ten weeks in Benares. But I be shown in an exhibit, "City of think it is more accurately a Light," at Harvard's Carpenter ninety-minute expansion on a Center from March 13 through split second of the panic dread I April 13. It wi ll then travel to felt on turning an unfamiliar New York City and open May 7 corner on(O Manikarnika Ghat at the American Museum of (The Great Cremation Ground) Natural History. All the photo and finding my way blocked by graphs made in Benares are col The Oom Rl\ia, untouchable king of the cremation "IT." grounds at Manikamika and Harishchandra ghats. lected in Harvard's Film Study

Forest of Bliss is about people C HfU ~1 ' 0I' IIEH JA.\lES Center, where, with similar being and dying. Of the multi groups of photographs such as tude at work, at play, and at those made in Netherlands prayer, three individuals are seen in somewhat greater detail New Guinea, or Ethiopia (by Clark Worswick and Michael than others. They are, first, a healer of extraordinary genialiry Mathers), or Nepal (by Kevin Bubriskie), they are available for who attends pained and troubled people both in his modest study, reflection, or simple admiration. home above Manikarnika and at the Durga temple late at Forest of Bliss by Robert Gardner, senior lecturer on visua l nighti second, an unusually conscientious priest who practices studies at Harvard, premiered at the British Academy of Film his calling in a small shrine near the Ganges; and, third, the Arts on September 26, 1985. Its American debut was at the untouchable king of the cremation grounds, the Oom Raja , Carpenter Center benefit for the Harvard Film Archive and who vigorously exercises his hereditary rights to sell sacred fire the Erikson Center on November 7. On December 6 it won to mourn ers. first prize at the Florence (Italy) Film Festival. Fores! of Bliss Christopher James's Oom Raja, one Kailash Choudhury, will be shown at 5 p. m. and 8 p. m. on March 13 at the Car looks balefully at his spectators, who look back knowing that if penter Center and begins a theatrical run at the Film Forum in this is the way he looked on January 24, 1985 (the day this New York City on May 14. photograph was made), it is not the way he will ever look Stanley Cavell has said of Gardner's fi lm, "I see Fores! of again. As a matter of fact, the Oom Raja died not very long Bliss as staking itself on its strength to participate in the fact after we all came home. Time melts not only people but and the idea of life and death as cycles of metamorphosis. everything under and beyond the sun, what people think as hence in the human effort (threatened at every turn) to re well as what they make. Styles and customs appear and disap deem the violence of death and the violence by which life pear, buildings rise and fall, whole landscapes are obliterated sustains itself-that they may not be stupid and inconsequen in the blink of an eye, the click of a shutter. The next Dom tial separations, but fruitful, faithful, memorable, as in the Raja to rule the cremation grounds of Benares may, in the perpetuations of a cremation ritual , and as in the transfiguring coming year, find competition in electric crematoria furnished proposals and provocations of such a film as this."

34 ReprintedHARVARD from tvlAO HarvardAZINE Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 at Inc. Magazine, Harvard contact information, more For Magazine. Harvard from Reprinted

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A shrine on Kedar Ghat. A hospice for the dying poor. CHJoI.I S1 'CII' II ER JAMl:S JANE T UCKI':RMA:"J

A corpse on its way to the cremation ground. C IIR I STOP ~IER JA"n:s

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• - "CITY OF LIGHT" ron/;n.,tI

Boatman on the Ganges.

JANE TUCI:EII.~tA.'\i

Interior of the Nirvani Akhara, a dwelling for ascetics.

JAN~: T UCKERMAN

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Articles THE STANFOROIHARVARD SURVEY 21 An opinion researcher analyzes the views, values, and visions of the Cardinal and the Crimson. Florence Skelly. THINKING IN VISUAL MODE 28 Psychologist Stephen Kosslyn 's com puter experiments are providing clues to the complex process of mental imaging -and how we might make better usc of it. Emily Isberg. CITY OF LIGHT 33 Photographs of the holy city of Benares, India, taken during the making of Forest of Bliss, a prize-winning film. Christopher James, lallt Tuckerman , Robert Gardner. abOut VITA: EDMONIA LEWIS 40 ...... Brief life of a neoclassical sculptor (1844- ? ) who is all but forgotten today. Mot;lyn Richardson. for ~ nme nt • • •••• THE GIITENBERG CAPER 42 A bibliophile's account of the most brazen theft attempt in the annals of higher education. W.H. Bond. NEW INITIATIVES Alumni of Stanford and Harvard are reck oned among our society's most privileged Discovery members. Are they pleased with their lives? What are their hopes, fears , and BETTER LIVING THROUGH CULINARY CHEMISTRY 64A dreams? The 5ranford/Harvard Su rvey How the Boston Cooking School changed the eating habits sought to find out. Jointly sponsored by of the nation. Lauro Shapiro. ("Discovery" is a special The Stanford Magazine and Harvard supplement for subscribers and donors to [his magazine .) Magazine, in co llaboration with the New York firm of Yankelovich , Skelly and White, it is the first research project of ics Departments kind. Florence Ske lly, president of YSw, WORK IN PROGRESS: Cosmic bubbles, AIDS, speaking up in presents the findin gs in an aniclc class. Introducing a new section OIl current Harvard research. 4 beginning on page 21. This issue of Haroard Alogozine inco r ESSAY: Faith, Hope, and Clarity. Philip Dunnt. 10 porates new graphic styling. OUf intent is MONEY MAmRS: Goi ng to London? A "furnished service to enhance readability and refresh the apanment" offers cheaper and roomier digs. John Train. 16 magazine's format, unchanged for almost a decade. Designer Ronald N. Campbell , EXPlORATIONS: The Cotswolds in bloom. Christopher Reed. 50 former art director of Fortunt, conceived 11IE BROWSER: Mayhem and mankind. Richard Marius. 58 and guided our visual renewal. T his makes him a Harvard parent twice over: his son Bruce graduated from the College Poetry in 1982. Bruce is now a th ird-year law smdent at-you guessed it-Stanford. Caroline Finkelstein , Richard Eberhart 48, 119

John Harvard's Journal

Ideological tensions at the Law School . .. Candidates for Overseer . .. A chronicler of Harvard athletics . .. First per formance of a requiem ... Rehabilitating Radcliffe's dormi tories ... Revisiting Halley's Comet. Page 65.

EVENTS 86 ClASSIFIED 106 LETTERS 114 CHAI'ItR ANO Cover design by Ronald N. Campbell. VERSE 116 ANY QUESTIONS? 119 THE PUMP 120

Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 any say abOut esent one feder al government does .... ·•··· · ·· ta~ es are much too high for only a small part of my l ife from the federal gover nment • • ••• • ...... object to abOu t the federal s in life are r elated to s ys t em is that I hav e t o pay ...... my fair shar e ...... · ...... · · .. · ...... ·· put i n extra time on my j ob o tax system benefits the r ich a lot to me ••••••••••••••.••••••••• air to the ordinary worKing s ou t the best in how I o ...... LJ statements most c l Osely describes Your

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