Bloomsday Challenge: Day Eight

"Busted Abode!"

I questioned whether or not to take a photograph--as Joyce did not consider photography to be art: "A photograph is a disposition of sensible matter and may be so disposed for an aesthetic end but it is not a human disposition of sensible matter. Therefore it is not a work of art" (CW 146). I can see the validity in this argument--as it is the camera that ultimately does the "rendering" when the flash goes off and captures the image. I am reminded, however, of something I heard in a lecture by artist, Thomas Allen, that photography is not just about taking the picture as it is making it.


Though I did little staging (or making) here, I like the simplicity and the irony of this photo. "What is Home Without Plumtree's Potted Meat. Incomplete. With it an Abode of Bliss..."--the cracked pot to me is very much like the "cracked lookingglass" in "Telemachus" because it narrates a brokenness larger than the objects themselves. The broken pot echoes the growing distance between Molly and Bloom as she engages in an affair with Blazes. It also represents the brokenness of their family--with Milly gone and their son Rudy, dead.

I was not expecting an aesthetic dilemma today but I am rather glad I did. It gave me a lot to ponder for the next few challenges. Only 9 more days till Bloomsday!