Untitled by William Zuback
From “The Book of Mirrors” (White Pine Press, 2021)
Forecasts
Humans may evolve into machines. The internet weaves insidious threads. Roses
bloom by empty benches. Poetry fades on dusty shelves. Aliens may land in Kansas
tomorrow, or discover the jazz from Voyager a thousand years from now.
Computers can impersonate the dead. Machines may become sentient, keep humans
in zoos, or erase all biological organisms. In another universe, an ash tree’s roots
span a continent and shimmer into the air, weaving paths to other planets.
The elite may invent immortality, herd the masses into concentration camps. Aliens
may arrive with silver arks to ferry refugees to Andromeda. The Earth is an egg
about to hatch. We are the gametes.
The Universe will shrink back into a tiny bubble, or dissipate into space-time foam.
Only the soul can escape through a wormhole.
In the author’s words:
Yun Wang’s poetry books include “The Book of Mirrors” (White Pine Press, 2021), “The Book of Totality” (Salmon Poetry Press, 2015), and “The Book of Jade” (Story Line Press, 2002), as well as a book of translation, “Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms: Tune Poems of Su Dong-Po” (White Pine Press, 2019), and the translation of Dao De Jing (the Daoist scripture) as poetry (in collaboration with Li-Young Lee, W.W. Norton 2024). Wang is a cosmologist at California Institute of Technology, focusing on developing NASA space missions to explore the Universe.
www.amazon.com/Book-Mirrors-Yun-Wang/dp/1945680474
About the artist:
William Zuback is a visual storyteller. Early on in my career, I needed to balance my commercial photography with visual stories that were personal yet relatable to others. So began a 25-year journey of creating and exhibiting my photography. As I visually explored different techniques and processes through many different bodies of work, people would ask what inspired me to create a specific series or photograph. For many years I couldn’t answer that question. Finally, while creating a series called Identity, it all clicked. It didn’t matter if I was photographing still life, assemblages, portraits, nudes, or landscapes; each was about identity—the identity of family, society, and me. I’ve analyzed the chronology of my work. Every photographic series was an exploration of identity.
In a documentary about David Geffen, Don Henley was asked what he thought drives Geffen. Henley replied, “that just as we all do, he wants to belong somewhere. We want to find out where we fit in and who we fit with. We search for belonging, self-worth, and identity. It’s why we become artists. We are not the king or queen of the prom.”
I relate to those words. As I begin to explore the landscape as a body of work, it is personal. I’m searching for scenes that feel personal and reflect my emotional state at that moment in time. I might see and pass up a particular landscape if it doesn’t fit how I feel at that moment. I’m not a prolific shooter. I am choosy. I ask myself if that represents me at that particular time. If it doesn’t, I move on. Think of landscapes as self-portraits.
I like to summarize my philosophy as a humanist trying to make sense of the world around me, one photograph at a time.
fineartamerica.com/profiles/william-zuback/shop