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Matinee: 'Mark Steinmetz: Terminus'
10 March 2018
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 230th in our series of Saturday matinees today: Mark Steinmetz: Terminus.
Airports? Is there anybody who hasn't seen enough of airports? And, let's face it, planes do not have the allure of trains. So what's the attraction with this week's 2:26 matinee?
Mark Steinmetz has an impeccable pedigree so if he finds airports intriguing enough to photograph, we are no one to argue the point.
The Athens photographer has been hanging around the Atlanta tarmac for years, in fact, accumulating a collection of images now on display at the High Museum of Art (that's the High to locals) through June 3.
But why? He explained to Virginie Kippelen:
Perhaps I could have gone to a train station or a bus station but air travel strikes me as more modern, and the scale of the airport is vast in comparison. I wanted to show passengers, people on a journey.
The metaphorical road is the thing, he admits in the video. The past behind you, the future in front of you.
But manicured, architected scenes are not what attracts him. He was particularly fascinated by an overgrown, abandoned area adjacent to the airport taken over by wild greenery. It's a paradise, though, in the flight path. Look up and you can see planes flying low overhead.
That's a different perspective on air travel.
He's a film guy, he admits, using several different cameras including the Fujifilm 6x9 rangefinder he swings from his shoulder in this clip. He likes film's sensitivity. And prefers silver exposed on paper to ink printed on paper, he says.
But why, we kept wondering. Well, there's no definitive answer. It just appeals to him. He's not being coy, though.
"The world is more interesting than any of our thoughts or beliefs about it," he explained in the interview with Kippelen.
Indeed. That's why we fasten our seat belts.