Part One: Viggo Mortensen
One hesitates to use stuffy words like polymath, but what other term describes Viggo Mortensen, noted film actor, painter, poet, writer, and photographer? In short, he is an artist who moves effortlessly from one medium to another and to my mind, the parts add up to an artist whose talents deserve attention.
Of course, Mortensen is mostly famous for his acting which tends to be superior to the vehicles which contain his performances. I first became aware of Viggo Mortensen, the actor, in a little scene from a gangster movie, the title of which I can’t recall, despite having a look at his filmography. Maybe one of my readers can recall the title. In this film, Mortenesen plays a gangster carrying out that movie cliché, the exchange of drugs-for-money. Viggo’s character hands over the money – or is it the cocaine? – and then with no more emotional involvement than changing a flat tire, casually murders the recipient. I’ve seen a many a screen killing but that particular one left a chill that remains. It was a small part but a large scene.
Mortensen’s other art efforts add up to a large scene as well – aside from appearing in dozens of films, he has had shows of his paintings, read his poetry, and published twelve books of his photography which more often than not also contain his writing, paintings, collages and poetry.. As if this wasn’t enough, Viggo Mortensen has also started his own publishing house, Perceval Press, but more on that in Part Two of this post.
So how good a photographer is he? I’ve looked at two of Mortensen’s books and from that evidence I would hazard the opinion that he is very good indeed.
From Recent Forgeries
This particular Mortensen image, perhaps made with a toy camera, instantly reminded me of a photograph made by Nancy Rexroth in the 70s, an almost wholly abstract image of turkeys being rounded up for Thanksgiving slaughter.
Nancy Rexroth, Turkeys Advance from Iowa
Nancy pioneered the use of the ‘Diana’ camera, a toy from China which cost $3.95, and since her classic book of Diana photographs, Iowa came out thirty-five years ago or so, the world has become awash in images made by the Diana descendants, particularly the Holga and the Lomo cameras. These days you can buy a Diana camera at eBay for about $50.
From Skovbo
What’s impressive about Mortensen’s photo work is his intuitive use of the camera: he uses it as a mirror of different facets of his life. It’s not pretty pictures he’s after, it’s the thread of his existence as Viggo Mortensen. But paradoxically his pictures can be pretty. They can also be sophisticated, crude, elegant, or mundane. He plays the camera like a musical instrument. It’s a conversational kind of photography: it’s Viggo telling you who he is with images. He looks at everything, believes everything has a meaning, and he shows you his pictures in the belief that seeing might reveals the hidden mysteries of everyday life.
Sometimes, of course, his pictures fail, they fall victim to a romantic excess, and the mystery remains locked, but like Eggleston, who only takes one picture of something in the belief that another will come along if the first one doesn’t work, Viggo’s photography is always curious, looking, exploring. Sometimes the exploration is trivial, sometimes profound; it doesn’t matter: it’s all a search. While he disdains images for their own sake, his pictures paradoxically reveal a constant awareness of the medium of photography. He shows the ragged edges of his frames and he incorporates accidents like light leaks and scratches as if to say: it’s not life, it’s just a reflection of life called photography.
It is not surprising that Mortensen is drawn to the book form because with a book he can integrate photography with his poetry and prose so that it becomes a book about art, not just photography. Viggo’s most recent book is called Skovbo, ( Danish for “into the trees”) and that’s what it is, a trip into the trees. You can imagine Viggo spending a large part of life lying on his back, looking at the sky through the trees and pondering the meaning of life. There may or may not be an accompaniment of burning herb in this rumination but in Skovbo there is poetry ( in several languages), prose poems, and a wealth of diverse arboreal images. The romantic impulse fuels the images, an impulse summed up by Walt Whitman who is quoted in the book, ”Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” There’s another quote from Vergilius Maro ( Come on, Viggo, can’t you call him Virgil like everyone else?) which sums up much of the book’s yearning: “Happy is the one who has learned the causes of things.” One could say that’s the essence of Mortensen’s search; I doubt if he’s happy yet but that doesn’t stop him from trying.
detail, click on photo to enlarge
I also have on hand an earlier Mortensen book, Recent Forgeries, an altogether more personal book, filled with paintings, poems, short stories, collages and of course photographs: scraps of memory, remnants of family albums, many people, men, women, and children, some seen clearly, some only visible in the shadows, most without names, a book filled with regret over the changes that the passing of time brings. I was quite moved by it and the intimations of a life it brought me. Recent Forgeries also is accompanied by a CD of Viggo reading many of the prose pieces in the book. I found it distracting; hearing that familiar voice somehow turned the artist Viggo Mortensen into Viggo Mortensen, the movie star.
Interestingly in these two books there is almost no reference to Mortensen’s public life as a as a movie star except for a portrait of actress Sandy Dennis in Recent Forgeries and some poignant written memories of her. A closer look reveals a portrait of actor Jack Kehoe and a poem called “Edit”. Here’s the second stanza:
A half-soul in transit
The man you were
For one short season
Has been pruned,
Removed
To a well-groomed graveyard
That smells like popcorn.