Kyle Hemmings – Five Photographs

Love in the Afternoon

Brotherhood 

World Afire

Come Together

Contemplation 

Artist’s Statement on Beauty

My earliest recollections of beauty were from when I was very young, perhaps only a few years old. I had a physical reaction to certain images or to colors. I became entranced and immobile, immersed in my sense impressions of the outer world invading the inner. It was much later that I began to love words and the way they could combine to form poems or stories. But for me, the image, and the other physical impressions of an object, the scent of a flower, the feel of a dog’s fur, the starchy voice of a wind-up G.I. Joe, were the origins of my love for beauty. And I might add that “beauty” might not always be that commonly accepted view we’ve been taught to appreciate since grammar school. There is beauty in the corners of the inner city, on the side streets of a neglected neighborhood, in the poorly tuned guitars from the garage band down the block. Barbie-doll beauty is only one facet and it quickly fades away. I’ll add that the experience of beauty is a very personal thing, although not altogether solipsistic. While I prefer French Impressionism to Classical Art, I can still appreciate the old masters, and I can see their influence on Monet and Cezanne. And although I love colors and saturation to the max, I still admire the stringent beauty of shadows and light, their interplay in black and white photos. Beauty is complex. It simply is.

Kyle Hemmings has art work in The Stray Branch, Euphenism, Uppagus, South 85 Journal, Black Market Lit, Sonic Boom and elsewhere. He loves pre-punk garage bands of the 60s, Manga comics, urban photography and French Impressionism. His latest collection of poems and prose is Future Wars from Another New Calligraphy. More at: upatberggasse19.blogspot.com.