Mystery and Obsession: Author's Notes on the Photographs by Ted Rose
Thomas Rose on Ted Rose and his photographs. I write this as Ted's brother based on my understanding of him as we grew up, and as I attempt to place Coal Smoke & Steam in context I find myself examining and wondering what is it I have created here — an exercise I indulge in after every project I have done.
This excerpt considers a series of 21 photographs shot by the visual artist Ted Rose (1940-2002) between 1960 and 1961 in Central Mexico as he sought out the last working steam locomotives — many sold to Mexico when U. S. companies transitioned to diesel. The images I selected are the touchstone of my book, Coal Smoke & Steam in which I explore the photographs through the origin and evolution of Rose's career arc and the visual narrative uncovered when arranging them for the book. My interest is with the unconscious subtext that seems to haunt the images. As I write this, I understand that I am going outside the boundaries Rose considered as part of his thinking or his intentions for the work; however, the foreword I wrote, "An Enchanted Childhood", lays the groundwork for consideration of an unconscious intention in the images. The following quote I use here embodies what I believe gives Rose's photographs strength and their uncanny character.
" ...where I often wander from the subject like the wayfarer in a picaresque novel seduced by the charm of the unexpected intrusion, the unforeseen story, certain false memories have undoubtedly remained, despite my vigilance."
— Louis Buñuel: My Last Sigh
As I structured the form of the book around the sublime in Rose's night photographs I chose to highlight those with the greatest density of black, with emphases on the blur of smoke and steam. Each selection had a particular flaw that made it, to me, a unique trope of Rose's work. A visual story began to form as I continued to review and edit my choices — random or? Image (1) A lone daylight image of small train, black smoke billows from the stack against a background of mountains, foreground of yucca and scrub, train moving right to left, the overall impression is a toy of the imagination, a dreamscape of promise and adventure — a perfect feature of whimsy. In the final image (21) a smoky evening gray mist with little or no detail, an engine sits alone on the roundtable unattended, forlorn and forgotten. I didn't originally have an order in mind but aspects revealed a story, a subtext of a child's imagination and the last, the adult and the end of a long and tired era. The interwoven visual sentences and paragraphs are part of the story that can be built by the viewer according their particular histories, visions and dreams.
The unintended surprise of architectural space, specifically the domestic interior with its physiological ambiguity between fear and comfort, the secure and the homely is certainly a favored trope of mine. Ted Rose's photographs reveal a blank verse of hidden analogies that illuminate the unconscious recognition of his unimagined personal obsession with mystery. This linkage may not be part of the artist's intentions; nevertheless it is available to the aware observer, e.g. Roland Barthes', Death of the Author; the essays of Argentinean author, Jorge Luis Borges in his collection of essays, Other Inquisitions; James Carse, Emeritus professor of history and literature of religion, NYU, in his book of essays, Breakfast at the Victory: Mysticism of the Ordinary; each reflects on mystical experience not in terms of magic, rather on preparedness for surprise. The photographs by visual artist Ted Rose are likewise, images from ordinary life, ordinary objects that surprise with their uncanny double in the world of our imagination.