“Some have the custom to cover themselves in a sheet and go to a place where the moon can be seen. There they throw off the sheet and stand naked. They stand straight, with all their limbs spread out, and they examine their shadow in the moon. If one’s head is missing, he will lose his head. (...) But at another place in the Talmud…it says that one should not take this too seriously, because one might get frightened and ruin his fate because of this; for example, he might not see the shadow out of fear. Therefore, it is all right not to examine one’s shadow at all.”
The excerpt above is from a Minhogimbukh, or a “Book of Customs”. This lost literary format was a Yiddish-language synthesis of farmers almanack and prayer book popular in the European Jewish diaspora between 1590 and 1890. Minhogimbukhs guided readers through the Jewish year by detailing common cultural practices that wouldn’t be found in scripture. The particular custom I’ve cited here is observed on Hoshana Rabbah, the last day of the holiday of Sukkot.
I set out to make a sukkah out of my own full-body, headless cyanotypes because I wanted to investigate a custom concerning light and shadow by using them as my medium. I was also excited to challenge the photographic potential to show things the way they “really are.” For each exposure, I laid on top of the fabric with my head lifted upward so that it wouldn’t cast a shadow. I laid on top of the fabric with my head lifted upward so that it wouldn’t cast a shadow. I felt really clever while I was doing this – like I was playing a trick on the sun, but afterward, I couldn’t stop myself from reading too deeply into the results. A part of my body, for example, would become discolored in the final exposure, and I would worry about what it meant. What was the sun trying to tell me?
“Some have the custom to cover themselves in a sheet and go to a place where the moon can be seen. There they throw off the sheet and stand naked. They stand straight, with all their limbs spread out, and they examine their shadow in the moon. If one’s head is missing, he will lose his head. (...) But at another place in the Talmud…it says that one should not take this too seriously, because one might get frightened and ruin his fate because of this; for example, he might not see the shadow out of fear. Therefore, it is all right not to examine one’s shadow at all.”
The excerpt above is from a Minhogimbukh, or a “Book of Customs”. This lost literary format was a Yiddish-language synthesis of farmers almanack and prayer book popular in the European Jewish diaspora between 1590 and 1890. Minhogimbukhs guided readers through the Jewish year by detailing common cultural practices that wouldn’t be found in scripture. The particular custom I’ve cited here is observed on Hoshana Rabbah, the last day of the holiday of Sukkot.
I set out to make a sukkah out of my own full-body, headless cyanotypes because I wanted to investigate a custom concerning light and shadow by using them as my medium. I was also excited to challenge the photographic potential to show things the way they “really are.” For each exposure, I laid on top of the fabric with my head lifted upward so that it wouldn’t cast a shadow. I laid on top of the fabric with my head lifted upward so that it wouldn’t cast a shadow. I felt really clever while I was doing this – like I was playing a trick on the sun, but afterward, I couldn’t stop myself from reading too deeply into the results. A part of my body, for example, would become discolored in the final exposure, and I would worry about what it meant. What was the sun trying to tell me?