Appreciating Autumn

From their gallery Fall: A Photographic Appreciation, at Magnum:

It is hard to write about Fall without feeling like one is dipping into a familiar store of words. They come up again and again. Leaves. Trees. Bonfires. Fireworks. Wood-smoke. In Persuasion Jane Austen wryly characterizes it as “that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.” These attempts are everywhere, influencing our understanding of this peculiar season of great riches and slow decline.

No article dwelling on the season is complete without a line or two from Keats’ famous ode To Autumn referencing “mists and mellow fruitfulness” and “moss cottage’d trees,” or George Eliot’s 1841 missive praising “the still melancholy” of autumn with its sights of “trees… putting on the hectic or pallid hues of decay.” Perhaps one might add in a line from Sylvia Townsend-Warner’s diary for good measure: “Spring is strictly sentimental self-regarding; but I burn more careless in the autumn bonfire.” (With this idea of fire think too of Nick Drake’s song Milk & Honey, “gold and silver burns my autumns/ All too soon they’d fade and die.”)

Mark Power ('Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts'). Cleveland, Ohio. USA. November, 2017. © Mark Power | Magnum Photos

Dennis Stock | Autumn leaves. Connecticut. USA. © Dennis Stock | Magnum Photos

Stuart Franklin | Quantock Hills. Somerset. GB. 1986. © Stuart Franklin | Magnum Photos

Bruno Barbey | A non-conformist painter selling his work. Moscow. Russia. 1988. © Bruno Barbey | Magnum Photos

Raymond Depardon | Garet's Farm. Villefranche-sur-Saone. Rhone-Alpes Region. France. 1982 © Raymond Depardon | Magnum Photos

Martine Franck | The annual festival of "Fruits and Vegetables of Today and Yesterday". Gardens of 17th century castle. Essonne. Saint-Jean de Beauregard. France. © Martine Franck | Magnum Photos

Bruno Barbey | A farmer's specially trained pig sniffs for precious truffle mushrooms, which grow below the soil. Dordogne. France. 1988. © Bruno Barbey | Magnum Photos