La Macchina Fotografica

The seduction of photography is complex. I often wonder why we desire to record things on film or digital sensor. So often I get the thought that says “I must capture this and take it with me!” In looking at today’s featured photo, that thought came to me, as it did when I made this photo in Venice a few years ago.

The winding path of our life takes us on a treasure hunt that unfolds right before our senses. At certain places, at certain times we get the urge to prove we were there. One sees it all the time at famous sites. Everyone wants a photo of themselves in front of…(fill in the blank). It signifies something. Like graffiti that marks a wall, it says, “I am here!” Or, more basically, “I AM!” This famous thing (or person) and I co-exist. In the case of graffiti, it is more aggressive. Not only does the encounter exist, the person making the encounter changes the object he encounters.

While graffiti obviously alters the object encountered, Quantum Physics says that all encounters result in change. We know, as photographers, that once we bring out our camera and point the lens at something, it changes the something at which we are pointing. People stiffen, animals frighten, our perception of the world alters. The camera does not record reality, it records a certain version of reality. We often see a camped-up world in snapshots that has little to do with world that existed before the camera entered the scene. The camera records something—what that something is, is debatable.

So, on we go. We find these things along our journey that, like a prowling cat, make us stop and sniff. Sometimes they simply make us curious. But, there are times when it provokes more. We want the feeling to linger, to be captured, and to last longer. We desire that it be known the we were here, that we ARE here—that we matter. And it is always fortunate when we have our camera with us at the time.

Relics of the past are everywhere. They haunt us, tease us, and intrigue us. Most any relic becomes valuable if it gets old enough. Anthropologists find their most valuable stuff in ancient garbage heaps. But, it’s not the preciousness of antiques that interests me here. I am most intrigued at the moment with the oppressiveness of our past.

We are taught by those wiser than we that the only thing we have is the present moment. All else is an illusion, projection, or abstraction. Yet, as if we were stars of a particularly bad, B-grade science-fiction flick, our past keeps popping up along our path. Old photos jump out of shoe boxes, old songs tug at our heart, old friends remind us of where we’ve been. The weathered recordings of our life keep playing in endless loops inside our psyche.

Many memories soften with time, become rounder and more mellow. Sometimes memories get darker and more menacing. They haven’t been resolved so, as if they were an old ghost who’d died in an untimely or unseemly way, they rattle around the house in the middle of the night. This is fertile ground for an artist.

Duane Michals’ work is particularly powerful in evoking conflicted memories. His book, The House I Called Home, has profoundly influence my own work. In it, Michals juxtaposes the photos of his youth with images of the now-dilapidated house in which he was raised. It is a poignant reminder of the impermanence of everything and nature of memories, both good and bad.

Working one’s way through the tangle of old memories can be a fascinating process. It’s not as if we must live in the past to do so. Perspective can be maintained, even enhanced by the experience. The power of these old ghosts comes with lack of resolution. Most often life does not tie itself into a neat package like the arc of a well-written film. Endings are messing, inconclusive, and most often, not endings at all. Sometimes an old memory simply needs to be tucked into bed.

This morning, in the low, dark light of late autumn, I find the need to work, yet again, with my ghosts. And whenever I get the inclination to do so they seem as eager as I to get on with the job.

Life mostly feels like an undulation of this and that. We straddle the line, walk the tightrope—fairly well keeping our balance. Then, things happen that weren’t in the plans. They knock us off-center, destroying our equilibrium. And we realize that there is no clear path, no way out, no ultimate resolution of anything. And while the waves get choppy, they are still waves. Up and down, we continue onward. Then calm, ultimately, returns.

The past few weeks have seemed momentous. We have a new president, we are enduring an economic crisis, and each person I know is living out the collective drama. Yet, for all the globalization and noise and media screaming, the quieter, personal challenges are the ones that don’t get much attention. Yet, they seem to matter at least as much. And all we are trying to do is stay on the path.

I spent the past week hunkered-down with work. I neglected my blog and hadn’t had time to pick up my camera. I felt detached from photography and generally removed from that aspect of my creative process. This morning I was resolved to regain my creative momentum. Since I had no new images, I searched through my image library, seeing if something resonated with me. And there it was! A photo I’d made some three years ago while spending the holidays in Venice. It instantly brought me back feelings of the city. It made my heart ache for the place.

Usually it is the smell of a place that burns its way into my memory. Venice has the briny essence of its lagoon that provides me with instant recall. In fact, all the senses are excited by Venice. But, more than anything, Venice is a visual city, a giant stage set that is past its prime but probably more beautiful in decay than it was in its peak of glory. It is impossible not to take evocative photos of the place. Great visual artists are forever drawn to Venice. It stirs the imagination and makes one feel the pull of making art.

And so, today, a day where I feel depleted, I found this image of Venetian pigeons on Venetian stones. The pigeons are as big a part of Venice as are its canals. They are ubiquitous as are its stones. Sweet and gentle, they are the peaceful souls of city known for centuries as La Serenissima, The Most Serene. The photo makes me long for the place, want to simply sit and watch it and breathe it in.

Great places have a way of being forever with you. They work their way into your heart where they reside as long as you live. They bring joy and melancholy alike. When you return to them they are like great lovers; magnificent, beautiful, alluring, and terribly flawed. You feel that you cannot live without them. Your moments with them are fleeting, you can feel your time together slip away with each passing breathe. Then they are gone again. And all you have are a few fading photos.

Several years ago we spent the holidays in Venice. Venice is a city of dreams, an island of aching and unreal beauty. It is stunning that even its deterioration is sublime. Most photographers choose to photograph the crumbling and settling facades of ancient buildings as testament to Venice’s fading glory. This is entirely appropriate as the city feels like a giant stage set, its public face bold and dramatic. The facades are so enticing it is hard to see anything else. There is something poignant about peering through their thin veneer and into the exposed flesh of the buildings. It is sadly lovely to see something so exuberantly extroverted fade into homely decay.

Venice is also a city blighted by graffiti. I find it fascinating that locals would consciously deface a city so magnificent. Is it seething anger, boredom, or artistic expression? Having been to Venice many times, I tried, in my most recent visit, to find something else about the city that I had not yet explored. The graffiti became a topic of my fascination.

I will not take the position that all graffiti is art. While it is a real expression of society, it is also vandalism. Yet, it its randomness and contribution to the patina of surface, graffiti, particularly when faded and layered, can be a remarkable resource and inspiration for the abstract painter.

The image featured here today is of a door right outside our Venetian apartment. I could see it from our bedroom window as it changed in the dim winter light. I was fascinated by its textures and layers of rust, paint, and graffiti. One morning I decided to go out and photograph it. While it evokes little of Venice, to me it is still very Venetian and is one of my favorite images.

Almost to a person, if you ask an East-Coast transplant who now lives west of the Mississippi what he or she misses the most, the answer will be: the change of the seasons. More pointedly, most everyone longs for fall foliage, something that is seen in California, but is sort of like setting off a firecracker after watching fireworks.

There are, indeed, seasons in California. They just lack the drama one finds elsewhere. They are filled with lovely hues and subtle tones. Partly what we lack is the utter relief that one feels at the end of a sweltering summer or bitter winter. I often regale friends with old tales of college spring fever, that heady mixture of spring scents, soft breezes, and young love. If you haven’t suffered through winter, you’ve never really known true spring fever.

There is more to the change of seasons than cold-to-hot and green-to-brown. Each change reminds us of the perpetual nature of things. It instills a sense of renewal, of optimism, of balance and perspective. There is a perpetual quality to the change of light that accompanies each season.

The camera is keenly aware of the nature of light and is a marvelous tool in the exploration of seasonal change. While our mind tends to normalize the quality of light, the camera does not. It will showcase warmth or coolness, clarify and differentiate the differences that each day or season may bring. The high or low angle of light becomes apparent when viewing most any photo. Soft, harsh, boring, or dramatic, the light of day blossoms behind the lens.

With time, the camera teaches us to see things its way even when it is packed away in its case. We learn to see with new clarity. The seasons become sweeter, each day more precious. No two days are exactly alike to the camera. Each one is a new opportunity to bring light into our life.

I’ve written here before about Edward Steichen’s shadblow tree, a small tree outside the window of his home in West Redding, Connecticut. Steichen, tired of the rigors of fashion photography and museum administration (he was the director of the Department of Photography at MOMA), found inspiration in this small tree and photographed it exclusively for six years. Steichen found great meaning in the seemingly insignificant tree. To him it represented the changing and cyclical nature of life.

I’ve often found inspiration in Steichen’s obsession with his tree. An artist must often imposes self-limitations in order to find the essence his or her work. I’ve given much thought as to how I might find something worthy of such singular focus; a subject that I could work with for years as both it and I changes through the passage of life.

There is a tree in our town park that I find utterly captivating. A large eucalyptus tree, it has endured storms and tree-surgeons’ amputations. It is a non-native plant and, thus, will probably someday be cut down. They have been systematically removing the eucalyptus trees from our town and I fear this one is already on Death Row.

These trees shed bark, and nuts, and leaves like no other. They are a fire hazard and their limbs tend to twist off in ugly ways during storms of high wind. Lots of people find them to be problematic. I think they are quite lovely in their own way and am saddened when I travel around the neighborhood and find yet another gone, victim of native-plant awareness.

Maybe this tree is a symbol of my awkwardness as it relates to political correctness (botanical correctness?). Maybe I see the underdog in this lone, remaining eucalyptus. I root for it, hope it makes it through the impending winter and her winds. Whether I photograph the tree every day is another question. But, I will give regular updates in this blog.

If you are regular reader of this blog, you know that my buddies and I hike Grand Canyon every year. The trip is generally exhausting and to help us forget the pain which is shooting through every fiber of our bodies we tend to resort to an endless loop of repeating banter. To the casual observer it is mindless, silly, and incomprehensible nonsense. But, to three stooges from New Jersey, who have known one another for some 45 years, it all, scarily, makes perfect sense.

One of the things we recite endlessly is one particular line from The Deer Hunter where John Cazale’s character looks around the familiar location of his deer-hunting trips. He paces about the outdoor scene, bewildered and agitated. “Something’s different,” he says. “They changed it!”

That line seems entirely apropos in Grand Canyon. The light is constantly changing everything. You can come across the same scene a hundred times and it will always look different each encounter. They changed it.

This past year I came upon a pinnacle that I’d remembered from the previous year. I remembered it because it had glowed in a eery pre-storm light, the red earth electric with the storm’s accumulating energy. This year it was flat. Boring. I was disappointed as I’d, for miles, looked forward to seeing the spot. But…they changed it.

The canyon is that way. It is in constant motion, ever shifting, ever fluid. It seems still but never is. It is in the midst of constant change. Luckily, I made a photo of that magic moment which, in this blog, I am sharing with you now.

The sunrise was shrouded in a thick blanket of low fog. I took one look out the window and decided a hot pot of coffee was a better idea than an excursion down to the park. The alarm had been accidently set to go off at 2:30 AM and I still felt the crankiness from an unexpected wake-up. The cats were also agitated and they demanded that I rise early. They wanted proper attention. Coffee was a much better concept than exercise.

The light was too exquisite to be ignored. Like the cats, it demanded attention. The caffeine was working. I needed to get out before the fog burned off and the day turned to blasted sunshine. I went out, feeling rusty with the camera. I found a few autumn leaves on an old truck to photograph. Very nice.

I crossed the road into the park. My favorite eucalyptus glowed in the misty light. Things were getting interesting. I walked around the tree about ten times, exploring every angle I could, making images all the way.

Then I got to the little pond. There were hundreds of birds! They flew in formation around the small body of water, skidding to a landing with a monstrous splash. The did this about five more times, keenly aware of my presence and playing cat-and-mouse with me. They stayed far enough away from me in order to feel safe, but taunted me just the same. I made images as fast as my camera could keep up. The camera felt warm from its furious work.

Finally the egrets had had enough of me. They flew off to another body of water, flapping their wings at me in a friendly way. I felt tired and satisfied. On the way back a fat goose came up and posed for my camera. Then I left the park.

A lovely, older woman was packing up her tennis racket. She looked up at me, her droopy hat making her round face seem friendly. “Did you get anything?” she asked, pointing to my camera. “Ma’am, it’s a very birdie morning!” I responded. “Oh, that’s nice,” she added with a smile. I walked home feeling grateful for a life so rich and so filled with birds and photography.

I had to rise at 4:00 AM this morning, earlier than is my habit. The morning light is lazy this time of year, not getting around to lighting our neighborhood until after 7:00. As I write this the trees outside my window are nothing but dark shadows looming over a dim sky. It is a time of day that brings out the optimist in me. The world awakens to all possibilities.

It is that way at dawn. One has the world to oneself. Light is magic, transforming ordinary things into sculptural expression. Sounds are soft and singular. The orchestra of life builds slowly, layer upon layer—everything there is stirs and rises.

This time of day evokes more memories than any other. It reminds me of leaving on trips and awakening in strange lands. The slowly waning darkness is both sweet and melancholic. It shrouds one in protective cloud of secrecy that rises like the most gentle morning mist. It is a time of inspiration and reflection, a sweet moment of the day when one can take in the brisk morning air, not yet polluted with the machines of modern life.

In just a moment, the world will transform into a Monday morning scream. Radio talk shows will shout about traffic, politics, and yesterday’s football games. It will all seem so important. The stock market will go down until it goes up until it goes down again. Then the tempest will exhaust itself and after settling into the long autumn night we will be back here again. A dawn’s view is always the best.