Simple Things
Summertime means simple meals. We were lucky that summer to be eating out of the farmer’s garden nearly every day. A broth of vegetables and lentils, some steamed zucchini, fresh tomatoes, edible flowers to embellish the tops of anything we wished, some locally baked crackers. This kind of eating makes me want to photograph every meal, and sometimes I do. More of a record than art, but simplicity is what it demands.
Millisecond
Gianni had arrived while Maggie was watering her roses. It was a blistering hot day and Maggie, spontaneous as always, turned the hose on him as he was walking away, and Gianni, open as always to whatever the next thing is, responded with such a moment of joyous abandon that I turned around and saw his exaltation and the rainbow all in the same millisecond. It pays to have the camera wherever you are, even around the house.
Moving Pieces
Siena’s Campo is one of the most spacious piazzas in Italy, and one of the most unique. It is a fan-shaped, brick patterned, space with 9 divisions representing the different contradas, or quarters, that existed when it was built. It functions as a giant sun bowl filled with people usually lying on the bricks and chatting, sleeping, eating, or playing. But what has always fascinated me – and I would like to make a time lapse video of this – is when groups agree to meet in the Campo they usually avoid the heat of the sun by standing in the shadow of the clock tower, and as the shadow moves, like a sweeping sundial’s pointer, everyone moves with it.
I can imagine a very funny short film showing the changing texture of the crowds and varying amounts of people filling the full length of the shadow. This early June morning shows only the first sets of tourists.
The Door
The door to our bedroom is like a Japanese screen.
Then and Now
Two years ago our place, which was then just a summer rental, looked like this, a gravel covered acre with not much else . Now that we have a long term lease on it we have made some improvements. Maggie is the giardiniera and treats the whole space as a work in progress. But it is really more like an ‘earthwork,’ given how she conceives of all the elements and spaces that the garden consists of, almost as if they were ‘rooms’ outside, where one can go when a different experience is needed.
Part of my daily shooting has been to document the changes that have come over the place as Maggie makes it come into focus. Documenting everyday life has its joys as much as being out in the world at large and watching the crazy goings on out there. I like the mix of the two.
Ordinary Moments
Some days not much happens.
We went for a walk.
I stopped to look at my own shadow.
The small, ordinary moments that life continually presents, in which I hope to find just a little moment of concentrated observation that would keep the idea of daily imagery going. These are the tough lessons of a project like this one; how to keep interest alive while many other things: books, shows, presentations, all crowd in and eat up precious time. So, as I have said before, “I’ll make the most of what I have.”
Elemental
Some years ago I began a series called “The Elements,” in which I was trying to see if I could photograph the phenomena of the 4 elements without resorting to the conventions of traditional renaissance perspective where there was a horizon line and diminishing markers of distance. I asked myself, ‘can I photograph the simple fact of each of our 4 phenomena; Air, Water, Earth, Fire, in such a way as to make them the pure statement of the thing itself?’
I began looking at sky, sea, earth, etc and realized that this could be close to being the most familiar and boring photographs one could make. Dumb images of dirt? Still photographs of water in a pool or lake? But my thought was to make them BIG, really large scale, say 10 feet high by 12 or more feet long; and I did make some like that for a show in Germany, where they were well received and collected.
I continue to add to that body of work whenever something speaks to me. Here was a moment when the light was going, and a stream of buttermilk clouds slowly drifted into view, and I found myself in that frame of mind where studying the sky for a while was a purely pleasurable experience, and what could be a better stimulant than pleasure for making photographs?
Timeless
To stand in the shadows, looking out into the light, is like a child’s game of thinking that the treasure is down there, just past the sunlight, around that bend. But the treasure is to be standing still, in the quiet cool at the end of a June day, and drinking in the sweetness of it, the silence, the timelessness that it suggests. And then raising the camera to affirm the sensation of contentment that overcame me.
Beached
The 6 month lease on the car we were using was up, and we had to go to the return place near Fiumicino, Rome’s airport. On the way back, in a newly leased Peugeot, we had the need to actually see the sea. But what a gritty stretch of used up and run down, Roman getaway string of beaches! After 15 minutes of trying to find some way on to the beaches we spent 5 minutes on the sand when Maggie said to me, “are you having fun here?” And up we got, but on the way off the beach I saw this dreamer drawing figures in the air, with a matching umbrella to boot.
Later, on a pull off near a gas station, I saw the burnt out wreckage of a tractor trailer and immediately pulled in to see what I might scavenge for my still lives. But on getting closer, and smelling that particular odor of burned metal, rubber, plastic, and assorted other materials, I was overcome by my memories of those smells, and this kind of physical ‘look,’ which I still carry with me from my 9 months inside Ground Zero.
I don’t know what the fascination is. Perhaps it’s seeing a whole thing reduced to its melted components while still retaining something of its original shape. To see this transformation and take the time to walk around it and consider it from every point of view, brings up a lot of thoughts and ideas, and sometimes a fresh image can appear.
While walking around this truck I was reminded of the time when a whale was washed up on the shore in Provincetown, not far from my house, and how it drew the attention of everyone who passed by on the beach. It was a solemn parade, with people needing to go over to it and stroke and commune with the now dead, but still mighty form.
Beppo
This is Beppo (Giuseppe), he built this farm we were living on when I made this image, and it’s where we live now. It was 7:15 in the morning and this 80 year old is out there doing what he has done for 45 years. Talking to the cows, looking at the land and reminding me of the Italian immigrants of my youth in the Bronx. All those country people from Puglia and Napoli who came to the big city and became a part of it.
ONCE MORE AROUND THE SUN 