JULY 12, 2015

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Sonnets and Lifeboats

I never expect every day to provide a photograph of real consequence. The truth is; many days are often spent doing other tasks, working on books and exhibitions, doing chores and ordinary life basics, attending to the business of making a living and staying afloat, and so sometimes the day seems to fly by without an opportunity to really be somewhere where things are supposedly happening.

Perhaps that’s why so many images of Maggie going about her life here, making the garden that now, two years later, is something that was developing in her consciousness and in real time, and required the patience of many seasons to reach this stage of being. Part of my discipline, as you can see, is to try and make the most out of what I am given, which has always been my way as I work in the, “trust the world to show you interesting moments,” method that has been my approach all these 50+ years. So in that regard Maggie has become my local muse on the days when I have been unable to venture far beyond of the space we live in.

But there is something else at work here that needs considering; by choosing to live in Europe we have thrown ourselves into the life raft together and are each others sole companion (soul, too) most of the time, and that fact has shown me that Maggie is someone I continue to observe every day, and so for the first time in our 25 years together I was able to concentrate on the ordinary reality of watching her live. We have probably all seen the great work Harry Callahan did with his wife, and Weston with Charis, and of course there are other examples.

I have no idea what I have amassed as yet, and what the overall quality and meaning of it will be, but for now, it is like an ongoing love sonnet made with images,. These things take time and trust to build, just like Maggie’s garden.

NB: After I wrote this post I took another look at the photograph for this day and thought, what is it about This image that made me want first to make it, and now to post it? I can tell you that none of these photographs of Maggie are set up as photographs. They are the instant observations I make when I discover her doing something and I get the call. Here, I turned the corner of the house to find Maggie standing there spraying an arc onto the bushes, but then I saw the cloud and the spray in relation to each other, and then the whiteness of her shirt came into play with the cloud, and then the shirt’s slipping off her lovely shoulder in that perfect way, and then the ‘bite’ of that black strap into her soft skin was duly noted, and made me see all of her, her posture, the way her head sits on her neck, and turned slightly, so that no face is seen, but a profile of the very edge, which tells me a lot, as I can ‘know’ what her face looks like from that edge without seeing it. And then the drapery of her shirt; sculptors in ancient Greece carved those lines in marble 3000 years ago, and they were able to look in the marble drape for the curve of a hip, just slightly carrying the weight of the supporting leg so that the swell of her body beneath the cloth gets the attention it deserves. All of that is what appeared to me as i caught this glimpse of her. 

07-12 Maggie garden L1031401

JULY 11, 2015

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Seeds and Sunshine

Silvia, the farmer on whose property we live, has been coming by with whatever is in season in her orta ever since we started living here. On that day in this photograph she brought zucchini and melanzana, and as I often do I make a portrait of her and the gift, which seems an appropriate way of thanking her while keeping a record of what a farmer’s wife can look like in the 21st century. Silvia is gentle and sweet, yet strong enough to handle big animals, carry heavy equipment, and bear up under the stresses of gardening, raising  sheep, cows, pigs, chickens, dogs, and children, and weathering all the unexpected events that nature hurls at farmers everywhere.

Those zucchini wound up in this omelet about 30 minutes later. So it is in life on the farm; garden to table in no time, with informal still lives and portraits as memories. Then, when the evening cooled and the call to walk in it came, we took to the road that is always suggestive of adventure even when it is just along our familiar old road heading into town. It never ceases to please us and tell us exactly what time of the season it is.

On this date the Queen Anne’s Lace is lacily trimming the borders of the roadsides. In some way these offhand photographic notes on the seasons show me the constancy of time, the year after year perfection of seeds and sunshine, which results in a measurable and quantifiable experience of time’s passing.

07-11 Silvia L1031345

07-11 Omelet L1031347

07-11 Maggie flowers L1031368.

JULY 10, 2015

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Berm and Schnoz

On the way back from Lucca, shooting from the car as I often still do, this earthen berm with a.. …..what is that thing anyway… sticking over the top of the berm like a droopy schnoz, called out to me and made me laugh. The reason I think some photographs have a surreal feeling is that the world is surreal more often than we might think it is. Is this someone’s idea of art? Is it an industrial site with work going on behind the berm and the schnoz lets the gases out?  Is it a lost wind sock from a nearby airport come to earth right there? Whatever it was, it made for a moment of visual excitement, a humorous few minutes of speculation, and the feeling that the world is always giving off unexpected pleasures. If you are willing to see it that way.

07-10 FTC L1031278 copyBy the time we got home the day was producing its own set of miracles, besides arriving home safely. The Tuscan skies, almost as often as the skies over Ireland, produce rainbows of long duration which fall to earth in their own pot-o’-gold, wheat field landscapes. Maggie seems to me to be my very own pot-o’-gold, my good fortune at the end of the rainbow.

the 07-10 Maggie L1031338

JULY 9, 2015

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Extravagance

Whenever I see architecture of extravagance; cathedrals, palaces, monuments, etc., particularly from 4 or 500 years ago, I give myself over to the experience of wonder that they produce in me. I love the birthday cake-like fantasía that architects in those days offered their wealthy clients, and that those clients, often the Church, would accept that kind over-the-top decoration, probably as a way to bring the paying multitudes in, grandeur being a seductive call or advertisement for the pageants produced therein.

Looked at today these places still hold up their end of the bargain, as one can see by the tourists regularly visiting these sites. For me though, it’s part of a continuing record I keep of the craziness of a past time, and I wonder what of our structures today might still be here 500 years from now.

We went to Lucca to hear a Leonard Cohen concert and the day started off sunny and bright, then dark and stormy, then back to sunny again, and on and off for most to the day. I always like being out in the weather, watching the way it clears the streets as everyone runs for cover. Sometimes it produces a photograph or two.

07-9 Duomo L1031208

07-9 Lucca L1031218.

JULY 8, 2015

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Tempus Fugit

Time is measured in many ways; seconds, minutes, hours, days, seasons, years.  There is camera time, sports time, heartbeat time, music tempo, it goes on and on. But in our new life in Tuscany we can see time’s progress through the accumulated, incremental changes that have taken place in the garden that Maggie has made on the stoney and sterile soil.

This picture, made 2 years ago while I was working on the photograph a day project, shows the granola-like rocky surface of the area, in which Maggie used pots of plantings to simulate a garden feeling in what was just a summer rental place to us then.

In the two images below you can see what time; garden time, growing time, pondering what will grow here time, looks like in real time. The photographs themselves are merely records, the original one made on a day when I was caught up in other things and probably made the photograph just to say I made something that day, and yet now, 2 years later, the ‘record’ is, for us anyway, invaluable as a way of seeing where the passage of time, and all our considerations, have brought us.

07-8 Garden L1031179

 

07-8 Garden L1008578

 

07-8 Garden L1007984

JULY 7, 2015

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4th Dimension

Inside a local hardware store in the town of San Quirico d’Orcia I felt as if I was looking into the mind of the proprietor, an 80 year old woman, who has been in this shop for more than 50 years.

There was no room to walk more than 5 feet into the space, and then ask a question such as, ‘….do you have bar-b-cue skewers?’ or any other ordinary hardware store request;  you got 3 centimeter nails? measuring cups? freezer packs? and to my surprise she would take a stick and squeeze through some slot behind the counter and enter the 4th dimension, and come back with what I asked for!

It seemed worthy of making a photograph if only to remember what an incredible memory she must have.

07-7 chaos L1031188

JULY 5, 2015

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Patterns and Standards

There was a run of days in the high 90’s that kept us indoors during the middle of the day. The old hay barn we live in was built with thick stone walls which kept the interior cool despite the blazing Tuscan sun. By late afternoon we’d saunter outside to sit under the dappled light of the Leccio tree, the only place where something like cool air could be found.

We had two, sling-like, canvas deck chairs, called sdraio which we slung ourselves into, and dazed from the heat stared off into space. Above me the tree became a Japanese screen with infinite brush strokes of black and green which shivered in the slightest breeze or eddy of heat rising from the baked and stony earth. On many of those late afternoons I daydreamed there, and often saw through the breaks in the tree, small celestial comments floating by, like the way atmosphere lends a pearly, pinkish weight to summer clouds.

I probably wouldn’t have noticed something like this and made a photograph of it (but then my inner voice says, ‘oh, Joel, but you have, and in many different ways’) but since this project began I have many times considered things that I might have let let slip by under other circumstances. It is part of the pleasure of this kind of daily shooting discipline, that modest, often overlooked moments come into play in this way. It’s good to shake up our patterns and the standards which we hold so dear.

07-5 Trees L1031145

JULY 4, 2015

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Parade

On a quick dash to Siena to pick up eyeglasses that had been fixed I had some crowd time on the streets. As always it’s unendingly fascinating to watch our species and witness the parade of shapes, sizes, gestures, makeup, clothing, companions, family, emotions, and all the combinations that, as Shakespeare would say “…flesh is heir to.”  

07-4 Magenta lips L1031123

07-4 Couple L1031135.

07-4 Girls

 

 

JULY 3, 2015

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Consumed

Some friends had invited us over for a summer ritual they perform every year, followed by a yoga breathing workshop and dinner. Since I like breathing – who doesn’t? – and they are good cooks, and any ritual always offers some form of crazy behavior, we happily went to it.

They started off with a bonfire, around which we all went chanting and shaking bells and other noise makers. But the fire was what got to me. Who doesn’t stop to watch fire? It’s one of those transforming, elemental forces that touches something primitive in all of us, and this one, by starting off with a sacrificial chair, made it more mysterious to me. Hard to explain what it was, but it was different than seeing logs and kindling go up. Perhaps because it signals an end to something that once had a life, and with that comes the knowledge that we, too, will be consumed.

07-3 L1031077 Burning chair

07-3 L1031090 ceremony