FEBRUARY 14, 2015

Valentine’s Day

It seemed fitting for Valentine’s day to roast some artichokes since it is their tender hearts we desire, and in addition their heart shaped bodies are always interesting to look at. So I buried these in the ashes and embers of the fireplace and 30 minutes later out they came; dusty, yet colorful beneath their armored leaves; pinks and greens and even some iridescent blue, but so faint I had to look hard to see that it was really there, and then they gave off an earthy aroma all their own.

And our hearts, too, are still moving away from the unsettling events of earlier in the week, yet the small, nagging vacancies, where memories hold their power over us, can still pull us off center, but it diminishes more every day. Maggie was outside drawing, and came in with this pair of trees which she left on her work table and when I saw them together with my artichoke trees this record of the table seemed to be the photograph of the day.

A humble still life made from whatever is there and without arrangement is often a clue to the hidden beauty in things. I like ‘chance discoveries’ which, like photography itself, comes from unexpected moments in which we find ourselves suddenly awakened to the possibility that something fresh is calling out to be looked at.

FEBRUARY 13, 2015

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Glimpse

Friday the 13th. I already have had my bad luck day this week.

So the joy of seeing this chorus line of sprinklers dancing along the roadside in February lightened my heart. It’s a nothing image in lots of ways, but the reality of it, and the way it gave me pleasure, transcends the weakness. It seemed to me as if it was ‘light’ that was being sprayed across the fields. That momentary illusion, and the thoughts that trailed through my mind as it was left behind, were worth it to me.

I think that the stimulation the world so copiously delivers in its unbounded and random way, is what makes photography such a powerful medium for ‘ideas’. And for me, through all these years, photography, even though it is made of images, has really been about the generation of new ideas; ideas about life, time, place, relationships, or anything that comes up from that brief glimpse we catch, maybe even just out of the corner of our eye, that makes the medium so continuously provocative.

I feel so lucky!

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

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Plain Sight

Serenity after chaos can make itself felt in various ways. And it is needed to rebalance ones state of mind. I found myself drawn to this humble photograph because of the expansive and yet ordinary characteristics it uses to hold me for a moment, not let me move on, and then to draw me in, to transform my resistance into a small smile of wonder at the recognition, once again, that the most we can do is to work with what we have at any given moment.

This is where I am. This is what I see. This is what the world looks like.

A kind of honest appreciation of the fact that the sublime is often hidden in plain sight.

FEBRUARY 10/11, 2015

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Gratitude

If there is one thing that 50 years of making photographs has taught me it is that every moment, no matter what it brings; joy, pleasure, sadness, pain, or the endless bounty of everything else we can feel, it passes as quickly as it came, and the continual renewal of every moment is all we can hope to be conscious of. It is the attachment to things, as if they were permanent, that gets us into trouble.

So, first of all, I am grateful beyond words for all the loving, supportive and generous comments that flowed to me and Maggie today after yesterday’s challenging times. Yes! It was shocking to be setup like that by a band of thieves (we later learned that it’s a honey trap, and that many other travelers have lost their belongings at this roadside attraction). And the Police do nothing about it, figuring, we guess, ‘tourists get what’s coming to them, traveling with all their precious possessions, and the cops know insurance companies will cover the loss, so why bother looking, and, it aids the local economy’. What a way to live!

But, back to your kindnesses. So many of you offered your thoughts about attachment, and our moment of loss, that it made us feel that there is hope when so many strangers offer this comfort so warmly. Maggie and I are already filling the space with new moments, new feelings, working through the lost items and memories, letting things go as we must, and painful as it is at moments, it is also becoming lighter to bear.

Maggie even said to me today, and she lost more intimate, meaningful treasures than my replaceable things, “I say a prayer for those who had to live lives that brought them to a place where they treat other humans like this”.

February 10,

February 11,

A day of retreat from all the aches of yesterday. As I walked past this stone cap at the end of a flight of stairs it took hold of me and made me pay attention. It made me step out of my inwardness and take in the vast, almost cosmic map quality of this humble stone in which mould, and fissures, and weathering, have made the surface dance the universal dance. As if stars exploded and atoms were splitting, and planetary movements were being etched by time on a glass plate negative. And perhaps that is what time has done to this stone. Simply left its marks while the stone aged.

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

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Loss

Today, while traveling in France, our car was broken into and my computer, hard drives, cameras and other personal effects of mine and Maggie’s were stolen. All this while we were less than 30 feet away in an off the road and isolated antique store where we spent no more than 10 minutes. The police wouldn’t come and we had no recourse but to leave, even though we could see that a scam team had done the deed.

I’m sorry to say that I cannot post a photograph until I can access a computer and my files again. I will do my best to catch up once I’m back in the studio.

Thank you for being patient.

joel

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

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Now

Our year in Europe feels a little like we ran away to join the circus. Two older adults who left it all behind, packed 2 suitcases and some equipment and off we went. And who better to run away with than this woman! Maggie has enriched my life in indescribable ways. She is wife, lover, friend, consigliere, healer, business partner, co-author, and many more things to me, but always a joy to behold.

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t see her doing something intimate, or lost in thought, or writing, gardening, preparing something delicious, engaging with local merchants, so many minor, ordinary moments which are lifted out of the ordinary by the joy that emanates from her. And when she looks at me I am smitten once again.

So I make countless images of her, and the story they tell is our story, of love in the time when the years are fleeting, but joy is to be had in every moment of consciousness, that Now is the only moment we have. And every photograph is Now!

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

FEBRUARY 7, 2015

FEBRUARY 6, 2015

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Under The Rainbow

I was in the car on the way to Barcelona airport, and as always had my camera at the ready. The day became a day of ‘from the car’ photographs because after I landed in Marseilles I was back in a car on my way to Bonnieux.

That part of the trip was a ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ experience because, as I entered the Luberon valley, the weather, moving fast behind a passing storm, exploded with rainbows, which appeared around every bend in the road. Rainbows are a little like shooting ducks in a barrel since you can hardly ever miss, but at 60 miles per hour the rainbow, and what it is seen in relation to, makes for a challenging set of conditions.

I love shooting from the car because there is a purity to the gesture of reaching for the image. The image is what it is, and I accept it with all its shortcomings, flaws, crazy tilts, fragmentary bits and pieces which fall in wherever they do, and in a way they refresh my seeing and remind me to stay open to the suggestive impulsive side of photography.

By the time I arrived home the sky, darkening then, flared up one last time in pure symphonic crescendo, and then went dark.