Tag Archives: Interior

JANUARY 30, 2015

What Beauty

Again, a cold, wintry day, no one out on the streets of Menerbes, the light was gray, the town was ancient history, stones and more stones, and then, perhaps 30 feet away, I see a stain of acid-green leaking out into the street, a kind of luminous, neon-ish color that had nothing to do with anything in the town. This color is a modern artifact, and as such it defies naturalness.

So, naturally, I let myself be drawn toward the light, already feeling my openness and anticipation beginning to play with the ‘what ifs’ that might await me. And there it was! I cannot tell you what it was, as it only showed itself as a window, no store, just a space someone wanted to show this in. What was really fun was to stare into the room for 2-3 minutes and then turn around and look at the world. Everything was a glowing, electric magenta, which of course faded in 30 seconds or so, but was a lovely optical trip for the time it lasted. (you might want to try it right here on this page where, just a moment ago, I got the same flash of magenta on the screen when my eyes flicked to the side)

Let’s face it, photography is an optical trip too!

On the way back to my car I saw the daylight changing and glowing in its own natural way, not to mention the lovely complexity of the layers, and I am sure that my response was in relation to that window I stood in front of a half hour before. The green! and the glitter of the light on the land, although less intense than the window, were nonetheless wondrous, as only nature can be. How many times daily do I stop and say, ‘what beauty’!

JANUARY 26, 2015

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Free-For-All

I am reminded that all situations are fair game for making photographs, even the ones that seem most conventional; like sitting around with friends, watching family members living their lives, casual moments at home, or anything that is merely quotidian. These unexalted events are the things that become invisible to us, while in fact they are as potentially potent as anything else out there in the free-for-all of life on the streets.

I can think of wonderful images made by Robert Frank, Elliot Erwitt, Garry Winogrand, and lots of others who were open to looking at the abundance of their own family’s private life. This image is not significant in terms of art, but its moment of shared good will and human warmth, the lovely gesture of the woman on the couch, the quality of the ambient light in the room, all remind me of how engaged I was by the feelings swirling around the room, and how it made me want to reach for it the only way I know.

JANUARY 25, 2015

JANUARY 20, 2015

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Adding it Up

I came through the revolving doors into the warmth of the vestibule of the hotel, paused for a moment to take off my hat and gloves, and then caught sight of this kid sitting there like a little puppy waiting for his master. Something about the scale of the boy, and then the strangeness of the whole space; that room to the right, with the slightly underwater glow, and that crazy instrument from another era, circa 1900 I would guess, a piano roll, or reproducing piano I think it was called – look at the size of that thing! and think how far we have come and how we carry our music around with us today!

But what was really happening, as it so often does, was that all of it suddenly filled me with a quickening of the pulse and the mind, which made me stop and really look at just where I was! Moments like that are expansive. Everything comes into play. I look all over the frame to make it register clearly, and out of that disciplined looking sometimes an interesting photograph comes.

Back on the street I passed a cafe where a woman was drawing, and again an interior space made me stop. This time it was a more ambiguous space that caught my eye, but also the hard focus of the woman within, which made me take the moment and carry it off with me. It always astonishes me when themes arise, however loosely, on any given day, and connect disparate, non-events to each other, which then, sometimes, keep adding up.

And so it goes.

JANUARY 18, 2015

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A Bowl of Mussels

All alone, deep into the concentration of his solitary experience, and really enjoying himself. It made me happy to see the gusto with which he devoured the bowl of mussels.

JANUARY 10, 2015

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Getting to Know Them

I found myself collecting strange cast offs in the local flea markets recently. I’ve never been much of a collector of objects. Having so many thousands of photographs, stacked nearly floor to ceiling high on the shelves of my studio, I always thought I had enough ‘things’ already. But these old odd forms that call out to me are suggesting themselves as worthy objects to consider in some sort of still life way, still lives being something that never really were part of my vocabulary as a photographer until last year when the urge first came to me.

Since then I periodically find myself simply staring at some of these objects and turning them slowly around so that each new aspect of their form reveals another possible shift in my first or overall impression. It is as if their truest expression of their ‘objectness’, their ‘personality’, suggests that I stop and look harder – which is what I think photography is really all about – looking harder at what we may think we already know – and by doing that I get glimpses of their hidden sweet spot, and once you know where that is you want to explore it.

This image is more of an introduction to the new arrivals than a worked out still life. It’s what I do first to see how they stand, their relationship to each other, the way the surface holds the light, the sense of scale they emit in the space they occupy. Surprisingly, some small forms present a sense of scale greater than their real size, and it helps to know that about them for future use. It’s kind of like an audition where the cast of new arrivals struts their stuff for the director. Today the book and the pipe came home with me and we are getting to know each other.

JANUARY 9,2015

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Being and Seeing

Living in a new place sends us spinning out into the countryside every chance we can. It’s fun to just get lost and see where we end up, and of course, along the way we see everything from the grand scale of the countryside to small notes of momentary significance. That’s part of the pleasure of being and seeing in a new place.

On the road to St. Remy this wall of of sunny stone holds a procession of London Plane trees, pruned in the manner of this part of France, which is always astonishing to see given how they reach and swirl their limbs toward the sunlight, and they never fail to make me gasp at their powerful forms. As I came to a halt at the light it seemed as if everything there pinged a red note at the same moment, and then we moved on.

While waiting for lunch in a restaurant in St. Remy, I watched the play of light on the wall nearby, the kind of distraction that comes when you are ready to order and the waiter is lingering elsewhere. Moments like this you could call, ‘filler moments’, my eyes wandering over everything looking for some hook to catch my attention, and often the most unexpected things call out to me. In this case the projections from a leaded glass window tumbled over the geometrics of the window frame which itself sat near an elegant old radiator.

When these kinds of collisions happen I always try to make something out of them, try to see in a different way, it’s more like play really as I juggle the elements in the frame to see how long I can stay interested. Sometimes it is just an exercise and leads nowhere, and other times a fresh breeze blows through my mind.

ONCE MORE AROUND THE SUN

A photograph every day for a year