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.
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.”
Homey
I had seen Maggie doing a homey piece of handwork – sewing weights into the bottom of a fly curtain over the front door – and was moved to see such a simple task being done with so much pleasure. She is a real contadini in that way. She loves old methods and the life people led in the past.
When I stepped outside a whole other image presented itself, one a bit more comical, and probably one I might have made on any street, anywhere in the world. That kind of disembodied image that gives off a tremor of surprise that is accompanied by pleasure.
N.B. The wrong month and day were inserted yesterday
Humility
This is where we live. On a real farm in the hills of Tuscany. Those cows are out our door and down the slope maybe 150 yards away. Most of the time I don’t think of cows as subject matter that I’d be interested in, but when this double rainbow fell into their field they suddenly became more important to me just by being in the space. It’s the humility that gets to me. They’re not exciting the way wild animals might be. They just ruminate around, eating, lying down, wandering to the pond for a drink and a cool place to be, what a life. I could learn something from them.
There are evenings when we walked down the road just to be in their presence. They stand and look, and we do the same, and often something happens that is as simple and ancient as old dutch landscape paintings, with hay ricks and wagons, and farmhouses and sometimes a wonderful weather event in the distance. I don’t know what it is about this ordinariness, but it goes in deep, and I continue to try and find my way to making photographs that tell it right.
For a city guy to to be in this kind of country, without the drama of street life, is a lovely problem to take on, especially for a ‘photograph a day’ project. Some days things are very quiet in the country, so making work requires a different kind of openness.
On the walk back to the house Maggie (then the space behind her was bare gravel, and now, 2 years later, it is lush with flowers and clover and trees – a magical transformation made by Maggie) picked up two rose petals which were dazzling in her hands in the low light.
Accepting the Unexpected
Gianni knows how we like strange stuff to work with, me for my still lives, and Maggie for her constructions and other assemblages. On this day he brought a small barrel of wood shavings he saw in a woodworker’s atelier and had an immediate response to. So in they came and the first response was to how great they smelled, like being in a sawmill and taking in the sweet fragrance of pine and chestnut.
We give back and forth with Gianni. Whenever we come across something quirky or mysterious in some way, or very old and once of use in the old methods of working the land here, we bring it back for him. Part of this give and take brings us closer to the culture here and makes us more aware of the past and what remains of it in the present.
By accepting things as odd as this bowl of shavings I open myself to new ways of looking, and now that I have been making still lives I surprise myself by what speaks to me. I feel that seeing and photographing is an ongoing process of opening, again and again, to the unexpected, no matter what form it comes in.
Off Limits
We have had a special friendship with Gianni for 20 years. It was his character and generosity that led us to think about starting our own workshops in Tuscany 20 years ago. At that time he was the director of a large azienda; Castelnuovo Tancredi, on which there was a castle and 7 renovated farmhouses capable of holding 40-50 people. The castle was lived in by the owner, who at 102 is still living there! And who danced at our wedding when she was 87.
So, Gianni is, for us, and I know for many other people too, a special keeper of the flame of old Tuscany. And it is with him that we frequently go off on jaunts around the countryside searching for old treasures that carry the history of the region. And this year we have taken a studio all together to make a kind of museum out of these finds, and also to work on our own projects in. But when I made these images 2 years ago, while doing the picture a day project, we were just finding our way to living here more regularly.
Maggie has learned her Italian by speaking with Gianni who is immensely patient with us, and is a great communicator himself, while not speaking a word of English. I find that I can photograph our lives as if I was out on the street anywhere in the world, and that this trio we make provides countless picture opportunities. It brings up that same lesson again and again; do not treat the intimate space of family as if it was off limits for doing serious work.
You Will Be Surprised
When I am out walking with Maggie (who, among many other professions during a well lived life, was a dancer) the unpredictable often happens, so carrying a camera is a foregone conclusion. She, spins, and kicks, and runs and laughs, like a 6 year old, and she is more than 10 times that, but her energy and humor are part of the bounty she has brought into my life. Every so often I think; ‘why haven’t I made a book about her?’
While considering a photograph for today’s blog this one popped into view, as did that thought once again. I must have a thousand photographs of Maggie from our 20+ years together, probably more. This is a photographer’s dilemma; the thought that someone close to you is not the stuff of a book. In fact the family and loved ones constitute a great subject for an intimate work, if only we are willing to take the time to look closely at what we have. It also is a portrait of how one ages. Consider Nick Nixon’s series of the four, Brown sisters. When looking at them we see the wear and tear of lives spanning 40 years which, even without words, is an amazing document that grows deeper with each reading and every year.
So, look into your files for those images that you though were too personal, or too familiar, and try looking at them as if you were a stranger who has discovered this trove in a flea market trunk, the way John Maloof discovered Vivian Maier. You will be surprised.
Anniversary Day
One day a year Maggie and I travel Once More Around The Sun and find ourselves on the road where we were married 14 years ago. It is a road enclosed by tall Cypress trees, male and female trees mixed together for the last hundred years, or more and whose shapes tell you the difference. The female trees are rounder, thicker, taller, and have small, round, fruited pine cones the size of chestnuts, all over them. The males are slender, not s tall and seem to bend in the wind easier. They certainly are the inferior looking part of the species.
We always go for a walk there at the time of day that we were married, around 6 o’clock. Some days it’s sunny, as it was on our day, and others, as in this image, cooler, clouded over, grayer. We have had it every way and it doesn’t matter what kind of day it is, it’s still our day, and we always make the most of what we are given. Which, as you may have heard me say before, is what is at the heart of the photographic experience; ‘make the most of what you have.’
Who Could Ask For Anything More
What return to home! And to be greeted by Maggie and Nature in the double embrace of love and beauty. Who could ask for anything more?
ONCE MORE AROUND THE SUN 