Tag Archives: Maggie

MAY 6, 2015

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Simple things

A late evening walk after a soft rain. Gianni accompanied us so we could all catch up with the events of the season we had spent in France. Suddenly he leaped over the edge to grab some flowers. His spirit, and the joy he takes in everything, reminded me of why we love Tuscany so much.

It’s not only nature that calls to us, but a friendship with a man of this land whose connection  to it is so natural and deep that it has added a respect for all things Tuscan to our way of thinking. And out of that has come a kind of image making that is open and relaxed and about daily pleasure. And so portraits and gestures, and landscapes, and still lives, and the simplest of daily comings and goings mark my days. Everything seems photographable.

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APRIL 30, 2015

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Walking Stick

We had packed the house for a May 1 departure back to Tuscany. We were nearly done with the last details when Maggie walked out the door with this little walking stick I had bought a few weeks before. Why I bought it I had no real idea, just that the stick itself seemed to have a kind of ‘character’ that I felt might make its way into a still life; slender, with a small, knobby head, and a lovely flexibility that made me want to do a little dance when I picked it up.

It’s the kind of stick that as soon as one takes it in hand a transformation occurs; turning one into a Chaplin, or Chevalier, or a dandy, a fencer, a hoofer… and Maggie was no different as she strutted out the door and did her little jig and spin for me. At moments like this one can see their intimates in a new light because the playfulness and theatrics are revealing in sudden and fresh ways. Although with Maggie I am fortunate to have a partner who is always ready to play, and so I see different characters quite often. Still, if there is no camera in hand the transformations are lost to time.

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04-30 Maggie struts

APRIL 6 -11, 2015

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Seeing the Light

I look out the window never knowing what I’ll see that may be of interest. Will it be the weather? The landscape? Street activity? Even if we are familiar with our window’s frame, expecting it to show us the same old scene just altered by time or season, we can be surprised. The frame can move our attention just as we move the camera in front of our eye. On this bleak day, with a light rain falling, the delicate tracery of the cypress trees on the water, and the subtle coloration of the pool’s structure, made me feel as if I was seeing lavender in the overall aqua that I wasn’t sure was there. There was no lavender in the grey sky. Yet the grey bands in the pool delicately resonated with color. My feeling was that all that aqua produced a lavender echo in my eye, and on the sensor. And it is that magic of color seeing that has always seduced me.

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Carrying the camera always makes me interested in something along the way, and thus I am always having to catch up to family or friends who are already ahead of me. But sometimes it pays off if even in small ways. Seeing Maggie and our friends ahead of me as we hurried to the cinema made me appreciate the now lengthened hours of the day, and the lovely mix of last light and lamplight in this old town’s narrow alleys. I had that jolt, as I so often do, that, “I am Here, now!” And the recognition of the meaning of being in every moment becomes ringingly clear.                                                                                                                                                           April 7

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Nature takes hold wherever it can, it is, after all, nature’s dominion that we live in. So when I stand in front of something as simple as an ivy covered wall, naked in this season, I see the vivacious complexity of it all, and thrill to the marvel of it once again in yet another form. I imagined a print of it at 8 or 10 feet, and see how something so simple can also convey great power, depending upon its scale.

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I pulled into an empty lot to turn the car around and swung into line with the back wall of a  cemetery filled with crazy topiary bushes and trees. But what really called out to me at this late hour of the day, was the enormous pile of stones banked near the wall. There was something so funereal about the pile and the way it was stacked and ordered, that i got out to walk around it and take it all in. The scene became more mysterious as the light faded and the stones emanated a ghostly radiance. I guess it was just right for a cemetery.

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What a riot of color this restaurant was! Earlier in the week I was taken with the barely discernible lavender tones in a green pool, and was questioning color’s way of working in a subtractive or additive way. But here, the mix and bounce and reflection and blending of colors was a whole lesson in primaries and complementary colors, and the wait for our food to arrive was taken up with the beauty of how light transforms wherever we are and what we see.

April 10

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With all the various kinds of light this week presented, when it comes to feelings of intimacy there is nothing like candlelight. That old touch of primitive fire, flickering and dancing the shadows on the walls, making moods and mystery where electric light would elaborate the harsh details and leave us looking at the repairs we need to make rather than at the beauty of the moment. The cameras of today do very well in low light situations, and in fact have advanced our ability to see into the dark in ways that film struggled with. I am grateful when the technology of our times adds expressive potential to our ideas.

April 11

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MARCH 11, 2015

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Playmates

It was one of those spring days where everything seemed to be popping. Radiant greens along sun-warmed banks and walls, tiny buds pushing out of branch ends, grape vines beginning to look like miniature candelabras, a joyous day where I was aware of trees in a way that winter made me forget. When I stop to look at each tree individually their complexity and magnitude become astonishing, even trees that at first don’t seem to be worth the look, but then grab my attention because of where they are growing and what trials they had to overcome to survive.

I have probably photographed hundreds of trees in my life as a photographer, and none of them are just a ‘generic’ tree to me. They seem to me to be more like portraits of creatures who are extravagant in their proportions, structure, overall form, and, in season, their foliage. None of them are asking to be seen or photographed, but when I stand in their space I often get their message.

Here are some trees I encountered along the way, and what they suggested I do if I wanted to play with them, or watch as Maggie did.

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Maggie 4 trees

FEBRUARY 28, 2015

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Emptiness

The end of February! An unusually warm day, springlike even. We walk through the fields        outside the town and realize how the sun adds a lightness to our step as well as to our sense of place. Coming back into town we cross the library plaza and suddenly the scale becomes theater-like, and Maggie’s caped form, bold in the hard sunlight, makes her seem like an actor on the stage, then she twirls and comes to rest laughing and blinded by the full on glare of the sun. It is an irresistible moment! I feel the hard blue of the sky, the hard sunlight, the hard black edge of her form, the hard edge of the frame above her head, all known in that moment’s grace after the twirl, and before she walks away. It’s as fast as that!

Emptiness is a condition of photography that I have come to cherish. And as you may know, I love the charged, crowded precincts of big cities where everything going on all over the frame has enchanted me since I first began making photographs. But now there are times when the simplicity of place itself sends its awakening call through me, and when someone I love is passing within the boundaries it makes it even more vital for me.

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FEBRUARY 18, 2015

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Leo

There it is! The first tiny bud indicating that spring will come again. Maggie, the gardener in our life notices every change, even the slightest, which is how a true gardener perceives the world. Her glee, the sweet innocence of her discovery, moves me to delight. I see the child-like spirit, maybe even catch a glimpse of who she was when she was 10 years old. This brief morphing of the mature Maggie into the child is something all of us are lucky to see in our loved ones. Like seeing the original before the world gave us our lumps.

Simple as this is I like seeing the pairing of the trellis form and Maggie’s, and – only an insider can know this – I catch sight of the word LEO on the lintel, and Maggie is a Leo, so that’s a little playful aside, which tickles me. But who else knows and who cares? Me!

And as we know it’s only for us that we make photographs, but I put it out here now because of all the images from today this is the one that makes me stop for a moment to take it in, and to wonder how that small square of earth can support such a generous plant, which, in fact, goes all along the roof line in both directions and must be amazing to look at in summertime when it’s in full bloom.

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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!

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FEBRUARY 2, 2015

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The Child in the Adult

Maggie was a dancer in New York back in the 70’s. She is a natural mime, and is always open to whatever impulses the world sends her way. Walking with her has been an adventure for the last 25 years, since I never know what unexpected, playful gesture or move she’ll make. This day for example; bitterly cold, a mistral blowing, but out we went for a walk up and down the quiet streets of Bonnieux.

She is just as likely to jump up on a wall and walk it like a tightrope, as she is to spin around when a gust of wind spirals the leaves across the road and around her feet. She was 15 feet ahead of me when I saw her interacting with the tree, and so lost in play was she that I was able to slide up behind her without her knowing I was there and make a series of images which speak to me of the child still living inside the adult.

I am reminded that our loved ones are just as crazy as the rest of the world, and that intimacy is no excuse to not see them as separate and amazing.

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JANUARY 11, 2015

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Focus/Locus

There are times in the life of a couple when one observes the other in an unguarded moment, like this image of Maggie at her studio table, lost in the process of feeling her way around in something she is working on. At a moment like this I feel radiant with love for her!  I see the child-like concentration, and the adult’s expansion of the moment. This elasticity of focus is the state of mind that produces interesting answers to the question being posed, as well as the next question.

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Earlier in the day we walked to what has become a new locus for our casual rambles around the village; a lavender field bordered by cherry trees with Bonnieux in the background holding onto the hillside as it has done since late Roman times. A long time ago, when my family was young I made photographs of them that were separate from my so called, ‘tougher’ street work, but then I learned that family life needn’t be treated any differently than the everyday world. In fact one has to look much harder to see into our intimate lives.

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