Tag Archives: portrait

MARCH 13, 2015

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Glorious Monster

The French are brutal pruners of their trees in springtime. Not that I know much about the methods of pruners and what is right or not, although I am sure they are right since the trees live long and look healthy and produce well. This glorious monster had caught my eye countless times as I drove past, making my head snap to attention to catch a glimpse of its wild crown of thorns as I whizzed past.

On this day I had to stop. The tree had been given a Mohawk that really was fantastic to look at. I parked at roadside and waltzed around it for the 10 minutes or so it took to try and see where the image was at its best; where it sang its song, danced its dance, came into focus as an image as well as being just the tree itself. These exercises in limited situations (I couldn’t get behind it as the gate was locked) are fun to experience because they test one’s patience, inventiveness, and character.

Here it stands in all its grandeur, yet humiliated by the crappy sign, fence, and surroundings. I gave it all my attention but couldn’t rescue it from its fate.

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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 26, 2015

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The other side of the camera

This is what it looks like from the other side of the camera. I was being interviewed and filmed by the BBC for a documentary on Vivian Meier. I had been involved with her work almost from the very beginning, because, when John Maloof discovered what he had bought, and began asking for opinions from a number of photographers about the quality of the work, he called me, and I said, “she’s the real thing’!

I contributed to this BBC version because a friend was the producer of the film and I couldn’t say no to him even though I had already been filmed by John. It all worked out in the end and John’s film has brought a lot of attention to the work, which is the best result possible.

But as I sat there facing them I had the impulse to make a record of the moment, since it was one of the parts of the day that seemed worthy of remembering. It’s a record, more or less of who was there, how the place served us, and what life in Bonnieux offered. It’s what photography can do in its simplest, most utilitarian way.

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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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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.

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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.

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And so it goes.

JANUARY 19, 2015

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Exotic Birds

This unforgettable woman passed me on the street while I was being filmed for a documentary about my street work ( you can see the filmmaker in the background). How fortunate was I that she appeared just then?

She was lost in thought, glove dangling from her lips, extreme hairdo, like an exotic birds’, and an angular and chiseled face. I kept pace with her for perhaps 10 seconds of backpedaling on the crowded street, during which she never saw or felt me and my fascination with her.

In moments like that the street is still a wonder for me, mainly because we are all such exotic and mysterious creatures, and when instinct calls my attention to another human being, or the interaction between people, I simply accept and move with it as quickly and invisibly as I can. It’s amazing to me that I can still keep up, and that I still desire to see and know something about the moment.

This curiosity about strangers has been my passion for more than fifty years, and I am grateful to have learned the necessary behavior to be out there seeing it all and not bruising the situation in any way that might turn it from reality to something staged or predetermined.

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