Tag Archives: Provence

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

Show Me The Way

Feb-17 L1026220.

A beautiful day for a walk through the fields of Provence. Here they let travelers and hikers cut across what we think of as private property, as long as you are respectful of the vineyards and orchards, which are the main crops of this fruitful valley, it’s fine with landowners. They must have been pruning the vineyards recently because I came across piles of vines like these everywhere, and while there were hundreds to choose from these two had a quality and form that spoke to me. And besides, I had to carry them for a couple of miles, so they had the right heft.

I was thinking they may work in a still life somehow, but as yet I have no idea what role they’ll play or how I’ll use them. Might just be for firewood in the long run. Who knows? When I got back I placed them on the terrace floor and just looked at them. Sometimes the quiet study of what I have in front of me sends sparks through my mind, which, given room to catch fire, can send me on flights of imagery; aimless, loose, sometimes insightful, and even more often not connected to anything I’m involved in, which is the best I can hope for since it may open a door not yet known.

The light was gorgeous, but on the wane, so I carried the vine around like Liberace with a candelabra, looking for a place to see it separate from the other vine, and not as a still life object. This is not something I have ever spent time doing before. My photographic stance has always been; “the world gives, I receive,” don’t touch a thing! But this year abroad, and the making of some recent still lives, has allowed me – in some cases – to play in ways I never have before. Where it’s all leading I don’t know.

I’m just letting photography show me the way.

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

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Proof of Interest

For many years now I have seen dispossessed chairs hanging out wherever chance has tossed them, like old souls left on their own after a long and faithful service. Like us they have backs and arms and legs and feet and definitely bottoms, some even have a head of sorts. All of which, in some way, may make them so compelling. I have also photographed chairs within more noble or comfortable circumstances; thrones, Cardinal’s chairs, cushy corporate ones, and in nearly every imaginable location.

In fact, during my time working inside Ground Zero, one of the most surprising first sights was the unbelievable numbers of chairs that had been thrown from the buildings and remained intact upon landing! These chairs became the bleachers from which the exhausted rescue and recovery workers watched the amazing daily drama while taking their breaks. Every chair you might conceive of, from the most elegant to the most humble, found its way back to being useful once again.

How did I begin to notice ‘chairs’ as a subject? If I remember correctly it was while working on the light box (remember the light box?) when one day, while I was editing for something else, I noticed some funny chair pictures and tossed them to the top of the box, and then as others appeared I found myself becoming aware that this was a theme that I had not really known I was interested in. But the proof of interest was in the pictures that were appearing. And so I began looking out for them while editing and being more aware of them while out on the street.

I believe that it’s important to be open to the suggestive impulses that emerge, either from the world, or out of the work, for these clues have in them the clearest indication of our natural, instinctive responses, our identity even, and also some sense of the consciousness we may be overlooking when we act in more premeditated ways.

FEBRUARY 15, 2015

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Time As Light

When I began making these new still life photographs, in the year before this image below, I found myself working in a dark environment which was a strange thing for me to do since ‘Light’ was the phenomena that marked my photographs as mine. So why the dark? What was so attractive about that? These thoughts, and many more, are questions that rise up out of the chance events of our lives when combined with our creative impulses.

To tell the truth though, it was the weather! That summer the temperature in Tuscany was over 95 every day for 3 months – it never rained – and so searing was it that during the middle of the day it was impossible to be outside, so I retreated into the little studio that Maggie and I shared on the farm we had rented. The studio has never been my normal habitat.

Confronted with a dark corner there, darker than this one in the photograph from Bonnieux, I made many studies on different backgrounds, and over 2 to 3 weeks of work I finally arrived at this dark cloth as my sfondo (background). In fact I took this 100 year old piece of stained linen and had it printed with a dark tone I made out of a number of reassembled photographs of mine so that i had just what I needed to place my growing collection of dark objects on.

There is a story that perhaps some of you know, but which I heard from Ben Maddow, a friend of Edward Weston’s, when he was writing a book about him back in the 70’s. He told me that the famous image of The Pepper was made by placing it inside an old tin funnel (if you look closely you will see the curves of the funnel below the pepper) and that Weston put it far back in his studio away from the light in front. And that he told his sons, Brett and Cole, not to run around since the exposure was to be a long one and he didn’t want the floor to shake. Then he made an exposure (the stories vary from 6 minutes to many hours), letting the slow accretion of photons come to caress and build the light on the dark pepper set inside the dark funnel, in that dark corner of the studio.

This story always pleased me, and because I’ve used an 8×10 view camera since 1976, and know very well the generosity of the light, especially when time is used as light, I appreciated the strategy, and decided to adopt it to my new work. It has taught me more than I can say here, but perhaps as this blog continues, and these images appear, I’ll carry this inquiry further along.

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!

ONCE MORE AROUND THE SUN

A photograph every day for a year

Tag Archives: Provence

FEBRUARY 17, 2015

FEBRUARY 16, 2015

FEBRUARY 15, 2015

FEBRUARY 13, 2015

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

FEBRUARY 10/11, 2015

FEBRUARY 10, 2015

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

FEBRUARY 8, 2015

FEBRUARY 7, 2015