La Macchina Fotografica

I often find myself out on a limb—way off on a tangent. It’s a borderline condition, not enough OCD for medication, but I do obsess a bit much on my art projects. Then—poof—they burn out like a pop of flash powder. So is it with my window-reflections series.

I have no idea from where these things come. Such is the mercurial nature of creativity. I suppose my fascination with shop-window reflections originates from an early and consistent love of the Eugene Atget. His Parisian windows are among the most haunting images I’ve ever known. He was reportedly a shy man who preferred to photograph a deserted Paris in the early hours of the day. His loneliness shows in most every image and proves to me that what we choose to photograph is really, and ultimately, ourselves.

And so it is that today I end my recent adventures down the rabbit hole of reflective images. Readers of this blog have suffered enough. Tomorrow it’s back to the rock-solid world. The earth shall be firm under my feet. Everything will be clear and understandable. Life will make sense. The camera shall reveal all. Goodbye reflections.

Poof.

A good photograph is like a good hound dog, dumb, but eloquent. – Eugene Atget

It’s a brisk day in Northern California. I pull my coat collar tight up to my neck. This stops the downward draft that goes all the way to my waist. The overall visual effect makes me look like one of those little spies in Spy vs. Spy (Mad Magazine, circa 1968). On this day, I feel like the black spy waiting for the white spy’s engagement. I prowl the sidewalks on the balls of my feet—the way cats do.

I look at a shop window and into my reflection. I’m missing my fedora, a dandy Borsalino that I found in Verona on a distant day when I was then, too, cold and brooding. Today I wear a baseball cap, a feeble substitute. I wonder why I don’t wear the fedora more often, but, elegant hats in America just don’t seem right. My reflection looks less like a spy and more like a typical Marin County male just past his prime.

I shake myself of my self-absorption long enough to notice a woman. She’s also looking at my reflection.Given that I’m wearing sunglasses I don’t think she knows that I’m looking back at her. It is an eery encounter. I lift my camera gently, focus…and squeeze the shutter release. She’s still staring so I make five more images.

I walk off. And I wonder about her and her life’s story, figuring we’ll never cross paths again. Then I return to my spy fantasy and look for another window and another reflection. By now my collar has fallen so I pull it up again. The draft is yet again uncomfortable.

I saw three big cameras at the farmer’s market this weekend. It seemed to make the photographers imposing and separate from the life of the market. Lenses are getting longer and bulkier. It used to be that a zoom lens was an extravagance—it was most certainly a tradeoff in quality. Back in my youth, most serious photographers used prime lenses because zooms were so unsharp. Now everyone seems to use a zoom lens. I do, though with ambivalence.

While zoom lenses are enormously helpful, they do tend to keep us away from our subjects. It’s so much easier to zoom in than it is to move in. But, moving in is where the action is. Moving in takes interaction and courage. There is nothing worse than a portfolio of people images, all photographed with a long-focal-length lens. The detachment and sterility are palpable.

Move in. I remind myself of this constantly. Sometimes I do, other times I succumb to the shyness and laziness of staying back letting the lens to the work. Moving in forces an interaction between camera and subject. The camera becomes part of the stage, the unseen actor that provokes reaction.

One of the best-known encounters with camera is exhibited in the famous photo of Joseph Goebbels by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Shot in Geneva in 1933, Goebbels glares at Eisenstaedt as the photographer moves in with his camera. It is chilling preview of Nazi horrors to come. Eisenstaedt, a Jew, courageously intruded into Goebbels personal space to evoke the hidden veracity of the Nazi regime. A long lens would have yielded nothing more than a tabloid-style throw-away image. Instead, we see truth.

This weekend at the market I tried to move in whenever possible. The result is today’s image of one of the market workers as he looked up at me for a spit second. For that moment we saw each other, interacted, and acknowledged each other’s existence. I don’t think it’s a deep photo, but it does have power—thanks to moving in.

Carrying a camera around in a public place is tricky business. Sometimes I think people assume the worst in the person behind the lens. The world of paparazzi and hysterical mass media have made us wary of everything and everyone. Try carrying a tripod around a few major buildings in a big city and watch the reaction. Most likely a security guard will pop up out of nowhere and tell you to go away. When a society assumes the worst, it usual realizes its expectations. Sadly, fear is big business.

The fear of photography gives me angst. My camera and I are simply trying to find that little sliver of a moment when people become themselves. Sadly, cameras can get in the way of the treasure hunt. People stiffen, sometimes smile, other times scowl. They tend to look at the camera askance, out of the corner of the eye. While the reaction to the camera is part of the reality of the moment, my goal is to trigger the shutter just before that happens. While my intentions are good, it makes me feel more like a hunter than an artist.

The world of photography is partly to blame for the hostility towards it. Photography can be aggressive and invasive. Examine, for a moment, the language of photography. We capture images, take photos, and shoot our subjects. The term, snapshot, is borrowed from the sport of gun shooting. I know not why these terms were adopted by photographers. However, I try never to use them.

Who among us wants to be shot, captured, and taken?

Outside looking in. Fourth Street is dead on the Monday of a three-day weekend. There is a sterile scent of nothingness in the air. I escaped from the studio to see the world and the world stayed home. I’m just slightly out-of-sync on the tail end of a twilight-zone holiday.

President’s Day weekend is among the strangest long weekends. Not exactly the birthday of any one president, it is little more than an excuse for ski weekend. No one seems to even think of Washington or Lincoln or anyone other president. On the way to San Rafael I did see one of those tea-party guys hang a pathetic little “Impeach” sign on a chain-link fence along Highway 101. I give him credit. At least he was thinking about presidents on President’s Day. But his creepy little sign just added to the weirdness of the abandoned day.

Outside looking in. There’s nothing left to do but smoosh my face against empty shop windows. Every light in every window is off. Dark. I come upon a closed, glass door. Inside is a stairwell littered with old magazines and phone books. I ask myself why they’re there. Then I imagine one of those old black & white TV shows from my youth where some guy (me) is about to realize that there was a nuclear war and he’s the sole survivor. I wonder how old the magazines are.

Right around noon a couple shops open. The world transforms from monochrome to color. I awaken from my B-grade fantasy and realize that I haven’t given one thought to a single president, dead or alive. The day remains a mystery as do the old magazines behind the glass door. Outside looking in.

Suburbia. It feels like a dream in which a towering mountain of wet wool buries my sorry soul deep within it. In that dream I poke my head out of the suffocating mass of animal fur. I am nearly decapitated by a black SUV as it rushes past me. Some crazed woman is taking her child to piano lessons…and she’s running late. Welcome to my suburban postcard from hell.

Deep within this mass of conformity there are pockets of resistance. Yesterday, emphatically not in a dream, I meandered around downtown San Rafael. I stopped in my tracks and blinked. No, I really was awake.

“Curious about…pole dancing?” asked the little handmade sign in the shop window.

Not only was there a book on the art of pole dancing, there were several intriguing outfits of the garter-belt variety. Feeling warm in my overcoat, I looked around to see if anyone was watching me. I stared at the window and deeply into my imagination. A daytime dream emerged. This one has me in a crosswalk. Suddenly one of those SUV mothers ran me over and then got out of her black, suburban-warfare tank. She was dressed in a pole dancing outfit and asked me, “Curious about…pole dancing?” I blinked and shook off the daymare.

Suburban living has its challenges.

I feel anticipation as I approach the pumps. Each day they are different. Astride a small dam that forms the lagoon, they adjust the water levels of the various channels and basins that make up our ambitious flood-control project. These homely contraptions are the unsung heroes our lowlands. For a town that was once known specifically for its floods, we haven’t had a big flood in years.

The water level of the canal, which the pumps feed, is a mystery. I’ve never been able to correlate it to the changing tides or weather or the impending threat of flood. Sometimes it’s low, other times to the brim. When low, the pump apparatus is visible. It reminds me of the exposed and vulnerable shellfish at Muir Beach during low tide—the enormous outlets of the pump are uncomfortable and naked. When silent, they take on an ominous stillness. It feels like the suspension of time. I want to stay there until they spew forth the frothing, churning water of the lagoon behind them.

The pumps remind me of Robert Smithson’s seminal work, The Monuments of Passaic (1967). Smithson, a native son of Passaic, New Jersey (as am I) and best known for his earthwork, Spiral Jetty, contemplated the significance of the wastelands of suburban New Jersey. He proclaimed the pipes and pumps of Passaic to be fountains. Its bridges and sandboxes and pontoons were, in a wry perspective, also monumental.

Has Passaic replaced Rome as the Eternal City? – Robert Smithson, The Monuments of Passaic

Are the pumps of Corte Madera our monuments to fine urban planning? Or are they the reminders of the follies of filling our tidal marshes with tract houses? I haven’t decided. Yet, there is no question of their significance. People pass them every day with their poodle or bichon frise. They ignore the noble structures, even as they protect the low-lying tract houses from the surge of bay’s tide. It’s a thankless job. In honor of their fine work, I’ve decided that they, like The Monuments of Passaic, should be elevated in status. I hereby proclaim the pumps to be now named, The Fountains of Corte Madera. Postcards to follow.

“I wish I were in Italy right now,” I thought. Then, suddenly, I became aware of my mental complaining. Sometimes the camera will do that to you. It wants to find something exotic. On this particular morning my macchina fotografica wanted an italic slant on things. All I could give it was a simple walk around the hood which is actually good practice for the mind’s eye. If you can make images in suburbia you can make them anywhere.

Generally, come the month of February, I start getting antsy. The nesting instinct starts getting old. I look at the migratory birds and wonder when I might fly somewhere for the new season. Pretty soon our feathered friends are leaving this habitat. I might like to go with them.

While busy making migratory plans I came across a homely post, set in concrete. “Nothing here,” I told myself and my camera. Then I looked with more intent. There actually was something about this tiny scene that appealed to me. I got lost in the moment. A weak, winter sun provided a moment of golden illumination. I made an image. The moment left along with the shaft of sunlight. I felt sprinkles on my back.

Instead of longing for Italy I completed my walk with camera, looking for more images like a hawk does for his breakfast. My step quickened as my anticipation for an exotic journey waned. It was replaced by my desire to get to the studio and see my post picture. When I got back I was not disappointed.

Staring at the edge of the canal I look down into the morning light. Lately I’ve preferred looking at the sky’s reflection than directly at the real thing itself. Sometimes the sky is too much for morning; too bright and too vast. Its reflection is nearer and more intimate—something into which I get lost.

Getting lost is the phobia of contemporary society. We’ll do anything to prevent it. We have Google Maps. We have GPS. We have our phones. Soon we’ll carry with us every song, every book, every bit of contact info, and every Word document we own, at all times. Then, in our brave new world, whatever we do, wherever we go, we simply cannot get lost. We will always know where we are.

I now know why getting lost is so frightening. It is losing control. It is letting go. It is looking deep into a reflection until the reflection yields—and becomes something else. Lately, I’ve been looking into morning reflections. And getting lost.

I looked out my window late yesterday morning. High clouds. Normally I like to make photos early in the morning when the air is fresh and the sun is golden—when the world is my own. But high, wispy clouds mean magic in photography so I broke my own rules. I went out with my camera in the latest part of the morning.

Cirrus clouds diffuse the sun just enough to soften and fill shadows. They add drama to sky. Painters know that cirrus clouds are the most difficult of clouds to paint. Their delicacy is elusive. In photography we must take care with when pointing the camera to sky. Blown-out highlights are the death of wispiness.

While I’ve noticed the cottony light of cirrus skies for years, I have come to realize that there is more to the magic. Reflections take on new drama and depth on days like these. Gone are the harsh specular highlights that can ruin an image. Surfaces glow instead of sparkle. There is always something new to learn about light. It is a magician who never reveals all the secrets. The sorcerer unveils the truth with time and contemplation.

Yesterday I found the Larkspur Palms again. The sky turned them to towering monuments of grace and drama. I found angles and perspectives that I’d not known before. It was the light that whet my appetite but it was also the emerging truth the comes with familiarity with a subject. Too often we seek the unfamiliar with photography, forgetting our own backyard. The truth can be found in the familiar. Revisiting a subject over and over is like peeling an onion. I’ve only begun with the Larkspur Palms.