La Macchina Fotografica

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.

The camera makes me feel like a skulking voyeur. Pointing the damned thing at people makes them nervous. Therefore, I oftern walk around with my camera as if I were a cat tiptoeing on a sheet of aluminum foil. Cat owners who have actually seen their feline doing this will appreciate what I mean. More times than not, I want to be invisible.

When I feel myself getting shy or paranoid I start photographing my reflection. I’m a willing subject, even when I’m cranky, and I really don’t care what I look like in my images. Sometimes the worse I look the better the image is.

Besides being a convenient method of self-portrait, the reflection deepens the complexity of an image and reveals the elusiveness of reality. Children intuitively grab at reflections like they do soap bubbles. Both are elusive. Children understand the multiple planes of reality.

A reflection is so deep and complex that each viewer sees something different in it. Whether our own reflection is bouncing back at us or not, reflections are mirrors of our soul. We see into them what we must. And so I photograph them as often as I can, especially when I feel that blasted aluminum foil under my feet.

A lot of my early work, especially the reflections, was about what I call the surrealism of everyday life…picking out the strangeness in the world we live in. Those doors are doors that could lead you to other worlds, or what is behind what is in front of you. – Stephanie Torbert

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.

Regular readers of this blog know of the Pyracantha Caper. For some time, someone had been decorating an agave plant along the old rail bed near our home with pyracantha berries. The berries were placed onto the thorny spikes of the agave in a somewhat festive manner. I decided to augment this clandestine activity with a flourish of my own berry decorations. It was a good way to spend that otherwise dull week between Christmas and the new year. I’d hoped others would participate in this secret, suburban art project. Alas, no one did.

I revisited the agave plant a week after my lonely decorating party, my heart bursting with expectation. Not only did no one add berries to the thorny plant, someone or some creature removed all of them that I’d applied. I’m officially blaming the smart-alecky birds that terrorize these parts and I’m accusing them of being the perpetrators. And, it’s not only the crows. One would expect that kind of misbehavior from those bad boys. The truth is that there are lots of birds of all kinds around here that eat the fermenting pyracantha berries and then dive-bomb my truck with their berry-stained poop. I can deal with the red plops on the truck. But, did they have to eat my suburban art project?

See for yourself. I have photographic evidence. Those birds are lucky that all the shooting I do around here is with a camera. Thanks to the drunk birds (some who have flown into our picture window while inebriated) all the berries are gone from the art project and the trees. Therefore, readers take note: there will be no more suburban pyracantha art projects until late fall.

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.

Old cars share a sadness. They speak in faded shades of worn patina. Old hopes reflect back to me in their marred paint. Long after fat ties and worn suites are rounded up into Goodwill bags, certain old cars hang around the neighborhood. I have written of them in past blogs.

I still see most of the same old that I wrote about back in December ‘08. Nothing much has changed with them. They are as predictable as my morning routine. On a rare day I’ll veer off routine’s course and find a new street with a brand new, old car. Rarely is the car not photogenic. Its history radiates out and is easily captured with camera.

A bit like encountering Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, an old-car encounter is emotionally dark. There is nothing like a has-been to kindle feelings of one’s own missed opportunities. The scratches and dents and dabs of touch-up paint remind me of a black-tie charity event. Everything is past its prime and the stories are in the details—behind the smiles and makeup. I wonder about the body putty on the fender, some primer sprayed on the nose.

Meeting a new old car reminds me of my Uncle Fritzie. Uncle Fritzie drove an old, black sedan with a sunshade over its windshield. He worked in a perfume factory and always smelled like a cosmetic counter after an earthquake. You could always smell his presence long before actually seeing him. His sedan, needless to say, possessed his peculiar odor whether he was in it or not. When his car was at my grandmother’s house I always knew that I’d have to kiss him on the cheek and sit in his lap. If I paid enough attention to him, he’d give me a quarter. Old cars are the essence of lost times.

In a scratchy dream I learn to fly. In effortless propulsion I glide through air and space. “Why haven’t I tried this before?” I ask myself. Somehow I reach an oasis of palms. Lanky and swaying, they acknowledge my arrival. They are rooted, yet free—something I make note of as I land on my feet and look up.

In my altered state I realize that these palms are familiar. They are the palms of Larkspur. I stay for awhile, something akin to a picnic. Then I propel myself off again into the pearly fog of my dream. I soon awaken in my bed, now firmly tethered by the gravity, space, and time. For a split second I wonder why I can no longer fly. Then my cat whacks me.

When one embraces a place in a dream, its reality changes. It becomes hyperreal, of a different dimension. Having forgotten the rules of dream-flying I place my feet on the floor and put on a fresh pair of socks. New socks in the morning are one of life’s great pleasures. The cat nudges me and prances off. In that moment I decide to visit the Larkspur palms, which are within walking distance, in the town next door.

I have admired the palms for years, mostly passing by in my truck. “I must photograph them someday,” I say. During my walk on this day I approach them from a different perspective, one of a freshly-minted dream. I look up and they sway at me just like they did the night before. I wonder, for a moment, if the dream is still on. My feet, feeling the somber weight of gravity, tell me otherwise.

No, the dream has surely left. But, it has given me a gift of insight and I see in a less-rigid way. My day to photograph the palms has arrived. I seize the moment and find a tiny smidgen of bliss…