A blog about photography & transformative art
Photography is a medium that lends itself to series. Theme and variation. One can create a visual fugue with a photo series, a knitting of space and time into a fabric of singular vision. I know of no other medium that invites an artist to explore series in such a natural way.
When I was a young boy I would visit, with my grandparents, my great-great uncle's farm in South Jersey. That part of New Jersey, in those days, was flat and rural. I haven't been there in many years but I imagine it's still flat and probably less rural. I've heard stories that Uncle Walt's farm is now a condominium complex, a thought that often saddens me. For, in those days, the farm was a place both exotic and foreign, a spot where nothing much happened and nothing at all ever changed.
I have rekindled my love affair with black & white. For awhile I'd been seduced by the juiciness of vibrating color. Push and pull. Chroma. Intensity. Color is a magic carpet that can transport our emotions to faraway places. It is a lifetime obsession in emotion, physics, mathematics, chemistry, and alchemy. Once smitten, color is impossible to shake off. Lately, however, it has given me a hangover.
Every walk has moments of insight—fissures in the quotidian facade. One step, another step, a drone of steps. The crunch of earth under foot is like the shaman's drum. The drum beats and magic swirls with the wind. Dreams give us clues. In dreams one lifts off the ground when walking. Walking becomes floating. Floating turns to soaring. Waking up after a soaring dream is ever a disappointment, as if being awake were actually the dream instead.
Every hike introduces one to new friends. Yesterday, on a hike at Point Reyes National Seashore there were few people to be found, only a cold fog that had settled in the night before. Our hike took us to a high mound of hill where we were to meet our only companions of the day; a herd of dairy cows.
The other morning I looked out the window. Rain. I wondered how the tree in the park was. The rain was falling straight down—no wind. That probably meant that the tree (and all the trees around it) hadn't suffered wind damage. It was simply wet and cold, good for trees, not for walking.
Four hikers in the distance. I moved in with my zoom lens for a closer look. Four hikers. Within ten minutes we would meet on the trail. Halfway between there and here. I wondered about their story; who they were, how they knew each other, why they were here. They were winding their way to us and we to them. We'd pass one another, exchange greetings and then, probably forever, never meet again. The mystery would remain unresolved. A brief engagement, a simple moment. Then the four hikers would be gone.
The gentle ebb and flow of seasonal light is jarringly interrupted with the change from Standard Time to Daylight Saving Time. Everyone seems cranky on the Sunday of the change. Yet, some people proclaim enthusiasm for the illusory, extra hour of light. I am not one of those people. I prefer the natural flow of light and dark, watching how my body and psyche slowly awaken to spring and then fall off to hibernation in winter.
I have given up mass media. Or at least most of them. The screaming headlines, the mindless banter, the search for the bad in everything—it has put me in sour spirit. I am therefore fasting, something that seems utterly appropriate in this Lenten season. The quiet has turned my attention to walking. Alone.
It's been raining here in Northern California for about three weeks. The newspapers were complaining about the drought and now they're complaining about cabin fever. And they still say there isn't enough water. The chronic negativity of the media seems to be unconscious, bouncing from one negative thought to another. It's one big, collective, "Yeah, but..." It's like that one sad-sack person in your life that you're trying to avoid.
