A blog about photography & transformative art
Most artists I know, with few exception, simplify their work as they mature. It may be that the passage of life beckons us towards the essence of things. Maybe we simply tire of complexity. Perhaps our senses reach overload after accumulating a lifetime of details. Our attic gets cluttered and we need to have a garage sale.
There is a dark, dreamlike drama that I search for in landscape. Even on cheerful, sunny days, I try to find a deepening shadow. High noon in the summer is, to me, almost unbearable. I crave the places of mystery, the depth of brooding light. Summer is a tough time of year for me. There's no place to hide.
Photography is magic. I suppose we all know that but it's become so common and easy that we have become desensitized to the miracle of it. I do love the way most everyone plays with photography now. I see people making images everywhere I go, with phones, automated cameras, and gadgets of all kinds. Yet, digital imaging is so immediate and so very automated that I wonder if some of the magic and wonder have been bred out of photography.
Photography has the ability to impart monumental importance upon the most mundane of objects. The tactile lusciousness of a deliberately crafted photo almost automatically makes anything with texture to be important. Texture, form, and singularity are the essence of monument and photography, as a visual medium, gives us the tools to achieve this effectively.
High atop one of the tallest hills in the Marin Headlands is an FAA antenna. Looking like an odd, little silo, it can be seen from quite a distance. As one approaches it, its strangeness emerges. It stands in utter silence, braced against the ocean wind. Surrounded by a gleaming white fence, it is unapproachable. Warning signs tell hikers to stay away, stay off, don't tamper. Lives are at stake. In the post-9/11 world one dares not go near anything related to air traffic safety. I figured the fence was electrified or had some weird force field emanating from it. I steered way clear of the damned thing.
"Do you guys know how to get back on the Coastal Trail, going north?" I asked two hikers. I was getting desperate. I'd been hiking for about twelve miles on a hike that was supposed to be less than eight. I'd passed the stage of being curiously lost.
It's been awhile since I wrote about the eucalyptus tree in the Corte Madera Town Park. I try to visit the tree often but sometimes I simply neglect it. Other times I go, say hello, and can't find artistic inspiration.
Please forgive my current obsession with Muir Beach sand. It will pass. I've been photographing these small sand vignettes for years, squirreling them away on my hard drive, not quite knowing what to do with them. I've always liked them but wondered if anyone else would feel the same way. I feel shy about them. But, creativity has its oddities and for some reason, right now, these simple, little images need to see the light of day.
"Listen to the ocean!" my mother used to tell me. Back in the early '60s the Jersey Shore had big conch shells cast onto the beach. They were everywhere. I was a short little towhead with a buzz cut and snazzy white sunglasses. I picked up a shell and held it to my ear. Sure enough, it had the echo of the ocean deep inside it.
The sand of Muir Beach is ever an elusive, artist's palette. It is swept constantly by sea and wind, its surf adds and subtracts. One cannot become too attached to any particular composition. None are made to last. But, in their brief life, they are lovely as anything ever conceived.
