Photographing Streets...Literally
Since 1980-1981, my point-and-shoot format has been 120/220 or better known as medium format. I've always been attracted to the square format as opposed to rectilinear, and 120/220 film size is substantially larger than 35mm so that prints from 120/220 offer better definition, and they have a quality unlike 35mm. The last 35mm film I exposed was 1992: before that, however, I made a lot of 35mm black & white negatives. With the exception of Polaroid SX-70, 35mm color slides where the only color photographic medium available to me. And what do you do with slides? Having said that, I've been burrowing into my 35mm black & white negative archive. I'm not sure what still works and what doesn't. These two were indicative of what I was doing in the late 1970's. I was purposely blurring images, shooting with Diana Cameras, and learning how to print negatives that often were grossly over-exposed. Both of these were exposed in Paris in the winter of 1977. I remember I was looking down a lot, and taking pictures of what was under foot.
A Black & White Self-Portrait
I'm considering putting together a portfolio of self-portraits. Periodically, I've made self portraits for as long as I've been making photographs. My earliest recollection of this activity was when I was, I don't know, eight or nine years old. My mother had just bought the first Polaroid Land Camera. I was fascinated by it; or rather, by the instant pictures it produced. I was home from school one day, and I purloined the camera, open it, and set it up on a table. I got a long thin stick, maybe a four or five foot dowel, and held it in my hand. I stood in front of the camera, posing while I slapped at the red shutter release button with the stick. Finally, I tripped the shutter, and I made the exposure. I wish I had the print today. I can vividly recall the process of making my first self-portrait, how it took me numerous taps of the stick on the shutter release button to trip it, but I don't really recall what the image looked like. It's as if it didn't get enough fix bath in my mental darkroom, and it faded long ago.
This self-portrait is my most recent...about three hours ago.
Welcome to the North Pole...
...Well not really. But it sure looks like it in some parts of my immediate environment. I live on the South Fork of the East End of Long Island: it's a peninsula that sticks eastward out into the Atlantic Ocean. Now, hold your left hand out in front of you with your palm facing you. Look at the fore and middle fingers. I live about 3/4 of an inch on the middle finger from where your fingers form a V at your palm. Between your two fingers is the Peconic Bay, and below your middle finger is, of course the ocean.
I took the image below yesterday afternoon. I live right up the street from the Peconic Bay, this is what it looks like in January. Because it's tidal, and because we have a big tide here, there is alot of ice movement even when the salt water is frozen.
The other two images are from the ocean beach which is about a five minute drive from my house. Since it snowed earlier this week, it's been real cold with a lot of northerly wind. There hasn't been much thawing, and the wind has been sculpting the drifting snow. I've always loved bundling up and going out onto the beach and into the dunes for a couple hour's walk. Looking both at the ocean and especially the frozen bay, it's hard to imagine swimming in it in another five and-a-half months.
Snow Dune
As I mentioned in my last post, I've spent a lot of time wandering through coastal sand dunes in the winter, especially after snow storms. The storm we had a couple of days dumped a foot or so on Eastern Long Island. So, I made several photographs out in Napeaque, one of the few remaing, sparsely developed areas left between Southampton and Montauk. I especially like this one. If you want, you can see an entire portfolio of my early snowscapes from Plum Island, Ma. I've set them up as a separate tab under"Phatlandscapes" on my home page; just click on the Black & White Beachscapes link and follow the navigation buttons.
Post Blizzard Black and White Back Yard "Snowscape"
The sun peeked out around 11:00 this morning, and this is what my backyard looked like. The east coast got slammed with a lot of snow and a lot of wind. I use to spend an enormous amount of time photographing landscapes right after big snow storms, mainly on coastal New England beaches. The image below was made with an 8x10 view camera on a tripod right off my back deck. I can't wait to shovel out my vehicle and head for the beach.
Ghosting Along Offshore
On one passage offshore, I brought my handheld 5x7 Linhof Technica. It's definitely not the smallest point and shoot camera in the world. With a 210mm lens and film holder it weighs a little over 12 pounds. Mine has a universal view finer, and focusing is accomplished through a split plane parallax system combined with a dedicated focusing cam for a particular focal length lens. This is a 100% mechanical camera. Think of it as a giant Lecia M series range finder camera. The rest of the top side crew were amazed the fist time I hauled it out on deck to photograph.
As I've said in a previous post, being at sea on a large sailboat is like being a NYC cop, 98.5% not doing to much other than your job, the other 1.5% of the time being scarred to death. This image made with my 5x7 Linhof is a good illustration of what days at sea are like. Obviously, we were nearly becalmed; and the planet's eco-system is doing it's job, evaporating water into the atmosphere until it condenses into rain showers or little squalls providing a dramatic afternoon "late show". The wonderful thing about sailing on the ocean is how little effect you have on the biosphere, how little damage you do, you don't even leave a foot print. One of the sad things about being a thousand miles offshore is seeing all the evidence of our collective disregard as stewards of our planet: there's plastic and human manufactured crap floating everywhere. Any that's just on the surface. What will take to stop polluting our oceans? (Oh, I have an idea: each nation contributing to the ocean's pollution has to get it's dumbass politicians and environmental policy makers out on sailing ships, and go out there and pickup all the crap floating around (funded from that nation's defense budget): that would be a start.)
Offshore in Mexico
Middle to late November always leaves me thinking about being at sea. It's the season for southbound sailboat deliveries on the Atlantic coast of the US. Delivering a sailboat from, say, Montauk to Tortola ... is kind of like being a New York City cop. It's 98.5% of the time just doing your watch, fixing the mechanical problem of the moment, eating (DEFINITELY NO ALCOHOLIC DRINKING), reading, reading, more reading, cooking and bread baking (for me), writing, listening to Herb (weather guy @1500 hrs), sleeping, checking way points and keeping a weather eye on the radar and the GPS, and then .... the other 1.5% of the time can be sheer terror. There is no lonelier feeling than being at sea, especially on a sailboat less than 3o meters, out on the big bad blue, in the middle of a full blown storm: not a gale, but a rip snortin', I-want-to-make-you-puke, hear-it-in-the-stays storm. You feel very,very small and very, very alone. Over two hundred miles offshore, no one is going to fly out to rescue you; 500 miles or more offshore whatever happens, you're sticking with the boat.
The image above was from a day cruise across the bay off the coast of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on arguably the nicest, finest, power yacht I've ever been on: the Machiavelli. The occasion was a good friend's 45th birthday. His bride, my good friend, flew 26 of their closest and dearest down for his birthday celebration from NYC. And without going into details, it was a glorious day. As we crossed the bay, whales were breaching, and the weather in late January was extraordinary. The inside of the vessel smelled wonderful: it smelled of well oiled teak, salsa, Mexican chicken, fresh green salads, perhaps a little of spilled tequila that we had for lunch, and of course the sea.
I made a lot of exposures that day. A couple of them were all right. My friend who was celebrating his birthday handed me his digital camera; I'm not sure what it was, I think it was a Canon, and I loved the instantaneous aspect of it. I became a shooting fool as we returned back to where we had departed that morning. I stopped and looked over my shoulder. I saw the mist filtering the coast astern, and I picked up my Hasselblad for one last exposure. Topside, it was getting chilly as the sun set in the west. Someone buddied up next to me, and he had a large pour of Tequila in one hand for me. I smiled, actually, I laughed, tossed it back and felt the warmth swim through my belly.
I watched the light change over the coast behind me. I thought about Edward Weston sailing to Mexico from Southern California in the mid 1920's on a slow tramp steamer with his 8x10 wooden camera and his girl friend Tina Modotti. I kind of nodded at the misty coastline behind me. And then I thought about my days and nights, and sometimes, weeks at sea delivering sailboats. It always feels good to have water under my feet.
Salisbury Beach
I've been thinking about E publishing a couple of my photography books. There are a bunch of options available: i'm undecided which format etc. to use. But while I ponder that issue, I've been revisiting the books and the work in them. One is tentatively called Off Season. It is a body of photographs taken over twenty years documenting Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts during the winter months. Salisbury Beach is a small ocean town who's heyday has long passed. Left are a collection of small cottages and two story houses which rent during the summer for very reasonable rates; and during the winter, some of them house a colorful collection of temporary tenants.
During the late seventies and early eighties, I lived south of Salisbury Beach, across the Merrimac River, in Newburyport. Though it might be argued by some that knew me then, that I, how shall I put this, misappropriated my time during those years, I, in fact, spent hours and hours photographing in and around that part of New England, and then after exposing negatives, I'd spend hours and hours making prints in the darkroom. It was during that time I became a real photographer and started to become a master printer. Early on I was influenced by Minor White who started the Visual Language Workshop at M.I.T., and later, by Harry Callahan who taught at R.I.S.D. Clearly, it was Callahan who set me off on my way to making photographs in Salisbury Beach.
On winter afternoons, I'd bundle up and drive over to Salisbury Beach. I walk around for a couple of hours taking pictures until it started to get dark. Then I hop back into the car, drive across the river, and go into the darkroom to process film. The next morning I'd make contacts and work prints. I repeated this process several times a week during January and February. I looked forward to winter storms which would lash the New England coast, and would sometimes almost bury some of the small cottages at Salisbury Beach. Every afternoon would be different there.
The other subject I worked with at Salisbury were the cars. What an incredible collection of old cars were parked there, abandoned or simply left to hibernate during the winter. I look at them now in the photographs and I still smile and shake my head.
I left Massachusetts in the late eighties. But I continued to return to Salisbury Beach periodically to check in and to photograph. In the nineties I started making colored images as well as black and white. By then, I had a state of the art color lab. Just like in the old days, I couldn't wait to return from Salisbury Beach, process film and print. It's been awhile since I've stopped at Salisbury Beach: it feels like I'm overdue.
Immediately below is the dust jacket layout for Off Season.
Below that, I've included a small slideshow of images from Off Season. Simply click on the "FS" button for full screen, and then the "SL" to start the slide show. When you're finished click on the ESC key to return to my home page.
Salisbury Beach
Indian Rug Washer
I made several photographic documentaries about oriental rug making in Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan and India. Producing oriental rugs is an extremely labor intensive process. For high quality rugs, the weaving alone can take over a year for one rug: usually the weaving is done in the weaver's home where the loom takes over most of the living space. After the rug is woven, there is a whole process of shearing, washing, blocking, and finishing. Each one of these steps usually takes place at a different location than where the rug was woven.
The image below was made at a rug washing location in Mirzapur, India. For most of my documentary work, I used a Hasselblad; however, I often carried a Graflex Super D with me. It's a 4x5 hand held camera. I had an old Dallmeyer Pentac speed lens mounted on it. It's kind of a one trick pony: it renders extremely soft focus images with amazing bokeh (the swirling highlights).
More examples of my work with my Super D can be viewed by clicking on the "Phatsotfocus" tab.
Time out at the Taj Mahal
During my first trip to India, I made the obligatory visit to Agra to hang out at the Taj Mahal. And yes, it is worth the trouble to make a side trip to see it. Like most Indian cities, Agra takes some getting use to: especially the closer you get to the Taj Mahal. It's much easier to hire a bicycle rickshaw for the day than dealing with taxis. My rickshaw walla kept trying to take me to different shops so that some shop owner could try and palm some useless touristy crap off on to me, and my walla could make a couple rupees' commission. Outside the Taj Mahal compound, the streets were clogged with the usual armies of begging children, crippled beggars, sadhus, and interestingly, wandering bull-whip vendors all surrounded in a ubiquitous cloud mixture of dirt, cow dung and flies.
Once inside the compound walls, things were more serene. After spending an hour or so inside the Taj Mahal, I was hanging out, and I noticed a lot of Indians came to just sit and enjoy the setting. This particular crew grabbped my attention, and when I asked if I could take their photograph, the man with the glasses replied in excellent English that they would be delighted. When he asked me where I as from, and I told him, he was over joyed to have finally met someone who lived in New York City. Of course, that led to a half hour or so conversation about the United States, and the English speaking guy translating for the other two. But all in all, it was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.
So the photograph was a black & white image that I colored in photshop much the same way one would have hand colored a silver gelatin print back in the day. The color quality of the woman's sari has always fascinated me. I wish I had gotten their address, I would have loved to send them a print.
