One Week

an image and a quote to celebrate one week of posting.

Lake Michigan, 2011





"Every silver image has to become a greater experience than what the eye saw."

~ Ruth Bernhard

Light

this morning i discovered the following quote on the facebook page of my new friend, British photographer Gary Ligget ~

"Amateurs worry about equipment, 

professionals worry about money, 

masters worry about light..."

sorry, no attribution was given, but i'll see if i can track down who wrote, or said these wise words.

the quote is a little snooty, i'll admit, but i still love it because photography really is all about the light.  for me, it is not so much a "worry" about the light as it is a deep and abiding fascination with the play and power of light.   i am drawn to the movement of light across surfaces, how it peeks from behind leaves, how it caresses a loved one's face, how it streams through the clouds and touches the distant mountains.  it is pure magic.  one of the greatest gifts we are given.

i am a slave to the light.

Bordentown Marsh (6), 2011



Showing My Work

today, my first ever "art handler" arrived at my home to pick up my images and transport them to the art gallery at Johnson & Johnson for my upcoming show.  it was quite a treat.  i felt so pampered, like a "real" artist for a change, not an impostor.

that is how i usually feel at shows, like a poseur, especially at openings.  i am terribly uncomfortable with all the hoopla surrounding an art opening and i find myself anxiously awaiting my first chance to bolt.   i've even been known to try to bribe my husband Louie to take my place at openings.  i hate milling around, making small talk, schmoozing, and networking with artists, clients, curators and gallerists.  perhaps because i'm just awful at it.

unlike many artists, i cannot stand to talk about my own work.  i have always felt the viewer brings meaning to the art.  this suggests to me that i should not be blathering on and on to you about what my art is trying to say.  i should be quiet and respectful and allow you to look and make your own discoveries.  if you have a question, i should try to answer it, if i can.  but i shouldn't corner you by my piece and bend your ear for over an hour about the deep, vital significance of my work.  this makes me a not very good artist i'm afraid, especially in the marketing department.

in my ideal world, i would go happily about making my images.   my work would eventually find its way to a small, intimate, simpatico gallery, where people would see it and fall absolutely in love with it on their own... without my input, or the advice of a gallery owner or art consultant. occasionally people would discover they just had to have one of my images... just often enough to keep me supplied with film, paper and chemicals...  and my work would wind up, hanging happily ever after, in the perfect place in their homes, hopefully, all across America and beyond its shores.

of course, an art handler would always come to pick up my work and deliver it to the gallery.  is that really too much to ask for?

Bordentown Marsh (2), 2011, on its way to J&J

Robert Adams, Part II

yesterday i had a good cry.  not a sobbing, chest heaving type of cry, but the kind of crying where tears well up in your eyes and there's a gentle ache in your chest.  that is the power of Robert Adams' photography for me. 

The Place We Live, an exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery, is a massive career retrospective of the prolific writer and photographer's work over the past 40+ years.  definitely image overload.  there are two floors of small, exquisite black and white photographs, documenting man's changing, and challenging relationship with the land.

what stuns me about Adams' work is its magical ability to transport me to the places he has photographed.  i look at a tiny piece of paper hanging on the gallery wall and i am there.  i taste the air.  i feel the sun.  i touch the child.  i shiver in the breeze from the ocean.  i sit under the tree.  i don't understand why this happens with his work, and not with others, but it does. 

go see this exhibition, if you can.  you can bet your bottom dollar i will be writing about Mr. Adams again and again, once i have had the time to digest all that i saw and felt as i roamed the gallery yesterday.

Robert Adams

Robert Adams

*New Brunswick, NJ... New York, New York... New Haven, Connecticut*

artgallery.yale.edu/adams/landing.php

Robert Adams

today i find the time to be immersed in essential, inspirational landscape photography.

Sunflowers

The Sunflowers

~ Mary Oliver

Come with me

    into the field of sunflowers.

        Their faces are burnished disks,

           their dry spines

creak like ship masts,

    their green leaves,

       so heavy and many,

           fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.

     Come with me

         to visit the sunflowers,

             they are shy

but want to be friends;

   they have wonderful stories

       of when they were young --

           the important weather,

the wandering crows.

Don't be afraid

to ask them questions!

Their bright faces,

which follow the sun,

will listen, and all

those rows of seeds --

each one a new life! --

hope for a deeper acquaintance;

each of them, though it stands

in a crowd of many,

like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work

of turning their lives

into a celebration

is not easy.  Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,

the simple garments of leaves,

the coarse roots in the earth

so uprightly burning.



Homestead Sunflowers, 2011

This poem was read at my mother's memorial service by her dear friend Shirley Beckman.

It holds a special place in my heart... as do sunflowers.

A Post A Day

i am going to endeavor to post every day for a month.  the post may only be an image, a quote, a poem or a link to something i love, but i will try to post something every single day. 

i undertook this type of project several years ago with my photography.  i'm sure those of you who are photographers are familiar with the roll a day assignment ~ you shoot a roll of film every day for a given length of time.  i did it, successfully, for a month and learned a great deal about the way i see, about what my eye is subconsciously attracted to.  i also learned to push myself outside of my comfort zone in order to avoid creating repetitive images.  i learned discipline and dedication, forcing myself to shoot even when the weather was awful or i was tired or the hour was late.  i learned that one keeper image on a roll of film qualifies as a successful shoot.  and, i amassed a large number of new and exciting images.  this self-assignment also forced me to develop and print religiously in order to keep up with the work produced. 

i don't know if doing the same thing with the blog will be as beneficial, but i've decided to give it a try.  i think the hardest part may be coming up with post titles every day.  something tells me they may go by the wayside.

Great Lake Sacandaga, 2012

p.s. on days when i have no access to Lou's computer (the only computer we own that i can post pictures from) i will try to make up the missed day with an extra post, or an extra long post.  here goes nothing... or, fingers crossed, maybe something.

A Quiet Sunday

just a quiet picture for a quiet Sunday

Stopping Time

one of the things i love so much about making photographs ~ and there are many, many things i love ~ is how the process slows down time.  when you explore your world with your camera in hand, you gradually begin to expand and focus your vision.   as your sight intensifies, all your senses are heightened to an acute level, and you enter the tranquil cocoon of now.  the past and the future vanish in the power of the present.  you become so locked in the moment, time ceases to exist.  it is a sublime, and addictive experience.

as summer passes into fall, and we find ourselves another season older, stop for a minute, with or without your camera, and really look at the world around you.  take the time to stop time. enter the moment and leave your life behind.

The Last Day of Summer

to thank Bill for his two cents...

In The Sweet Grass Hills ~ Requiem

For the time being, earth and sky.
For the time being, body.

For the time being, nights of magpie blue,
mornings of salt white clouds winging over.

For the time being, eagle.
Eye to eye with the sun at noon,

I enter these hills of sweet grass,
sage, wild rose, and rock ---
bringing nothing with me,
       a wild solitude in the smoke
                              I please to call my soul.

- Margaret Gibson