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