Reflections on photography, art, beauty and the natural landscape.
I came across the following quote by composer Jean Sibelius from a 1919 interview and thought the sentiment could apply equally well to any non-verbal creative endeavor: dance, painting, photography…etc.:
If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.
The peripatetic fashion photographer Bill Cunningham is the subject of a new documentary film about his life and work. He's especially well-known to readers of the NEW YORK TIMES for his candid snapshots of everyday New Yorkers who exhibit, in Cunningham's estimation, a sense of style.
After decades of work, he clearly still enjoys what he does and has cultivated a very bohemian, free-spirit approach to his craft. Talking about the time he refused to take money for his work…, Cunningham says: “You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. … Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty, freedom is the most expensive.”
I posted this image to the gallery Facebook page as emblematic of the space between seasons – no longer winter but not quite spring. The landscape is muted and monochromatic here in the northeast and not many images suggest themselves.
The reflections in this vernal pool deep in the woods provided a nice counterpoint to an otherwise homogenous scene. It's shape and setting, fringed by trees, recalls Thoreau's observation:
"A lake is the landscape’s most expressive feature. It is earth’s eye…"
Many of the images I capture when I venture out I could not have planned. Even when I do have a certain type of image in mind – think dramatic landscape – it's more likely that I'll return with something I had not envisioned.
If I am receptive to the environment I am passing through, I may be lucky enough to "see" a unique pattern or scene that gently impinges on my consciousness until I respond by framing it in the camera's viewfinder.
Out skiing this past season I paused to catch my breath and this delicate spray of branches just off the trail caught my attention, one of an infinite number of equally captivating vignettes….
I've been photographing fewer iconic landscapes of the area — as of late, subtle details seem to attract my attention more and I find them compelling in a way that is different than the attraction of the dramatic landscape — more intimate – transcendent.
Here is a recent favorite:
I've never submitted work to a "call for artists" but recently one caught my attention and so I've prepared a proposal to display two panoramic images taken in the same location in different seasons and presented as canvas triptychs.
The idea is to explore the idea of "beauty" as it exists in a portion of a landscape at a particular moment in time and, when the pieces are considered together, "beauty" as exhibited by the same landscape at unique and very different moments in time.
The two images are "Spring Trees, Wallkill River," and "Spring Ice, Wallkill River," (gallery numbers 2283 and 2256, respectively.)
See what you think…
I came across this wonderful quote by E.B. White, the writer best known for books like "Charlotte's Web" and the classic writing guide, "Elements of Style":
Just to live in the country is a full-time job. You don't have to do anything. The idle pursuit of making a living is pushed to one side, where it belongs, in favor of living itself, a task of such immediacy, variety, beauty, and excitement that one is powerless to resist its wild embrace.
I read an interesting essay in the NY TIMES yesterday about UK Prime Minister David Cameron's decision to measure how happy his constituents feel.
Not surprisingly, Cameron's program has been met with a share of skepticism, even ridicule. However, the author of the piece, Roger Cohen, observes that it's no secret that money alone does not buy happiness.
Cohen writes: "… the case for trying to measure the happiness of a society, rather than its growth and productivity alone, has become compelling. When Western industrialized societies started measuring gross domestic product, the issue for many was survival. Now most people have enough — or far more than enough by the standards of human history — but the question remains: “What’s going on inside their heads?"
"Starting next month, the government will pose the following questions and ask people to respond on a scale of zero to 10: How happy did you feel yesterday? How anxious did you feel yesterday? How satisfied are you with your life nowadays? To what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?"
"… Andrew Oswald, a happiness economics expert at the University of Warwick, suggested the questions were a good start… The important thing, he argues, it to shift “from the concept of financial prosperity to the idea of emotional prosperity.” Perhaps that’s the 21st-century indicator we need: gross emotional prosperity, or G.E.P."
The Brits mention intangibles like "nature" "birdsong" "the environment" "open spaces" and "clear air" as having a significant impact on their happiness. Cohen concludes that "…These moments were linked to nature, to finding time, to feeling the transcendent power of the human spirit."
It seems the challenge in this day and age is finding time….
"Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the pond,
where whole generations of biological processes
are boiling beneath the mud.
Reeds speak to you of the natural world:
they whisper, they sing.
And herons pass by.
Are you old enough to appreciate the moment?
Too old?"
Eleanor Lerman
I recently came across some thoughts I'd recorded in response to an interview for a trade publication and thought they were worth sharing here. The last question the interviewer asked was about the general state of fine-art photography and here is my response:
"It is a tremendously exciting time to be a photographer! Not since the introduction by George Eastman of the Brownie camera has the photography world evolved so quickly. The medium (and the technology that is allowing this evolution) is changing in ways that we cannot begin to predict. However, one thing will never change: our response to art – painting, photography, poetry,music – independent of it's genesis. It may be a product of a new way of creating it but the ability of any work of art to evoke or provoke a response will always be independent of the means by which it was created."
