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PROJECTS
Over the years I have worked on a wide variety of projects, and my photography has taken me to many places. Here you will find a handful of projects and thematic groups of work spanning the past three or four years. These range from landscape to street photography, from macro close-ups to travel.
Places
My travels have taken me from Antartica to Iran, from Europe to Wisconsin. Here are a few pictures from those travels.
Antarctica
I have visited Antartica twice, once to ski, and once with my wife to just absorb this awe-inspiring place. There is no place quite like Antarctica; the color and light; the scale and vastness; the inimitable wildlife; the way you are rendered humble by the vastness. It is as close to an untouched place you can find on earth, but of course, it has been discovered by the tour companies who every year lay on more and more luxurious ships. I am not one to say "shut the door now that I've been," but we need to be careful how we use and abuse this singular place.
Curiousities
Sometimes you see things in the world that just deserve to be preserved and remembered. It might be funny, it might be mysterious, it might just be embarassing. Here, you'll find a few of those.
Botanic
Though without a green thumb, I have long been attracted to flowers and plants for their magical complexity and sheer beauty. Something about the rich color and complex structure of these marvels of nature draws my eye. There is some irony in the fact that they exist principally as organs of reproduction, and not simply to delight the human eye, particularly when compared the mammalian version of the same thing. Some suggest that the beauty and perfection of flowers is proof of a deity. Given that that deity has produced some pretty ugly things as well, I am not totally convinced. Nonetheless, divine inspiration or way-station along the endless train of evolution, flowers bring uncommon beauty into our lives.
I am also attracted to flowers showing imperfections or signs of decay, decomposition or rot. The transitory nature of flowers, their magnificent fragility, is a kind of memento mori for our own lives, a wake up call to remind us to take full advantage of every day that is granted to us.
I am also attracted to flowers showing imperfections or signs of decay, decomposition or rot. The transitory nature of flowers, their magnificent fragility, is a kind of memento mori for our own lives, a wake up call to remind us to take full advantage of every day that is granted to us.
'Round Midnight
About two years ago, I took a workshop from renowned French photographer, Claudine Doury. My subject was the wonderful and dynamic nighttime street life of Paris, that city that truly never sleeps. The results culminated in a book of the same name, 'Round Midnight, that combines the street photos with other nighttime pictures.
Ethiopia
In 2018 we visited Ethiopia, privileged to be accompanied by an Ethiopian/American friend whose presence opened a lot of doors. We visited historic cities like Lalibela with its remarkable churches carved out of stone; Axum, ancient seat of the Solomonic dynasty and home of the Arc of the Covenant; Gondar, an architectural wonder and former seat of power for centuries; and of course throbbing Addis Ababa. We also had the good fortune to trek for a week in the unique Simien Mountains. We arrived on the eve of the appointment of the current Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed. A year later, he would receive the Nobel Peace prize for achieving peace with neighbor Eritrea. Two years later, rebel forces from the North would ignite a bloody war that has left thousands homeless and starving. It is sobering to think that many of the places that we visited were victims of the depredations of both sides.
Abstract
One usually thinks of photography as a representational art form. After all, with our handy phones we devote far too much time to documenting our lives and the world around us, often in excruciating mundanity. Some of the most memorable photographers in the history of the art form were essentially documentary: Brassai, Cartier Bresson, Ansel Adams, Sabastiao Salgado, Gary Winogrand to name a few. However, there are also those who pursued a more abstract line, whether extracting from everyday scenes elements reduced to the bare abstract elements of line, shape and color, or distorting and manipulating their photos to achieve an abstract vision. Aaron Siskind, Man Ray, Harry Callahan all come to mind. The photos in this collection are a form of "appropriation" as they are based on other works of art in a very different medium: sculpture. As I looked at the works of Richard Serra and James Turrell. In them, I saw line, texture, shadow, reflection and shape by looking at the pieces not as a whole, but up close and in sections.
North
People who live there can be forgiven for calling Northern Wisconsin, on the shores of Lake Superior, God's country. But the superlative is in many ways deserved. For every frozen winter night there is a luminous autumn day; for every mosquito and biting fly, there is the vast clear lake stretching beyond the eye's capability. Endless and empty sandy beaches; shear sandstone cliffs and caves showing geological time; birch and maple forests; and a couple dozen pristine islands strewn across the bay. I grew up there and could not wait to leave; it took my brother's illness to get me to return and appreciate this magical place.
Fog and Smoke
Fog, and when it occurs, smoke, are transformational. Fog renders light translucent and shrouds the world in mystery. It reduces and simplifies, it obscures and limits focus to mere suggestion. As it recedes, it is as if a veil is being lifted as the world slowly returns to focus. Several of these pictures were taken early one morning on a meadow near Lake Tahoe. At first, the path across the meadow was barely visible; over the course of minutes, the fog drifted away, then burned off, revealing more and more of the meadow, the grass, fends, water and finally the mountains in the distance.
Smoke, especially wildfire smoke, is the sinister brother to fog; stinging the eyes, clotting the lungs, it is similarly reductive and transformational, but there is no mystery born by smoke, only the reminder of tragedy happening somewhere over the horizon.
Smoke, especially wildfire smoke, is the sinister brother to fog; stinging the eyes, clotting the lungs, it is similarly reductive and transformational, but there is no mystery born by smoke, only the reminder of tragedy happening somewhere over the horizon.
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