Photography Atelier

Grace Notes

Up to three months ago my photography usually focused on creating a story in a Todd Hido-type atmospheric scene or a Suzanne Revy-inspired childhood moment. I strove to capture the right angle, the best lighting, the spontaneous moment. But Covid’s Stay-at Home orders in March dramatically curtailed travel and opportunities for human interaction.

The virus has brought much sadness but also renewed moments of gratitude. Bringing my camera on daily walks, I began noticing new details: the way the rain highlighted muted tree limbs and flower petals on wet pavement, the reflection of morning light on a shiny blue truck, a colorful window display, a beam of sunlight on a glass bowl and a mixture that looked like the virus itself.

I began seeing small details I had not noticed: patterns, reflections and unusual configurations. I moved in closer with my camera wondering how the unique and tiny details in a photo would alter when filling a frame. Putting them together in diptychs and triptychs connecting images which themselves might be a bit plain was another step. Seeing flow, movement, light and color, some beautiful, some disturbing, so much like these times we are living. I hope you can discover your own feelings in them.

 

Liminal

Inspired by the mythical quality of Hiromi Kakimoto’s images, this series explores the complicated layers of subconscious emotion. I am interested in devising a story that lives on the edge of what is real and what I imagine. Buried as memories or dreams, this work is a bridge between my conscious mind and a subliminal world.

These arbitrary mental hiccups dance between the delicate intimacy of despair and joy, anguish and elation. The images lack a specific narrative as they leap from one to the next. Memories rise to the surface and make connections between disparate ideas – relevant to the moments in time into which they intrude only through a familiar smell, sound, taste, color, touch.

These are the stories we often tell ourselves. A constructed narrative based on the interpretation of facts as only we see them. Not false. But not entirely true.

Paper Playroom

When the coronavirus arrived in the Boston area, my toddler Moxie and I began spending our days at home together. One afternoon, we painted with washable paints and cheap printer paper, which crumpled as it dried. Looking at the peaks and valleys, illuminated by the sunlight streaming into the playroom, I was inspired to create sculptures out of ordinary paper products. I set these sculptures by a window and revisited them throughout the day to photograph while Moxie ate her snacks, napped, or played on the floor.

Paper has turned out to be an ideal medium. It is readily available and nontoxic. It is not fragile; these sculptures can fall on the floor and be picked up again. And it is recyclable and biodegradable, pluses for me as an environmentalist.

Over time, my passion for the paper sculptures has grown. They take on lives of their own, forming surprising shapes and becoming lively creatures. Just as Moxie has found wonder in simple toys, I have found joy in twisting, folding, and photographing paper. She and I, each in our own ways, have turned the confines of our home into a place of imagination and growth.

Fish Market

For Italians, food is the opera of life. It is important to use the best local ingredients. It’s important to think about it, talk about it, dream about it, dwell on minuscule details of the preparation and to finally sit down with family and friends to partake in the communal meal.  In Italy the preparation and enjoyment of good food is the metronome for life.

In these photographs of the Catania Fish Market (La Pescheria) in Sicily I portray the opening beat. For me the first photo depicts the first operatic scene where all the players are preparing to break out in song.  From there the drama unfolds. In this early morning ritual, fishmongers hustle to attract potential buyers (mostly men) with calls and hand gestures. Tables are laden with every creature of the sea meticulously arranged to convey its ultimate freshness. The buyers partake in an animated ritual of talking, joking, smelling and hand movements all aimed at securing the finest and freshest item at the lowest price.

Shimmering

How could I cope with a shifting landscape due to life-altering loss? My bearings became wobbly, vision uncertain, and my comprehension of events and feelings, indistinct.  Reality was too gruesome to bear. It was impossible to focus my mind and body in any direction, with conviction, and with consistency. My pace of healing was irregular, oscillating up and down, halting in an abyss with no obvious impetus for change or interest in the future. 

Marl Pond, a tiny, coastal land bank property in Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard is a stunning location, with pronounced seasonal variations typical of New England weather. In the midst of my continuous struggle with grief and reorienting myself for an uncertain future  bereft of anchors, I found myself on Martha’s Vineyard sequestering from the Covid-19 virus. Marl Pond became my refuge. 

Within the shimmering  waters, trees and lighting, the indistinctness  and impermanence of nature’s images echoed the unsteadiness of finding my balance in a distorted landscape. The visions are constantly in flux, a sobering reminder that nothing in life or in the natural world is permanent. An image taken one second may not be able to be replicated ever again, a key attribute in nature as well as in life. 

Preservation of the beautiful memory culminates in cherishing what has been and what will come. 

Los Habaneros

There is truth in the statement, Havana is a city frozen in time sixty plus years ago.  This is clearly evident in the American cars from the 1950’s still traveling the streets, and in many of the storefronts with their limited consumer goods, but it is also a characterization, which can lead one to a false sense of sentimentality or condescension.

The 1961 US embargo did, in one sense, freeze Havana and cut it off from consumer goods progress, and severely limited its economic development, but the Havana of today is not the Havana of 1961.  Havana today is the outgrowth of the 1959 Revolution, the US embargo and the Cold War which forced the inhabitants of this city, just 90 miles off the US coast to develop in ways they can speak of with great pride and in ways which leave them longing for more.

In 2015 I traveled through Mexico to Havana for the first time.  Although restrictions on travel from the US to Cuba had just been eased, I was one of very few Americans on the streets of Havana not tied to a tour.  The excitement and openness expressed to me by the Habaneros was infectious and led to my returning three additional times.

While concentrating on the sections of Havana known as “Habana Vieja,” and “Centro Habana”, now United Nations World Heritage Sites being renovated and brought back to life, I decided to document not only the buildings but the people living in these currently run-down sections of the city.  Their homes, the means by which they get food, their jobs, and even the newly sanctioned small private enterprise ventures, left me, an American with many privileges in life, awed and humbled by the resilience and ingenuity of the Habaneros.

The images in this body of work grew out of, and helped me to develop, a deeper understanding of Havana and its people. Havana is truly a city of resilience.

Suspended World

These images were created intuitively and spontaneously in my home during the statewide lockdown as my days were blending with one another while I was feeling a growing sense of sadness and depression. Using my body to interact with the rooms and objects in my home and a minimalist approach, I took photographs to mirror my own state of mind.

This body of work connects with others that I have created in the past in response to my dreams. From a Jungian perspective, dreams of houses usually represent the soul and the self, while each room is reflective of a different aspect of our psyche.

Suspended World is divided into three chapters, each one shot in a different room in my home. This is my own personal meditation on being human and being mortal in response to the Great Pause of 2020.

Tanto va el cántaro al agua o Ese querer arrancarse de raíz

Un mundo suspendido

en la madrugada del tiempo.

Una rutina de días.

Me escondo detrás de una palabra

me sacuden los vientos de marzo

Illuminating the Invisible

Nature is in a constant state of change. As winter turns to spring, trees appear bare and dormant in their muted shades of gray.  Piles of old leaves lie on the ground below and slowly decompose.  Microscopic organisms return their nutrients to the soil and complete the cycle of life, death and rebirth, keeping ecosystems in balance.

Walking through the woods on an early spring day, I was surprised to see a golden shimmer disrupt the dreary pallet of the trees. It was a dried leaf fluttering on the branch of a young American Beech. A last dance before it falls to nourish the soil.  The toothed edges of its elliptical shape had curled into a delicate cone. Moving closer, I peered through my camera lens.  A ray of sunlight illuminated the fractal pattern of its veins that resembled a miniature replication of its branches.

I am inspired to get a closer view. This work explores the transitions in nature that are invisible to the naked eye: the long silky hairs that cover an emerging leaf to deter hungry insects or the veins on a wing-like pod that help cut through the air as it spins in the breeze to create a new sapling.  Nature evolves and endures despite dramatic changes in the environment, just as humanity must adapt in the face of its own invisible enemies.

The Song of the Mystic

My photography is an exploration of the natural world, both its beauty and the impacts humans have on it. This work is a view of the natural world in an urban landscape.  I am seeking out the beauty that people just do not see.  I work through photographs, some landscape, some close up, some of wildlife, and occasionally people.  I want to show what I see and what I think is important, to understand its beauty and tell its story.

Through photographs I hope not only to illustrate the Mystic River, but to tell its story, the song of the Mystic.  It is a song that whispers to those who take the time to listen.  It comes quietly, among the noise and tumult of the city, to those who row its waters at dawn, or paddle in the cool of the evening.  It is contained in the struggle of the herring finding their way to its quiet waters or the silent yet spectacular journey of the eels.  It is a song as grand as an eagle, or as simple as a leaf floating on its surface.  It can be as exuberant as a child swimming at the beach on the lake, or as subtle as a fox padding along its bank.  It is a song that comes to those who reach out to know and preserve the natural essence of the Mystic.  Yet the Mystic’s song is a song that has persisted through all of the wounds we have inflicted upon it.  The goal of my work is to preserve the Mystic’s song.

Oh My Goddess

Oh My Goddess is a celebration of the women in my extended family.   It is about honoring these women, most of whom are living full and active lives in southern France.  (I wonder… is the secret to longevity in southern France the Madiran wine or the foie gras, or both…? ) A few of them have now passed, but their memories live on. 

All my family is in southern France, including my ninety-something mother and her ninety-something bffs, my aunt, my cousins and their loved ones.  In this period of the pandemic and its associated restrictions, the distance between me and my family of origin has never seemed so great.  Knowing that I am no longer just a simple airplane flight away from visiting them saddens me. 

These playful depictions of the women in my family reflect happy moments spent with them, while I am here and they are far away.  During my period of confinement, I revisited my family photographs and transformed these ordinary women,  giving them a breath of new life, and capturing their lively spirits and dynamism.  I mean to convey what is most beautiful about them, perhaps enhancing that beauty, even transforming them into goddesses.