I really want to like this photograph, but something about it bothers me. It has nothing to do with what’s in the frame and everything to do with what’s not in the picture. Or more precisely: What bothers me is what I had to do to get rid of something that was in the original […]
I was wandering the city that overcast Wednesday afternoon. While not empty, as it had been in the early months of the pandemic, it was not bustling in any normal way. Most offices in the city remained closed or only sparsely staffed. So I took the chance to look for scenes that would capture the […]
With the new month comes a new postcard. This month’s postcard comes from a local park where I spent much of my childhood. If you want a copy, let me know. How many times as kids were we chased off these bowling greens? More often, I am sure, than they were ever used by actual […]
I recently returned to the Park (the proper name is the Arcadia Community Regional Park, but to the hoards of us who marauded around it as kids, it was just the Park) where I spent so much of my pre- and early-teen childhood. Especially those long summer days. The sun, seemingly stuck in the sky […]
Knausgaard’s collection of essays is a joy to read. While the essays in Autumn are all quite good, the real pleasure comes from the physicality of the book. The coarse texture to the dusk jacket. The pages are a smooth, heavy paper that has a sensuous feel. The illustrations and the printed words look better […]
Photography seems always to imagine a different world. Photographers don’t record the reality they see, they consecrate a reality they wish to see. In this way, photographs are always about a world that no longer exists. The lure of dilapidated buildings, of abandoned places, and of weed-choked roads testify to the photographer’s urge to record […]
Looking out across the backyard this afternoon I watched a cloud of leaves fall to the ground. Despite the warm, humid day, fall is coming. As the days become shorter and the sun meanders more obliquely across the sky, I look forward to the most colorful season of the year. Autumn hikes are magical. The […]
The last weekend of summer in Philadelphia offered the chance to look for contrast between light and dark. Nothing metaphorical or profound. Just shadows. Looking for and at shadows invites a different way of seeing the city, a way that often requires looking down, looking for lines and patterns, for fragments of people going about […]
There is a special aesthetic to religion in the South West. A starkness to the architecture and design, born perhaps from the struggle to survive in the harsh climate. Amazingly, some of the missions and churches have survived centuries. The San Xavier del Bac mission south of Tucson, for example. Founded in the late seventeenth […]
This month’s postcard recalls a warm summer evening and swarms of mosquitos, oh and a comet too.