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Power Poles
Along the ridge is a line of old power poles, serving a few houses tucked into the hills above town. Whenever I walk the trail past these poles, I photograph them, noting how much the scene changes at different times of day. One day these poles will be gone, replaced by more modern, taller poles that bring electricity to the many houses that will cover the foothills. When that happens, at least we’ll have these…
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Postcard Archive: August 2022
Panta rhei, we are told Heraclitus claimed, everything flows, everything is always in motion, always changing. Where, I wonder, does this stream flow? And where will it take these leaves? How long will that one leaf resist the pull? I stood there in the dense woodland; a thick canopy of greenery blotted out the sky. The heat and humidity was oppressive. And yet, already hints of fall….
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Roses
Flowers are powerful means of conveying emotion: condolences, loss, love, apology, friendship, thanks. Among the flowers commonly given, roses occupy a particularly important place, especially to express love. Yet, roses die quickly. Cut from the bush, placed in a vase full of fresh water, they last only a few days before petals brown and fall all over the table and the rose bud itself droops and becomes sad. A metaphor, perhaps, of the fleeting and…
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Blackboards
Zoom.Whiteboards. Smartboards. iPads. Tablets. Video. Flipped classrooms. Clickers. MOOCs. How much effort do we put into designing educational technologies? Who benefits from that effort? Rarely, it seems, the student (if the educational disaster of the last two years is any indication). The blackboard was introduced into the classroom in the 19th century, and within a couple decades was ubiquitous. Since then pedagogues (and social critics) have praised and condemned the simple blackboard with its screechy…
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“Art as Correspondence”
I did not know of Ray Johnson’s art before stumbling across information about the exhibit, “Please Send to Real Life” at The Morgan Library. I like the vernacular, collage aspects of his photography and art. It is not something to hang on a wall. It is not “beautiful” in any sense. But I really appreciate the immediacy of it, and its specificity. In the video introducing the exhibit, Joel Smith (the curator) describes Johnson’s work…
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Ashford Farm Photo Book
I make “limited edition” books, something between art books and photo books. They are often experiments that will never move beyond my work table, hence the “limited edition” label. I play with format, with layout, with folding pages or cut pages. Some are little more than pamphlets. I always learn something from these books. This “Ashford Farm in Photographs, 2021-2022” is another type of book. This type I tend to make for somebody I know…
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Postcard Archive: July 2022
History is filled with people who have decided to wander off, who have followed some call that most of us can’t hear. Some reappear; some do not. At times I think I hear faint whispers of that call, and I wonder …. Sometimes I struggle to resist the lure of the forest. What would I see if I just wandered out into the trees? How far would I walk before realizing that I couldn’t find…
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Postcard Archive: June 2022
Four young people were already there when I arrived. They had, it seemed, spent the night on the beach. The beach was otherwise empty. Five people standing in a breeze thick with moisture and smelling of salt. Five people watching the sun rise as it has done a trillion times before. We are so tiny. Alone on the beach I basked in the golden glow of dawn and listened to the waves crashing on the…
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A Natural History of Infrastructures
I find something compelling about Bernd and Hilla Becher’s book, Typologies of Industrial Buildings. Juxtaposing numerous individual examples of industrial structures highlights their similarities and their differences. It also draws attention to often overlooked or ignored architecture, encouraging us to see design and aesthetic choices, to view these utilitarian structures as art. While each of their photographs, taken alone, is interesting, when taken together they are a sort of conceptual art, as well as a…
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Two Years
I returned to a place I’ve visited before — remnants of an old corral quite literally just off the beaten path. While not particularly remote, it does require driving down a bumpy, dusty road and hiking an hour or so across a shadeless cross-country route. The time and physical exertion required would, I thought, limit the traffic, and the general “take only photographs and leave only footprints” attitude shared, I had hoped, by hikers and…