A bit late this month, but a new postcard is now available. Wandering around the ruins of Clifden Castle, I couldn’t help but think about how quickly our feeble efforts at permanence decline into ruin. It was a reminder to enjoy the evening, the breeze coming off the bay, the smell of early spring. These moments are all we have. I was fortunate to add them to my “Museum of This I Experienced.”
I find something relaxing about taking photographs of horses. There’s no talking and very little effort expended to get them to pose. I tend to watch them for some time, just trying to get a sense of how they are moving in their stalls. I often wonder what they are thinking, as they look out. Sometimes, when they whinny and neigh, I assume they want to go run around with the other horses. Clearly that assumption depends on equating the noises they make with those that I think humans would make when they want out. Sometimes they seem to be restless, but again if I’m being honest I have to admit that I am interpreting their movements as analogous to human actions. Maybe they are perfectly content just gazing out into the fields.
How to find time every day for photography, in seven easy steps:
As far as I can tell, all those pseudo-aphorisms about inspiration and art boil down to the same thing: Make the time. So that’s what I do. I make the time.
John D’Arcy was a wealthy landowner who built this castle ca. 1818, just outside the town he founded. He and his family lived in it for about twenty years. After he died, his son inherited the castle and lived there until the family went bankrupt about a decade later. New owners. Renovations. Yet more new owners. Yet more renovations. Finally, decline and ruin. Now, 200 years later, only the shell still stands looking out over the land and the bay.
The original construction was mediocre, lots of rubble and junk, rough-hewn stone stacked up into walls that were then covered with plaster. Remnants of decoration, also made from cement or plaster, cling to the walls, as does the ivy. Inside little remains besides dirt floors and piles of fallen stone. Trees and plants grow where floors used to be, and graffiti cover many walls.
The ruin also stands as a reminder that not long after we go our carefully assembled collection of photographs and photographic equipment will fall into disuse and disrepair. How many photographs and slides lie in boxes in closets, attics, storage units? How many cameras, both expensive and cheap that took hundreds of precious photos, mold in basements? Families no longer gather around to watch slide shows from last summer’s family vacation. Few people pull albums from shelves to thumb through the pages of photographs.
With recent moves to digital photography and the near refusal to print images, how much easier will it be for the next generation to discard our photographs and cameras? Hard drives full of images will fail before too long, 4 to 5 years for mechanical drives. Cameras will break. They’ll be recycled or thrown away at e-waste events. We think we have this impressive collections, but like D’Arcy’s castle they are little more than a pretty façade.
I continue to be inspired by Mapplethorpe’s photographs of flowers. The quiet puttering around as I set up and move lights is a pleasure. The way the process encourages me to study the flowers and to see things I would otherwise miss. It’s quiet and contemplative in an otherwise noisy world.
Anyway, I’ve updated the Two Photos page with two new photographs of flowers, tulips this time.
It was a miserable day. Cold and windy, and then cold, windy, and snowy. Stores closed early because the “winter storm warning.” Most people wisely chose to stay home, warm and dry. A perfect day, it seemed to me, to go for a hike. Thick leaden clouds and blowing snow created a sort of post-apocalyptic wasteland of dead trees and empty spaces. There was no palette — everything shaded from black to gray. Nearly every scene was hauntingly beautiful.
On days like this I am drawn by the sirens’ songs and venture out into the howling winds. The discomfort and physical effort compensated for by the chance to be alone and the opportunity to photograph scenes few other people will experience.
COVID continues to disrupt lives and shape our experiences. I wonder how this student and his friends would be playing in the snow if times were different.
It was a particularly cold January evening as a student, carrying his dinner, wandered back to eat alone in his dorm room. The snow only added to the cold.
I find something peaceful about these photographs. Looking at them recalls for me the days spent wandering alone. Now and then, when I was close to the road or near one of the trails, I would see other people. I might even hear them. But head north west, toward the San Andres mountains and soon I was all alone. Wandering up and down the gypsum dunes.
After about an hour they all began to look alike. The sun is relentless and seems to burn from above and below. A hat scarcely protects you from the glare so much light reflects up from the ground. Everywhere is either white sand or pale blue sky. It is easy to lose your way. There are no trails, no posts to mark the way. I understand how people get lost out here and, tragically, die from heat and dehydration. “What will I find over the next dune?” I wonder as I continue deeper into the dunes.
I paused near the top of each dune, marveling at the sight. As afternoon wore on, the sinking sun started casting amazing shadows, giving the dunes texture and shape that they lacked when the sun was higher. There are no footprints. No evidence of the last person who passed. I might be only a mile or so from the road, but I feel like I’m a million miles from anywhere. Just me and these mesmerizing shadows.
For some people, lush forests are a paradise. They long for the sound of a creek or the wind through the trees. For me, these desolate, expansive, unforgiving spaces are more appealing. That afternoon no breeze disturbed the silence. No birds flew overhead. No water anywhere. And yet so much to see. The ripples and soft contours. The subtle shadowing.
I had been wandering for hours but had probably walked only a few miles. Time and distance are different here in this pale landscape of undulating dunes — both seem meaningless here. I could have walked for hours more, captivated by the stark beauty of the swells and shadows, but late in the day I turned around and headed back. Any trace of my passage has long since disappeared. What is left are these photographs, the memories they evoke, and the hope of maybe one day returned to that land of light and shadows.
Sometimes, for me, it is enough that a photograph is just what it purports to be. It doesn’t conceal some meaning or tell a story, doesn’t point to the photographer’s social agenda, and doesn’t reveal the photographer’s psychological anguish. It isn’t reportage or social commentary or documentary photography.
This, e.g., is a photograph of a flower. Just a flower.
Recently I heard a comment attributed to Todd Rundgren about the direct relationship between effort and value.1 Something to the effect: “Effort increases value.” The people talking understood Rundgren’s point to be: the harder you work at making a [piece of art] and the more effectively you convey that effort to the audience, the more valuable the [piece of art]. Some version of that opinion seems rather common lately. See, for example:
While these examples are drawn from photography, I could collect them from most other arts (e.g., writing, painting, woodworking, baking, knitting, sandcastle building).
I confess: I don’t see how knowing all this background context contributes to the value of a photograph (or any piece of art). For me, knowing the labor invested in producing a photograph has no effect on its aesthetic quality (or lack thereof). Perhaps I will appreciate or understand the photograph in a different way knowing the calories burnt or miles trekked or hours spent searching for that decisive moment, but I doubt that understanding will make like a photograph that I initially disliked, or make me dislike a photograph I had previously liked. In the end, the photograph is either aesthetically pleasing or not, visually compelling or not.
Thinking more about the comment attributed to Rundgren: what if he wasn’t saying anything about audiences but was, instead, saying something about makers. If approached that way, Rundgren’s comment contains a degree of truth but is not particularly new. I expect someone who is passionate about a particular endeavor to spend loads of time and effort doing it, more time and effort than people who are not passionate about it. That passion and effort will, I suspect, lead to making better art, excelling at some sport, crafting better tables, grilling better burgers, whatever. I’m not sure what Rundgren meant by “value” (and not even sure that he said it — I couldn’t be bothered to look it up), but maybe we can understand him to mean something like: If you work really, really hard, and do so with intentionality, you will get better at something. Then whatever you produce will be more valuable because it more fully embodies your intentions and goals. But that form of value is first and foremost a value to the artist (or athlete or woodworker or chef or whatever). Any value that an audience invests in the product (art, performance, burger, etc.) is secondary and a different type of value.