DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Haverford College

  • A Sense of Space

    A Sense of Space

    In A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time John Brinckerhoff Jackson reflects on the meaning of our increasingly urbanized and industrialized landscapes and how we interact with and live in those spaces. He is neither the first nor the most recent to draw attention to various aspects of the built environment, with a particular focus on vernacular structures, e.g., garages, mobile homes, parking lots. His book does seem to me to be more optimistic than many.

    Interior #220226.1. A color photograph of lockers with locks hanging from the doors.
    Interior #220226.1

    Reading Jackson’s book made me think about the changing vernacular of interior spaces that permeates a significant portion of a new library. What sort of behavior and activities do these spaces encourage? What comparisons to the color schemes and lighting invite? How are different parts of the library marked by different interior spaces? How does it all differ from the former, dank and crowded and dark library?

    Interior #220830. A color photograph of the ends of compact shelving, with a stool on the floor in front of them.
    Interior #220830

    The different floors of the library are intended for different practices, embodied in the layout and decor and furniture on each.

    Interior #220226.0. A color photograph of two chairs on wheels in the corner of a room.
    Interior #220226.0

    Nobody would relax in these chairs, with their wheels, rigid backs, and spare armrests they are clearly intended to be tools. Roll up to your desk, work, pivot if necessary, roll back. Built for labor not for comfort. Unsurprising to find these near the stacks of books packed tight in their compact shelving.

    Interior #230106. A color photograph of an armchair and a table illuminated by a floor lamp and a recessed light.
    Interior #230106

    Ascend from the bowels of the building to find comfort, warmer color palettes, and tables that invite leisure rather than work. Nestled in alcoves are comfortable chairs around a table where you can linger, perhaps read a book or chat with a friend. Whatever work occurs here, it is of a decidedly sort from that which happens in the floor below.

    There’s a particular, almost poetic beauty to these different spaces. The limited palettes, the orthogonal repetition of the lower floor echo visually the rigid, tabular presentation of information. Down there habits and practices are structured and regularized. One floor up, the welcoming curves of the chairs, the table, the lamp, and soft cushions almost demand a different set of activities. Here conversations and work, insofar as that occurs on this floor, are less regulated. Just as Robert Adams found beauty in truck stops, generic houses, unadorned churches, and roads, we can find beauty in quotidian spaces, with their subtle efforts to shape our behaviors. We just need to pause and linger a bit, to look around.

  • My Office Window

    My Office Window

    The boundary between me and the world is about 12 inches wide. But in that 12 inches there is another, if smaller, world. Shadows cast by light falling across various things sitting on the window sill. Shadows that shift and change over the course of the day, the weeks, the months.

    Stilllife #221106.1 is a black and white photograph of two eggs, slightly different shades.
    Still life #221106.1

    Two eggs from the neighbor’s chickens. Hardboiled. Lunch if I remember. Now and then I glance over at them, like small sundials tracking my time here on earth. Empty glasses and coffee cups, evidence of having done something. Bottles of different sorts. Strangely, no flowers or plant life, for reasons I can’t explain.

    Stilllife #221106.2 is a black and white photograph of an egg in a tea cup, shot from above.
    Still life #221106.2

    Some cups get repurposed, a tiny coop that keeps an egg from rolling off the sill and onto the floor. I see now how Sudek was able occupy himself with nothing more than a window and the things around him.

  • Fall Diptych

    Fall Diptych

    Diptychs (and triptychs). Thinking about photos in groups: twos, threes, and fours, maybe more (the grids of photos by the Bernd & Hilla Becher, e.g.). How does pairing photos change them? How does looking for pairs alter the process of photographing? I don’t know, but I like to think about it.

    Landscape #221102 is a diptych made up of halves of two trees, one with yellow leaves and one with red.
    Landscape #221102
  • Second Hand; Non-Visual

    Second Hand; Non-Visual

    Keith Smith noted: By saying he was going to make a picture of some thing, he ended up making second-hand, non-visual pictures (see “Not vivid, Not exciting.”). I wonder how often I take pictures of something I have imagined (whether or not I’ve said it aloud to others or silently to myself) rather than take pictures visually of things I have never described or imagined. How often do I not “see” something because I was fixated on finding what I hadn’t seen?

    The other day I walked by a tree resplendent in fall color, leaves wafting down in the breeze. Under the tree was a lone chair, bathed in warm light reflecting up from the fallen leaves and filtering down through those still on the tree. I imagined that scene, returned with my camera, and took a dozen supremely mediocre pictures of it, from lots of different angles. Nothing.

    The other night I wandered out after dark, looking to spend some time alone. Nothing more. As usual, I took my camera with me. I took a handful of pictures, some of which, in hindsight, have become interesting (to me) photographs. In the moment, I had no real sense of the scene being anything. I just took a picture. After the fact, and with some editing, I have ended up with photographs that I quite like, photographs that I had not previously described in words.

    Urban #221007.2 A color photograph of an entryway at night. Inside a red plastic chair sits next to a blue metal door. A hand sanitizer hangs on the cream-colored cinderblock wall.
    Urban #221007.2

    After noting the problem of taking pictures of scenes he has already described in words, Smith goes on to say:

    I can look at a completed picture and find, ‘Oh, yes, I used tertiary colors here, complementary there, saturated color in this small shape as a solution to counter balance the weight of the heavy form in another part of the composition, et cetera.”

    Smith’s observation seems, to me, to describe much of how people discuss composition. It is easy, after the fact, to find the rule of thirds, the golden spiral, golden triangle, balancing elements, leading lines, etc., and to assert that the photographer used them in taking the picture. As if to say: while out in the field, or even in the studio, the photographer viewed the world through some rule-of-thirds overlay, or golden spiral overlay, or whatever. More often, I think, what we mean (and perhaps should state clearly) is something like: Now that the photograph is complete, we can find in it evidence of the rule of thirds, complementary colors, a golden spiral, etc. I do not doubt that we can find evidence of those compositional rules, but I do doubt that those rules were operative when the photographer “took the photo,” i.e., when the photographer was out in the wild and pushed the shutter release button. In other words, insofar as “rules of composition” implies that they were operative in composing the picture, I don’t think they play much of a role. I think they might play a role in editing pictures and producing finished photographs.

    The question, then, seems to be: When does a photograph acquire those aspects. In the comfort of the studio or the office? Then the photographer (and perhaps the photographer’s assistants) has the luxury to review all the pictures from a particular trip or day or session or whatever and has selected the pictures considered best (see, e.g., the oft-praised Magnum Contact Sheets book). From that subset of pictures the photographer (and perhaps some assistants) then often crops or edits that image further (see, e.g., Arnold Newman’s portrait of Igor Stravinsky).

    Taking Smith’s comment seriously, I wonder how many pictures turn out to be dull, second-hand photographs because they merely reflect the rules of composition, and how many pictures made without any attention to the rules of composition turn out to be great photographs.

    I’m not interested in the issue of “breaking” the rules of composition (I’m not interested in the rules of composition at all and all discussions of learning them to break them seem to me to be stale.). Instead, I wonder how relying on any rule, guiding principle, pre-described scene, goal, plan, expectation, affects my photography. I am motivated by Smith’s subsequent comments:

    We must learn to see: nature, space, color; to see photographically, to see with our third eye, to read visual material; it is a constant struggle. We must find various ways of learning. One of many is concentration. We must daily practice observation — we are in the business of seeing. Seeing demands research, discipline, training and courage. It takes energy to be visually perceptive rather than to follow simulated vision.

  • Alt Haverford

    Alt Haverford

    Most days Haverford College is idyllic and lovely, and therefor kind of bland. Beautiful trees, manicured lawns, clean buildings, maintained nature trail. It is all so picturesque, so “park like” as somebody said yesterday while looking at a large maple tree resplendent in fall colors. But is there another way to see Haverford, one that is not so bright and cheery?

    Urban #221011: Colored double exposure of Founders Building and a tree.
    Urban #221011

    I enjoy photography because it encourages me to see the world at different times and in different ways. I can juxtapose images and scenes to give a different impression. Or I can seek out scenes in different circumstances and conditions, allowing me to see them in ways most people won’t.

    Urban #221007: A color photo of Haverford College music building after dark.
    Urban #221007
  • The Window of My Office

    The Window of My Office

    I often feel trapped in my office, looking out at the world having fun. The tree blowing in the breeze, the sights and sounds of kids playing, the occasional snippets of conversation between people huddled beneath my window talking about something they hoped to keep secret. The window faces west. Lovely warm light streams in through the blinds each afternoon. Sometimes I raise them and look out. Sometimes I don’t.

    Still Life #220925.2: Black and white photograph of an egg on my office window sill.
    Still Life #220925.2

    I am not, of course, trapped. I can come and go as I please. But I work here and so spend most of my day in this office. It’s a comfortable space, filled with books and gadgets and notes and pens and old prints and scientific instruments. But always the outside beckons, especially in the afternoons when my motivation wanes. I stand at the window and look out.

    Still Life #220925.1: Black and white photograph of an egg on my office window sill.
    Still Life #220925.1

    The window becomes the interface between me and the outside world. Not a barrier but a liminal space where light meets shadow, a space where possibilities await. I linger in that space.

  • Blackboards

    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 chalk and dusty erasers. But there’s something dependable about its simplicity, and little evidence that the many innovations introduced since then have improved pedagogical effectiveness.

    #220831: Black and white image of a blackboard with writing mostly erased.
    #220831: Blackboard as educational technology.


    quid est nōmen tibi?
    quomōdo tē vocās?
    nōmen mihi est …
    ego mē vocō …

    canis
    cattus
    fēlès
    je reconnais
    il/elle reconnaît
    recitāte

    There is something almost poetic about the traces left on blackboards. Fleeting. Ephemeral. Momentary vestiges of teaching and resistance.

  • Postcard Archive: January 2022

    Postcard Archive: January 2022

    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.

  • Can’t See the Forest

    Can’t See the Forest

    Standing here looking west, it’s easy to lose yourself in thick forest of trees. There is no path leading forward. No obvious way to the far side, if indeed there is a far side. Although the sun shines somewhere overhead, here under the canopy of branches and leaves a diffuse light seems to permeate the scene. I pause for a moment to enjoy the solitude and to imagine I’m on the edge of some vast unknown.

    A particularly wooded section of campus.

    Then the pneumatic hammer begins pounding, so close it startles me. I am not, alas, in the middle of some ancient forest but a scant few feet from a construction project. Men running jack hammers and excavating the existing parking lot presumably to replace it with a new one. I turn around and watch the workmen for a few minutes, lament the intrusion of civilization, and then head down the nature trail toward my office where, if I’m lucky, it will be quieter.

  • Detritus

    Detritus

    Detritus (noun): waste or debris of any kind. Cf., discarded matter, refuse, litter, flotsam & jetsam, dross, chaff. Maybe sediment (noun): matter that settles to the bottom (usually of a liquid). Cf., dregs, lees, residue, alluvium. The difference, to me, is we can’t help but produce sediment. Just our being generates a trail of sediment everywhere we go. Detritus, however, is often a willful act of discarding, throwing off that which we no longer want. Cigarette butts are surely detritus.

    #210815