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
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.
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 photos to remind us of a simpler, less crowded time.
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 study in form.
Infrastructure #220621.1
The Bechers’ work lies behind my interest in otherwise overlooked infrastructure. Windmills, manhole covers, utility poles, high tension towers, bridge supports. These are all opportunities to focus on the mundane in an effort to find the interesting.
Infrastructure #220621.2
Manhole covers. Lots of people have found manhole covers interesting. Some people use manhole covers to make great prints. Other people have spent time photographing them. But what happens when we consider them in large numbers? Can we produce a typology of manhole covers? Sewer covers, storm drain covers, utility covers, and communications covers. In the process, can we see the traces of their histories? The imperfections, individual marks of fabrication, scars, and design quirks of individual foundries. Do they also reveal the history of industry, consolidation, and shipping? Local foundry names giving way to larger, regional foundries, which are then replaced foundries in foreign countries.
Infrastructure #220621.3
I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing here. But maybe there is.
We work incredibly hard to create remnants of the past that will help us imagine what it was like: think of ghost towns and historic monuments. National and state park systems have developed strict guidelines for how to repair “historic” structures, e.g., what materials can be used for public-facing projects (stuff visitors might see) need to be or seem to be authentic to the period (whereas non-public-facing projects can use modern materials). Valley Forge is filled with such structures — fences, cabins, embankments — maintained to give visitors a sense of history.
Landscape #220312
That stormy March afternoon, the quiet, lonely cabin certainly didn’t help me imagine the history of the place — 244 years earlier I suspect it was a relatively loud and lively camp with perhaps as many as 1,500 cabins and more than 10,000 soldiers scattered around the Valley Forge encampment. This cabin doesn’t help me understand what life was like for the Continental Army, but standing there in the blowing snow and listening to the ice cracking on the tree limbs as they flexed and bent in the wind I was able to conjure up an image, a fiction of what it might be like to live in such a place.
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.
Landscape #220312
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.
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.
I was asked to take photographs of the local area for a soon-to-be revamped community website (brynfordcivic.org). I wanted to do something different, something that captures the experiences of walking and living in the area, or at least how I see and experience living in the community. Here is some of what I see as I wander the streets and parks:
I want a new camera. Or is it a new lens? I want something to kickstart my photography out of its late winter creative slump. Ya. I think I would prefer a new lens, a new 50mm f/1.4. But first I need to do some research to be sure I get the best lens possible for me. Off to the internet to read reviews, to watch unboxing videos, hands-on reviews, long-term reviews, to compare sharpness, transmission, vignetting, distortion, chromatic aberration, weight, weather sealing, to listen to other photographers explain why they think this lens or that lens is the best (or the worst). And then the pleasure of watching sample images appear and disappear on my screen, examples of the miracles each lens can work. I can’t go wrong. Any of them will be better than my current lens.
#181110.1
I know. I’m not supposed to fixate on my equipment. I need only the tools that enable me to realize my vision, to make the photographs I need to make. Clearly good tools help make good photographs. But how, exactly? What strange alchemy occurs, transforming my base creativity into precious photographs, when I affix a new lens onto my camera? What if a new lens, a new camera, a new tripod, a new filter, a new [whatever] actually has the opposite effect?
In large and small ways, explicit and implicit, concern for equipment permeates so much of the conversation about photography. The sounds gear makes, or a simulacrum of that sound, has become de rigueur for videos, as have clips of people loading film or attaching a camera to a tripod. We can’t look at a photo without wondering what film stock was used. People talking ostensibly about photographs and making photographs sit surrounded by cameras, usually lurking on shelves in the background or proudly sitting on the table in the foreground. For me, all of that emphasis on gear distracts. It unhelpfully deflects attention from the joy of photography, which is, again for me, making photographs. That is why, I suspect any new bit of kit will in the end dull my creative vision. That new gadget distracts me from doing what I need to do in order to realize that vision: from making photographs.
#181027
No. I don’t need or even want a new lens, let alone a camera, or any other fancy bit of new, or retro, gear. Those won’t help me realize my creative vision. Only going out and making lots and lots and lots of photographs will.
In the chain that leads from vision to photograph, I am already the weakest link. Fortunately, I cost the least to improve.
Snow still covers the ground, lays piled by the sides of roads, and blocks the sidewalks. Ice covers the pond. This morning the world is still monochrome. But not for long.
#210227.1
Fog rises from the melting snow, growing thicker as the morning warms. At first the world seemed to be a circle of visibility moving along with me as I walked, no more than a few hundred yards across. But soon even that contracted. Shapes fading into existence as I approached gained faint color and texture only at the last minute, when I could nearly touch them. They lost both color and texture as they receded behind me before quickly dissolving into the whiteness.
#210227.2
A world shrouded in fog is a magical place, full of surprises and unknowns. You can neither see nor hear clearly — the fog seems to dampen noise as much as it obscures sight. The noises that do penetrate unsettle and unnerve because they seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Every now and then, a tree with the remnants of last year’s leaves clinging to its branches emerged from the fog, water dripping from its leaves glowing golden brown against the milky scene.
#210227.3
Mornings like this happen rarely around here, once or twice a year. I feel sorry for all the people who missed this one, but am glad they didn’t invade my enjoyment of it.
Benches are so much more than merely a place to sit. Arranged around campus they seem like sentinels watching over a particular vista or guarding a quiet corner. Should you happen across one, it invites you to pause and maybe even to linger. Alone or with a friend, passionate conversation or silent observation, it matters little. Benches don’t care.
#210223a
Their insistence on reflection and contemplation put them at odds with a world that celebrates busyness. Now, more than ever, we should perhaps take them up on their offer to loiter and to dawdle. We would all benefit by spending some time doing nothing. We don’t need some app on our ever-present “smart phone” to tell us when and for how long to focus. We need not regularize and formalize downtime. Just go find a bench. There are plenty out there waiting for you.
