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On the Road in New York, DC, Maryland and Virginia

When I go back east, I try to make the most of the cross-country trip. These past two weeks have been rather intense contrasts between city and country, teaching and practice. I like plunging into deep experience immersion. It makes life full, or makes it seem so. I know I want to live intentionally and intensively. Seeing those words appear on the screen makes me want to take a nap.

The trip was conceived as a mini-lecture tour, starting in New York City, which I improvised on from there. 

I am always grateful to be invited back to PhotoPlus in New York to lecture. It is a great teaching opportunity, connecting with thousands of people over the years who need some help with their photography. It is also among the few venues left where I can connect with old friends and colleagues while trying to grow connections and opportunity. This year, I was blessed with both once again.

Wandering  New York Streets

My first day in NY this year was spent walking the streets. It was colder than I anticipated, and my vest not being quite up to the warmth I would have liked, kept me a little on-edge. 

The confluence of big city, ordinary objects, people in motion, street smells from car exhaust, restaurants, and refuse all mix together. The camera lets me sort the visual out of the mix, sometimes encouraging the mini-anthropologist in me, studying our state of affairs. It is a jumble. 

I instinctively headed for the United Nations, only about 15 blocks from where I was staying. It felt like a good plunge into being in the city. The UN is deeply symbolic for me, a physical manifestation of our hopes for peace and the struggle to achieve such a state.

The fact that a Trump tower was across the street, did not escape my intention/attention nor fail to raise my irony antenna. The clouds reflecting on the building created a view of unreality that seemed completely appropriate.

Reality and illusion seem to always be in play in the city. It was particularly noticeable with the upcoming election and truth on trial. Photography often discovers visual to mirror our state of mind. 

New York is jam-packed full of visuals. Almost everywhere I turn I see more time capsules of where we are, who we think we are, who we want to be, with wonderfully endless comments and contrasts along the way.

Richmond Virginia

Friends I had made many years ago when I’ve taught at Maine Media Workshops have been inviting me to Virginia and their photo community for years. This year, thanks to Charles and Cindy Krumbien, the Focus Group of Richmond Virginia hosted a talk by me which brought more unexpected and good experiences.

The audience was appreciative and curious. There were so many things I could only touch on in the time I had, that it seemed it would be useful to come back.

Washington DC

Any trip to Washington DC draws me to the Air and Space Museum (and annex near Dulles). I never cease to be taken in by the reality of the machines that have so seductively carried us beyond this world literally, and photographically.

The museums are complex, and the settings dictate the photographic options. Sometimes I can make desperate form and design work together, which is surprising and delightful. I just keep looking, trying to piece together views, angle of view, stitch, perspective and wonder. The photographs are rarely as simple as I would like, but the fascination keeps drawing me back.

There is never a “right” lens to carry, so I now just assume I will stitch together needed wider views, and hope that a short zoom will suffice for other opportunities. A longer lens could also be useful, but visits are often too short to be fiddling with equipment. That does leave me with that nagging sense that I could do more, but I try hard not to let that dominate the experience.

The Air and Space Annex now houses a real, traveled Space Shuttle, the Discovery. The Discovery flew 39 missions, launched the Hubble Space Telescope, and traveled 148,221,675 miles over 27 years from 1984 through 2011. I’ve seen the prototype Enterprise many times, starting way back in 1982. And I’ve had the extraordinary experience of being at the Kennedy Space Center, on the launch pad 39B in 1996 walking around the shuttle Columbia waiting to fly and in 1997 on Pad 39A with this very shuttle Discovery.

Washington DC as Our Capitol

I have always used my photography to explore the world, who we are, what we have done, and where I hope we might evolve. Trips to our nation’s Capitol have taken on much more complex meanings these days, and although I still feel deep pride in our aspirations as Americans, I’m am deeply concerned about the directions that journey has taken. This feeling is not just limited to current politics.

My last visit to Washington DC was just before the 2016 election. I felt fear in the air and visited the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. I needed the reassurance of their reality. It turned out I needed it more than I could imagine.

On this trip, fear of our new reality was an understatement. At Air and Space, or for a nice lunch at the Museum of the American Indian, I could get lost in a celebration of what we’ve accomplished technologically, and the familiar horror of what we did to our native peoples.

As I walked toward the US Capitol, for the first time in my life visiting DC, a dread descended on me that was palpable. Had I been here during the Vietnam War, I’m sure I would have known this feeling long before. But all of these years visiting our capitol, with congresses I’ve been disappointed in and presidents I’ve both been proud and ashamed of, I’ve never felt the same dread. The closest to it was when I came through in 2002, my first visit after 9/11, when I felt how precarious this whole American dream might actually be. I didn’t feel the dread of destruction from within. This time, that feeling was pervasive.

Walking around the capitol building, seeing scaffolding surround the House, a big cloud forming overhead, carrying my mono-pod which I realized might be mistaken for a weapon, all weighed me down, way down. I walked over to the Supreme Court, thinking about what may be coming and how much the dream and aspiration of America might rest on what happens in that building this next year. I had never been inside, but this time I had to see the Chamber itself. The real place where great and bad decisions have been argued, where our nation depends on justice, and does not always see it delivered. I stood there for a long time, pondering our nation’s future and the great aspirations it was founded upon.

Carrying a camera with a desire to make a difference can create agendas, “You see what you want to see,” becomes a legitimate concern. Seeing ironic juxtapositions, being sensitive to visual evidence of concerns, sometimes just the act of going someplace because it is a place of power or intrigue empowers us to notice, and record. I don’t believe I have ever made a good photograph based on political commentary. But I have witnessed events, purposely visited places involved in controversy, and tried to find visual manifestation of anxieties I feel.

It is simpler for a photojournalist in some ways, even though their work is often much harder and more dangerous. They often work in danger to document visual evidence of tragedy and wrongdoing. They are often truth-telling heroes. I’m trying to walk a different line, still letting the artistic intent dominate, while trying to be insightful about the implications.

I knew I was going to Monticello in the next few days. Starting out from our slave-built national capitol, with all of those obvious sad contradictions, my sensitivities were only going to heighten over the next few days. It was a lot to take in, and I was troubled. Meeting my daughter for dinner was the great relief of the day. Her smile, beauty and wit turned my mood around.

And, of course, there is always so much more to see…

Montecello

Monticello is a place of great contradictions for me. It was the home of Thomas Jefferson, one of our most gifted founding fathers, the author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States. It was also a slave plantation.

I spent time on this visit on anther tour of the house, but also an longer interpretive walk to the Slave Quarters, listening carefully to descriptions of life and work conditions. The guide made it quite clear that despite the children that emerged, Jefferson’s relationship with Sally Hemings and his other slaves was still one, of these people, being his property. This clearly did not fully characterize the relationship the guide argued, but despite the trust Jefferson put in Sally’s brothers and her children, they were not on his plantation, nor working, voluntarily.

On the Road

We don’t need unrealistic melodrama to make beautiful photographs. For me, it is a deeply satisfying journey to work hard to record what I see. As I seem to repeat endlessly, realism is of great value. Beauty and realism may not be enough to make the photograph important to me beyond the personal moment. It may not rise to making it into my “greatest hits” folder, but stomping on the reality with trumped-up saturation and contrast would not move it either.

My own experience is that we rarely make great photographs. When we do, it is the rare moment of light coinciding with opportunity and skill. What I do in processing afterward has far less importance, regardless of what is needed for my own aesthetics and memory.

In Richmond Virginia

A dawn on the James River started my exploration of the area. It was a lovely morning, and the site along the river was rich in form and line, rock, current and trees.

I felt empowered by the ease at which I can now do high dynamic range (HDR) files and encode such a broad range of light, even beyond what my eyes can take in. I made quite a few HDR sets, some with the intention of stitching them together into panoramics. Thanks to local photographer David Everette for taking a group of us down to one of his favorite places along the river.

Over the next few days I got a much broader glimpse of this city, the river and its history. I was grateful for the exposure, and with visits to Williamsburg and Jamestown over the next days, my sense of the history evolved.

Photography takes so many forms. I am drawn to its potential veracity more than any other quality. Sometimes the option to juxtapose photographs to convey a larger, deeply felt context can be part of that power.

Image combination is not new, and has certainly been used for evil when designed to fool viewers into an altered reality. This joining of images into an obvious montage felt like a larger truth for me.

These dark words are inscribed on the circular stone surround:

“Not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our duty to transmit unshorn to our children.” 

Although it hadn’t initially occurred to me, people are asking if they can buy a print of this of the Memorialized photo. I think this might be a good idea, and it seems I might have found the appropriate non-profit to donate at least 50% of the proceeds to, The Southern Poverty Law Center. Please email me with any thoughts you might have. info@sjphoto.com

At Home: Smoke from Devastating Fires

The light is pretty this morning. It is very smoky.  The photographs could be romantic, but it is not the world I want to see. Golden light is not the answer to every landscape question.

Haunting light, strange, disturbing, beautiful despite the reality, from fires that have killed, making many ill. How can something so fundamentally destructive also carry beauty? Beauty has many facets, some very dark.

The fires are still burning. It has been a week now, with the death toll growing and breathing masks showing up everywhere.

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