Tuesday, September 27, 2011

After finishing the roll of film from which yesterday's post was made, this image is from the next roll about five minutes later.  It's Bethesda Fountain, a landmark Central Park icon, that is an extremely popular destination in the park. I've been coming here for decades, and never remember seeing the lotus plants that are present now in the fountain.  I suppose they're a recent addition, and one I like very much.

 

Monday, September 26, 2011

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Though natives of other capitals will disagree, I think New York City is the most interesting, dynamic, and vital city in the world.  I am not a native, but have been privileged to have lived in, and later nearby (still in NY State) "the City" for decades, and I consider myself a New Yorker to the core. Manhattan is an absolute gem, and within Manhattan, Central Park is a diamond.  Both this year and last, I've accompanied my wife, and now my stepson into Manhattan on Saturdays for them to attend classes at the Art Student's League of New York while I spend that time doing something else. My mecca is always Central Park. With a monopod I got last Christmas,  I've decided to use my Mamiya kit there  These images are from the first roll of film I've made this way.  They are statues of the poets on the Mall in Central Park that most people refer to as "poet's walk".  The poets are Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and Fitzgreene Halleck. 





Friday, September 16, 2011

The most beautiful season of the year is just beginning to emerge from the lushness of a wetter than usual summer.  I've never known exactly how the relationship between weather and autumn color works, but I suspect that this will be a memorable year.  This image is a late summer one.  I will go back later and see how it may change as fall progresses.  It is of a marsh beside the Hudson River in the town of Cornwall-on-Hudson from a road that's not easy to find, but well worth looking for as it meanders by the river's edge. 

Friday, September 9, 2011

This coming Sunday will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11/2001.  The images posted here have never been printed nor scanned until now.  I took them a little over a week after the murders at the WTC and they have haunted me since.  There were hundreds and hundreds of posters with pictures and messages begging for any information that could possibly reunite the missing with those dear and important to them.  Those reunions never happened.  I have not been able to prepare these few photographs for this post without intermittent bouts of deep grieving, and tears.  The entire experience of that day has made me profoundly hostile to religion...every religion... and, especially, their particular forms of fundamentalism and judgmental intolerance. 



Sadly, the NO FEAR poster seems to me to be more bravado than reality.  In fact, the thousands of people who still live with PTSD belie the notion that terrorism has no impact on our or anyone's society.  The next photograph tells a different story.


As does this one.



This last represents but a miniscule fraction of the tsunami of grieving, and mourning that brought many hundreds of people, including myself, to lower Manhattan to be witness to and connect in spirit with the nearly three thousand victims of wanton murder and the far wider circle of their friends and families.

Friday, September 2, 2011

A year ago or so I bought two exhibition catalogs of the photographs of Chip Hooper.  I've like his work a lot since I first saw some large monochrome prints at a now closed gallery in NYC.  His principal body of work is of shoreline views of the ocean and the extraordinary variations that occur.  For the past several years I've been fortunate to have been able to spend a week or so at a beach front place in Florida that has allowed me to see what Chip Hooper regularly sees at the Pacific Ocean sites he frequents...those wonderful variations of sky, and sea and their perpetual interactions.  The two 'graphs below were made at a location south of St. Augustine.  The first, facing the ocean of course, and the second 180 degrees behind.