My neighborhood in Savannah periodically adds a little twist to the day for tourists riding the trolleys around Washington Square/Ward, with events like the Bathrobe Brunch (a weekend morning where a large number of people in bathrobes show up for a pot luck brunch), or sometimes by the size of the crowd at our regular Friday afternoon gatherings, or maybe by a Memorial Circle for someone in the ‘hood who has passed.
Our neighbors just to the south, Greene Square/Ward, have added to the possible surprising sights for a visitor, starting a new tradition a few years ago, an Equinox Party, another pot luck meal, but beginning with a “special cocktail” toast to the Sun and then a Sun Salutation, later followed by a series of games where one could win a Rudolph nose.
Neighborhoods where people look for reasons to celebrate together are the best.
The book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” told the outside world about the eccentric nature of Savannah, and some of her inhabitants. Saint Patrick’s Day is when many try to demonstrate it publicly.
The parade used to be the only really public event. When my sister and I were small kids, I have a vague memory of Mom taking us to the parade and us sitting on a curb watching it. While the parade still kicks the day off (after several fraternal breakfasts), there’s already been a week of activities from issuing the parade permit, to announcing the Grand Marshal, to greening the fountains. And after the parade those capable (not too old, parenting, or already over-served) will continue with a spring break revelry until the early hours of the morning. Soon after 3 AM bar closings, downtown residents will hear the drunken arguments about who was supposed to remember where the car was parked.
It’s a long parade and it once was, just a couple of years ago, there were long stretches of the route where you could walk up just before, and have a front row seat. This year, I saw someone in one of those areas putting out chairs more than 24 hours early.
A few years ago the City had to close the squares along the parade route the evening before to keep people from camping out there, and stop arguments. Now, when they open them in the morning for people to set up their family compounds, I hear it’s like the Oklahoma land rush, but I haven’t gone to see it.
Sidewalks get plenty of tents as well, with lots of folding chairs interlocking like a Maginot curb-line facing the street, and defended like the Ukrainian front, multiple coolers with food and beverage enough for at least three days, and in at least one case, a pickup parked nearby with one’s own personal porta-potty in the bed.
Continuing our “Go West Old Man” tour from last week’s post, the boys cross Montana and head south through Wyoming. I’ve been to about 25 of the 60+ US National Parks, and the one I always want to go back to is Yellowstone and the Tetons. (I know that’s two, but they are adjacent.)
Some years ago Barbara and I drove from Yellowstone’s northeast exit at Silvergate through Bear Tooth Pass to Red Lodge just after the route opened in the spring. The road was tunnel-like in the shaved walls of snow taller than our rental car, threaded up and down the steep mountain slopes. It occurred to me the plow driver tasked with the first clearing of the year might have a death wish.
This time, going in the other direction, and without snow on the ground, it was just spectacular.
Yellowstone will always be a special place for me, at least partly for the way it came to be. Photographs made by William Henry Jackson were shared with members of Congress to show what an amazing place it was/is, and they established it as our first national park, the world’s first national park, in 1872.
The Tetons were ghosts for my brief visit this time. There were a number of wildfires in the area and lots of smoke. But you take what comes, and there’s always an interesting photograph to be made.
With Tom Coffer and Paul Thompson at Badlands National Park.
The unspoken question: could three cranky old friends (old both chronologically, and in the length of their near 50 year friendship) manage almost three weeks in a car together all day, every day? We’ve worked together, played together, partied together, lived together, dated some of the same women, mourned together, but…. Well, 17 days, 21 states, and 7,310 miles later, we’re still speaking.
The genesis of the drive was a comment Tom made to Paul, that he had never seen the Grand Canyon and would like to do a road trip there. It was repeated to me and I suggested if we were going to drive that far, we should see more than one thing, maybe do a loop to see several national parks.
It took a couple of years to finally commit to a route. We were looking at a fall departure and Paul suggested we start in the north and move south to try to avoid weather issues, which we did. It didn’t wind up mattering for the weather, but hotels and restaurants were starting to close or go to shortened hours for winter, so fewer choices, and would likely have been even fewer if we had gone south to north.
So on October 1, Paul and I left Savannah, drove to North Carolina to pick up Tom and headed west. First stop was briefly in Saint Louis to get a photograph with the arch, and then head north for The Badlands.
Any thoughts I ever had of the Badlands before the first time seeing them (prior to this trip) was based on western movies and TV shows, showing them as stark, arid, severe, forbidding places. There is some of that, but, like most things in life, it’s more complicated. I’ve posted a new gallery of photographs from the day we spent there.
I should take long walks in the woods, in the rain, more often. It’s an analgesic to the cacophony of the world war on facts and empathy.
My generation expected to have jet packs for personal transportation, flying cars, and transporters to beam us up. Still waiting. One prediction that has finally arrived, also late, is the Newspeak language from “1984.” In 1983 U.S Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Well Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.
I’m assisting an old friend and teaching colleague who is bringing a small group photo workshop to Savannah soon, and my goal is to show these folks something more than the sole focus on Savannah’s Landmark District (the old town) that most visitors get. For part of that, I have Skidaway Island State Park on our agenda, to see something of the wetlands environment that is the “Low Country.” I took a drive out there to see what kind of shape the park is in, thinking, because it was raining, to take a short walk on the trails to make sure it is a viable shooting location. I wound up walking all the way back to the river, about an hour an a half round trip.
It’s not the first time I’ve gone to the marsh for peace and quietude. Growing up, my school bus crossed a large expanse of open marsh twice a day, every day. A little later in life, I wandered along the edges of those areas, playing with the kind of graphic images you can get from the complex simplicity and infinite spectrum of colors and textures of grass, mud, and water. But what fascinates me more is the transition space between open marsh and the lowland forests next to it, a place where something is always being born, and something is always dying.
My first time in the park area was when the island was still a private landholding, accessible only by boat. After the creation of the state park (and the construction of two bridges and a causeway to provide access), I’ve dropped by off and on for years. At first there were no formal trails or infrastructure. You just roamed through the marsh and floodplain areas at will. Now boardwalks elevate you above the wetland areas, and the trails are formalized and mapped.
In 1983 I did some nude photographs of a young woman swimming in one of the creeks that flow through the area, but I had no idea that we would be such trend setters. On my latest walk I found that spot to be a designated photo station. Not kidding. Unusual, interesting idea. The sign tells you how to use the cradle to hold your smart phone and then where to upload the photos to become part of a long range series of images from that spot, to create a time-lapse portrait of how the area changes over time. Cool. Maybe I should send them some of my nudes.
Valentines’ Day last week reminded me of this photograph. Our room had a rose bud in a vase, rose petals scattered and shaped into a heart on the giant bed, and more scattered over the bathroom vanity and linen.
We had caught a taxi at the airport and given the address for our hotel, Les Jardins de la Medina. We arrived on a narrow street of brick pavers, defined by long, tall, plain walls abutting the pavers. The hotel entrance was as unprepossessing as the exterior wall, but going through the door was like being Mary, finding the key to the gate of “The Secret Garden.”
Entering the hotel you are immediately in a lush courtyard jungle . You’re asked to sit and relax, enjoy a cool towel, drink and refreshments, while someone checks you in, gets your luggage moved to your room, and, when you are ready, takes you on a tour of the property, ending at your room. Of course there is no ADA in Morocco, so everyone has to climb stairs, guests and staff.
I spent almost 30 years traveling for a living and I’ve spent a lot of time in hotels. A lot of time. Often as I stood in the mind-numbing sameness of another of those corridors of repeating room doors, I thought of the hallway scenes from “The Shining” or “Barton Fink” or “Naked Lunch.” I understand why a hotelier would want to maximize ROI with as many rooms to rent as possible, and those rooms as standardized as possible to simplify and control costs for housekeeping and maintenance, but it is such a pleasure to discover a property designed and built to exploit the light and climate, where every turn you take is some new, unique vignette.
I was assisting at a workshop many years ago and National Geographic photographer Jim Brandenburg (https://www.photoby.fr/en/8-jim-brandenburg) was speaking, suggesting a different spelling for the braggadocio bumper sticker soundbite, “No Fear!” His version, “Know Fear.” Use it.
A few years later I was one of the photography Mentors for a workshop; the trip leader had just divided the students into groups for each of us, and she said, “Bill, here is your group and here is your costumed model. Go do something interesting and teach something at the same time.” (Or something to that effect.)
One of many ways of distinguishing different kinds of photographers is between reactive and conceptual. I’m mainly reactive; I respond to what’s happening. But nothing is happening.
The model is standing there waiting for directions. The students are staring at me waiting for pearls of wisdom. Thank you Jim. Fear can be a useful motivator. Just do something, and ideas will flow from that. I need a story, a narrative. Backgrounds tell stories with the information they contribute, and I have this western gold-mining ghost town.
So she’s the school marm, leaving her home, walking the dirt street to the school house, stepping carefully, and watching for reckless riders. First composition has such contrasty light, a reflector puts light under the hat, but it feels flat, footlight-y, and her fingers look odd. Move in close, a smaller area where I can use a large diffuser to control and soften the light, much more natural feeling. Keep moving in, with a nod to Vermeer.
Walk down the dusty street to the saloon, beautiful window light bouncing off the smoothness of the worn floor. Same model, same outfit, but now she’s a dance hall girl. Move in tighter, again, for those eyes.
And then…then, there were these old railroad tracks and cars, and another actor/model in just the right outfit. So we did a quick “Snidely Whiplash and Nell.” Dudley Do-Right must have been just around the corner.
Why the residue of a poster stripped from a rough stone wall? In the old village of Hongcun, filming site of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and a UNESCO World Heritage site, from the Ming and Qing dynasties (1300s to 1900s), why is that my choice of subjects?
Part of the reason is Aaron Siskind. (https://www.wikiart.org/en/aaron-siskind) Abstract Expressionism in paintings is interesting, but Siskind’s mid-20th century abstract expressionist photographs were a revelation in seeing for me. Someone could take the paramount documentation tool, and make non-objective pictures. The objects and ideas you discover hidden in the patterns are personal; they are yours and multiply the longer you stare. Documentation can tell a great story, but abstraction lets the viewer go anywhere their imagination can take them.
After identifying a possible primary subject, that bright red slash, how did I get to this particular framing, balancing the visual weights implied by line, shape, texture, tone, color?
I don’t know. After going through infinite variations of micro-movements–in/out, left/right, up/down–one spot felt more right than any other. Of course that might have been because it was more physically comfortable, and have nothing to do with aesthetics, but I can live with that.
We had some unusual weather for the US southeast coast last week. The first thing I noticed, after the snow, was the quiet.
Partly it was a muffling benefit from the snow, but it was mainly no traffic. No large (or small) delivery trucks, no buses, no touring trolleys or horses and carriages, no cars, no jackasses with their intentionally loud exhaust racing down Broughton Street compensating for some personal shortcoming, no open dune buggys blaring music at top volume (when did deliberate aural assaults on the rest of the world become OK?); just people walking in the streets, photographing the ice-encased Tritons in Forsyth fountain, adapting boogie boards, wading pools and other warm-weather instruments into sleds, making snow angels, and building (mostly small) snowmen. For one day, downtown belonged to the people who live here.
About 30 years ago I was doing outdoor winter photography work with some workshops in places like Yellowstone and the Tetons. I bought some appropriate clothing–long parka, long underwear, gloves and glove liners, wool socks and sock liners, knit caps, knit dickeys, ear muffs, etc. I haven’t needed any of that for some time, but pulled it out and it was all in great shape. Unfortunately, I have not maintained myself that well.
It was beautiful. Then it was dangerous. Then it was just inconvenient, messy, and ugly, the “circle of life” for snow, I suppose.
This photograph caused a little bit of a fuss. For the record, Mitchell has long pants on, and any bare skin of Michelle’s was accomplished by minimal disrobing under the covers. (I am also completely dressed.) You’d see more skin poolside.
The picture was set up to use for the cover of “The Impression,” the UGA student literary magazine issue themed “Sex at Georgia,” which, granted, was probably intended at least partly to tweak some sensibilities. Isn’t that what college is for?
In the early years of my career there were conversations that people needed to be educated in “visual literacy,” to understand when/how they were being massaged by images to sell a product or point of view. In today’s world of deep fakes, easily accomplished, and even easier and more realistic as AI develops, a healthy dose of skepticism is important in “reading” any image or video.
For me there are three kinds of images: 1) documentary/journalistic–just the facts; 2) illustration–to help visualize text content with no requirement to be truthful; and 3) advocacy–advertising and propaganda. A fourth might be fine art/personal expression.
For me this was an assignment to create an illustration. For the editors of a magazine, the cover is considered advertising. There is no case made for this to be documentation, but the implication of illicit sex set some folks off, including one faculty member who sat on the board that supervised student publications, and chastised me saying he would bet I would not use that photo in a portfolio.
At that point, I was in my late 20’s, an Army veteran who’d had enough BS, married, divorced, back in school on the GI Bill, feeling reckless and even more anti-authoritarian than normal. It disturbed his world view that I was not intimidated.
Looking back, I think the thing he and others should have been more concerned about in the photo was the amount of student drinking rather than the possibility that 18 year olds (legal adults) were getting lucky.
As it happens, the old guy was right; the photo never made it into a portfolio, but not for moral reasons. It just never rose to the point of being useful in a showing of work examples, like 100’s of thousands of other photographs I’ve made.
