In an A.I. world, the pleasure of a simple irony, found and photographed, will be diminished. Oh well.
Why did several generations who grew up on the Magic of Hollywood, from early Disney to CGI, ever presume any image was documentary to begin with? And all efforts to control A.I. will be modest, and ultimately fail, because technology always outruns regulation and, sometimes, evolution.
This photograph, however, is a real scene. I was driving through the Blue Ridge and Smokies, playing with one of the early (new then) point and shoot digital cameras (a little over a whopping 1 megapixel) as I made my way home from a company meeting in Virginia, and saw this along the road. The only changes I’ve made to the image are to trim some blank sky and parking lot off the top and bottom, add a little contrast and sharpening, and a black border. Trust me.
The Marquis de Sade as a theme for a cafe seems odd to me. Maybe they have a wonderful menu, you order something that sounds really good, and then they show it to you from a distance but refuse to serve you?
Some years ago I use to drive I-95 down the Georgia coast into Florida regularly, for work, and there were billboards along the highway advertising a topless breakfast cafe, apparently a strip club’s efforts to expand their business. I was a little curious, and considered stopping a couple of times, but could never contort the mix of eggs, bacon, toast, and titillation into something that wasn’t off-putting, or just sad, and it seemed unlikely they would let me photograph there. On a recent drive to Jacksonville, I noticed the billboards are gone.
In Prague, the de Sade cafe around the corner was pretty bland looking. Maybe it was a disguise for a backroom with alternate menus, but I thought their ad here was a nice cross-marketing effort, placed between a head shop and a lingerie store.
We were in the Lake District for part of the photography trip/workshop, and our busload of students, staff, and instructors had all piled into the lobby of our “home” for the next few days, along with all photo gear and personal luggage. While waiting for everyone to get their room assignment and key, I decided to take care of business in the lobby Men’s Room.
As soon as I stepped in, I saw this and immediately stepped back into the lobby, grabbed my camera, and hustled back into the Men’s Room. I suspect a couple of eyebrows may have been raised, but sometimes you just know a picture is a photograph, even if you can’t explain it.
“No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” Dr. David Livingston
The Falls are at least as spectacular as you may have heard. The Zambezi River is the dividing line between Zambia (on the right here) and Zimbabwe. About five miles above the Falls the river channel starts widening, a little like a river delta, and calmly (deceptively) winding around small islands until it finds the gorge and tumbles in thunderously, then to follow an eroded meandering channel, on through Mozambique, and into the Indian Ocean.
There is a walking path on the ridge line opposite the Falls, and the views are worth the continuous shower from the mists billowing up, but for a photographer it was a little frustrating. I could not find an angle that came close to showing the volume and power of the flowing water, and even when I did see a potential shot, the ebb and flow of the heavy mist-clouds always obscured some portion of the scene.
We took the boat ride on the river above the Falls, but, as pleasant as it was for a way to enjoy a sunny afternoon, obviously there is no Falls photo from above the gorge, unless you go too close to the edge. No thank you. I quit thinking that holding a camera made me invincible sometime in my 30’s, a very long time ago.
For getting something close to a comprehensive view, a helicopter did the trick, but with little feel for the thunder, the pounding reverberating through your body, in your bones, when facing the cataract, soaking wet; an aural battering negating any other sound or sensation.
One of the great pleasures of photography for me is fleeting, found images. It’s the challenge of not only seeing possibilities converging, but reacting fast enough to catch the shot: getting the right camera position, lens, exposure settings, the peak moment; all done more with fluid muscle memory than conscious thought. It’s my version of sport hunting.
I had a free day before our workshop started and spent hours just walking the city, from breakfast until after midnight. Several times I stepped into a shop to ask for directions and was usually encouraged to catch a cab. Maybe Romans don’t walk, but it was easy, like Paris, and it was the best way to experience the place, even the hazardous pedestrian crossings on some of the busy roundabouts.
Going back to the same location several times during the day (Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, The Forum) offered different takes as the light moved and redrew the description of the spaces, plus, in the morning, local foot traffic; later in the day, tourist hordes multiplied by lots of tacky trinket street vendors; late at night, lovers. My favorites: The Forum for people watching, and Galleria Borghese. I could sit and study Bernini sculptures for hours. I am in awe of how he could create flesh and flexing muscle tone under clothing, from stone.
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted….” Ecclesiastes 3, 1-2; King James version (or The Byrds if you prefer)
Savannah has an extensive urban forest, dominated by old oak trees. These trees have survived wars and hurricanes, the invention of the automobile and the airplane (and help protect us from some of the side effects of that). Many of them were planted when it would have taken less than 30 minutes to walk across the City, a city that is now over 100 square miles in area.
So, it is not frequent, but not surprising to spot the sad green tag, an obituary, posted on a tree, informing a neighborhood that damage, disease, or just age requires the City to safely remove it. I understand, I accept, but for a while, walking through that square, I will see the gap and have a visceral sense of something elemental missing.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.” Greek proverb.
Of all the hotel rooms, in so many places, over the years of traveling for work, this was the first time, only time, the room had a free-standing door. “Room” might be an inaccurate word here.
During those years of traveling, I had some very nice surprises in lodging, a place better than expected, or a serious upgrade. I was overnight in Las Vegas to meet some folks to head out to Death Valley and had a reservation at Caesar’s Palace for the gathering spot. The hotel was overbooked and offered me a very attractive package if they could just buy me a room somewhere else that evening, but it was our convening place so I had to decline. Then they gave me one of the suites (seriously, it had more square footage than my home) they reserve for the high-rollers, requiring me to agree that I would only stay one night. I can’t imagine they thought they would have any trouble dislodging me if I tried to stay, so it was easy to say yes.
Barbara and I had just finished leading a photo safari in Tanzania and were treating ourselves to a few days R & R on Zanzibar. I don’t remember how we came to reserve this place; all we knew was it was a little larger room, but not the biggest. We arrived at Emerson & Green’s and discovered a group of buildings with rambling, interweaving, connecting corridors and stairwells and, following our check-in host, came out on an open rooftop, with this free-standing door. He opened it and the bridge to the other rooftop was the entrance to our room–cross, turn right, three steps down.
The green roof on the right was the large bedroom, with fourposter bed (and mosquito netting that worked), all in lush, dark wood, and cool shadows. There was an open courtyard sitting area and the green roof on the left was “the facilities,” which included a large stone tub that extended partially into the bougainvillea-roofed space. There was even a mosque nearby, and the tinny loudspeaker’s call to prayer several times a day became part of the sensory experience.
A friend asked if I would photograph her destination wedding, in Jamaica. Yes. Barbara and I stayed in the resort facility with the couple’s friends and family and photographed the various activities, formal and incidental.
After the last of the goodbyes, and all departed, Barbara and I headed to the other side of the island for a few extra days, to what sounded like a fun, quiet getaway place, next to the beach. This was December, and being able to bask on the sand for a little while felt great. I really liked the place. Interesting island architecture, vibrant colors, vegetation on the verge of taking over, giving everything a “back to the garden” feeling. I could have wandered around the place photographing it for days, as the light continuously changed the landscape.
The problem was that an opening in the mosquito netting allowed a swarm of very small biting critters into the bed overnight; bugs with the discriminating taste to only bite Barbara, and not me, for whatever reason. Based on her misery the next day, they must have been ferocious in their attack. I don’t think I will ever get her to go back to Jamaica.
The shape of military grave markers will vary from culture to culture, but the common denominator in each military cemetery is the endless, numbing repetition of those markers, receding to a vanishing point at the horizon.
I have heard several variations on the story, but broadly, in 1868, a group of Southern women laying flowers on Confederate graves decided to also honor the Union dead, left so far from home. Word of this got around and the conciliatory nature of the act led to a poem by Frances Miles French, “The Blue and the Gray,” the last stanza of which is:
“No more shall the war cry sever, Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever When they laurel the graves of our dead! Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment-day, Love and tears for the Blue, Tears and love for the Gray.“
Memorial Day became a national remembrance for all those who made the ultimate sacrifice. That story reminded me of seeing this military cemetery near Ho Chi Minh City, for thousands of Viet Cong dead, with a bench for resting, placed by American soldiers who fought them there.
Growing up in the exurban Savannah area, I lived in a world of green–lots of trees large and small, forests and tree farms–and blue–skies, and water from rivers to marsh to ocean. In the 1950s, my formative years, the morality tales of the day were disguised as western motif books, movies, and TV shows, most often scripted with a White Hat/Black Hat ethical simplicity. Maybe some of our complications today derive from a failure to teach ambiguity.
That sort of philosophizing, though, is from later in life, looking back. At the time, the lens of that genre was showing me something else, an alien landscape that was often red or purple or brown, with vast expanses of open space, and great variations in elevation, with supernatural flora. I was fascinated by the western landscape. I longed to see it, be in it.
Now, all these years later, I have had many opportunities to see much of it, in its many forms–deserts to buttes, canyons to mountains, Death Valley to Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon to the Tetons, Devil’s Tower to Custer’s last stand–and I am still fascinated by it, but the real experiences of it have taught me something the passive viewing could never have driven home. It can be a long way between water, even with a motorized vehicle and a multitude of gas station/convenience stores, and how dangerous and unforgiving a place it can be. Also, growing up in the high humidity of the southeast, I sometimes feel I must have grown hidden gills to adapt to breathing moisture. The result is that, in the arid air of the southwest, I can do about a week before my dry, cracking skin becomes rough and sometimes painful.
We all live with a point of view, and having that flipped upside down can be good for the soul, but a little bruising to the ego.
I was leading a small group photography workshop in Monument Valley, with a Navajo guide. As we chatted we discovered we had served in the military about the same time, me in the Army, he in the Marine Corps, based at Camp Lejuene, NC. He said he was glad to get out and get back home; I understand the draw of “home” no matter what or where, but I also heard some dislike of North Carolina in his comments, and asked why. He said, “Too many trees. Out here, I can see what’s coming from a long way off.”
