Photographs

#1

#1

This photograph introduces viewers to the group; to the scene, still recognizable as on a bridge, and to the style, readable as using the bridge's structures.   

#2

#2

For collagists, typographers, and humanists,...

#3

#3

This photograph, like others in this portfolio and some in others, relies on pareidolia, a desire "to perceive a specific, often meaningful, image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern" (Webster's Unabridged), as one door into imagination.   

#4

#4

More pareidolia. The man appeared to me only while I was editing the image, well after I had made the exposures, so that it is hard to pin down the role of intent in its creation. The photograph faithfully represents some visual facts vital to its overall effect; rusty girders look like that because photographs of girders went into the image. However, the figure appeared to me as if by its volition, in any case not as some creature of post-production guided by calculating intent. I added nothing to this image out of the camera, although I did remove some junk from his back, to make a photograph presenting visual facts *and* appealing to my and viewers' imaginations, especially those whose taste runs toward Dada, surrealism, or play.   

#5

#5

Pareidolia works best (or most often, anyway) when we can read faces into (or out of?) otherwise-randomness. This graffito, because locally famous (I've been told), also proclaims "Made in Williamsburg," demonstrating photograph's unique power of thisness.

#6

#6

If the night and technique can generate figures and faces, why not a landscape or four?

#7

#7

The car and its driver merged with the bridge without my intending--or even, originally, my knowing; I fired the flash reflexively as he was zooming by in his car and discovered him only later, while editing the image. Is he therefore less aesthetically valid or more? Why?    

#8

#8

Unlike all the other photographs in this portfolio, this one is a creature of my intent as implemented in post-production. All the others, made in-camera on the scene, relied heavily on chance, making me grunt, "Oooh," "Ah," or "Wha?" when they came up on the camera's screen. Thus the *others* confirm G. B. Shaw's remark: "A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.” Post-production is more efficient than cod, but at least in this portfolio, it led to no other image worth showing (of the many hundreds made).

#9

#9

When I adjusted the color balance to compensate for the aggressive yellow of the sodium street lamps, this image occurred.  

#10

#10

No product of my intent, this image stands or falls in catalyzing possibilities, also metaphors, in viewers' minds, as it has in mine. That's a general purpose of this portfolio: to show images whose meanings, unmoored from my intent, arise and change in viewers' minds as they wish and play.

#11

#11

a thrusting dancer? 

(but why assume movement?)

weapon brandished?

hummingbird mechanized and overdriven?

open Swiss knife leaping? 

 

#12

#12

Photographs of people who place themselves in meaningful spaces and patterns, of "menshen in matrices," has long been a theme of mine, and the technique developed for the bridge generates matrices galore. Here, the tradition and the technique converge. 

#13

#13

After making a flash exposure that left black voids among the girders, I was looking for a scene that the voids would tear into, when a subway train thundered by, and my shutter finger twitched. Photography can exploit serendipity. Uniquely? The face of the young, innocent-looking girl appears slashed by a girder, and the train is so surrealistically impossible and ominous that I take this image as a scene from a nightmare, but my interpretation is just as after-the-fact as anyone else's.

#14

#14

Some viewers -- prompted, they have said, by the ray of force emitted by the "ship" left center and aiming down right -- have blurted something about warfare in space.  Others see an archipelago, and just one, a landscape reminiscent of a painting by Yves Tanguy. Why not surrealism? 

Bridge #15

Bridge #15

Another Rohrschach exercise.

Bridge #16

Bridge #16

This image pushes the portfolio's point toward an extreme.  

If the triangles right and left were -- somehow -- directing the structured rhombus, then...

Bridge #17

Bridge #17

This is still a photograph.   

#1

#1

"One Scene, Many Seens." The comma effectively means but. That matters here!  

 Here's the sign, rendered literally, which I chose for its ordinariness, so that, to the degree that any image of it manages to be extraordinary, it will contrast all the more with its source. This span between ordinary and extra-ordinary, I use gen

Here's the sign, rendered literally, which I chose for its ordinariness, so that, to the degree that any image of it manages to be extraordinary, it will contrast all the more with its source. This span between ordinary and extra-ordinary, I use generally to gauge a photograph's success. The more deeply within mere mimicry it originates, the more meaningful (or at least intriguing) is its escape. This conception of meaning in photography, I learned from Bill Jay, Negative/Positive: A Philosophy of Photography.       

#2

#2

The B, though still easy to read, is not undisturbed.

#3

#3

Just barely the B in Buca still. 

 

#4

#4

#5

#5

On to other letters.

#6

#6

The combined exposures sometimes make for an impression of movement.     

#7

#7

 detail of the preceding

detail of the preceding

#8

#8

Crystallinity amidst churning. 

In the implied motion around the calm center, I see also emotion. 

#9

#9

The camera, aimed at the same spot as in the preceding image, just rotated less between exposures, but the resulting images differ significantly. Since other distinctive images might be made even of this one spot, this sign must be photographically rich. What about other scenes?    

#10

#10

#11

#11

#12

#12

After having made hundreds of photographs in a dozen trips to the scene over eighteen months, another purpose of the portfolio emerged in my mind, catalyzed by seeing again Berenice Abbott's "New York at Night"  (  http://www.afterimagegallery.com/abbottnightview.htm ). In light of this and other photographs by her that I have long admired, I came to see this portfolio as a re-take on New York City as interpreted by some photographers and painters from about 1920 to about 1950, drawing on Modernist traditions. My "original intent" had nothing to do with this result, at least not consciously.   

#1

#1

#2

#2

#3

#3

#4

#4

#5

#5

#6

#6

#7

#7

This photograph has looked and felt like the portfolio's visual and logical end since I first saw it as Polaroid positive. The ice had melted for a day, released shards, but then refrozen, creating a surface like leather with deep jagged punch marks. In bright sunlight, I aimed the camera at the sun's glare on the ice perhaps twenty feet away, exposed the negative for the glare (placed it at the top of the tonal scale), and Polaroid Type 55 let all the rest of the scene fall down into the gloom while still holding details everywhere; that's what makes for an impression of a ball hovering in space.    

Matrices #1

Matrices #1

The arrow written in chalk was apparently to direct participants in a running event on the campus of UC Berkeley. The couple looked as if they were breaking up, or rather, as if she were leaving him. The as if counts here, not what they were doing in fact, though. The drama depends on the matrix. He stands on the center cross formed by bricks as she is turning away. The arrow, then, can be taken as if anticipating his retreat in rejection, confirmed by his body language of resignation, confirmed by his hands in his pockets, The figure top right, in the only direct sun, is oblivious, barbing the drama nearby even more.

In several ways, this photograph was spontaneous. The figures acted without any direction from me (or even giving any sign that they were aware of a photographer). Although the arrow had caught my attention, timing makes this image, and that was decided by my shutter finger spontaneously. I had come prepared, though. I was photographing couples, especially those breaking up, while myself in agony over a rejection.   

Berkeley, CA, 1981 

     

#1

#1

Woods enclose an 18th-century house in Chaplin, CT. 

#2

#2

The portfolio originated with this image, which, like the house as a whole, charmed me so much with its quiet, bold simplicity, that I asked myself, "What other images might I make from just a door?" As it turned out over time, I photographed it dozens of times in different kinds of light, from different sides and distances, using different exposures, lenses, and films, though always in b&w and using large-format. The images of this one, simple object kept surprising me with their diversity in not just appearance but also implied state of mind. Something was intriguingly wrong with the notion of a fixed, intrinsic correspondence between an object and a photograph of it. Photographic treatment of the scene mattered more than the scene "itself." By raising doubts about the notion of a scene-in-itself, this door series anticipated "One Scene, Many Seens," done twenty years later. Measure this work, then, by what it *makes* of scenes, I ask, not by what scenes it *takes.*     

#3

#3

#4

#4

#5

#5

still the "same" door as in #2 through #4

#6

#6

Here is (a photograph of) the back of the same door as in #2-#5. 

It is difficult to make a print that represents the crack and the surrounding shadow properly dark while distinguishing the two and preserving the floor's texture -- rich wood grain -- right down to the print's bottom edge; difficult but worth it, the surfaces palpable because of a 4x5 negative and Schneider lens. Exposure: at least ten minutes, during which I walked softly.  

#7

#7

the same back of the same door as in #2-#6  

#8

#8

the back of the same door as in #2-#7

To capture light on a soft afternoon, the shutter was open for about an hour (Tri-X, ASA 160).

#9

#9

This photograph depicts a corner of the hearthstone, with original chestnut floorboards snuggling up to it. The stone must have been hewn into a rectangular face before it was wrestled into place, but in the perhaps eight generations since then, many shoes have smoothed it. In this light, the wood's texture contrasts with the stone's. If I return to the house again, I will give stone its due by including it in more images. This photograph is structured like #1 in Black Ice, made a few years previously, though the resemblance has occurred to me only now, while setting up this website.  

#10

#10

With light coming only from the fire itself, the lens stopped down to at least f8,  the exposure was long enough for individual sparks to streak as they floated toward the chimney, past the ladle and the iron arm holding it. No wonder the hearthstone was necessary!                           

#11

#11

Chestnut floorboards near the hearth. Although weak or outright broken lengthwise in many places, creaking, they never gave way. Each nail differed in shape because a smith had struck them never exactly the same way.   

#12

#12

The grain in floor boards gave rise to many photographs implying how it felt to live in the house.

This digital photograph, I made on a visit years after I had moved out.

#13

#13

In places, the knots can appear as if rocks in a stream, and the wood's grain if as a current.

#14

#14

Long after moving out, I returned for a (digital) photographic romp that revealed this, overlooked during my years of living there.  

#15

#15

Light from one of the small frame windows -- glass must have cost more in the 1770s -- splashed across floor planks uneven everywhere and in some places cracked after two centuries (but not giving way).

#16

#16

Large format reveals every fiber and crack in the wood, and splinter of light. 

Buildings #1

Buildings #1

Dallas, TX

#2

#2

Electronic reproduction may obscure the strips of blue sky on the left and right edges that are easily seen in a print. 

Dallas, TX

#3

#3

Dallas, TX

#4

#4

This photograph, with its lines and false colors, heralded the portfolio "Corp Distort."

Houston, TX, 2006

#5

#5

The Pennzoil Building

Houston, TX

#6

#6

Houston, TX

#7

#7

As part of a Zen garden, a friend has built a bathhouse.

Austin, TX 2007   

#8

#8

a barn somewhere in New Hampshire, c. 2005

#9

#9

Berlin, looking across the Spree River

A window as reflected in the river is bright (as if the light inside were on) but not the window itself. Since photographic fiction is now technically easier than ever before, I feel obliged to add: I did not make the window look that way, cannot even explain it after the fact, which a friend pointed out to me.  

#10

#10

Without a 24mm tilt/shift lens on a DSLR, I would not have made this photograph. It enables me to straighten an image's lines and tilt its focal plane, so that here, the verticals are starkly parallel/vertical (with a conventional lens, they would have converged, since the walls loomed above me), and the focal plane runs from near on the left to far on the right (so that the aperture could stay open enough to keep exposure short enough for a hand-held camera). Because this lens lets me shape what I see, it invites an active stance, even "rubber vision." By requiring manual exposure and focus, it also slows me down, inviting reflection.

To bring out the wall's edges, I have applied a red filter to make an intensely blue sky appear dark.

in the Sculpture Garden of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, TX, 2011 

#11

#11

Giorgio de Chirico painted some scenes struck by similarly stark, angled light, structured geometrically, and populated by works of art. Many of his works hang in the Menil Collection, near which I lived in Houston not far from the sculpture garden of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, where I made this exposure in 2012.

#1

#1

Electronic reproduction degrades the foreground's texture, which emerges -- though just -- in a print.  

#2

#2

#3

#3

#4

#4

#5

#5

#6

#6

#7

#7

#8

#8

#9

#9

#1

#1

Kids and I usually agree in seeing here a dog trotting along, but what some of them have seen as jaws, I see as feelers.  

#2

#2

This image started the series, which was accepted by the owners / managers of Designworks Gallery in Galveston, TX. They sold no prints, even lost one to a flood, but I remember the gallerists with gratitude anyway. In this age of electronic photography, I want to add that the moon was really looming by a Ferris wheel.

#3

#3

How this surprised me! 

#4

#4

#5

#5

An amoeba or other form of life? It's creepy in any case.

#6

#6

#7

#7

Especially the red cylinder makes for an impression of depth.

#8

#8

Mathematicians, delight!

#9

#9

In #1 through #8, both the rides and the camera were moving during the exposure. Starting with #9, the camera stayed on a tripod, so the results depended solely on timing and the loops described by the rides. The lines as if drawn with a Spirograph whose marker is skipping, this picture still manages to be different from others made with the same technique on the same spot just moments before or after; a small difference in craft can make for a big difference in aesthetic impression, ultimately (I aim) in meaning.   

#10

#10

#11

#11

It would have been impossible to duplicate images from one moment to the next, which implies that visual experience is infinitely photographically rich even in just one carnival.    

#12

#12

Using garish lights, a camera can make something suggestive.

#1

#1

Over a baseball complex near Beaumont, TX

 

(a detail of #2)

#2

#2

symmetry, disturbed

(#1 is a detail of this.)

#3

#3

Berkeley, CA 

 

#4

#4

To make the exposure, I climbed into a tree whose branch is visible as a black blur in the bottom right corner. Ilford's chromogenic film made for such delicate details over a long scale that even large (20"x30") prints from a scan reveal every strand of the hammock, small leaf on the terrace, and animal on the plastic pool at the top in the center, from darks into brights. This photograph demonstrates structured presence to intimate ties that bind.

Santa Barbara, CA

#5

#5

The net, its shadow, and a "negative shadow" of the hole in the net are visual facts arranged for misdirection. The player did not pose.

Monterey, CA

#6

#6

By pointing the camera up (as compared with #5), I removed the foreground, thus some information that keeps #5 grounded, so this photograph should be more disorienting, puzzling -- though not, I hope, coy.

Monterey, CA

#1

#1

On the MoMA's page devoted to Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie," the artist characterizes the work's aesthetic as "destruction of natural appearance; and construction through continuous opposition of pure means—dynamic rhythm." This photograph's pure means, its structures and colors, less refer to visible objects than evoke visual and commercial extravagance. However, I did make this photograph steps away from Broadway.                                  

New York, NY, 2015 

#2

#2

Because this image was made not electronically but by traditional means, the possibilities for manipulation were limited, so whatever figure or scene you might see here, it has arisen naturally. I would like to think that this image "would cause Allan Chasanoff to stumble, [would] fool his eye at least for a moment, raise a question about perception" (Charles H. Taub, "An Understanding," in a booklet about the Chasanoff Collection).

Chaplin, CT, c. 1995

#3

#3

Creatively abused HDR

The results of such abuse are unpredictable, as shown by the next image, a detail of this one.

The Bronx, NY, 2013

#3a (detail of #3)

#3a (detail of #3)

It startled me when I noticed, long after the exposure, that the photograph makes it look as if a fellow's head had separated from his body. A painter would have to intend such, but not a photographer. If a photograph's meaning depends less than a painting's on its maker's intent, what *does* it depend on? Does my choice of this image in editing (inclusion of it in the website) constitute intent? If so, what about some other feature later discovered in the image?

Bronx, NY, 2013    

#4

#4

A curtain flapping in a breeze caught some sunlight.  

near Round Top, TX, 2008

#5

#5

swishy fishies

Houston, TX, 2007

#6

#6

not dead

Houston, TX, 2007

#7

#7

Berkeley, CA, c. 1984

#8

#8

Juxtaposition can work in a photograph something as a pun, paradox, oxymoron, simile, or metaphor might in a text.

Galveston, TX, c. 2009  

#9

#9

I thank the sculptor.

Sculpture Garden, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, c. 2009

#10

#10

Electronic reproduction may make it hard to see on the screen what is easy to see on a print of decent size: a body seems to be falling from the ceiling. Like the large metallic sphere in the background and the frame around the image, he -- it -- is a work of art displayed at the UC Berkeley Art Museum, straddling fiction and "real" experience, animate and inanimate. A boy running across the garden contributed the blur without any prompting. 

Berkeley, CA, c. 1984

#11

#11

through a large outdoor sculpture by Alexander Calder

Fort Worth, TX, 2011

#13

#13

To defy the cliches of fireworks photos, I focused on the detritus after the explosions. It was dull-brown rather than chemically garish, and drifting down rather than shooting every-which-way. To put distance between this image and other photographs of fireworks, I also made long exposures while moving the camera around.

Houston, TX, 2008        

 

#14

#14

As recorded, the junk of exploded fireworks looked the same as in #19; dull brown. I have electronically replaced it with dark blue. Does this switch strengthen or weaken the effort to defy visual cliches? Some viewers have complained that the purpose should stand or fall on its own; that such tarting up weakens it. Others, though, have said that they take this image for itself, without regard for what it was *of.* I side with the second party. The subject provided a pretext for making a structured image that can serve as metaphor of grace and mystery.

Houston, TX, 2008

#1

#1

Houston, TX, 2008

#2

#2

Houston, TX, 2009

#3

#3

I enjoy this image for the community that it suggests.

Houston, TX, 2008

#4

#4

Houston, TX, 2008

#5

#5

Houston, TX, 2009

#6

#6

Westerhausen, a German village, 2006

To make this exposure, I writhed under the kitchen table, annoying my hostess, whose hands making a salad are visible on the right. Her daughter looks on from the left.  

#7

#7

Dylan Thomas on a good hair day?

Houston, TX, c, 2007

#8

#8

I see here someone scornful with a beard, scowl, frown, pointed ears, and a bald pate. How literal are Rorschach tests?  Am I what I see (here), do I see what I am? What about play?

Houston, TX, c. 2007

#9

#9

Rig Steak House, somewhere in TX, 2010

 

#10

#10

Shadows here, together with what casts them, make for a network. 

Houston, TX, c. 2007

#11

#11

May all your chairs melt so gracefully! 

in a friend's Zen garden, Austin, TX, c. 2009

#12

#12

If shadows are included, I count eight arches (and a few bricks from a ninth) in this Greek Orthodox church building under construction.

Storrs, CT, c. 1995. 

#13

#13

A print of this image provided a prisoner some mental recreation and solace.

Japanese Garden, Houston, TX, c. 2011

#1

#1

the high-altitude, volcanic desert near Kilauea Volcano

#2

#2

On remote beach near (as I remember / speculate) Pahoa, I found walls made of lava boulders. 

#3

#3

Prevailing winds from the sea just yards away had bent the trees. 

#4

#4

This dead leaf measured perhaps three feet from stem to tip. 

#5

#5

In the black desert near Kilauea lay nothing but dead trees bleached white and their shadows. 

#1

#1

Because of the mountain-like shape created by the shadows on the rock, this photograph introduced an exhibition of the portfolio at The C. G. Jung Center in Houston, TX, in 2008, a fitting site, since Jung's emphasized symbols in mental life. An unusually pious Catholic once remarked about one member of this portfolio, "I sense spirit here," which I, an atheist, gratefully accepted as a high compliment and testimony that we, usually separated by a wide gulf, had communicated. -- A lichen forms the white blob and circle in the center, but many viewers, including me, feel tempted to take it as a sign or symbol. Of what? From whom? Meaning what? No answers, but no matter; the notion persists, the perhaps-symbol packing punch partly because just perhaps.

#2

#2

#3

#3

How could nature. seemingly blind, fashion such simplicity?

#4

#4

One perceiving this, I recognized and accepted my altered state of mind.  

#5

#5

#5 belongs together with #6. They present the same cracks but different figures, each at his emotional extreme, so that together, they demonstrate photography's visual ambiguity, an abiding theme of mine--or obsession. At the very least, they upset the still-reigning notion that photographs copy scenes-in-themselves.  

#6

#6

Compare this with #5. 

 

#7

#7

#8

#8

Nature as sculptor.

#9

#9

For the curves alone,...

#10

#10

How could nature have made this crack, consistent, smooth, and beautiful over several yards, rather than some skilled stonecutter glowing with expressive intent?     

#11

#11

More natural sculpture. 

#12

#12

What do mathematicians, geologists, and artists make of this? 

#13

#13

As if cut by a stonemason, this crevasse extends several yards. 

#14

#14

As if, as if, as if pivoting on the axis defined by the stone below, a clock hand about six feet long arcs along the crevasse above.  

#15

#15

It looks as if the jagged walls of a crevasse touched delicately -- kissed? -- at the one point. A deeply pious Catholic singled this one out as spiritual. 

#16

#16

These waves of stone appear as if ... what? Foamy swash conquering a mountain beach? Heavy smoke billowing? The mountain can make stone seem to melt and move. I may have been trying to imitate (tho not consciously) an image that I had long marveled at, Edward Weston's "9T Cypress Point Lobos," which makes an old tree's grain seem to flow or flame. (  http://www.kimweston.com/edward-weston-photography-archive/point-lobos/9t-cypress-point-lobos/ )      

#17

#17

Natural simplicity makes for mystery.

#1

#1

The former Enron building provided the mirror here.

#2

#2

The Enron building, I again used as a mirror. 

#3

#3

Here's an unusually clear demonstration of the technique. The lines of the mirroring building form a crystalline lattice, which the reflection of the other building then plays off of, disturbing the lattice, usually with lines that are curved and that I have colored differently.

#4

#4

tumbledown town

#5

#5

By zooming in on one pane of glass, I dispensed with the lattice in the mirroring building and gained another view of one mirrored.  

#6

#6

pushing on into purer imagination,...

#7

#7

The mirrored building has become unrecognizable as a building, it approaches pure pattern -- without, I sure hope, becoming *merely* abstract, bloodless, flat. An instrument dependent on incoming light can yield an image insistently suggestive.  

The large sheets of glass are uneven in ways that distort consistently any lines reflected in them. 

#8

#8

The window frames make for the lattice. The large sheets of glass, each distorted differently, vary the patterns within the frames. This portfolio, like some others, follows a strategy of matrix and variations.  

#9

#9

Although this pattern seems pure, disconnected from visual experience, I find it hard to resist seeing it as something that I could see, indeed have often seen: a waterfall. What force pushes me toward this particular?  Why bring what's imaginative down to earth? Why resist it, though? After all, seeing it as a waterfall is a leap of metaphor, and such jumps are usually enjoyable.  

#1

#1

Near Woodstock Valley, CT, c. 1992

#2

#2

Chaplin, CT, c. 1995

#3

#3

Eagleville, CT, c. 1996

#4

#4

Lake Bungee, Woodstock Valley, CT, in the fall before it froze thick for "Black Ice"

#5

#5

Hall's Quarry, Mount Desert Island, ME, 1991

#6

#6

Why do nets (one species of matrices) keep beguiling me? I crave visual structure, partly to rave against mush, in the visual arts and beyond, partly to balance against my fascination with visual ambiguity. Despite my efforts, I cannot explain the hold they have on me. 

Southwest Harbor, ME, 1991

#7

#7

Southwest Harbor, ME, 1991

 

#8

#8

Heavy rain made photographing outside with a heavy, cumbersome, delicate, and expensive Linhof rail camera risky, frustrating, and anti-enjoyable, so I took refuge in a restaurant. After asking its owner for permission to tripod my beast in his main dining room, I made this image through its picture window.

Seal Harbor, ME, 1991

#9

#9

If someone asked me for a tree characteristic of New England, I would reply, "The ancient apple tree" for its venerable scraggliness. Sure, such orchards must dot other regions, as well, like the Midwest's Johnny Appleseed country, but in the U.S., they cannot be as old as those in New England. The region's landscape makes for a sense of time distinctive in this country. Does this centuries-old orchard still yield apples? Does anyone still care? Such questions played into my making such landscapes of New England. This bare, wintry orchard, like many others, looks and feels has-been, as does the region's farming generally and many factories that led the US into industrialism but now lie still or even in ruins. 

near Woodstock Valley, CT, c. 1992

#10

#10

This barn is so large that it must have once housed many animals (or harvested crops and equipment), but it now stands empty and neglected, revealing the past, as like the shadow of the huge tree hints.

Because the shadow is folded at the roof gutter, it emphasizes another element of my photography, visual projection.   

Storrs, CT, c. 1995

#11

#11

New England's farming is now almost as clapped out as this tractor seat. While re-photographing scenes in old photographs, I found high, dense forests now covering much land once farmed.  

near Manchester, CT, c. 1995  

#12

#12

Surprisingly to me, these tented tobacco fields and sheds are still active in the Connecticut River Valley, near where Thomas Gilbert, an English farmer and ancestor of mine, cleared land in about 1650. He came for a future of farming that is now, fifteen generations later, long past.

Windsor Locks, CT, c. 1996

#13

#13

New England has long prized simplicity.

The Congregational Church in Hampton, CT, c. 1996

#14

#14

The New Englanders who built this revered simplicity, piety, and community.

Chaplin, CT, c. 1996

#15

#15

The materials of such ancient houses, wood and stone, also surround them. This house may be much older than the tree.

Mansfield, CT, c. 1997

#16

#16

Found in a long disused field

Chaplin, CT, c. 1995

#2

#2

A field worker is moving irrigation pipe from one furrow to the next in a field growing broccoli.

near Salinas, CA, c. 1986  

#3

#3

The workers kept moving around in the fields, the different crops and the roads forming different matrices. 

near Salinas, CA, c. 1986

#4

#4

Loneliness can make for feeling small. 

#5

#5

Electronic photography first made a decent print of this image possible. 

Lewes, Sussex, England, 1981

#6

#6

Tirol, Austria, 1997

#7

#7

The Swan brothers are cousins of mine. 

Cloverville, CA, c. 1984

#8

#8

Crete, 1997

#9

#9

On the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

William Allard (Vanishing Breed: Photographs of the Cowboy and the West) grunted "Oh!" with enthusiasm on seeing this  at a workshop, encouraging me to persist, for which I hereby thank him.

New York, 1985

#1

#1

Well-dressed in tans and browns.

New City, 2016

#2

#2

END THE WAR ON DRUGS  ODD FELLOW OUR BODIES  GBDSE

LEGALIZE SEX WORK                                    OUR CHOICE

The flags flutter over a McDonald's eatery.

GBDSE has left many tags in this neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant, with many thoughtful political / moral / philosophical slogans or claims, some of which I also affirm.

I made the exposure just a few blocks from the site of #1, while hiking along Brooklyn's Broadway under the el from Williamsburg Bridge to Broadway Junction.  

New York City, 2016

#3

#3

OK, structure, but strong and not immediately obvious. Following a tradition maintained by Margaret Bourke-Whie, Berenice Abbott, Edward Quigley, Charles Sheeler, and Edward Quigley (but out of fashion now, it appears), I find much to admire in industrial achievements. Homo faber! 

George Washington Bridge, NYC, 2016

#4

#4

Play with a lens, play with meaning. 

New York City, 2016