The Powerful Observer

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Bertrand Russell

The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world.

Deepak Chopra

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.

Niels Bohr

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

Sylvia Plath

Wall

According to my parents, I did not speak a word until I was 3 years old. As a child I was very introverted and sometimes I think that I might have been somewhat autistic. I could easily withdraw into myself and look out as if from within a shelter. I think mentally, I put up a protective screen or wall between me and reality. I remember when even being slightly admonished by a teacher I would hang my head and withdraw into myself; becoming unresponsive to the teacher. Now thankfully I have progressed light years from that little boy, but recently I have been replaying these memories and feelings in my head and spirit. I think it began with my Up series where childhood feelings of wanting to escape my environment and looking to the skies to find it were the taking off point for the series. Even though I have a collection of images I think there is still more to do here.

As you can see from the picture above I have also started trying to express that childhood feeling of putting a wall between me and the world. A study of wall that runs along Riverside Park in NYC and also how a “wall” prevents you from really being able to interact with friends, family, lovers. You see and sense only partially. The message is fragmented, never whole.

Calvin’s Dad

Here is an excerpt from an interview of Bill Watterson by a Cleveland newspaper. In it he talks about creativity.

The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.

I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it. That was the full extent of my concern. You mix a bunch of ingredients, and once in a great while, chemistry happens. I can’t explain why the strip caught on the way it did, and I don’t think I could ever duplicate it. A lot of things have to go right all at once.

What he says pretty much goes for photography and any other creative medium.  Watterson’s talent is in his unique vision of the world and his expression of that world via the words and actions of a precocious six year old boy. My favorite strip was one in which Calvin asks his father why all old pictures are in black and white. His dad, instead of giving a sensible, informative answer tells him there was no color; the world was black and white back then (Calvin’s dad is my role model as I raise my children). The part that makes everyone laugh (and I give it to quite a few people to read, in fact it is pasted to the back of my work notebook) is where Calvin very insightfully responds to his dad’s statement with an observation that old paintings were in color and that if the world really was black and white back then wouldn’t the artists have painted it that way? Without missing a beat his dad responds, “Not necessarily, a lot of great artists were insane.”

Priceless.

1 + 1

I am a great fan of music.  I tend to watch a lot of music programs on TV (not that I watch that much TV) and one of my favorites right now is Spectacle with Elvis Costello on The Sundance channel). Elvis Costello has an assortment of musicians join him on stage and they play music and chat in between numbers. It’s a great show (and no I am not getting paid for this plug).

I have always thought (and I am not the only one) that the creative process is similar regardless of the actual medium of your art. So, for example, many times if you are reading a passage about the writing process you can usually substitute the word photograph or photography for the term writing. Artists have always found inspiration outside their own medium. Aaron Siskind was influenced by the circle of painters he hung around with (Piet Mondrian) and Keith Carter is inspired by the writings of Horton Foote.

It is in this vein that I watch interviews with musicians. Music is so corporeal; it affects you physically and that is what I want my photographs to do. On the Spectacle program with Bruce Springsteen he  said something that made me sit up and say yeah, that’s right! In speaking about writing music he said (and I paraphrase loosely) ” … in writing music one plus one has to equal three. If at the end all you have is words and paper then you fail, if all you have is paint and canvas than you failed. There has to be that something other, that transcendence…)

Same with photography. Light plus silver has to equal magic!

Building A Better Magazine

Over the years I have been a subscriber to many, many magazines. From Aperture to Zoom and beyond. Recently I subscribed to a new magazine called Publication. It’s founder Nick Turpin is a street photographer based in London and he is one of the founders of In-Public; a really great website for street photographers.

What first caught my eye about the publication is that it’s format is very similar to another new photo magazine called Lay Flat published by Shane Lavalette.  Both of these publications are part of the new DIY publishing paradigm (Do It Yourself and if this catches on I want credit for coining the term!). Both consist of 2 parts. The first is a modest booklet with texts from various photographers, critics and art historians. The second part (and which I really like) are a set of postcards with images from the featured photographers (or at least the photographers the editors chose who embody the particular theme).

I am assuming that it’s cheaper to publish separate cards than it is to increase the page count and have the photos as part of the booklet. Or maybe this is a great way to optimize each photo. As a former photo editor I can tell you that it was notoriously difficult to print each image to it’s optimum best. When laying out a magazine for print the pages are not arranged numerically. Pages from the front and back are printed on the same sheet so photos from different stories and advertisements maybe printed together. It’s one big mish-mash. So the optimal color settings (in terms of inks) for an ad that is predominantly red are not optimal for a color photograph of green apples and definitely not optimal for a black and white photograph of a building. The settings are all a trade off.

Maybe Shane or Nick can shed some light. But it seems to be a better way of building a photo magazine. My only complaint is that I need to keep each issue in some sort of folder or binder so that the booklet and individual postcards remain as one unit. I am sure some clever marketer will come up with something soon.

Joy of Travel

The warmth of the day (it’s 43 degrees in January) always gets me to thinking about travel. I love traveling. When I travel alone I can be truly me. I am not a Dad, I am not a husband or anything else. I am just me with no role to play. I am free to walk and stop and experience new things at all times of day.

Just before President Obama was elected President I was in Chicago. I got to walk around at night and photograph. The image above is a new band-shell designed by Frank Gehry. The same architect who designed the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. I just love the colors.

Three Kings

Here are a few of the pictures I took at the Three Kings Parade last Wednesday and which I wrote about last time. The gentleman above was the one I was setting up before being swarmed by (news)photographers falling over each other (and me) to take a picture. He is rather colorful. After I escaped the swarm of photographers I started chatting with an older gentleman (graying hair and mustache) who was gathering together sets of stilts. The stilts caught my eye because they had shoes firmly attached to them. I found out he and his fellow actors were hired to play The Three Kings, the Sun and Moon in the Parade. I asked if I could photograph them as they setup. He smiled and said sure. I followed them across the street and generally just hung back and took photos as they got ready.

Mike (in blue pants) played the moon and his partner was the Sun (in yellow of course at right). At top the last of the Three Kings is ready and is testing out his stilt legs.

Here the Sun and Moon are ready to go while, one of the Kings (Balthasar, I believe) gets a laugh.

What do the Sun and Moon have to do with the Three Kings? I am glad you asked. The Three Kings are also known as the Three Wise Men or Magis. Magi is a Latinization of the plural of the Greek word magos, from the Old Persian word magus from the Avestan magauno. Avestan is the religious caste into which Zoroaster was born. The term refers to the priestly caste of Zoroastrianism. As part of their religion, these priests paid particular attention to the stars, and gained an international reputation for astrology which was at that time highly regarded as a science. Their religious practices and use of astrology caused  the term Magi to be applied to the occult in general and led to the English term magic.

The Epiphany

Yesterday was the 12th day of Christmas and it was (as we Latinos like to call it) El Dia De Los Reyes or Three Kings Day, also known as The Epiphany. Now I am not a religious person but I am interested in the rituals and celebrations of people. This day celebrates, as the name implies, the arrival of the Three Wise Men to visit the baby Jesus. In Puerto Rico, where my parents were born and lived before emigrating to the US in the late 1950’s, children would fill a box with grass and leave it under their beds the night before Three Kings Day. The grass was for the camels that the Three Kings would be riding. In appreciation for the grass, a present would be left for the child. My parents continued this tradition with my brothers and I in the U.S. and I am keeping it alive with my 2 children, who also happen to be Jewish on my wife’s side. They get to celebrate Hanukah, Christmas and The Epiphany.

There is a parade each year in Spanish Harlem to celebrate Three Kings Day and I went up to photograph it. I brought along my Mamiya M6 which I have been using a lot lately and I also brought along a Nikon digital camera. While I shot several rolls of film I did not shoot a lot with the digital camera. The images kept being overexposed and in the excitement of the parade I could not stay still long enough to figure out what was wrong. It was very frustrating. Speaking of frustrating, I hate it when I spend time with a person introducing myself and making general small talk to make them feel at ease so that I can get them to pose, and then as soon as I have everything ready a gaggle of other photographers (including professional news photographers) swarm in and start taking the picture I worked to setup. In one case even stepping in front of me to take the picture! Bunch of vultures!

Okay, that’s off my chest. Well, at home after the parade I sit down and try to figure out what was wrong with the Nikon and just as I am about to give up, my finger turns the sub-command dial on the Nikon D70s (yeah I know it’s old) and the shutter speed changes. You guessed it – Epiphany. It seems that even though you set the camera to aperture priority (my usual setting) you can still change the shutter speed via the sub command dial; even accidentally! Even though I wasted a lot of time and images at the parade using this camera I wasn’t upset in the end because I learned something and I am pretty sure it won’t happen again or at least I will know how to correct it. Once this feeling washes over me I look up and see the scene I have pictured above. A sign or just man’s capacity for seeing connections and patterns?

To All A Happy New Year

As everybody gets set to mark the passage of another year and as I sit in my office all alone (kinda nice!) I am feeling a sense of relief. Not just at the end of a rather dreadful decade (from 9/11 to the Wall Street debacle) but at the completion of my application to Graduate School. I just handed in all of the requested materials and paid the unholy application fee (see image above). If I am accepted I will be working towards an MFA in photography. Not that you really need one if you are already a practicing photographer but I wanted to explore the idea of a photograph in more depth and in a multidisciplinary environment such as at Columbia University. I’ll find out if I am accepted in the Spring.

So to all I wish a very Happy, Productive and Fulfilling New Year and New Decade!

Blow My Mind

I just finished creating an iPhoto Book of my series of photographs that I have entitled Up. I’ll probably get the copies I ordered from Apple sometime after Christmas. I’ll put the PDF on my website soon. As I was contemplating the images and starting to get my usual Holiday Melancholy I got a glimpse as to why I might have been taking these photographs. That’s the great thing about art as practiced by Minor White and his school, it is a pathway to self-realization. Just like that little boy back in Brooklyn who looked up at the skies to see something grander than where he was, I too am searching. At my age it is inevitable that you ask yourself, “Is this all there is?” It has been a long time since I have encountered something or someone that blew my mind; that somehow changed the way I looked at the world and myself or at the very least gave me a clearer picture of “life” and my position in it at a particular time.

These feeling have led people to abandon everything and go someplace and start over again. That is just plain silly. This feeling is a call to delve deeper into life or to step back a little and see where you are in relation to the path you are creating. I love  it when a photograph, anybody’s photograph (but it is especially thrilling when it is one of mine) makes you stop and reflect or gives you that feeling of discovery.  It’s like getting a message from life. Some people would say “Heaven” but as many people know I don’t roll like that!( Sorry couldn’t resist.) But there is that “spiritual” dimension to all this I must admit. I leave you with these words from Minor White:

Every photograph, A celebration. Every moment of understanding, a Birthday.