Tag Archives: black and white photography

The Ethics of Seeing

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Spoonbill

Spoonbill

I always have mixed feelings when visiting the zoo. On one hand, I get to see an array of amazing species, but on the other hand, they are locked behind bars. In the aviary of the L.A. Zoo, I spotted this Spoonbill in an enclosure with a couple Sacred Ibises. He (she) was hunkered over, emitting an occasional wheeze. I stood next to him for quite a long time and then snapped his picture, hoping to capture some of his dignity, his beauty, his misery. His eyes were rivetting. I’ve been taking a home study course in bird languages from the ravens, the blue jays, the mockingbirds, the mourning doves, the sparrows, and finches in my back yard. I’m still a novice, but I do notice how much they say with their eyes, speaking paragraphs through blinks and dilations. If I could, I would have told this magnificent bird, “You are beautiful,” and “I’m sorry.”

I lament the fraught relationship between humans and animals. We’re not so different from one another, and yet we humans act as if an opposable thumb grants us an oppressive dominion over everything, having the right to do what we will with other living beings. Heartbreaking stories abound resulting from abuses of that dominion.

Meerkat

Meerkat

In the research I’m doing for my doctoral dissertation on the influences between early twentieth-century women photographers and women writers, I’ve spent some time reading and thinking about the notion of an ethics of seeing, a topic Susan Sontag introduces at the beginning of her seminal book, On Photography. She writes: “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.” I certainly believe that aside from the prurient, exploitative, commercial value some photographs contain, a photograph can also be a witness, find beauty that’s overlooked, and stir our compassion for beings other than ourselves.

My own animal photos are inspired by the work of Isa Leshko. I am humbled and moved by the haunting beauty of her images of animals. In particular, her images of elderly animals are incredibly poignant and compelling. If there was ever a photographer practicing the ethics of seeing, she is. She has certainly changed the way I view other beings through my lens.

Ash, Domestic White Turkey, Age 8 I

Isa Leshko’s Ash, Domestic White Turkey, Age 8 I

 

 

Ghosts

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Ghosts

Ghosts

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one’s own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assassin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror’s least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O’erlooking a superior spectre
More near.

Emily Dickinson

Dead Or Alive

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Husk Dance

Husk Dance

“Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surrounding. And if the photographer has a bit of sense in his [or her] head maybe he is able to capture some of this—and I suppose that’s lyricism.” –Joseph Sudek

An Old Burroughs

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Adding Machine

Adding Machine

I found this old adding machine tucked into a forgotten, quiet corner of a used bookstore in Ventura, CA. I didn’t know that this particular brand of machine was invented by the grandfather of Beat writer William Burroughs, who wrote a collection of essays called, The Adding Machine.

Technology changes so quickly these days…..people are lining up outside Apple Stores for the iPhone 6, and when I was growing up, a family had one phone that sat on a table, or it was mounted on a wall and required spinning a rotary dial to register a specific number. Zeros were the longest to dial because they were required to travel the entire circumference of the rotary. I can still hear that distinct, mechanical sound, and, oddly, I can remember the smell of my grandparents’ old, black rotary phone…an interesting mix of resin and cigarette smoke.

I never worked an adding machine. By the time I was in high school, early pocket calculators were replacing the slide rules that most students of physics had sticking out of their back pockets. Still, I love the typewriter-like faces (another machine now obsolete) of these adding machines, now relegated to the quiet corners of memory.

The Poet of Prague

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Egg

Egg

 

Josef Sudek's Egg

Josef Sudek’s Egg

I had not seen the work of Czech photographer Josef Sudek, “The Poet of Prague,” before I created my own photo of an egg and its shadow. Sudek’s development as a photographer is an interesting story, but his work speaks for itself…..beautifully, wonderfully poetic.

In an article that Charles Sawyer wrote for Creative Camera in 1980, he describes Sudek’s photographic aesthetic perfectly, “The eye is usually accustomed to seeing not light but the surfaces it defines; when light is reflected from amorphous materials, however, perception of materiality shifts to light itself. Sudek looked for such materials everywhere. And then he usually balanced the ethereal luminescence with the contra-bass of his deep shadow tonalities.”

In Sudek’s own words (taken from the text accompanying a short video tribute to his work set to music):

” I believe that photography loves banal objects, and I love the life of objects…”

” Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings…. To capture some of this – I suppose that’s lyricism…”

The banal through the eyes of Sudek…….exquisite visual poetry.

 

Oh Captain, My Captain

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Robin Williams

Robin Williams

I took this photo from my vehicle a while ago when I was stopped in traffic on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, CA. There’s a skyscraper there that often posts enormous advertisements for various TV shows and movies, and this one was promoting the TV series “The Crazy Ones” featuring Robin Williams. Williams has always been one of my favorite actors and comedians. I probably know the script of “Mrs. Doubtfire” by heart now. “Dead Poet’s Society” is also a favorite movie, although there are few movies that he’s been in that I didn’t enjoy. That man had a gift and a big, big heart.

The news of his death has saddened me in a way that surprises me, and I can only imagine what his family is going through right now. Anne Lamott, one of my favorite writers, grew up in Tiburon not far from where WIlliams lived as a kid also. She wrote a poignant piece that she posted on Facebook that addresses his death, making sense of seemingly senseless tragedy, mental illness, and addiction. One of the things she said about Williams remains with me, put as only she can put things: “You know how I always say that laughter is carbonated holiness? Well, Robin was the ultimate proof of that, and bubbles are spirit made visible.” On the marquee of The Laugh Factory in West Hollywood, it says, “Robin Williams rest in peace. Make God laugh.” If anyone could do that, it would be him.

As much as his passing has produced a sense of heaviness and sadness in many people, there’s also a lighter, positive impulse emerging in the wake of his death. I know he struggled with depression and addiction, a double whammy that is hard to shake. But, along with the sadness there’s also an appreciation for his little spark of madness that produced such a life-affirming light for so many. It’s evident in every clip of a movie or interview they’re now showing in the media. He lived the “carpe diem” his character extolled in “Dead Poet’s Society.” And even though these aren’t his words, but words spoken by Mr. Keating (the character he played in “Dead Poet’s Society”), as a photographer, they also inform the philosophy at the core of my work:

“We must constantly look at things in a different way.”

Robin WIlliams certainly did and he shared that with everyone with his unique, infectious hilarity. Thank you, Oh Captain, My Captain.

Fred Sandback

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Needle and Thread

Needle and Thread

It’s always great when someone compares my work to another artist’s, particularly when it’s an artist I’m not familiar with and have the thrill of discovering. In this case, someone saw this image and compared it to the work of installation artist (though he prefers to be called a “sculptor”) Fred Sandback, who worked with elastic cord and acrylic yarn to delineate or bifurcate three-dimensional space. Obviously, photography and thread sculpture don’t share the same relationship with space as one is two-dimensional and the other three, but both can draw the eye along line and form. When I work in black and white, my attention focuses on line and form, light and dark, eliminating the distraction of color. It’s all in the eye. I use light like a thread one follows into a dark room. For Sandback, his work was meant to be experienced in the third dimension, as opposed to seeing photographic reproductions of it. In a statement he made in 1999 about his own work he says:

“I left the model of [ ] discrete sculptural volumes for a sculpture which became less of a thing-in-itself, more of a diffuse interface between myself, my environment, and others peopling that environment, built of thin lines that left enough room to move through and around. Still sculpture, though less dense, with an ambivalence between exterior and interior. A drawing that is habitable.”

 

Figs and Light

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Four Figs

Four Figs

With monsoonal moisture blanketing the area, the light has been difficult with regard to photographing. When a moment of morning sun broke through the cloud cover, I ran for the camera. Figs are in season here now and so, for a brief moment, I could celebrate both figs and the light.

A Finalist

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Thrilled to find out my photo was chosen as a finalist (it’s a huge group) in Photographer’s Forum Magazine’s Spring Photography Contest. Even if I don’t win, my photo will appear in their book “Best of Photography 2014.” One of my photos was chosen as a finalist in their Spring 2013 contest as well.

Windblown

Windblown