Photography Archives - Sanders Meanders

To Be Continued

Since we last met, the summer ended and the fall arrived. I continued to write and take a few pictures, but nothing momentous or amazing was going on, so I was feeling like I would need to post something just to post something. And that’s never good.

By the time we got to October, it was time for vacation, and for Daytona Beach, which I figured would give me something to write about. Storms had come through as they had the year before, but instead of flip-flops and glasses and televisions washing up on shore as they had during Matthew, all we got this year was seaweed. And not just seaweed, but SEAWEED.

We visited the St. Augustine Lighthouse, which was something we wanted to do for a long time and never got around to:

All of this was interesting, and I admired the photographs as I got home, but overall I didn’t feel like anything happened. We went to the beach, we ate seafood, we listened to the ocean at night, and yet, when it was all done, I didn’t feel like much of anything happened and I didn’t feel like our vacation felt like a vacation. Not true, of course, as I look back on it. But a malaise is a malaise, I didn’t post anything, and I wasn’t really taking much, if any, pictures.

So the question is, when you feel like this, what do you do about it?

You don’t talk about things. You do things. The lack of photography was really getting to me and I wanted to go out and take pictures, but by this time it was November, and November in Allentown is not the most photogenic. Most times, I’ve avoided the dark, dreary scenes that punctuate the coming winter in eastern Pennsylvania, and certainly with the way I was feeling, such images would seem to be truly counter-productive. I sat on the idea for about a week, and then I said to myself that I had to do something.

So I drove around. The sun was bright and the weather was cold. I had a shot in mind, something I had seen a few days before. Nothing momentous, just the winter sun on a fence:

But it was a start. I drove in to the city with another shot in mind. There was an old variety store downtown with a “Teem” soda sign, a rarity even in the day when it was put up. Unfortunately, it didn’t exist anymore, and I ended up driving around. Along the way, I spotted a woman in the window of a diner, so I shrugged my shoulders, and took a shot out the passenger’s side:

I didn’t know if what I was doing was art, but it was certainly making me feel like I was doing something. During the next few weeks, when I found a free moment, I just started driving around Allentown, taking shots at whatever I saw.

It rained one night and Laura had a hair appointment, so I carted myself out to get some shots. I went by Zandy’s trying to recreate a shot I had made earlier, only this time I brought my tripod. And when I say tripod, I mean, a 16-year-old aluminum and plastic bit of off-brand nonsense that can barely hold the weight of my camera. It was raining a lot, so I stayed inside the car and tried to wrestle with this beast to make it stand straight enough to take a decent shot out of the window.

This is not an easy thing to do.

The rain was cascading in through the driver’s side window. I was flopping all over the seats, trying to get a somewhat decent angle. The locks on the tripod legs slipped and put the camera at an angle, causing me to reset and lock them again. The locks slipped again, and the whole process started anew. In the end, I took about four shots, only one of which was close to what I wanted to get.

A while ago I mentioned that I had a job as a photographer/videographer at a Catskills resort when I was in my late teens. One day, I got chastised for taking shots of things that weren’t paying customers, and it’s one of those things I think about almost every time I press the shutter. I know I shouldn’t, but I do.

In light of that, I drove around a little bit more after this, wondering why I take pictures at all. What I was doing was nonsense.

But the more I thought about that, the more I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t worry about that. Sure, not every image, not every story is going to be a winner, but that shouldn’t stop anyone from doing anything. Nothing’s perfect that first time out, so why stop?

Maybe it’s nonsense, but it’s all important. Even if it’s a failure, you can build on it to become a success. The work, just like life, is always to be continued, because if it stops, then it truly is meaningless. All through the winter, I’ll be trying to take some more shots just like these, and some of them will be OK, some of them may be good, but there will always be something new.

A Lot Else, You See What I Mean

Originally, when I wrote The Path Walker Evans Took, I had this idea that I would write a post solely on what Walker Evans, if he were still alive, would take pictures of today. This post was to feature several pictures that I would take myself: a) in color, because I personally don’t think he would have continued to be bound by the confines of black and white, and b) on my iPhone, because in the latter days of his life, he had taken to the latest technology, the Polaroid instant camera.

This post will never happen.

You see, in all the research I did for this, I came across a list he wrote in 1934 a list of picture categories: things he had shot, and presumably, wanted to shoot. I had read Evans’ list before, and I had planned to make this the basis of the pictures I was going to take. It went as follows:

People, all classes, surrounded by bunches of the new down and out.
Automobiles and the automobile landscape.
Architecture, American Urban taste, commerce, small scale, large scale, the city atmosphere, the street smell, the hateful stuff, women’s clubs, fake culture, bad education, religion in decay.
The movies.
Evidence of what people of the city read, eat, see for amusement, do for relaxation and not get it.
Sex.
Advertising.
A lot else, you see what I mean.

The next logical step was to take pictures of these things, or failing that, their 2017 equivalents. I even started in on this project, when I took this shot of a person sleeping in the park.

Deep down, there was something wrong. Something was holding me back from writing this post, and I didn’t know what it was. I had written down the 1934 list in my notebook and I went back over it. Was there something on there I didn’t want to photograph?

I continued on until the end, and there it was: A lot else, you see what I mean.

There’s so much more than a list could hold.

Here is a picture I couldn’t get out of my head. Evans took it in the late 20s, a few years after he wrote this list. Technically, it would fall into his Advertising category I would guess, but I thought about the circumstances that brought about this picture. It was most likely unplanned. Oh, he might have followed these two guys down the road until he got to their truck, but Evans didn’t wake up that day and say to himself, “Today, I’m going to find a few fellows and take a picture of them loading a sign into a truck.” He had his camera, he was in the city, and all of a sudden, this happened. He had to be ready for it and he was. This is the result.

As much as I wanted to take shots that checked all these boxes, I knew I couldn’t. I read a quote from the great photographer Paul Strand, which underlined what I already had been feeling:

“Your photography is a record of your living – for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people’s ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzche meant when he said, ‘I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.’ He knew how insidious other people’s ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own personal vision.”

I can take pictures that can resemble what Walker Evans did, but in the end, I wouldn’t be true to him and I wouldn’t be true to myself. I would be following a recipe instead of becoming a chef. In the end I realized I had to come up with my own list.

The modern-day equivalent for this list, in my case, is iPhoto. Pretty much all my pictures are in one iPhoto folder or another, but it is high time I reorganized. Obviously some of these titles will be shortened, and I may name a folder “The Hateful Stuff,” just because I like the sound of it.

1. Signs (naturally). Neon, old, broken, ghost signs, evidence of the past.

2. Flowers. Dead or alive.

3. What doesn’t belong.

4. The American road.

5. Barns, farm life, the decay of the old and what it looks like now.

6. Churches: the buildings, outside of the building. The evidence from outside the church of what can be expected inside.

7. The Movies

8. The remnants of an American election.

9. The good stuff.

10. A lot else, you see what I mean.

Death of a Flower: Protea

For this series, I’ve been trying to find flowers that stay upright as long as possible. The idea of a drooping, wilted flower is really appealing at first, until you realize that, for the most part, wilted flowers pretty much look the same. I went with sunflowers, and loved the result. I started to look for more flowers with hearty stems, and one day, while at the nursery, I found something I didn’t know existed in nature.

Behold, the pincushion protea. They had two of them, and it didn’t take a second for me to decide that this would be my next subject. I saw the hearty stems, the strange, unearthly center and the curly tendrils on the outside, and I was entranced. This one pictured above also had these wonderful ribbon-like portions woven through it. I couldn’t wait to see what results this would bring.

At the nursery, the woman who checked us out lamented, “I love these. We don’t get them in that often. Unfortunately, they don’t last.”

I assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem.

I took this shot on day 1, and I loved the look of it, the almost mirror-like effect. So much so, I decided that for these flowers, I would shoot a similar shot during each session.

The woman at the nursery was quite right. By day 6, the pincushion proteas had already transformed.

The color had faded and the head had dropped. The beautiful extensions had become disorganized, like unruly hair. I was a bit concerned that the entire flower might just snap off, but it held firm. I carried on with the matching mirror shot—an amazing difference between the two.

I continued on through to day 10 with the proteas. I might have continued further, but the fact was, they had already become what they were to become.

As with all of the flowers I’ve used as subjects, the human qualities stood out, and deepened as the days passed. Their heads remained high, almost proud of what they had evolved into. The leaves became arms, spread out, almost as if to say “I’m here!”

I was so happy with this last shot that I had a large version printed and now it hangs on our wall. Despite the fact that I don’t have another picture of what this looked like on the first day, it has a fascination all its own. Even if you don’t know what a pincushion protea looks like fresh, you can imagine it in your head, looking at this picture.

But just for reference, here’s what they look like, side by side.

Here are some of the others in the Death of a Flower series:

Summers by the Lake: Remembering John Margolies

Last week, I saw an innocent little item Mod Betty had put on her Facebook page concerning the John Margolies collection that the Library of Congress put out recently. John Margolies passed away last year, and the LOC was providing those interested with a look at over 11,000 images he had taken over the years of roadside architecture and signage. The name seemed somewhat familiar, so I did what we all do, I went to Google with a bunch of questions about John Margolies, and they provided the necessary information on who he was, and examples of his work. The picture Google put next to the name stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was 1989. I saw an ad in the newspaper for a waiter position for a resort called Scott’s Oquaga Lake House. My only previous work experience had been a summer at McDonald’s, and I wasn’t prepared to go back to that, so I called the number on the ad and set up an interview. The place I was going was in Deposit, which was over 20 miles from my house, but this was truly a case of beggars not being able to be choosers. I needed a job, any job.

Scott’s Oquaga Lake House sounded like the perfect place for me to work, and in a lot of ways, it was. It was minimum wage, no tips, and I could stay in a room on the campus (for a fee) and eat my meals in the kitchen (for another fee). I could start right away, so I started right away. My first paycheck was upwards of 50 bucks all tolled.

Scott's Dining Room — Scott’s Dining Room, John Margolies

It was still early on in the season, so the dining room was about half-full at mealtime. Most of the early season visitors were elderly folks who had come down from Canada in a bus. Only one person really stood out, the man sitting alone near the salad bar. From first glance, you could tell there was something different about this guy. At the age I am now, I would recognize him as someone who is consistently observing, but then I couldn’t tell you anything about him.

Well, not completely true. I knew he always came alone, always came to stay for weeks at a time, and was very infrequently seen outside of mealtime. It’s possible that someone said that his name was John Margolies, but I didn’t remember. Someone said he was a photographer. One of the maids told me that he always taped the drapes shut when he came. Maybe he was using his room as an impromptu dark room? I thought at the time.

I never knew what kind of a photographer he was. I was 18 and lost in my own self too much to care about anyone else, so in all the times I waited on him, I never asked him.

Scott's Casino Interior — Scott’s Casino Interior, 1978, John Margolies

Scott’s was a throwback. Actually, that’s not necessarily true, Scott’s just hadn’t changed. The picture above was taken in 1978, but it could have been 1989, because it honestly looked the same. I was there for two seasons, and I left with more stories than I could possibly relate in the space of one blog post.

It’s fairly evident from the Library of Congress collection that during the summers of 1977 and 1978, John Margolies went to great number of Catskill resorts. Most of the pictures look like they may have been taken for brochures, with men and women seated around pools in bathing suits, lobby shots, pictures of the owners. There are quite a few people in these shots, but when I read his New York Times obituary, this was what was said:

Shooting in color with a 35-millimeter Canon FT, he strove to capture his subjects in consistent attitude: unsentimentally, against a cloudless blue sky (for which he often had to wait), devoid of the visual irritants like people and cars.

Visual irritants such as people. The phrase stuck in my head. Certainly this wasn’t true for these pictures, but over the years, especially in the 1980’s, the New York Times description was dead on. Very consistently a blue sky, no people, all taken with the same camera, with the same transparency film.

Dutch Mill Motor Court, Malta, NY, John Margolies

That was, until I kept looking at the Scott’s collection. Yes, there were plenty of shots of the lake, of various buildings, but then there was this one, of owner Ray Scott in his old car, taken during one of the summers I worked there:

Scott’s meant something for John. It seems fairly evident, from the frequency he stayed there and the amount of pictures he took, that the place was a refuge for him. As I looked through this massive catalog, I felt bad that I never asked him about it when I had the chance.

The second year I was there, I got to be the staff photographer for the month or so before the actual staff photographer came in from California. I had no training at all. Ray basically handed me the camera and said the film goes in there and you press the little button to make the pictures happen. I could do that. The day before the tour buses were to go, I would drive in to Binghamton to get the pictures developed, hang around for a few hours and come back. Then they would tack the pictures to a billboard and the groups would come through and order as they saw fit.

The first group of pictures I took didn’t go over so well. Not that they weren’t good pictures, but in my training session, the question of what I should take pictures of never came up. Ray saw them, curled his lip, and growled something to the effect that I had taken pictures of nothing. That wasn’t especially true, but pictures of woods and flowers around the Scott’s Campus would hardly sell to people who were buying pictures of themselves. So I shrugged my shoulders and took pictures of the Canadians as they stood in large groups, and life continued.

I was relieved of my photographer duties in late May of that year and resumed the life of a lowly waiter. John Margolies continued to show up for weeks at a time, sitting at his solitary table, and socially, this is the extent of where our paths crossed.

A few months ago, I got a book to read for our trip to Japan, but I decided it would be more interesting if I spent the flight hurling into a bag. Long story. At any rate, the book, which I eventually read after gastric distress had passed, was Geoff Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment. One of the points of this book is the intersection of themes and subjects within photography, that some photographers, although they have never met in person, meet in their pictures. So as I went through the huge catalog of images, I wondered which ones we had in common.

The answer was: surprisingly few. Although he spent a great deal of time in the Northeast, as have I, the subjects he chose were, thankfully, recordings of signs and locations that are no longer with us. But some remain.

The Red Robin Diner is still in Johnson City. When I visited it in 2012, the white panels had yellowed considerably.

The Clam Box in Ipswich, Massachusetts has been one of my favorites for years. My parents have visited there as long as I have memory, so whenever I’m in the area, most likely you’ll find me there. John Margolies took this shot in the 80’s:

The New York Times’ statement about devoid of the visual irritants like people and cars came to mind when I saw this. However, the shot I took in 2011, is more representative of what the experience is like:

Schell’s in Temple, PA, north of Reading, has been a mainstay. When I saw his shot, I was sad and a little disappointed that the extra features on the sign no longer exist.

Finally, I checked the collection for Wildwood, but one of the only ones to come up was Laura’s Fudge. Again, I thought it was a cool sign now, but back then, even cooler.

Laura's Fudge, Wildwood, NJ — Laura’s Fudge, 2014

Laura's Fudge, 1978, John Margolies — Laura’s Fudge, 1978, John Margolies

I’ll be going through some more in the coming weeks, I’m sure, but if you’re curious, here’s the link to the archive: loc.gov

I got to see a time on my life I never thought I would see again. All the pictures I took at Scott’s that spring of 1990 (I’m sure) made their way to the trash-heap just as soon as the Canadians pictured made it back to Canada. I’m so grateful to be able to remember these summers once more.

Scott's Show Boat, John Margolies — Scott’s Show Boat, John Margolies

Scott's Barn, John Margolies — Scott’s Barn, John Margolies

From Japan to Sweden without Leaving New Jersey

I kid New Jersey. We all kid New Jersey. After all, it’s hard not to kid New Jersey when they present you with things like this:

(Those of you not from New Jersey, this is the Cannonball Loop from Action Park, a ride so unsafe they shut it down after a month. Reportedly they sent dummies down it to test it, and after one came down with all its limbs intact, it was declared safe.)

But say what you will about New Jersey, they do pull a Springsteen out of their hat every once in a while.

Laura’s sister Hannah contacted us a few weeks ago from Japan. She read up somewhere about a Japanese market called Mitsuwa which had all the comforts of home, provided your home is in Japan. There were several in California, one in Hawaii, one in Texas, and one—you guessed right—in Edgewater, New Jersey, directly across the Hudson from Manhattan. She asked if we were willing to check it out and we said Oh, gee, if we have to.

Since our Tokyo trip, there were many delicacies we were craving. We made a list. I made another list, or at least, I already had a list. This part of New Jersey was uncharted waters for me, and there were many, many signs I wished to capture.

I talked Laura in to going to Clam Broth House in Hoboken before we went to Mitsuwa, owing to the fact that a) it was technically on the way, and b) this is one sign I have been after for years. Clam Broth House closed a while back, but they kept their wonderful hand-pointing sign on top of a neighboring building.

This was what I was after. Everything else was gravy under the bridge. Or whatever.

(Again, non-New Jersey-type folk, you may have a predisposed notion of what a place named Hoboken may be like. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Hoboken is one of the nicest places to go in New Jersey: historic and well-worth a visit.)

On to Mitsuwa, which didn’t disappoint, either. They have everything you’d see in Japan, from ingredients to onigiri (rice balls) to rice crackers to sake to…well, my favorite…

All this, and a food court complete with a ramen shop, a sushi shop and a bakery. We could have stayed all day, but there were things to see, places to go.

I wanted to get a few authentic Jersey diners under my belt, because honestly, other than Olga’s in Marlton, which was closed, and the Tick Tock in Clifton, I had missed out on some of these beauties. First stop was the Arlington Diner, in the shadow of a drawbridge on the Passaic River. Their sign had some work done to it lately, but it was still majestic with its twin signs, one parallel with the road and one along the front.

The plan was to go along River Road to the Lyndhurst Diner, but I wasn’t expecting a stop in between. Along the way, there was this old Auto Parts store, long abandoned, with gorgeous old neon along the top.

I’m guessing the word “Auto” was in the space between “Riverside” and “Supply”.

As I got out and started snapping away like mad, a guy in a pickup truck stopped at a stop light called out to me. “Hey, you gonna buy this place?”

I don’t know what makes people assume that. I’ve been asked this several, several times in at least four states. “No, sir,” I said, “but I’d buy the sign.”

He laughed. “I can’t help you there,” he said, and drove off.

Once I had my fill, it was off to the Lyndhurst. I had forgotten that this is one of the few signs I’ve seen that has neon on the side of the sign, as well as on each face. The sun had gone away, but that was still cool, because the black-and-white sign looked like it was in a black-and-white picture, despite the fact that it was in color.

“So how far away is IKEA?” Laura asked me when I got back in the car. There was one in Paramus we had been to before.

I checked my phone. “Only eight miles.”

“Well, then…”

Off we went to Sweden-by-the-Passaic. We took NJ 21 up through Clifton, when a thought occurred.

(Those of you who are from New Jersey know what’s in Clifton, but for the benefit of you poor, Jersey-starved individuals, it is the home of Rutt’s Hut, commonly referred to in my house as The Happy World of Hot Dogs. Those of you familiar with the comedy of the late John Pinette know that I must have heard the voice of the angels singing…ah-ah-AHHHHHH)

Three rippers from Rutt's Hut — Yes, please

So after lunch, we got back on the road to IKEA. Honestly, I thought I was done for the day, but as we passed by a 70s plastic sign for Parkway Lanes, I suddenly had a spark of memory: back in behind that thicket of trees by the overpass was a neon bowling beauty, an animation of three pins being hit with a bowling ball. Broad daylight, I thought, but who cares? It may not even be there.

We soldiered on to IKEA and picked up a few things. Eating there was not in our future, seeing as we had eaten enough for three lifetimes already, although Swedish meatballs, onigiri and deep-fried hot dogs are a trifecta like no other.

On our way out, we retraced our steps to Parkway Lanes. Easier said than done, because the exit only went west on US 46 and we needed to go east, but we managed to find a place to turn around and head in the right direction prior to reaching the Pennsylvania border, so that was a positive. In the rush to find this sign, I had forgotten to tell Laura what the main sign looked like, so the whole time she thought I was after the yellowing old plastic monster we had seen from the highway.

OH, she said, once we pulled in to the parking lot.

As I looked closer, I noticed there was some broken neon in some of the pins, so the animation looks like it’s a thing of the past.

I admired the bowling pin out front. It looked to me like some large bird might hatch out of it!

We headed back on US 46, because, as I’ve learned from experience, the best old signs are on the old U.S. highways. Sure enough, a few miles down the road, we spot a motel:

Normally with motels, I will ask first before shooting, but there was nobody parked out front, and I made the assumption that this place was no longer in operation. It wasn’t until I took this shot of breezeway bricks that I suddenly noticed something:

Um…those bushes didn’t grow that way naturally. As I hopped in the car and started off, we passed the office, and sure enough, there was somebody in there. So, please forgive me, good folks at the Pine Brook Motor Lodge. Next time I’ll check in at the desk.

And then, one last one for the road, the Parsippany Shopping Plaza. Laura saw this one in person and thought it was interesting, but later she commented that the pictures came out better than most of the others. It has two major things in its favor: a) it’s higher up, and b) it’s in a relatively quiet area. What this means is, it’s very easy to isolate the sign against the sky, like so:

A perfect end to a perfect day. Thanks again, New Jersey. You don’t disappoint.

The Path Walker Evans Took

Walker Evans and I were not formally introduced. It had something to do with the fact that I was four years old when he died and we didn’t run in the same circles, something like that. He was a photographer who is most known for documenting the south during the height of the Depression. I ate paste.

When I first started doing Instagram, I posted a picture of the Flour Mill above. One of my friends, who is an architect and knows about stuff, complimented me and said it reminded him of Walker Evans. I thanked him, then promptly Googled ‘Walker Evans.’ Pretty quickly, I realized how much of a compliment it was, even though I had no intention of taking this or any other picture in anybody’s style.

Then, a few months later, I crossed over the Free Bridge from Easton, PA to Phillipsburg, New Jersey. There were a couple of neons in Phillipsburg I was after, including Eddie’s Drive-In, right along the river. A friend had mentioned Jimmy’s Hot Dogs was a good place to eat, and it was within walking distance of where I was, so I toddled on over and got a couple of their finest. Along the walls they had pictures, old, historic. They were by Walker Evans. He had been to this spot back in the 30’s, had taken a picture of Jimmy’s original location.

It was odd to me, that he had some connection to the area. Most of the pictures I had seen of his were all in the South. I made the natural assumption that he was from the South, but he wasn’t, he was a New Yorker. He took a lot of pictures of buildings. Small houses, churches. Usually face-on, full sun, just like the picture I took of the flour mill.

And signs. Not often the neons that I favor, but hand-painted and crude ones. Recently, I came across this one I took at a farm stand in 2009, which fits in with his style:

Two weeks ago I purchased a copy of Walker Evans’ American Photographs from 1938. Sure enough, four of the images in the second section of the book were taken in Easton, Phillipsburg, and Bethlehem. The image of Phillipsburg was not one I had seen in Jimmy’s, but I recognized it right away. It was taken from the Easton side, with the Free Bridge on the left. Eddie’s Drive-In was not visible, but in its place, was a large building that says, prominently, Pennsylvania Railroad.

Off to Easton we went. Laura was dying to go to the Easton Farmer’s Market, anyway, and it was a beautiful day.

I knew where the above shot was taken, but I didn’t want to take the same shot, although it was tempting. So I crossed the bridge, and parked in the lot where the train car at the bottom right sits in the picture above. I got out, and took a picture from the other side. It seemed appropriate.

Also, look back at Evans’ picture, at the buildings visible just to the right of the railroad building and just to the left of the bridge. Believe it or not, those buildings still stand, restored.

We came back over the Free Bridge and parked, and along the way to the Farmer’s Market, I saw a shop that seemed to step right out of the 1930’s in every single way. I figured, why not? If I’m going to do an hommage, I might as well go the whole hommage.

And off we went, figuring we had done a day’s work. The Farmer’s Market was terrific, and we loaded up on fresh produce and bread and kombucha.

We drove home and that was it.

Well, not quite.

So, when I was looking at American Photographs, I saw something. There were two pictures of Bethlehem, back-to-back. Both were taken from the top of a hill, looking down. Both had a line of homes off to the right. Same angle, same everything, and I thought, These look like they were taken in the same spot, same day, same everything. I looked closer and I noticed a spire off in the distance. That’s the same spire. These were taken maybe a block away from each other. I filed that away.

Back to our car. I got on 78 and went west, and around the exit for Bethlehem, traffic came to a screeching halt. Laura looked at me with her try-the-scenic-route eyes. Sure, just go through Bethlehem, I thought. And find where those pictures were taken.

One day in November 1935, Walker Evans was traveling with the photographer Peter Sekaer and his wife as part of a project of the Farm Security Administration. They ended up on 4th Street in South Bethlehem, where the second of the two Bethlehem pictures in American Photographs was taken.

So why there? I wondered.

I drove up 4th Street in South Bethlehem. The road comes to a rise in the middle and then drops down into the city, so I felt sure that one of the pictures was taken on this road. As I got to the top, sure enough, I saw it, To the left was the cemetery, to the right, a row of old brick homes, standing much as they did in 1935. I cut left at the next block for two reasons: one, to get back to where the first shot was taken and two, to find where the second shot was taken.

This was the second shot in the book. I came right around this corner, down where the car is in front of the church, and I saw the severe angle up the street, culminating in…that same cemetery. I got halfway up the hill and couldn’t resist. I got out, and tried to remember how the above picture looked. In all, not quite, but in the ballpark.

The cemetery, though. Not a coincidence. When I got to the top of the hill, I knew exactly why Evans and Sekaer had chosen it.

There was Bethlehem Steel, right there in the background. My complete ignorance really worked in my favor here. I really hadn’t studied Walker Evans and I only knew a few of his photographs, so I hadn’t seen this one:

Cross/Steel — Walker Evans, Graveyard, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

…which I would have tried to recreate. First of all, I would have been frustrated, because that cross no longer exists, and second, I had already done so with the street picture a few minutes ago, and that picture already felt like I was encroaching on his territory. But since I didn’t know, I had the freedom to explore. I took this shot of the church, using a high f-stop to get everything in focus, very much like some of Evans’ shots.

…with the added bonus of some hand-written signage on the pole.

The first shot from American Photographs was now impossible, because trees have been planted along the cemetery, blocking that view. So, again, I was saved from the temptation of recreation. I stood at the corner, high above the sidewalk, and spotted an elaborate grave. It was cool and old, so I shrugged, and took the shot.

Not knowing that Walker Evans, in fact, took the same shot. From straight on, of course, which I should have guessed.

Walker Evans, Castellucci Grave, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Later, when I saw the above picture, I was pretty startled. When I saw the next picture, I was floored. Since Peter Sekaer, another great photographer in his own right, was along for the ride, he must have been taking pictures. And so, a picture exists of Walker Evans taking the very picture directly above.

As I saw the gigantic view camera on the tripod, I was amazed how easy it is for me to go around getting shots of everything. During the last years of his life, he took photographs specifically with a Polaroid, because due to ill health, it was much easier on him not lugging around all that equipment.

So, this was the question that rolled around in my mind as I trudged back through the old cemetery: what would Walker Evans take photographs of today? You’d think that could be the subject of another blog post. And you’d be right.

Death of a Flower: Gerber Daisy

After several different subjects, and finding that the flowers with the hardiest stems seemed to produce the best results for this “Death of a Flower” series I’ve been working on, you would think I would continue on this path, wouldn’t you?

I couldn’t resist. The sunflowers showed me how vibrant colors showed up in the studio, so when I saw these gerber daisies, I knew they had to be the next group. The centers looked like eyes, how could I say no? The stems weren’t that thin, and in fact, when I looked at the back of them, it appeared that a wilted version of this flower might be very interesting. I took several shots from the reverse side the first day I had them.

I wasn’t worried about the petals falling off like they had with the lilies I had tried out a few weeks earlier. I was more anxious about wilting, and there was no doubt they were going to wilt. It was just a matter of how fast, and how hard it was to get a good image. Face down, I thought, these couldn’t be all that interesting.

At this point I was still finishing up with the hydrangeas, so I let the gerber daisies go a while. I got back to them on day 5, and by then, half of them had already started to droop. But they didn’t quite cave. They gently bent. Downcast almost.

Now I wasn’t seeing an eye, I was seeing a whole face, a head, a neck. It would be fleeting, I knew that, but just for this moment, this group showed me something marvelous. The three that weren’t wilting yet were producing something just as great.

These two showed a bit of decay, but for the most part, they were holding up. They had a steadfast quality. I went back later in the day and shot the same flowers, this time, getting more contrast from the background:

One thing I did not do at this point, which on reflection would have been a good idea, was to take another group, so you could see how different they all were already: three of them drooping, two with their faces to the sky, and the sixth…

…looked like a staring eye. I took several shots of this particular one on day 6. This one was my favorite. As the days passed the yellow flecks became more and more prominent, adding a nice color accent to the image. Meanwhile, the three drooping daisies got droopier.

The petals, instead of dropping off or hardening to a crisp, wrapped themselves back and around, giving a strange motion to the still image, as if the whole flower were rotating on the axis of its stem. This would get less pronounced by day 9, when the petals began to dry. They began to resemble bells.

Meanwhile, something strange happened to one of the flowers. Just one. In the center of the “eye”, which had been black on all six flowers, the entire field filled with yellow, backed with the same red color as the flower. It was startling.

The staring eye had dropped by the ninth day, but these two remained mostly upright. When I shot them together, and if you see them as eyes, the right one is cloudy, blind. If you see the one on the right as a face, it looks expressionless. Such a contrast between two of a kind.

After two weeks, these two finally started to droop like all the others, but they were all individuals throughout.

No two things are the same, nor would we want them to be. If all of these flowers, and if all of us, did the same exact thing in the same exact way, what would be the point? There are so many different things we can be. When it comes to beauty, similarity can only go so far before it loses its appeal. It is in diversity that we can see a myriad of beauty, and in each one of these flowers I saw something new, unique and exciting.

Found: One Shoe

It happens. Kids lose their shoes, usually more out of design than out of carelessness. I even saw a child drop one out the window of a moving car. I found this one on the Third Street in Media back in May, and I’d like to think the little stinker yanked it off from the front of the stroller while Mom wasn’t looking.

Lost and Found

Lately I’ve been finding a lot of interesting stuff out on the street. So much so that I’ve decided to put together a section called Lost and Found, full of found items, and one lost dog. A dog so lost he’s missing from the poster created to find him.

The couch below is just one of the many pieces of furniture I’ve seen in places where it doesn’t belong.

I’ll be posting some short posts here, mainly driven by photographs. I also added a post from earlier this year, The Way that We Play, which featured a picture of a leather chair on the side of I-476 on a snowy day.

Death of a Flower – Sunflower

During the experimental stages of the Death of a Flower project, I chose as one of my subjects a set of Peruvian Lilies. They were highly colored, had very prominent and interesting stamens, and above all, they were pet friendly, so I could leave them out without worrying about the cat munching on them. However, the decay process with these flowers came in two stages:

Alive, with flowers intact.
Dead, with no remaining petals whatsoever.

About the most interesting picture I could have taken was a self-portrait of myself, sweeping up the floor from all the dead petals. So far the best successes I had were with flowers with strong stems, which could hold up the “face” of the flower long enough to get interesting shots before it totally wilted and collapsed. Thus, the decision to go to sunflowers next.

I got five in this group, and each one seemed to have a different personality. One was smaller than the rest, one already had some petals that were bending inward, and another was twisted upright. I was most excited about the upward-facing flower, because once wilting began, this one was most likely to hold its shape.

Upward-facing Sunflower, 15mm, 1/180 sec @f/9

Using the larger sunflowers as a subject allowed me to use my wide-angle Pentax 15mm f/4 lens on individual shots, which was another plus. I love this lens and the way it renders color. For the most part I used it and my 35 f/2.8 macro lens for every single shot.

Sunflower 2 — Sunflower #2, 35mm, 1/180 sec @f/3.2

The other good thing about using sunflowers in the summer was being able to keep them safely outside the house, and free of cat-related mishaps. For a week, I greeted the sunflowers on the porch on my way in from work, and everything was good, apart from one thing: on day 5, they looked exactly the way they did on day 1.

Then, on day 7, the smallest flower of the group changed dramatically. I don’t really know how or why this happened, but all of its petals shrank and hardened. The flower remained upright, which was perfect, exactly as I had hoped. The others had wilted slightly, too, but nothing in comparison to the small one. I took them back into the studio that night and got these shots:

Upright Sunflower, Day 7, 15mm, 1/180 sec @f/4

The upright sunflower had its petals curl up a bit, but its “head” remained lifted. The #3 sunflower had drooped forward, a sudden downcast expression.

Sunflower #3, Day 7, 35mm, 1/180 sec @f/4

But the highlight of the day was the small one, whose appearance had transformed into that of a wide-open eye:

The process of decay moved quickly. In another three days, all of the sunflowers’ petals had shrunk and hardened, and best of all, the strong stems were keeping the flowers anchored in place, with minimal wilting.

Sunflower #4, drooping — Sunflower #4, 15mm, 1/180 sec @f/8

My hope was that I could get some more human expressions from this set of flowers. Sadness is obvious, and most wilted flowers can present that quite easily. The “eye” flower, however, continued to give me a look of surprise. And a touch of the “What Was That” monster that was hiding in the trash compactor from Star Wars.

The most interesting shot of that day was of the #2 sunflower. Note the picture of this particular flower at the top of this post, taken from more of a side angle. For this shot, I took the camera off the tripod and shot it slightly from above, freehand, adding more of a tilt than a full-blown shot from the side. Despite the fact that this sunflower, like the others, had its petals dry up, they had done so in an interesting angle. The effect is an expression that is almost carefree, like someone with eyes closed feeling the wind in his or her face.

The Breeze, 35mm @f/5.6 — The Breeze, 35mm, 1/180 sec @f/5.6

At that point, I was convinced that I couldn’t take a better shot of these. I started in on another project, and these went back on the porch.

I went away for a few days, but rather than keeping the sunflowers on the porch, I left them in the studio. The “studio”, is a room in the basement below the porch, which as you can see from the group shot at the top, is a concrete-walled dungeonette with a tiny window. When I returned, the sunflowers had gone through another transformation, one that I had never expected. They had fully wilted. Any human expression I could get from them was one of dead-down resignation. But something new was added.

Strands of white, Day 24 — Cobwebs, Day 24, 35mm, 1/180 sec @f/6.3

All five of the flowers had been knitted together by cobwebs. I had to pull them apart in order to get individual shots of them. These two remained inseparable, and I didn’t want to extract them for fear of complete disintegration. Yet of all of these, the “eye” remained steadfast and mostly upright.

The Eye, covered in cobwebs, Day 24, 35mm, 1/180 sec @f/6.3

I’ve tried to repeat this process with other flowers, hoping to get these strands to return, to no avail. It made me wonder if I’m mistaken, and these are not cobwebs. Maybe something from the flowers themselves? I thought about it the whole time I took these shots.

The Breeze, Day 24, 35mm, 1/180 sec @f/4.5

When I had the camera in my hands, I thought of these strands as happy accidents, something random, a product of the sunflowers and time and positioning. As I look these shots over once again, I think of it more as a gift. It is not random, but something to be discovered, and marveled at, and enjoyed. I can’t help but smile when I see this shots, as dismal and creepy as they might first appear, because they are a product of a larger world.

This is part of a series which included as its subjects roses, irises, and hydrangeas.