Through the thin veil of the sky

Title: "Looking west towards the Golden Gate"

(click on image to view larger)

  

Lurking II

Title: "A deepening stillness"

(click on image to view larger)

  

The shadows whisper, reluctant to reveal their secrets but burdened by the deepening mystery that surrounds them.

In the cooling shade

Title: "Gleaming"

(click on image to view larger)

  

It is such a relief to stand in the cooling shade after a long, hot climb; to see the intensity of the sun condensed into one glowing point reflection.

Lurking

Title: "Shadowtalking, Coit Tower (Oct 2010)"

(click on image to view larger)

  

I love the distortion of shadows - the world seems familiar and strange at the same time. To me one of the interesting things about shadows is how often we inherently recognize what is casting the shadow, even in the absence of the actual object. I'm also captivated by the indirect stories they tell of our existence.

A Unseemly Sense of Scale

Title: "Coit Tower, Mid Morning"

(click on image to view larger)

  

There is something about towering objects that invokes ambiguous feelings - on the one hand, there is a sense of majesty and wonder; on the other hand, the erection of a towering object seems overly egotistical. In this case, the tower (even with its marvelous views) is overshadowed by the incredible murals in the base building - so marvelous that one can excuse the excess of the tower.

Beyond a Gnomic Existence

Title: "Class struggle, Filbert St. Stairs"

(click on image to view larger)

  

This statue was an unexpected find while climbing the Filbert Street stairs to the Coit Tower. It reminded me of statuary I saw many years ago in the former Eastern Bloc of Europe - a writhing mass of naked bodies in some way meant to epitomize the class struggle against oppression. Transported to a well tended English-style garden, it seemed to have acquired a faint whiff of eroticism.

An Uncertain Majesty

Title: "Palm Bifurcating Frame, Filbert St. Steps"

(click on image to view larger)

  

It's interesting to work with these negatives several months after the images were made. In looking them over, I found what was for me a rather high proportion of images with the subject firmly centered in the frame. I usually consider placement carefully when composing an image, and I have no reason to think I wasn't working carefully at the time. I have always had a strong affinity for the square format - back when I was painting in watercolour and acrylics, the vast majority of my work was on square fields. Many painters dislike the square format, but my feeling was always that once I made the first mark on the paper or canvas, the square had inextricably been divided into rectangular spaces. I think with these images from SF, I was simply finding that middle placement of a subject works well with a square frame.

A Journey Measured in Inches

Title: "In the shadow of the Golden Gate"

(click on image to view larger)

  

This was a hard-won view. Our friend Stephanie offered to drive us over the Golden Gate bridge after we'd all visited the De Young museum. Unexpectedly, what should have taken 15 minutes by car ended taking us over 2 hours - we hit the mother of all traffic jams, on a Sunday afternoon no less. Stephanie was baffled by what could possibly cause such a congestion, and we constantly dithered between hanging in there, or trying to find an escape route. Well, we hung in there and were rewarded by this late afternoon view of the long shadow the bridge casts over the water.

Geometric Oddities

 Title: "Triangular View, DeYoung Museum"

(click on image to view larger)

  

I was entranced by the architecture of the DeYoung museum in Golden Gate Park. I was drawn to make this image by the intersection of the edges of the building and the shadow, and the way the rectangular window is divided into light and dark. I find myself vacillating between thoughts of impending doom (as if trapped in a deep dungeon) and eternal hope when I look at this image.

Iconic Cliché

Title: "Palm Tree, DeYoung Museum"

(click on image to view larger)

  

What, a holga image of a palm tree? Such a cliché you might say, but it's my cliché and I'm glad to have it. After all, it seems silly not to make an image of a palm tree when in California with your holga. I think it's the unpredictability of the plastic camera and film development that can make even such a cliché image unique. I have certain modifications I use to soften the image captured on film by my holgas, and in this case part of the modification has clearly scratched the film along the top edge. Also for some reason, I have a lot of "bromide drag" in the negative from the development process. I absolutely love these imperfections, the slightly quirky character they bring to the image that seems so appropriate for the subject, which seems to be listing precipitously towards the building behind.

Old School Snapshot

Title: "Sisters, Golden Gate Park 2010"

(click on image to view larger)

  

Besides the fact that I love the subjects of this photo dearly, I love how this image connects to the long tradition of the family vacation snapshot - subjects posed in front of a water feature, image taken with grainy film, and printed in the darkroom with slightly high contrast. There are photo albums all over North America filled with images like this, and without the date in the title I think it would be easy to think this image was made in to early 1970s.

I was happy to get a bit of time in the darkroom this weekend. I shot 6 rolls of film with my Holga on this short trip to SF, and I've just made prints from two of the rolls. I want to get the rest of the frames printed, and then make a selection of them to use in a zine or chapbook. I'm looking forward to converting these into a precious, low-tech object.

Alien Contingent

Title: "Nob Hill Voodoo"

(click on image to view larger)

  

One morning I went out early for a walk around the neighbourhood of our hotel. As I climbed up a hill, I came across this display in a shop window. There were stately buildings all around, and some very expensive hotels a block away. Not to mention the Masonic Temple! It all seemed a bit spooky....

Big Alma

Title: "Victory, Union Square"

(click on image to view larger)

  

"Big Alma", Alma de Bretteville (also known as "The Great Grandmother of San Francisco") met her future husband thanks to modeling for this monument to commemorate George Dewey's victory in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish American war. This statue was selected from a number of entries and only barely made the cut, thanks to the crucial vote of the chair of the Citizen's Committee, Adolph Spreckels. Although he was twice her age, she was smitten by him and eventually after a five-year courtship, they married on May 11, 1908. Because he was head of the Spreckels Sugar Company, Alma often referred to her husband as her "sugar daddy"

It is good to know the truth, but it is better to speak of palm trees

Title: "Two palms facing outward"

(click on image to view larger)

  

The title of this post is apparently an Arabic proverb. I think a good proverb, like good art, is somewhat enigmatic or ambiguous, allowing for personal interpretation.

Little Blue Box

Title: "Tiffany & Co."

(click on image to view larger)

  

One of the casual images I made during our short trip to San Francisco in the fall. I had never used the holga for "travel" photography, in fact I've rarely used the holga for urban photography and felt a bit out of my element. Unsure of what I'd get, unsure of what to look for in terms of subject. There was a lot of hit and miss....

More stories from the shore

Catastrophic aftermath

  

Witness the violence of the sea, the brutal force that throws all together, shattering life and limb.

Found Still Life

Title: "Carefully considered, but uncontrived"

(click on image to view larger)

  

I was at an artist's talk a couple of weeks ago given by my friend Dave Aharonian for a show of his at the Lúz Gallery. The show contained two bodies of work, both printed in platinum: beautiful, isolated views of the west coast landscape, and figure studies in the rainforest. An audience member commented that the figure studies seemed contrived, and asked whether the photographer had placed the models in these positions. Dave replied that he worked with professional models who usually came up with the poses themselves. Actually, I was surprised by the question because I've long felt that most figure in the landscape images suffer from the "garnish" syndrome as I've come to call it: the model seems to be draped like a garnish over some feature of the landscape. One of the strengths of Dave's work is how he successfully integrates the figures into the landscape, and the interesting thing about the images he had in this show was the disparity in the scale of the landscape (huge) compared to the figure (quite small and in some cases almost unnoticeable).

I was struck by the sobriquette "contrived", since it is difficult to imagine any figure work (other than the voyeuristic, à la Miroslav Tichy) that wouldn't be posed (and thus contrived), nor most still life studies. Indeed, in the case of still life paintings, art history is rife with explanations of the symbolism in the elements chosen and in their placement within the composition. Modern artists often work very hard to construct still life compositions that look random and natural (although they by definition are not). One of the joys I find in photographing the local coast is the rich source of "found" still life compositions. The objects and their placement is to some extent random, although subject to the forces of wind, sun and ocean surges. As a photographer, I have to be aware and looking, and make considered choices in composing images from these seemingly random collections of flotsam.

The endless line of reason

Title: "Multiple plot lines"

(click on image to view larger)

  

I am always happy to come across these multilayers of lines within the landscape. I imagine the stress lines in the rock to be ancient narratives, which have become overlaid by the more contemporary narratives plotted by those sensuous curving lines of kelp. The curving lines are more complex than the straight lines in the rock, mirroring an increasing complexity in language and vocabulary from ancient times to the present. Within the ancient narratives, we may stumble across little jewels of wisdom that seem prescient; within those lush curving lines of narrative we may find intellectual stimulation, or titillation, a feast for the senses but not necessarily greater wisdom. The lines seem to be conversing across time, integrating their narratives rather than remaining aloof and separate.

Jewels of Light

Title: "An offering from the sea"

(click on image to view larger)

  

I love the interface between the ocean and the land, every changing with the tides. There are always little gifts or offerings left behind on shore, signs of a constant courtship between the two.

Profusion of Confusion

Title: "Remnants of ocean stories"

(click on image to view larger)

  

Every time I go down to the sea, I inevitably take pictures of kelp. I have an endless fascination with the lines they draw on the beach, the tremendous variations in tone as they slowly decay, and the variations of thin and thick. It's as if the ocean is a huge jet, and the kelp are contrails left at different times and in different directions. I imagine each represents a story, in the same way we often look up in the sky at contrails and wonder who's going where, and why. Perhaps one day I'll start to tell the kelp stories, illustrated with images like this.