Last summer, Dean Peterson (director of What Children Do) was out walking in NYC and “spent minutes working up the nerve” to ask artist June Leaf and photographer Robert Frank if he could take their picture. I’m so glad he did.
Four (or more) seasons
From Kottke.org:
Nestled amongst hundreds of stunning shots of the aurora borealis taken by Finnish photographer Jani Ylinampa is a series of four photos of Kotisaari, showing the island from a drone’s point of view for each of the four seasons (clockwise from upper left): spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
I came across this image last week and I keep thinking about it. There’s something so magical about seeing the same view in each season. (This is what Thoreau was recording so diligently in his journals.) The Kotisaari photos remind me of Paul Octavious’s Same Hill Different Day:
Of course, this kind of project requires that you live somewhere with actual seasons. Here’s Paul on living in Chicago:
I live near Lake Michigan… it’s like living by an ocean. Also, having all four seasons is inspirational because I can do a photo project and see it evolve throughout the year. Going outside to a hill, or a tree, or taking one subject and revisiting it multiple times inspires me to see how I can photograph it differently each time.
Now I’m reminded of Kurt Vonnegut claiming in Palm Sunday that there are actually six seasons in the Northeast: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Locking, Winter, and Unlocking.
Regardless of how many seasons there are wherever you live, one should heed Thoreau: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.”
Harry and his monster hat
“One cannot open a newspaper without being disgusted by new records of shame…. the house and land we occupy, have lost their best value, and a man looks gloomily at his children, and thinks, ‘What have I done that you should begin life in dishonor?’”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1851
A devastating image by photographer Brook Mitchell in the NYTimes. Nails the stakes of climate change: It is our children who will have to sift through the wreckage.
I was particularly affected by the photo, as I have a towheaded almost-six-year-old who looks a lot like Harry. (“Where have you been my blue-eyed son?” Dylan sings in “A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall,” a song that now destroys me.)
A little googling led me to the original Guardian piece about Australian farm families battling the draught. You can see more photos of Harry and his family there, including this one, of him wearing what he calls his “monster hat”:
That one brings the slightest smile: Children are resilient, and no matter how bad it gets, there will still be moments of humor. Even if it’s gallows humor.
On the other side of the camera
I needed new some new photos, so I asked one of my favorite artists, Clayton Cubitt, if he’d take them. We spent a couple of really pleasant hours last month in his studio in Williamsburg, just chatting about art and life and taking pictures.
Clayton likes to take a polaroid of studio visitors wearing a prop crown — he says he thinks everybody deserves to be royalty for at least a few minutes. (Iggy Pop: “Every stinking bum should wear a crown.”)
Here’s a photo I took of him in action — the tattoo on his right arm, “this too shall pass,” was explained by Abraham Lincoln (a quote I used in the last chapter of Keep Going):
“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, “And this too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”
“Sometimes I worry it’s weird for my subjects to see a giant ‘this too shall pass’ tattoo on my trigger arm,” he says, “But it’s true and it’s why I photograph.”
He gets a new hatchmark on his left arm for each year he makes it around the sun.
You can read more about his life and work in this interview.
Here’s my favorite photo that he took of me:
The season of lies
Back home after two weeks on the road with the kids. No new epiphanies, only fortified beliefs:
1. Traveling with young children is not a “vacation” it is a “trip.”
The sooner you understand and accept this the sooner you can lower your expectations accordingly. My kids are, I think, wonderful travelers, and even so, traveling with them is beyond exhausting.
2. Photos can say whatever we want them to say.
Instagram lies. If you follow me on Instagram, it probably looked like I was having the time of my life. Nope! There was a lot of eye candy to be had, but a large majority of the trip was pretty miserable.
I found myself thinking a lot about Errol Morris’s book, Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography, and how he summarized it in these handy 8 points:
- All photographs are posed.
- The intentions of the photographer are not recorded in a photographic image. (You can imagine what they are, but it’s pure speculation.)
- Photographs are neither true nor false. (They have no truth-value.)
- False beliefs adhere to photographs like flies to flypaper.
- There is a causal connection between a photograph and what it is a photograph of. (Even photoshopped images.)
- Uncovering the relationship between a photograph and reality is no easy matter.
- Most people don’t care about this and prefer to speculate about what they beleive about a photograph.
- The more famous a photograph is, the more likely it is that people will claim it has been posed or faked.
If you’re sitting around this summer scrolling Instagram seething with jealousy over vacation photos, remember what Mary Karr says: “Don’t make the mistake of comparing your twisted-up insides to people’s blow-dried outsides.” You have no idea what kind of time anybody’s having. Images are nothing without context.
If you love summer and summer vacation, I’m happy for you. For me, it’s the season of lies. Best to pour some iced tea, crack a book, and wait for it to pass.
(Happy to be back, BTW. Will write a more upbeat post tomorrow!)