Frank Eugene, “Minuet, 1900”

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Figure 1 - Frank Eugene, "Minuet, 1900." In the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Frank Eugene, “Minuet, 1900.” In the public domain because of its age.

In doing this past year’s Favorite and Noteworthy Photographs, I discovered and was quite taken by an image by Frank Eugene (1865 – 1936) entitled “Minuet, 1900.” It is shown in Figure 1. Frank Eugene was an American-born photographer, a founding member of the Photo-Secession, and one of the world’s first professors of photography. So marched photography ever so slowly from craft to fine art, which was, of course, a significant goal of the Photo-Secession.

What one sees in “Minuet” is typical of Eugene’s heavily worked negatives.  There is the very fine photographic detail of the dancer’s beautiful dress, the delicate precision of the lace and the setting of her hair, and at the same time scratches scribed with an etcher’s pen in the background to create the ambiguity: photograph or etching?  The faces of the audience are obscured in an impressionist fog and not seen at first.  To me, what is truly amazing about this image is that the subject’s back is turned to us.  We are barely thought of viewers. It is so antithetical to what we normally see as the “rules” of composition. And yet, the beauty of the woman is revealed to us by her slender, alluring neck with its alluring Ingresesque curve and by the mystery of her hair.  In these elements it is truly a genius work.

 

 

 

 

Assabet River Wildlife Refuge

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Figure 1 The Assabet Watershed #4, (c) DE Wolf 2015.

Figure 1 The Assabet Watershed #4, (c) DE Wolf 2015.

The Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge is a 2,230 acre wildlife refuge that was reclaimed from the U.S. Army’s Fort Devens-Sudbury Training Annex on March 26, 2005.  Part of the Assabet River watershed, it is the epitome of an eastern Massachusetts wetland.  So if you think of scrubby trees, piney groves, and stomping through soggy marshes, you’ve got the image, and it is truly spectacular in its wildness.

Back at the height of World War II in 1942 the federal government seized the land by eminent domain, giving residents only about ten days to pack up and leave, and paying them, well, not so much. Most intriguing today are decaying World War II era ammunition bunkers. The significance of the site was that it was convenient to railroad shipping to the Boston Navy Yard (of ammunition), yet far enough inland as to be out of range of German battleships. could not shell the area. Each of the 50 bunkers, officially referred to as “igloos,” has inside dimensions of 81x26x12 feet, with a curved roof. Sides and roofs were mounded with dirt for extra protection and disguised from aerial view.

After WWII this site served as a troop training ground, ordinance testing center, and laboratory disposal area for Natick Labs (U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center). Not surprisingly, it became categorized by the EPA as a “Superfund” clean-up site.  It was was contaminated with arsenic, pesticides and lots of other nasties. The US Army spent years cleaning up the site and in 2000 turned it over to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Today as you walk through the woodlands and along the lake you suddenly come upon some solitary feature, a fireplace or piping, not to mention the bunkers, which speaks to the refuge’s past.

It is one of those places that seems to beckon the photographer, and I had a wonderful, and I think successful, time walking there in the waning light on December 27.  The image that I posted on January 2 (The path ahead to the New Year) was taken there as was Figure 1* an example of the marshland with drowned trees at its best.

This image I hope speaks to the fact that wild places can be reclaimed.  But there is something profounder going on.  In summer the woods are dense, and it’s all kind of a playground.  But in winter there is a harshness, both of landscape and of environment. If you shut your eyes to the fact that you can easily return to the warmth of your car and then back to hearth and home, you feel your own fragility and you become keenly aware that nature survives, the creatures of the forest and the trees have been in these post-glaciation woods for thousands of years and before that in other forms, indeed, stretching back millions of years.  This is only an instant, and that ultimately is the message of wild landscape photography.

 

Judging the quality of sunbeams by the warmth on your nose

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Figure 1 - Judging the quality of sunbeams by the warm on your nose. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Judging the quality of sunbeams by the warmth on your nose. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I have taken a long and wonderful winter break that was filled with good things, with family and friends.  And I am most grateful for all of these. One of those wonderful things was resting and napping.  This is a journey into a feline world, where in winter the best naps are taken by the fire or better still in the glow of an expected sunbeam.  For cats, the quality of sunbeams is best judged by the warmth on your nose.

So now I am rested, as one is meant to me after vacation, and I am ready and excited to return to work.  My cat on the other hand will return to her naps. She will awaken for a while to explore the gurgle of the humidifier, to watch the birds at the feeder, always beyond reach, or to bat a toy around.  And then more naps.

Canon T2i with EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS STM lens IS on at 51 mm, ISO 100, 1/8th sec f/5.6, external flash, first curtain synch, evaluative metering, no exposure compensation.

The ghost of Christmas past

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Before the Ghost of Christmas past have passed us by, and this past Christmas has become a faded memory, I wanted to draw everyone’s attention to a very clever photoshopping piece by Peter Macdiarmid of Getty Images/ Hudson/Topical Press Agency/Hulton Archive. Mr. Macdiarmid has carefully merged antique images of Christmas with contemporary ones taken at the same location.  The piece raises the very significant point that in place there is both timelessness and change.  And of course, the whole concept turns itself around, when you realize that today is (or will someday) be in the past.

Some years ago I went to Rome, and we purchased this little souvenir book that had photographs of the ancient sights.  Overlaying each of these was a plastic sheet which was a painting that took the site back two thousand years to ancient Roman times. I was struck both by the ambiguity of the ephemeral and the permanent nature of things – of human experience and vision.  We tend to think of change as transition, but as these images the ones in my guidebook and the ones created by Peter Macdiarmid, illustrate change is in a sense a diffusive or random process, a brick is removed, a brick remains. On a dark winter’s day people still bustle in Trafalgar Square under the watchful eye of London policemen.

A New Year’s resolution from Edward Weston

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Figure 1 -Fred R. Archer's 1915 portrait of Edward Weston. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 -Fred R. Archer’s 1915 portrait of Edward Weston. From the Wikimediacommons and in the public domain because of its age.

I have been reading Mary Street Alinder’s new book “Group f.64.” I think there shall be more on that book to come.  But last night I read a quotation from Edward Weston’s Day Books where he compared himself with Alfred Steiglitz.  I think that nearly a century later the conflict between the Group f.64 on the west coast and Steiglitz’ Photosecession on the east sees rather antiquated and beyond the point.  We can safely love both point of view.  But coming on the heels of my New Years photographic resolutions what Weston said could easily be a timeless resolution for all photographers in all years. So I thought that I really should share it with all of you.

“But it has come to me of late that comparing one man’s work to another’s, naming one greater or lesser, is a wring approach.

The important and only vital question is, how much greater, finer, am I than I was yesterday? Have I fulfilled my possibilities, made the most of my potentialities. What a marvelous world if all would, could hold this attitude toward life.”

Some photographic resolutions for 2015

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Lost Giant in a September Light, Fresh Pond Reserve. Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Lost Giant in a September Light, Fresh Pond Reserve. Cambridge, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

January 2, 2015 and it’s time to take stock in how I did on my photographic resolutions for 2014 and to make new or continued one’s for 2015.

Beginning with last year’s resolutions, we have:

  1. Focus on seeing.  As I said last year, this is an intensely personal and a continuing lifetime lesson.  You see all the time and you compose untaken images all the time, and a very important aspect is not to become merely an observer, not to use photograph to abstract yourself out of your own life.  I’ll give myself a B on this, I have taken some images that I am very proud of, or at least that I like very much.  But there is always so much more to see, so many more possibilities.
  2. Spend more time taking photographs and have my camera with me more often. Yep to this and maybe a B+. I have a camera with me a lot, but not always. IPhone doesn’t count.  And invariably, when I don’t, I wish that I did.
  3. Slow down, concentrate on composing the image, on setting and checking the light. This speaks to the fundamental technical task, and I have worked very hard at it. An A for effort, but a minus for when I have failed; so A-. Psst, I’m an easy grader!
  4. Continue to learn to photograph trees.  I continue to believe this and I decided to give myself and A if there was one image of a tree that I took this past year and that truly met my goal and expectation.  I actually found several, but my favorite is shown in Figure 1, and image that I took the past September at Fresh Pond.
  5. Spend more time photographing people, learn to take better portraits and to develop a personal portrait style. Hmm! I have worked on this.  I did set up the En Persona Gallery on Hati and Skoll and there are some portraits taken in 2014.  But, I still have the temerity associated with photographing strangers, of asking whether I can take their picture, and as a result I did not take as many people-pictures nor did I focus much on learning portraiture, nor have I yet developed a personal style.  So C+ to you Wolf!  Gonna be hard on myself with this. I include as Figure 2 one pleasing image that I took on the Old North Bridge in Concord Massachusetts this past summer.

So, what about going forward into 2015.  My New Year photographic resolutions for 2015 carry over a few from last year:

  1. Focus on seeing.  I think that this always must be there.
  2. Spend more time taking photographs and have my camera with me more often.
  3. Slow down, concentrate on composing the image, on setting and checking the light. And yes, learn more about the camera controls, the one’s you don’t use, but should. This remains the key and is a lifelong lesson.
  4. Continue to learn to photograph trees.  They remain the most worthy of subjects.
  5. Work more on portraiture.
  6. Learn and utilize strobe-light techniques in portraiture.
  7. Continue to photograph birds and to develop better technique.
Figure 1 - Wonder of Childhood, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 2 – Wonder of Childhood, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

The path ahead to the New Year

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The Path ahea to the New Year, Assabet River Wildlife Reserve. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

The Path ahea to the New Year, Assabet River Wildlife Reserve. (c) DE Wolf 2014.

At the very end of December my son and I went for a short hike at the Assabet River Wildlife Reserve. These are the shortest days of the year in the Northeast. Still there is beautiful light to December afternoons, just not a lot of it. And, of course, you’ve got to look for it early, 3:30 to 4:30 pm.  Still the calendar promises that the coming year is on the ascendent. Slowly the days will become longer and eventually warmer, ‘though before the we must pay our dues for mild New England summers.

We came around a bend in the path and saw a golden glow in front of us.  It was a dazzling light that made the pine forest ahead not quite clear. And it demanded to be photographed, with Figure 1* the result. I was immediately reminded of Marco Secchi image that I discussed yesterday, and my discussion of the tabula rasa.  It is the pastel light that summons us forward into the future.

*Canon T2I with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM at 180 mm, ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode, 1/80th sec at F/7.1 with no exposure compensation. Image taken with IS 1 on a monopod.

New Year Greetings 2015 from Hati and Skoll Gallery

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Happy New Year everyone! Couples, young and old, have kissed and toasted the New Year at celebrations all around the world, and we find ourselves at the dawn of a new year.

I have been scouring the “Year in Pictures series for 2014” and found lots of spectacular and gorgeous images, just not too much that was positive and uplifting.  I mean if the best that we can do are sports images, we are in serious trouble! However the New Year is meant to represent a fresh start, a blank slate upon which shall be recorded the events of the coming year.  So, let’s at least try to be optimistic.  The future, after all, is really up to us. So let’s dig deep into the wellspring of our common humanity.

In the end what struck me as closest to my feelings this January 1, 2015 about where we are today, at this precise moment in time, is a remarkable image by Marco Secchi for Getty images showing a visitor walking inside the installation by Doug Wheeler at a preview of the new exhibition last April, The Illusion of Light, at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice. For me the photograph emphasizes that photographically, intellectually, and in terms of experience the New Year is indeed a tabula rasa. By this time next year the whiteness will be filled vividly with another set of images expressing the common experiences of mankind.  And perhaps we may find hope in the fact that the only reason that photography works is because we are all connected.

Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, “Montmartre, 1906” – Favorite and Noteworthy Photographs 2014 #10

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Figure 1 - Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, Montmartre, ca. 1906. This is one of the images featured in the MFA exhibit on Pictorialism. This image is from the Wikimediacommons and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. In the public domain in the United States because it is more than 75 yrs. old.

Figure 1 – Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, Montmartre, ca. 1906. This is one of the images featured in the MFA exhibit on Pictorialism. This image is from the Wikimediacommons and from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. In the public domain in the United States because it is more than 75 yrs. old.

Drum roll, please.  This year’s Favorite and Noteworthy Photograph #10, the winner, and the last image on Hati and Skoll for the year 2014 is Emile Joachim Constant Puyo, “Montmartre, 1906.” I have spoken about this image before.  I saw it earlier this year at an exhibit at Bostons Museum of Fine Arts and fell immediately in love with it.  The image is truly stunning and represents bromoil printing at the glorious high point of photographic pictoralism.  The diffuse pointillism of the image closely mirrors contemporary impressionism.  The foggy vision of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica is amazing and quite magical. And then there is the enigma. Exactly what is the young woman looking at on the street below?