Figure 1 – Adoration of the Virgin, Parishoners gathered for mass before the Immaculate Conception Churd of Mary Adoration of the Apostles Church, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

A striking and touching moment each Sunday morning, in this time of the first isolation, is the gathering of the faithful in front of Salem’s historic Immaculate Conception Church – Mary, Queen of the Apostles Parish. The church is closed officially, but the doors are flung open wide, and an altar has been placed in the doorway.  A small and socially-distanced crowd of masked-parishioners gathers on the lawn. Some like the gentlemen in his Sunday-best fall to their knees.I have been trying to conceive this photograph for weeks, while at the same time not being too intrusive, remaining respectful. This Sunday I got the concept of featuring the Ten Commandment Plaques in the foreground – the foundation of faith. I feel that it is still photographically imperfect. But I do hope that it captures this moment of Sunday hope and adoration.

Figure 1 – Derby Street Laundry on the corner of Becket and Derby Streets, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

We have definitely gotten into a strange new world view, as we wander the streets. They are so deserted, but at the same time we rise to anger whenever we pass a smoke, mask down around his/her neck, puffing away. perhaps they should develop a special mask for such fools, one with a hole in the center for the cigarette! 

There is an airy silence in the bright morning light. I see it in black and white, leaning towards the classic duo tone that mimics selenium. In Figure1, we see the Derby Street Laundry at the corner of Salem’s Derby and Becket Streets. The building has certainly seen better days, and true to an old section of an antique town, the streets are bent and warped. This is near the Old Custom’s House and most certainly Nathaniel Hawthorne tread this very path. 

“and the third[window] looking across a narrow lane, and along a portion of Derby Street. All three give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers; around the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Customs House 

Figure 1 – Don’t you just wish you had a magic wand and could wish it all away?

Sunday morning in the time of the isolation

Sunday morning and there are no church bells.

Sunday morning and the streets are deserted.

We are in isolation, self-imposed.

We are in quarantine, self-inflicted.

The word isolation has new meaning.

The word viral, is now a thing of dread.

There are no hugs, they are all virtual.

There are no kisses, only emojis.

Pay-stations mock me, as I trigger them.

Dogs mock me, don’t really understand.

Where are the homeless, more than ignored?

Where are the children, kept now indoors?

I see that the sea is still sparkling.

I see that the crocus now are blooming.

Maples caress the air with crimson buds.

Magnolia blossoms vanish in the wind.

Mergansers still seek seasonal lovers.

Muted swans still dance with their life-long loves.

Spring has come, but there is COVID-19.

Spring is unseen by those in quarantine.

Figure 1 – Menu board at the Olde Main Street Pub, Salem, MA, April 17, 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

As I said in my last post, the signs of the isolation can be subtle yet poignant. On Salem’s once bustling, now lonely, Essex Street is the Olde Main Street Pub. According to the pub’s website it offers “fine Contemporary family dining in a cozy pub-like atmosphere.” The darkness inside betrays uncertainty. Figure 1 is a photograph that I took of the menu board in the window. The Pub is closed and offers no menu. But you can see the bleached shadows of many years of past menus. The physics of light is relentless, and you may wonder just how long it will take for the daylight of our new reality to erase all signs of the past. 

It is, perhaps, worth noting. in case some future historian happens to read these words, that we know that this is a transformational moment. Ours is perhaps akin to the uncertainty that Europeans felt during the first World War. We know that the world will never be the same. We do not, however, know, with any precision, how it will change. Some, in arrogance, may suggest that they do know what will happen. But I am reminded of the wisdom of the Tralfamadorians in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five:

 ‘We know how the Universe ends-‘ said the guide, ‘and Earth has nothing to do with it, except that it gets blown up, too’

Figure 1 – Derby Joe Cafe, Salem, MA, April 15, 2020. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

There are three types of people facing the COVID-19 pandemic: those who are inconvenienced by the isolation, those made financially desperate by it, and those who face the full physical brunt and terror of the disease. Needless-to-say the sick suffer the most, and the omnipresent fear of everyone else is to become one of the sick. Such a terrible and stressful time for everyone. It is one that challenges our humanity.

I had thought that signs of the isolation and financial ruin would be subtle and really hard to find. But in fact, that is not truly the case. Signs are everywhere. You just need to look for them. They may at first be subtle to the sight, only to become vivid and horrible when at last you find them

I was walking along Salem’s waterfront thoroughfare, Derby Street, the other morning, when I passed the Derby Joe Cafe. It is a place that is ever familiar. But when I crossed the street to maintain my social distance from another passerby, I spotted two makeshift signs on either side of the entryway. “HUNGRY?” and “FOOD PANTRY.” Embarrassed in the way that people are when they look through and ignore the homeless, I stopped to take the image of Figure 1.

Written now some four centuries ago, and despite the rantings of a senile egomaniac, we are reminded that people are not statistics. They love. They are loved.

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
― John Donne, Meditation XVII – Meditation 17

Like most of you, I have been hunkering down in isolation and maintaining safe-distancing. I haven’t posted in quite a while and since I’ve been walking in broad circles, for exercise, every day there hasn’t been too much to photograph. Today was such a sunny and beautiful day that I decided to venture to the Salem Waterfront, in all cases maintaining a safe social-distance and wearing my face mask. What was there to see? In fact, I was so giddy to be out that I started photographing everything and over the next few days I’m going to post some of these images.

Figure 1 – Parking is free, but there is nowhere to go! (c) DE Wolf 2020

The first thing that I saw this morning was that the Federal Street Parking Lot was largely devoid of cars; so there were so many available spots. And then there was the scene of Figure 1. The parking stations were covered with trash bags. All of this means that parking was free but there was no where to go!

The town was quiet and largely deserted. You just had to be wary and shift sides of the street, if you saw someone coming. I wandered down Orange Street to Hawthorne’s Customs House and then along Derby Street to the House of Seven Gables. Along the way I stopped to maintain a safe-distance from the Derby Street Dinosaur (Figure 2). You may recall a previous photo of him from a few months back, wearing a stovepipe hat fro Christmas. It is very important that he not get sick because he suffers from a chronic case of brontosaurus bronchitis.

Figure 2 – Practicing safe distancing with the Derby Street Dinosaur, (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Finally, I took the image of Figure 3, which leads me to an important question. With a deadly respiratory virus raging and killing our fellow citizens, why would anyone? Do they still think it all a hoax?

Figure 3 – Do they think it’s all a hoax?

I will post more. But in the meantime, stay healthy and safe, dear readers and friends! It has been said that the trouble with our times is that we have no saints. That is wrong, our first responders, nurses, doctors, truck drivers, grocery workers, and delivery people who face this enemy for us every day are our saints!

Figure 1 – Avalonia terrain granites, Singing Beach, Manchester-by-the- Sea, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

At the risk of being redundant, I continue to revel in and work on my granite photographs of this past weekend. So today we revisit Avalonia! It seems a conflict in my mind whether to do these in black and white or in color. Today’s image, Figure 1, I decided to do exactly as I saw it, a warm late winter’s afternoon on the beach, bathed in a glorious golden light. 

Granites come in so many different colors. The most beautiful that I’ve seen in their natural state are the red granites of Wisconsin. And no these are not called “Badgerites.” All of this, of course, depends upon the incorporated minerals.

An important aspect of granites is that they have had a long time too cool. Slow cooling, or annealing, promotes crystal nucleation and growth. Granites are plutonic rocks, meaning that they are extruded lava flows that form deep in the Earth; so they have a lot of time to cool. Deep within the Earth, you say? Yes far beneath the Earth in the realm of Pluto, god of the underworld. In contrast, lava flows on the surface of the Earth or even blasted into the air are volcanic rocks. They cool very quickly and are very fine grained. 

For granite we have no less a person than Ansel Adams for a quote.

“No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain cannot be denied – it speaks in silence to the very core of your being.”

Canon T2i with EF 70 to 200 f/4.0L USM lens at 87 mm, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/320th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – Granite debris field, Singing Beach, Manchester-by-the-Sea, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Figure 1 is another photograph that I took of the granites at Singing Beach at Manchester-by-the-Sea on this past Saturday. I am not enough of a geologist to say whether these are part of an ancient debris field, a glacial moraine, or man placed. Perhaps a reader can inform me. But I love the scene.

While my usual inclination is to do this kind of image in black and white, here I just loved the colors so much: the greens, the subtle blues, and the burnt oranges, that I just had to do the image in color. Just a little saturation and color balance correction and voila. It is a rock garden laid out randomly to convey a sense of order in the universe.That is one of the great and splendid songs of nature.

Canon T2i with EF 70-200 f/4L USM lens at 70 mm, ISO 800, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/250 th sec at f/7.1 with no exposure compensation.

Figure 1 – The View up Palfrey Ct. Salem, MA.” (c) DE Wolf 2020.

I was wandering down Salem’s Historic seaport district the other day and found the quaint view up “Palfrey Court” of Figure 1. A lot of time it is worth pausing and taking a look up a narrow street, framed by houses now close to the street, and this view did not disappoint. I took the image with my iPhone XS and was actually pleased with the result except for an overly enthusiastic blue tint to the white paint from a cold February light. As I expected, the image yielded wonderfully to a little working in the stylized AI App PRISMA. I am slowly accumulating a set of historic Salem scenes, where PRISMA magically turns them into paintings. 

The operational word here is magically, because when I begin this blog I emphasized the magic of photography from the very moment of its inception with Fox Talbott’s “Pencil of Nature.” You’ve got to think about all the people oohing and thing at the Crystal Exhibition of 1851. Anything that adds to this magic, in the modern era, is simply part of the process. 

And please let me rail on a bit. I am getting mighty frustrated by STRICTLY Black and White user groups. Fine, nobody loves black and white more than I. But is toning allowed? How about duotone or tritone. Some of the best black and white photographs use these, and toning is certainly part of the great master Ansel Adams’ formulary. And then we have the wonderful Facebook Cloud Appreciation users group, no enhancement allowed. Yeah right! “More practiced in the breach than the observance.” And finally, we have iPhone Photo contests that insist that you use a phone-based editing app. Can’t call them programs any more! GET REAL PEOPLE! Sometimes I think that these people are more interested in rules than art.