There are many wonderful places for photography on the web, but one of my all-time favorite places to visit are the magical realism worlds of California photographer Beth Moon.  There is a long tradition of the mystical and magical in photography, arguably beginning with the little cherubs of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron and encompassing the nymphs and nyads of Annie Brigman.  But I truly believe that Ms. Moon takes this to a new level.  Magical realism is the insertion of the mystic into reality in such a way that it becomes redefining, and reality becomes much more than it once was.  We ascend into a mythic or spiritual plane much as we ascend into a great cathedral and we return to the mundane world a degree enlightened.

My introduction to Beth Moon’s work was a portfolio of her tree pictures, “Portraits of Time,” in Lens Work a couple of years back.  Many of the trees that she photographs are over a thousand years old, some as much as four thousand.  They are trees, but much more, they are silent witnesses to time and history.  And, of course, there are two additional associations.  First there is Frasier’s “Golden Bough,” the axis of the world, the Bodhi tree, the tree upon which Odin was crucified so that he could gain knowledge of the world, the tree of life, and the tree from which the cross was made.  Second, there is Tolkein’s tale of the Ents, the tree people that have become sedentary witnesses.

In her photographs Ms. Moon takes us to other worlds as well.  There is the world of many journeys in her series “Thy Kingdom Come.” There is a world of “Augurs and Soothsayers,” populated by magnificent all-knowing chickens.  That particular world is double edged in that it seems to take us in two directions at once: first along a magic path and second a scientific one as these pictures are reminiscent of illustrations for Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”  And most recently, Beth takes us to “Odin’s Cove,” the intimate world of the ravens of the California.  What is more mythical in the new world than the old trickster raven, here masterful drawn with great empathy and love?  The point is not only that all of these pictures make us think, but that they first make us feel, and then they enlighten us.

Beth’s work has taught me a lot about the lack of limits that photography holds in the hands of a master practitioner.    But I also learned one more thing from her.  About three years ago I went to see her work in person at Gallery 291.  For the first time I understood the subtlety of art that is the Platinum Palladium print.  Now whenever I see one, my first reaction is “ahh, platinum palladium.”

Beth Moon’s work is not just worth seeing, it is worth seeing again and again.

About fifteen years ago, I started researching my family’s genealogy.  After a while I had amassed a reasonably large number of images of people from the “old country,” in my family’s case Russia, Poland, and Lithuania.  This collection is haunting.  There are all these people, now gone, who once had dreams and many of whom were murdered during the Second World War.  Finally you realize two things: first that as Edward R. Murrow said: “We are not descended from fearful men;” and second that we are their dreams.  These are significant lessons, because they teach us how we ourselves must live if we are to be true to them.

Often over the years I have found myself studying these images and looking for the resemblance.  As I have gotten older, I certainly see my father’s face in the mirror.  But what about the face of his Uncle Jack or that of my great grandfather?

Photographer Rafael Goldchain has taken the quest for family resemblance a step further.  He has duplicated family photographs, real or imagined, all with himself as ancestor.  The result is a remarkable set of self-portraits, portraits not quite right as they dwell somewhere in the middle, somewhere between the past and the present.  This creates a haunting effect and tension, which define these images.  And despite your knowledge of the creative reality, epitaphs like: “b. Warsaw, Poland 1890’s, d. Poland, early 1940’s” still cut deep as.  The realization of murder and snuffed out dreams haunts us.

Right now these wonderful pictures can be found in three places: Lenswork Extended #101, if you subscribe to that, at the ZoneZero.com website; and in Mr. Goldchain’s book, “I am My Family.” Check them out!

We went on Saturday to visit the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design. Our principal purpose was to see the Vogel Collection; so first a note on that. Dorothy and Herbert Vogel were art collectors who on a shoe-string budget collected more than 4000 works of art. Much of this body of work can be classified as Minimalist or Conceptual art. The Vogels stuffed their collection into their tiny Manhattan apartment. The Vogels donated their work to the National Gallery in Washington, DC, and it was decided that some of the work would be donated to each of the states, Fifty Works for Fifty States. All of this is delightfully documented in the film “Herb and Dorothy.” I highly recommend this film. It is fun and shows what can be accomplished, as a collector, with taste, understanding, and very little money.

Next we have a truly monumental and marvelous exhibit, “America in View Landscape Photography 1865 – now.” There is a lot to say about this wonderful exhibit, and I hope to explore some of the individual photographers in upcoming blogs. But simply and succinctly, if you can go see it, you must see it. The exhibit runs through January 13.
For many of us, American landscape photography begins with Ansel Adams’ images of a pristine wilderness. But this is only one vision, and it doesn’t even begin there.

A miraculous point is that most of this work is in the permanent collection of RISD, much of it collected by the late photographer and RISD Provost, Joe Deal, and his wife Betsy Ruppa or donated by others to the museum. I have been to few exhibits with so much photography, so well displayed. I think that I could have spent hours there and certainly plan on a return visit.

So let me just mention a few personal favorite highlights:

1. Laura Gilpin, Footprints in the sand 1931;
2. Arthur Rothstein, Father and son walking in the face of a dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936;
3. Documentary works of the American West in the 1870’s by Timothy O’Sullivan and William H. Bell;
4. Beautifully contrasted images of women at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Anne Brigman, Soul of the blasted pine, 1909; Clarence White, Morning, 1905.

The point is dramatically made that landscape has many meanings. It does not just connote a pristine wilderness void of people. People share, enhance, or mar the environment. It can be mythical or it can be raw. It can be artistic or utilitarian. The American landscape is both in the National Parks and in your neighborhood. It is a lonely dark house with a brightly lit front entryway seen on a night walk. It is a decaying urban environment, or a sewage treatment plant.

I will now have a new sense of meaning the next time I fly into San Francisco Airport and marvel at the salt extraction ponds vividly colored by the halobacter (salt thriving bacteria).  It’s all landscape.

As a scientist, specializing in optical imaging,  I am always interesed in new ways of seeing the world.  So I was quite curious when my friend Rebekah introduced me to Nick Veasey’s website of X-ray images.

Veasey uses x-rays to create artistic images of everyday objects, thus rendering them not so everyday in the end.  The result is a unique view of the world: a flower recast, a womans foot inside a shoe, or a man’s hat.  All of us, in my generation, have wondered what it would be like to have Superman’s x-ray vision.  Ever wonder what you car keys look like in your pocket or what the TSA scanners are seeing as you make your way through airport security?  Here is the wonder of Veasey’s images.

Nick’s process involves some fairly involved and nasty (safety wise) x-ray sources.  So thankfully, I do not have to remind you that you should “not do this at home.”  He has a special building set up for exposing his subjects.  His process involves exposure onto x-ray film followed by digital scanning of the x-ray image and some creative image processing.

I mention this because x-rays can also now be taken directly into a digital format and the big issue is just the one that we have been discussing for the case of digital vs. film-based photography.  That is whether the pixel size and number is equal to the resolution of film.

Of course, the end point should be the creative and beautiful, not just gee wiz.  And it is in this respect that Veasey’s images do not disappoint.  I recommend a visit to this website.

I make it a point to look at as many photographs as I can.  On business trips I always bring photography magazines and I go to as many photography exhibits as I can.  There’s always something to be learned.  Last week at Bowdoin College’s art museum I went to see an exhibit of the photographs and paintings of William Wegman “Hello Nature.”  Yeah, yeah the guy with the weimaraners .  .

And I have to admit that I have never been all that excited about Wegman’s work.  Maybe it’s because I’m more of a cat person.  Still, like I said, there was something to be learned.

First, of all these are very clever pictures and they do make you laugh.  So, like everyone else, I enjoy these pictures.

Second, I learned from my friendly student guide that there’s no Photoshop or photomontage at work.  Thus, when you see dogs dressed as yachtsmen sailing a boat there was a photographer’s assistant who positioned the dogs and jumped into the water at the last possible instant.

Third, one gets to see some of those large format and soon to be extinct Polaroid images.  Every day as I drive to work I pass the old Polaroid headquarters in Waltham, MA.  The site is now knocked down and a new buildings under construction.

But, I digress.  A few years back I read a useful book by Bill Smith Designing a Photograph.  There are many ways to create an image to grab one’s viewer.  One of these is to throw the image out of symmetry with something unexpected.  This can create a sense of imbalance and dynamism.    And that’s a fourth and important point with Wegmans work.  You expect people and get dogs, expect a moose and get a dog’s head with antlers.  Hmm!  Still there’s something familiar here.  There seem to be two types of cartoon figures. Mickey and Pluto are animals. Goofy has a dog’s head, but human limbs – like some sort of ancient Egyptian deity.  Years ago I was present for a sheep surgery.  The sheep was lying on the table all covered with sheets so that all you saw was the sheep’s head.  It kinda felt like I was in a Wegman photograph. And it makes one laugh. And also Wegman has clearly achieved a brand.

The laughing is a key point.  If you were to challenge yourself to make a photograph that makes people sad – not so hard; fills people with awe – again not so hard; hat’s cute – bring out the curly haired kid or the puppy.  But to create not only one but many images that are sure to elicit amusement  – that’s a feat that Wegman accomplishes repeatedly.

When it comes to photography, I like deep blacks, luminescent whites, and dynamic range that give you everything in between.  In a recent issue of Lenswork Magazine (Issue 100, May-June 2012), I discovered some wonderful photographs of seaweeds that blew me away in all these respects.  These are part of two series of photographs of seaweeds by Long Island photographer Alan Henriksen.  Lenswork Magazine is available online or, if you’re lucky, at your newsstand.  My own Barnes and Nobles has stopped carrying it.  You can also find some of these pictures in the  August Contest Special issue of Black and White Magazine, which gave Mr. Henriksen a merit award .   Unhappily the reproduction quality of B&W fails to give these images their well-deserved do. This, parenthetically points to the importance of the attention to detail that Brooks Jensen and the folks at Lenswork apply to photography reproduction).  Fortunately, you  can also visit Henriksen’s website, with the added bonus of seeing his other portfolios.

The seaweed images are examples of what can be accomplished with black and white photograph if you pay proper attention to dynamic range, not to mention if you had considerable talent and artistic vision. The blacks are marvelous.  The dynamic range lends an amazing sense of texture to the images, and the luminescent whites seem to pull the images into a third dimension.  You can tell that I’m impressed and excited. Look these photographs up and see for yourself.

Any discussion of the pinhole camera must lead us to the camera obscura and from there to the truly inspired vision of Boston-based photographer Abelardo Morell and his book Camera Obscura (2004).  If you haven’t yet seen these works, you must.  In general what Morell has done is taken a room, covered the windows except a small pinhole, and then taken an extended image of the walls and surrounding furniture with a view camera.  So we have for instance “Boston’s Old Custom House in Hotel Room, Boston, MA 1999.”  But to me the most inspiring of these works is “Book and Camera: in Memory of Fox Talbot, 1999,” where a hstory of photography book is imaged with a homemade pinhole camera, revealing a dim ethereal image of the inventor of photography.  This is the specter that haunts us all as photographers.  It is an amazing work.

And on a more diminutive, although no less inspiring, level are his photographs to illustrate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  These are made from cutouts of Sir John Tenniel’s original classic illustrations.  For instance, the Rabbit (Down the Rabbit-hole, 1998) now peers down a magical hole or Alice (The Lovliest Garden You Ever Saw, 1998) looks tentatively into an illustration of a garden in a partially opened book – not sure whether to enter.

I leave Morell’s other works for you to discover for yourselves.  He is certainly one of the most creative living photographers.

We are all on a pilgrimage towards enlightenment and engagement with the human experience.  But it is rare that we can catch an intimate glimpse into the pilgrimage of another.  I will offer up James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword, which beyond being a remarkable exposition of the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian world is Mr. Carroll’s own odyssey of inner awareness.  And if you really want to raise the hairs on the back of your neck with the realization that others have been their before, read Heloise’s letters in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise written in the twelfth century.

This sort of intimacy of experience is rare, and I highly recommend that you make the effort to catch Annie Leibovitz: Pilgrimage somewhere on its national tour.  It will be at the Concord Museum in historic Concord, MA until September 23, 2012.  Ms. Leibovitz has already given us her remarkable portfolio A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005.  In Pilgrimage, she touches our collective past and, I think, significantly reconnects the humanities with the sciences.  We have Thoreau’s cot from Walden Pond, Freud’s couch, Annie Oakley’s boots and a cardboard target card with a little printed heart pierced by a bullet.  And then we have Julia Margaret Cameron’s lens.  Significantly too, the exhibit places each of these in the context of place: Concord, Massachusetts, Vienna, Austria, Darke County, Ohio, and the Isle of Wight.  The pilgrimage is through mind and time and space.  The pilgrimage is at once personal and collective. Intimate artifacts of our collective past connect us.

This is what I take home.  I highly recommend that you experience it for yourself.