Winnowing on the Bay

Topiary, Viansa Winery, Sonoma, California

Artist Albert Handell framed by topiary at Viansa Winery

Three forces are at work as I relive my street photographs over the years. There’s the simple but arduous task of reviewing hundreds of images since 2014. Earlier than that will be a very deep dive. Then there’s the more difficult task of choosing which ones should be preserved in some fashion for posterity. Those are matters that occupy a still agile mind as it approaches 83. The final component is to select the best of that lot for the street photography portfolio on my website and for preservation in printed form. That presentation will be accompanied by a carefully curated digital archive from which prints can be made. In other words I want to leave a lifetime of photographs in a space sensitive and protected form.

In the short term I’ve been posting small handfuls of images that relate according to location, subject and style according to me. The question of how many photographs are best for a blog post is a subject that elicits many opinions I have learned. And while I’m persuaded by arguments for presenting fewer better images and that’s the path I’ve chosen I understand and appreciate the alternative approach to present more. My marketing consultant is a committed minimalist whose contentions are persuasive. So, at least for now I'm in concision mode.

As I write these words on Thursday, I’m editing my cache of possible entries for the week’s post to a goal of two and once again they come from the same place and about the same time of day. The same location element was not what I intended. I simply wanted the photographs to belong together. These do.

Winnowing away the hours

Pigeons in flight, Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona. We'd traveled all night yet Peggy insisted we stay up till bedtime. By the we got to the Plaza or Placa with a lisp in Catalan I was asleep on my feet.

Catching rays, Plaza Catalunya, Barcelona. We were both laying down with out heads on our carry-ons when I took this midday beauty. I may have dozed off at some point but I'll never admit it. That evening we chanced upon a little tapas pace on the Gran Via. It was 11pm when we left. The next day we were acclimated and ready to boogie.

Tourist throngs, Las Sagrada Familia, Barcelona. Gaudi's masterpiece was three blocks from our hotel in the charming L'eixemple neighborhood.

When I limited my images to four last week, I intended to reduce it to three this week then two and one. I also aimed at mixing it up so the images wouldn’t all be from, say, Barcelona. Yet the images needed to hang together as if on a gallery wall. That proved a daunting objective. This less is more approach stems from a Ted Talk that showed that too many choices can lead to fewer sales or clicks than fewer more selective choices. One of the research projects was of the olive oil selection in a big box store that displayed sixty brands and another that offered eight. The research showed that the smaller eight variety selection yielded more sales. It made some sense to me, and I could fathom how too many choices might lead to confusion and fatigue. So, the question becomes what is the ideal number of olive oils that represents variety but encourages sales. I don’t claim to know. In my posts I typically offer five or six photographs appropriate to the theme of the post and that still seems reasonable. My marketing consultant seems to think fewer yet might be better and less images might not cause attention deficit disorder. Another result of posting fewer images should be that they are better ones. Addition by subtraction is another way to frame it. A subset of this pursuit is not to post images that are too similar. If the image doesn’t tell a different story than its companions don’t use it.

So, here are a paltry three images all from Barcelona. I was unable to choose that few images from three different locations and have them flow to my satisfaction. I’ll keep working to that end. It’s a work in process, kiddos.

Winnowing the pooh

This rugged campesino was photographed at the Mercado de San Juan de Dios in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico in the fall of 2018. It was under a corrugated roof over the loading dock for the sprawling enterprise so the light was diffuse and soft. It was my first memorable image from my shiny new Sony RX100 V.6.

Tia and Paul Kratter, both accomplished painters and two of our housemates in Brittany, were captured in the carressing light of the falling sun on a hillock above the beach in Keremma in July 2019. This is but one of a dozen elegiac photographs taken as the sun dipped into the Celtic sea. It was 10:00pm. Summer days are long at land's end.

I photographed this sad soul walking through the shadow before crouching in the in the sunlight for a smoke. I invented stories to explain his plight. Now it's your turn.

This was made from my window seat on the Madrid to Malaga train. It was the last stop before its terminus at the Estación de Malaga-Maria Zambrano. Based on their attire I made these folks to be expats not Spanish.

The sorting and winnowing process proceeds though slowly. Because I’m up to my keester in hard drives and a gazillion folders I’ll make this quick. If the goal is to wind up with 20 or so meaningful candid photographs for my Street Photography portfolio, I remain hopeful. What lies ahead is a ruthless edit. For now, here are a handful of candidates. Perhaps the captions will be more robust than normal in the absence of much body copy.

I'm experimenting with Mies van der Rohe's "less is more" today. 

Street Music

The Stride, Madrid, 2014

Street photography it seems to me is candid imagery that freezes a moment in time. The more memorable the better. Usually, it involves people, but that may not be essential. And it may have been posed if you can't tell. It’s safe to say that many if not most of the best-known photographs in the 200-year life of photography are a street photography or photojournalism. Think of Eddie Adam’s wrenching image of the Viet Cong prisoner being executed on the streets of Saigon in 1968 or Nick Ut’s chilling photograph of the young girl escaping her village that had just been napalmed by a Viet Nam Air Force Skyraider. There are thousands of unforgettable photographs that capture history in the making.

Trabajadores, Antigua, Guatemala, 2008

Bicycles, Munich Altstadt, 2006

Rough Rider, San Miguel de Allende, 2008

Street photographs need not be drenched in terror and guilt. I think of Elliot Erwitt’s heartful and humorous scenes on the avenues of New York. Erwitt photographed the funny and the absurd till the age of 95, He left us last year. I had the honor of sharing wall space with his work in a group show in Durango, Colorado a dozen years ago. He’s a guy I wish I had met. His humanity was evident.

All this blather arises from a flurry of organizational activity that had me poring over hundreds of my street photographs since 2006. I am trying to complete my Street Photography portfolio which is threadbare. And the sorting and selecting is far from finished. For the most part I remember the place and circumstance of every image. I literally recall the time, the angle of the sun and where I was standing when I made the photograph. It’s a gift that transports me to Barcelona, Munich or Madrid for a second time,

In the absence of new work, I will dole these out over the course of, say, 52 weeks. I tend to inflate.

For sale 6,000 square foot fixer-upper

Side light

Hearth and Home

Sometimes there’s no story to be found. Over the last week I had a few photographic moments that were fleeting, disparate and highly adequate. There’s absolutely no connection from one subject to another. As is so often the case with my wandering attention the images I offer here will be discovered as I select them. Because there’s little linkage between the subjects you may find an image or two from several batches or they’ll all be from one of the photo opportunities in the last seven days. Even I won’t know till it happens.

Baby dolls

Wrought iron

Stained glass and bent metal

The explorations from which these are gleaned are typical Taos landscapes and interiors and still lifes from the late Julian Robles’s adobe casa that was built in stages starting in the early 1800s. According to legend Robles and his partner bought the rough-hewn adobe manse in 1968 for $5,000. Greenwich village had become inhospitable to a gay men, so they decamped to Taos where Robles became one of the Taos Six which included Ron Barsano, Walt Gonske, Rod Goebel, Ray Vinella and Robert Daughters. He died in 2023 leaving only Gonske and Barsano to carry the flame.

In 1968 the 6,000-foot adobe had no plumbing and had an outhouse. It’s still rough as a cob. To say that it needs a work is an exercise in understatement. It’s a coin flip and a million and half dollars away from being a tear down. The buyer of the historic property will need vision and bucks. It’s for sale folks and the seller will deal.

Monhegan. It's about the light

Monhegan Light at dusk

Barnacles and granite

Monhegan School and Peggy's easel

About now fifteen years ago, we spent three nights on Monhegan Island, a lobstering community and luminous art colony just ten miles by ferry off the Maine Coast at Point Clyde. A more memorable visual feast you will not find. The state of Maine, more broadly, is the place we consider the other best place. Taos is the reigning champion. So far.

Lawn chairs in falling light

Lobsterman's shack at the magic hour

Side Light. Monhegan Light House

Island House at dusk

At the 2024 La Luz de Taos Biennial Gala and Art Sale at the El Monte Sagrado Hotel Saturday night we fell into a conversation with one of the featured artists John Lintott and his wife Emily whose daughter had just graduated from art school in Portland, Maine. We gushed over Portland proclaiming it our favorite small city in the country. John extolled the seafood, and I responded that the compact city of 75,000 is one the great food towns in the county, maybe top ten. The other Portland makes the list as well. What’s in a name?

Peggy commented that Maine’s light rivaled that of our little art mecca, Taos.

The light is particularly pure and crystalline on Monhegan Island, an art magnet which like Taos dates back to the end of the nineteenth century. Famed artists Robert Henri, George Bellows, and Rockwell Kent worked together on Monhegan . They were followed by Louise Nevelson and three generations of Wyeths.

I can tell you this. We need a Maine fix stat. Salty air, lobster rolls and surf crashing on granite headlands are calling my name.

Toby of TP

As I’ve expressed many times one of my great joys is a chance encounter with a stranger, a random meeting in which I forge a connection. The most memorable are when I learn a life story in few short minutes I have a new friend. My life has been enriched. Pursuing those miraculous moments could be my life’s work, especially if I became more bold and better prepared.

Saturday morning, I went to the Taos Farmers Market for a bit of street photography. The street photography part was middling. But ten minutes into my wanting effort a leathery dude walking his mountain bike stopped next to me. He looked down at my pocket sized mirrorless camera. He commented, “That’s a nifty piece of kit. What is it?”

I answered that, “It’s a super camera for street photography. It’s little, stealthy and has tremendous range for such a small unit. It’s a 24-200 mm f2.8 so I can go from wide angle to a moderate telephoto with a camera that fits in my front pocket.”

He bent over to see the make and model. As he studied the camera, I told him that it was a Sony RX100 model 7.

I asked his name. He said, “I’m Toby” and we shook hands. “I’m Steve.”

I  asked where he lived. He said,” I live in Tres Piedras.”

“It was either TP or Three Peaks” I thought to myself. Tres Piedras and Three Peaks are scruffy bastions of hippy homesteads known for affordability and loose attention to the law. If they flew flags they would feature a certain leafy green plant.

Toby was the poster boy for an off-the-grid community. Lean almost gaunt with a long greying beard. He could have been 48 or 70. He was also a sweetheart with an expansive knowledge of photography. He said that he was from Pennsylvania and had studied photography at the infamous Art Institute of Pittsburg, part of a shady for-profit chain of art schools that went bankrupt a few years back. Toby wondered if any of the beleaguered schools had survived and I told him that I didn’t think so.

Toby expressed appreciation for a handful of photographers that I didn’t know. And somehow the work of famed street photographers who have left our midst came up. I asked, “Do you know Vivian Maier?

He replied “Of yeah. She had some story didn’t she? Working as the nanny for a bunch of rich people in New York and wasn't recognized for her street photography till she was dead. Didn’t they find her negatives in cardboard boxes in the garage of her last employer?”

I replied that was the case and that the discovery of her bounty was made by two of her charges in Chicago after they were adults. They had been close to Maier who had raised them and assumed stewardship of her archives.

I told him, “We were  in Bologna in October and while we were strolling down the city’s retail corridor we saw a sign for a Vivian Maier exhibition nearby. It was 7:45pm on a Sunday and the gallery was closing at 8. We literally ran the six blocks to get there in time. They let us in and told us to “Take your time.” We spent a forty- five minutes alone with 100 of her images. So we had to travel to Italy to see a Vivian Maier show." 

Toby said he’d better catch up with his girlfriend. “We always go back to TP with bags full of fresh produce, Buy local, bro.”