Riverside

Despite two gorgeous days on the Maine coast with fellow photographer John Snyder I’m going with more Cambridge shots for this post.  As I said last time, I’ve trod the paths that line both sides of the Charles River many times; once on a leg of a triathlon.  The paths are well used treasures.  At about 7:30am a mish-mosh of humanity welcomes the day with a walk, run, ride or sail with the Boston skyline and the famed Citgo sign at Kenmore Square in the distance. 

Gotta say I love Boston and Cambridge.  Boston is often compared to San Francisco in shear usability.  I totally get that.  You can walk across both cities.  They both have populations of 600,000 give or take.  Each has a rich sense of history and a youthful vibe.  Oceans don't hurt. They score big on the Richter scale of hipness.  And both are bastions of foodiedom. 

Geezer alert.

Edifice Complex

The sights and sounds stimulated me out of my shorts.  Kendall Square, MIT, the Charles River and the Boston skyline from Cambridgeside served up a big load of New England whoopee.  What a rube.  A couple of early morning runs along the river amid the hordes of other runners and bicyclists recalled dozens of earlier efforts long along these very paths starting in the seventies. 

Fact is that in 600 plus photographs over two days I am left with too many themes for a single post.  Oh, the embarrassment of riches.  There’s the Charles River and associated subjects. Or Kendall Square and the MIT’s hallowed halls of academia. The great city of Boston seen from Cambridge is always a crowd favorite.  Decisions.  Decisions.

Ultimately the thing that rocked my world was the space age architecture of MIT’s newest structures.  As you can see they don’t look real but appear like an artist’s renderings of a future world colony on the planet Albon.

Yankee Homecoming

There’s a visit to New England on the horizon.  It was home for most of thirty years so there’s still a palpable tug at the heartstrings when the places, people and events that defined young adulthood, middle age and, ahem, senior citizen-ness loom so large.  They say that the childhood years are the formative ones but the ones starting with 3 and 6 make a pretty big impression as far as I’m concerned.

There’s a fair amount of excitement around the old hacienda as we anticipate revisiting old haunts and good friends.  Thoughts of the great northeast as fall approaches prompt this sampler of images that say New England to me.  

Mirror mirror on the wall

It's no surprise that the previous week's post often spawns the next one.  In this case, Cris Pulos's portrait received several positive emails to which I had to disclose that the subject was less than ecstatic about the image.  In fact, I had posted the aforementioned picture months ago but deleted the offending effort precisely because he didn't like it.  In short, it did not comport with the subject's vision of himself.  The tension between what the camera captures and what the human imagines is not new.  Indeed, disertations have been written on less.

Juma's mug, above, falls in this dubious category.  It drew a heavy yawn at best.  Still it works for me and I am, after all, the final arbiter of good taste and the general wonderfullness of what I publish.

Trading Places

Long ago and far away my friend and fellow photographer Cris Pulos and I traded portrait sessions.  I set this one aside.  With his trademark Greek fisherman's cap Cris is full of craggy charm and has a decided twinkle in his eyes.  A playful quality.

It could be a vintage photograph taken on Santorini in 1949 or under my portal last year.  Seems to me that black and white portraits can be timeless.  Some of Edward S. Curtis's images taken near the turn of the last century are still remarkably contemporary.

No Parking

Salida, Colorado lies along the Arkansas River hence the illegally parked kayaks in this downtown alley.  Well, not really.  Like Taos, Salida has about 5,500 residents, an active outdoor lifestyle and a thriving art community that seems to be gaining momentum.  It lives in a so-called "Banana Belt" with moderate temperatures year round.  It's a sweet little spot with an uber cool vibe. One of my faves.

Kayaks to me are among the most appealing forms around.  They're in the heady company of acoustical guitars, road bicycles, champagne flutes and vintage wooden sailing vessels to name a few.

This public service announcement is brought to you a day early for the first time ever.  Gonna hit the macadam for some dark o'clock photo ops tommorow morning.

Mormon Row

The Tetons sure are grand but in overwhelming way.  Then there’s the knotty problem of getting a shot that’s not a hackneyed piece of eye candy.  Add my penchant for pasture and prairie and you get photographs that don’t include the jagged teeth of Mount Moran, Teewinot and Middle Grand at all.  They're behind me for what it's worth.

Anyway a couple miles north of Moose Junction and a hard right onto Antelope Flats Road takes you to the remains of an 1890’s settlement once called Grovont and now dubbed Mormon Row for Mormon families from Idaho who settled the lush alluvial plain beneath the Tetons.  A mile long stretch of cabins, barns and corrals stretches north to south along a well tended dirt road.  Once there were six family homesteads on Mormon Row replete with a community ditch system, a granary, a post office, a church and a swimming hole.  Apparently the community existed till the 1950s and I have found no explanation for its demise.  I do know that the National Parks Service intended to raise the complex until a group of right minded citizens saw a nugget of history worth preserving.

Pow Wow Portrait

The annual Taos Pow Wow happened a couple of weeks back.  It's a splashy affair with beating drums, frenzied dances and exotic regalia.  I don't know this young brave's tribe but the Zia symbol on his forehead indicates he's from one of northern New Mexico's nineteen pueblos.

Picture Perfect

Here the complete ensemble poses on the mantle of a fireplace in an old adobe in Bernalillo.

Short Subjects

I'm road whipped. Too many miles in too few hours. Amber's lovely legs will have to do tonight.

On the Waterfront

I’m pleased to be included in the exhibition Color at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in, well, Brooklyn, NY.  BWAC says that Conservatoire des Ocres #1 is one of 118 pieces of art to be selected out of 1,224 submissions in all mediums.  The image is 14"x21" on 24"x30" paper.

The show opens July 28 and runs through August 23 at BWAC’s gallery in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn so if you’re in New York (and I wish I could be) take a gander.  

Red Hook, a gritty neighborhood of South Brooklyn, was the setting for 1954's On the Waterfront, is where the Queen Mary II now docks and has been dubbed "resindustrial" for its robust mix of lofts, galleries and industry.  That'll be on the quiz.

285

Early last week Jordi Baizan, a musician based in Houston, called about using a couple of my images for the jacket of his band's upcoming CD entitled “285.”  When I asked how he found the photographs he said that he had Googled "US 285" and found my work.  Above is one of them. 

Then a design firm in Vancouver emailed about an image called "Wagon Rut."  The agency's owner said she had Googled for images of, well, Wagon Ruts and after drilling very deep came up with the one below which, get this, was taken on US 285.  You can't make this stuff up.

Turns out that I have a substantial portfolio of photographs taken along 285’s diagonal path from Texas to Colorado.  Could this be the theme of a show or book?

Next week more postcards from 285 or not. 

King Copper

Natural State

Freeport-McMoran’s open pit copper mine in Morenci, Arizona is the largest in North America and one of the largest in the world.  The monster mine produces 650,000 tons a day of copper.  I tried to visualize its immensity and decided I’d have to see it for myself.  So I took the long way back to Taos from Tucson for the grand unveiling.  I was blown away. 

According to Google Maps the mine is the about the size of Manhattan; a slash in the earth that is a mile deep and measures eight miles north to south and four miles across at its widest point.  That’s 32 square miles sports fans.  It’s a Seven Wonders of the World phenomenon employing thousands of workers and using high rise earth movers that look like insects across the great pit.  The tires alone dwarf a human being.  The tops of mountains have been excavated to reveal brown earth rich with copper and gold.  Terraced amphitheaters laced with roads are dug, the dirt sifted and separated for its precious bounty. 

The Morenci of today is actually a new town built to house miners displaced by the ever expanding mine.  The company owns the whole shebang including workers houses that adorn an earthen cirque.

More to come  There's one hell of a story here.

Magic Light

Monhegan Island is a rocky speck 12 miles off the Maine coast.  It measures just 1.75 miles long and .75 mile across.  There are no automobiles allowed.  You can't even bring a bicycle. 

While the island’s 75 full time residents are lobstermen, Monhegan is most famous as an art colony; one that became prominent in the 1890s and remains so today.  Like northern New Mexico, Monhegan boasts magic light that has inspired generations of artists including Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent and Jamie Wyeth. 

The island’s lighthouse sits at the height of land. I photographed it as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon behind me.  The white clapboards of the adjacent buildings seem to glow against the darkening sky.

Is that All There Was?

When I chanced upon the remains of the town of Rice in California's Mojave Desert it felt like the most desolate place on earth.  What compelled Standard Oil to build a service station where there are no humans on the way to absolutely nowhere is baffling.  The crumbling mid-century station which once was Rice seems to be evidence of that folly.  Yet here, as in New Mexico and Arizona, the Santa Fe Railroad gave rise to dozens of sidings and tiny settlements built to support it.  Some persist.  Some, like Rice, do not.

To get to this garden spot head east from Twenty Nine Palms on Highway 62 heading to Parker, Arizona. I do not recommend July.

Land Grant Country

Even the smallest settlements in northern New Mexico boast a Catholic church.  Shown here are the adobe churches in Golondrinas and Watrous.  Services are offered every few weeks when a circuit riding priest passes through.  This is Spanish land grant country where nearly everybody descends from the Conquistadors and Los Archuletas, Medinas, Gallegos, Torres and Cordovas seem to populate every community.

Golondrinas

Stock Pond

Not far from Watrous grasslands roll toward the Sangre de Cristos and the land heaves up to 13,000 feet at its highest point.   State Road 161 winds through fertile pasture land past alpine lakes and tiny villages before joining Highway 518 and its abrupt ascent near Holman.    

Watrous

Highway 161 Westbound

I'm having blogger software problems folks so the images and copy are not in the order intended.  Gave it four tries and gave up.

Tres Cruces

Though San Francis de Asis in Ranchos de Taos is vastly more famous, San Jose de Gracia in Las Trampas stacks right up in curb appeal.  The rustic cross and brooding sky give weight to the church's importance as the central spiritual and social institution in rural New Mexico Hispanic communities such as Las Trampas.

Last Frontier

The Frontier Drive-In went dark at least a decade ago.  It’s a poignant monument to the halcyon days of tiny Center, Colorado and recalls sock hops, circle pins and getting to second base with Mary Lou in a chopped and channeled deuce coupe.  The partially hidden sedan gives me a giggle. You're hiding from exactly what?

Dry Land Farming

Sleepy Sudan Texas sits astride US 84 between Lubbock and the New Mexico border.  Sleepy is the operative word on a somnolent March morning.   You know it’s a backwater when the nearest city is called Muleshoe.  Gotta love that moniker.  The towering grain elevators that dominate the town are dormant.   A solitary pick-up creeps along Main Street in a scene right out of Bogdonovitch’s The Last Picture Show.  That film was made in 1971.  In Sudan it still is.

In 1892 the owners of the 77 ranch granted Lamb County the site for a town.  The town’s first postmaster P.F. Boesen named it Sudan for reasons lost in history.   The dusty burg limped along with a population of six lonely souls until in 1913 the Santa Fe Railroad built a spur through Sudan on the way from Lubbock to Clovis.  There soon followed a hotel, a cotton gin and grain elevators and by 1925 several hundred farmers, pickers and ranchers had settled in Sudan. 

A scant 14 inches of rain evaporates on the South Plains of West Texas where Sudan persists.  Rarer still is a frosty brew or icy high ball on a blazing summer afternoon.  Most of Texas’s 40 dry counties lie in this parched patch of nowhere.  It’s the nightmare version of the American Dream; a thirsty Bible Belt of cotton, oil and cattle.

And did you know that Lubbock, a city of 250,000 an hour away and the home of Texas Tech University was dry until May of 2009?  Matriculation without lubrication.  Jeez.

Field Studies

Beyond doubt the Sonoran Desert is my favorite of the four North American deserts.  It's the desert we identify with the towering Saguaro cactus and which also hosts the Cholla, the Prickly Pear and other succulents like agave.  Because it receives twice the rainfall of the Mohave, Chihuahuan and Great Basin Deserts the cacti of the Sonoran Desert come alive with flowers in May and June.  This amazing desert covers much of central and southern Arizona and a thin swath of southern California. It's best accessed from Tucson which is bracketed by Saguaro National Parks on its eastern and western borders.

The Saguaros themselves are immense, they can reach fifty feet, but are also humorous and oddly animate like creatures from a James Cameron movie.  Here I’ve included some portraits of these otherworldly characters.