More Cold Traveling

I have just discovered that three new photographers have been added to Cold Traveling.  They are Pascal Shirley of Venice Beach, California, Dave Skinner of Burlington, Ontario (an old haunt of mine) and Eamon McMahon from, in his words, somewhere between Montreal and Toronto.  This darn thing is getting bigger by the minute.

Below are images from each photographer that demonstrate the wealth of subjects and styles in the show.

David Skinner

Keith Dotson

Loren Haury

Eamon McMahon

Pascal Shirley

Steve Immel

Cold Traveling

Starting on Wednesday February I will be part of an online exhibition entitled Cold Traveling in which three very different takes on winter will be shown.  My images are from my Sketches of Winter portfolio while Loren Haury contributes his gorgeous abstract photographs of ice formations in Oak Creek near his Sedona home and Tennessee's Keith Dotson provides his luminous winter landscapes and quirky nudes.  I’m delighted to be in their company.

The exhibition is hosted by Toronto’s Garland and Ford Gallery which was established last year to present the finest in traditional and contemporary photography.  Based on previous shows I’d say the emphasis is strongly on the latter.  Click on www.garlandandford.com Wednesday.

Buried Bough

Because it's, well, winter it's high time I posted an image from my Sketches of Winter portfolio.  This one is the poster child for the series of minimalist photographs that have been compared to pen and ink drawings or sketches.  Hence the name.

This one was taken at Valles Caldera above Los Alamos on the way to the Jemez Pueblo.  Winter or summer it's vast and beautiful and a favorite spot for wintery goodness.

Hubbard Squash

This photograph of gnarly Hubbard Squash is one of the images that made my switch from film to digital a fait accompli  Taken in a fine mist under a brooding fall sky the squash gained texture, volume and weight.

Battery Godfrey

A WWI era bunker called Battery Godfrey sits atop a bluff just above the Pacific and a few hundred feet west of the Golden Gate Bridge.  Pea soup fog hugs the Presidio of San Francisco and the air is heavy with briny richness.

Goodness and Light

I’ve failed to post on Sunday yet again.  In this case I may be forgiven since I was attending the memorial for Marcia Harris Sewell, my longest standing college friend.  Fifty one years to be precise.  She and I were both folk singers in the halcyon early sixties.  Marcia enjoyed a measure of success as a member of one of the large New Christy Minstrel style groups of the era and later became an illustrator and painter following in the footsteps of her father Robert J. Harris.  Despite those artistic genes her real calling was caring for others before self, a trait her friends both rued and respected.  The common thread through the dozens who shared memories of her Sunday was her goodness.  That she might have been entirely good puts her in rather rare company I think.

I don’t have a specific image that depicts that goodness or one of the memorial (though I took many) so I’m sharing one of Marcia and her daughter Lisa several years ago in Taos.  This image shows love, joy and Marcia's eternal youth. 

 She's on the right at sixty plus with Lisa in her thirties.  Mother and daughter and sisters, too.

Arroyo Seco Glow Redux

Here from the department of redundancy department is another wish for a joyous holiday season and a bountiful and healthy 2012. 

Feliz Navidad

This isn't high art but is the heavenly view from Casa Immel. Taos Mountain looms snowy and majestic in the background.

Have a cozy Christmas with those you love.

Off the Cuff

The photographs Blessing of the Horses and Rough Rider are from Guanajuato state in the heartland of Mexico. They are part of an exhibit Off the Cuff that opens at the Minneapolis Photo Center on January 20 and runs through February 26.

The exhibition is described by London based juror Madeline Yale as "demonstrating the complex role photography plays as a witness and accomplice in seeing the world.”  These are spontaneous and unrehearsed moments in time captured by the eye of camera, fleeting and never to occur just that way again.  Much of the work in the show falls in the category of street photography: fly on the wall imagery with the photographer as observer of life’s story.

Roussillon Colors

Back when the baking summer sun beat down on Roussillon I posted several photographs from Le Conservatoire des Ocres.    As you probably know Roussillon is famed for its seventeen magnificent pigments.  The images below show particularly robust applications of these intense pigments on a crude weaving and a wall in the village. The weaving and the mottled wall make for most painterly abstracts.

  

These are both part of Hearts and Stars, a benefit art exhibition with proceeds going the Taos Men’s Shelter and to Shared Table, a worthy effort to feed the hungry in our artistically rich but economically challenged community.  The event began Saturday night and continues through December 9 at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art, 119 Kit Carson Road in Taos.  What a great way to buy well priced small works and help your fellow man.  

The vast empty plains and high desert continue apace.  Just can’t stop myself.  I’m taken by the effect a crude fence and gate can have on a barren landscape. Without them there’s not much going on but with them a narrative unfolds.  When, why and where does the path beyond lead?  It's a story the viewer can weave.  An interpretation residing between the ears.

Antonito Aluminum

Removing context is a sweet alchemy. This is geometric and abstruse in the best sense. There's an illusion of flatness since the grays aren't graduated. If you wonder what it is, it works.

Wagons Ho

Deep ruts cut through dry grass toward the low hills near Cline's Corner.  One conjures images of prairie schooners and hardy pioneer folk crossing the prairie to the promise of a better life.

Praire Fever

Afflicted as I am by a yearning for furrowed earth my auto pilot sometimes points east toward Texas and Oklahoma.  Once you cross the Sangre de Cristos the transition from the high desert to the grasslands of eastern New Mexico is so gradual it’s difficult to say just where scrubland becomes open range.  East of Springer a well ventilated hip roof and a sprawling farmstead speak of grass fed beef and summer wheat. 

Parallel Universes

Oops! I am late.  I missed my Sunday post for the first time in a couple of years.

Early in our French adventure my good friend photographer Daryl Black emailed me about  the stone work in the medieval castles and churches I was photographing and the pueblos of northern New Mexico.  Not only were the materials and processes comparable but so too were the eras in which the castles, churches and pueblos buildings emerged.  In this juxtaposition are Sabron du Ponteves in Bargeme and Pueblo del Arroyo in Chaco Canyon.  The similarities in 1,000 year old ruins 5,000 miles apart are startling.

Convergence

In my first post of the post-France era what better subject than the venerable and aesthetic Ranchos Church more properly known as San Francisco de Asis.  Here yet another effort to show it differently, no mean task with an edifice that’s been photographed about 7 million times. Then, too, it continues the architectural exploration that so dominated my Provence posts.  The single viga top left is the punctum of this serene image.

One for One

Antibes

 

As I 've sifted and sorted through the thousands of images from France searching for a theme for one last post, icing on the cake and redundant redundancy I’m offering one image each from, well, each place.  I figure the act of editing for the blog, a gallery show or a book serves as many masters and forces a closer critical look. How clever that I've got them all alphabetized and monochromatic.

Arles

Artignosc

Aups

Barjols

Barbabelle

Bargeme

Baudinard

Gordes

Lurs

Moustiers

Riez

Rousillon

Saint Julien Le Montagnier

St Remy

Sainte Marie de la Mer

Var

Verdon Gorge