Juxtapositions and related questions

I fully expected to publish pretty pictures of our forced march from Venice to the Prosecco Hills and on to Verona, Bologna, Florence and now Siena. My expectation if not my plan was a travelogue interspersed with stories about Stefano, my photographer friend in Venice, and my touching reconnection with Lenny Levenson and his wife Meryll in Treviso just north of Venice.

I had thought we went in separate directions in 1982 but in fact he took a position with one of our Pizzeria Uno franchisees in 1984, right after we opened the Denver Uno. We opened more than twenty restaurants together and books could be written about those heady days. I left the company after opening the Brentwood, California restaurant in early 1985. So, Lenny and I hadn’t seen each other for 39 years. When we met for appetizers at Lenny and Meryll’s condo in Treviso, I told Meryll that Lenny was the most talented restaurant guy I’d ever met. Meryll told Peggy that Lenny idolized me. So, we're even.

That was the plan till circumstances interceded in the form of two photography exhibitions that we discovered quite by chance. On our first night in Bologna, we saw a banner for a Vivian Maier retrospective a mile away. We had 16 minutes to get there in time to be allowed in. We virtually ran to the gallery and arrived with a minute to spare. Street photographer Vivian Maier was unknown in her lifetime as a nanny in New York and Chicago. When boxes of her negatives were discovered by a former employer her work found an astounded contemporary audience and she is now recognized as one of the great street photographers of the latter half of the 20^th century. To see perhaps 200 of her extraordinary images was breathtakingly good luck rivaled only our surprise encounter with the prestigious Siena Awards, an international photography competition held every year. The work was cutting edge, adventurous and large scale. Technical virtuosity was the hallmark of the show.

Among the award winners was The Ameriguns, which speaks to America’s gun culture as examined by Italian photojournalist Gabriele Calimberti. I’ll let Calimberti’s photographs speak for themselves. I'm including all of the images in the show because every one tells a story and his juxtapositions of the rabid and the banal are chilling. I can't unsee them. 

A Little Italian

My new best friend, Stefano, whom we met late on our first night.

Canal life.

Family unit, Venice style.

Working class.

The lagoon at sunset.

It’s 9pm in Bologna and I’m pondering my blog for the first time in a week. In most cases the subject and images have percolated for several days and by this time Sunday night I’ve done twenty or more edits. To say that I’m not focused on this entry puts it mildly. I don’t know whether it’s too many stimuli, being bone tired, no free time or the world’s worst cold, but my mind is an empty vessel. So, here are some random shots with little descriptive text. And to add insult to injury last week’s images included a couple of color ones which were rendered in black and white by blogger.com for reasons that escape me.

All of these are color photographs befitting Venice and its Crayola hues. If they don’t appear in color squint your eyes and pretend.

Lost in the Crowd

My queen on her throne at the Guggenheim Collection.

Venice is the most visually arresting city I’ve ever seen.  Peggy’s been touting the place for thirty years and I can see why. That’s why we picked the city of 118 islands as the perfect location for her rather large birthday. She’s still two years younger and refuses to catch up.

The Grand Canal.

The Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

Pilings and dock

Giovanni, the gallery dog

Nighttime on a canal with no name

As to Venice, it has no bad angles and just every shot is recognizable as, well, Venice. And there’s the rub. I despair that I'll muster a photograph that’s more than a picture post card. The unrelenting tourist hordes will drive (or have already driven) a marginally sane old man crazy. All that you’ve read about Venice being visited to death understates the situation. I hate crowds. Then there’s the blight of retail stores ranging from Made in China to Hermes and Bulgari. To get where you want to go takes you through a never-ending gauntlet of merchants grabbing for your wallet. It’s aversion therapy for the addicted shopper.

Still, I’m in this beautiful place with the love of my life. And we’ll always have Venice.

Start to Finish

Thursday of last week Peggy and I drove to Grand Junction, Colorado where she was judging Monuments and Canyons, an invitational plein air panting event held by the Colorado National Monument Association to benefit the Colorado National Monument. It was the seventh year of the event which has raised $700,000 for the stewardship and preservation of the amazing place. On Thursday evening she did a plain air painting demonstration from 7 to 9pm. In other words, the painting would stop at 9pm whether she had finished or not. She opened with the disclaimer that she might not finish since was attempting a larger size, an 11”x14”, than she would normally use. Happily, she finished about 20 minutes early to a hearty round of applause.

I find the journey from the first brush strokes when the shapes in the painting are established to the completed piece to be miraculous. I can’t fathom how an artist can deliver a vital, evocative, work of art inside two hours. Yet, there it was at 8:40pm Thursday night after four hours of sleep and a harrowing nine-hour slog from Taos. Peggy’s drive and endurance are beyond me. I was toast, while she proceeded to judge the show Friday afternoon between 2pm and 4pm, give the awards at 4:30, joined me for dinner down the block in bustling downtown Grand Junction, and attended another art opening across town at 8:30.

And we were on the road back to Taos at 7:30am Saturday morning. On the way we stopped at her gallery, Sorrel Sky, in Durango to pick up some frames and a real baguette at Bread.

The woman’s a machine. And I'm not.

Unrelated

Another lousy sunset in paradise.

Today I lead with one last image of the Grand Canyon’s South Rim at dusk. After a week I’d had enough of the gaping hole and escaped to the Verde Valley which, I was told, had grown into a wine producing mecca. Where there’s wine making, I suggest, there’s bound to be a food scene. The promise of good food and substantial portions at fair prices when compared to the Grand Canyon drew me to the recently designated Verde Valley AVA or American Viticultural Area. I’d also heard whispers about a heady stew of restaurants in downtown Cottonwood, the area’s biggest town. And I’d have Clarkdale, the Verde Valley Railroad and Jerome for a much-needed non-Canyon energy boost.

Locomotive 2321

Truck, Verde Valley Railroad, 2006.

Train and tracks.

Chain link, Clarkdale, AZ.

Industrial chic, Clarkdale.

A shell of its former self, Jerome, AZ.

What we have here is a splatter of photographs that barely relate. The “truck” of a long gone locomotive was taken 17 years earlier almost to the day. Back then I was producing completely black and white images, no toning. I like this truly black and white presentation very much and it may be time to reevaluate my approach. Then again folks seem to favor warm tones and sales increased substantially when I made the switch a dozen years ago. Sadly, the vintage locomotives, passenger cars and cabooses that made the Verde Valley Railroad such a draw have vanished from the industrial barrens south of downtown Clarkdale.

Still, I got the hell away from the Grand Canyon and enjoyed a killer Caprese salad and woodfired artichokes at the outstanding Bocce in Cottonwood. I recall that a hazy IPA was part of the ensemble. I know this. The three blocks of eateries, brew pubs, bars and tasting rooms in Cottonwood require further examination. And I'm just the man for the job.

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Learning to Grow

John Snyder at Schartner's Farms in North Conway, New Hampshire in the early 2000s. I was riffing on Edward Weston who believed that photographing Monumental Heads, his term, was best done against a featureless sky.

Same victim. Same station. Highly stylized but effective.

And finally John's longtime partner, Ginny Howe, in their North Conway chalet as shot with my spanking new Canon 24-70mm f2.8 lens and side light from the front window.

As we were driving to Taos from the Grand Canyon a week ago I got a call from my friend John Snyder in Maine. We spoke for at least an hour and our conversation wandered from the personal, to the professional, to politics and the meaning of life. He called because he wanted me to hear the singer and musician, Tom Russell. “He’s in his seventies and he’s still got it. You need to look him up. Do it while you’re driving. You’ll like him.”

For as long as I have known John, thirtyish years, he’s had a library of artists on his car audio system. Then as now his taste skews toward folk and Americana. He thought that as an old folkie I’d enjoy Russell. I did not search for Russell then. I don’t listen to anything but my thoughts when I’m driving. No music. No news. No talk radio. No nada. It’s ironic for a guy who called himself a musician sixty years ago.

Then John told me that he was taking guitar lessons via Skype once a week. He said that his mentor was very demanding and that he could get cranky if John didn’t perform precisely as he expected. But he said. “We’re cool though. I like the man. He has the same politics.”

He said he was practicing a very complex finger style of playing using various exotic tunings. I played a rudimentary finger style in the dark ages so I had some sense of how hard that could be. I even dabbled with flamenco which is a very fingery pursuit. The four-finger tremolo was the zenith of my achievements.

Two things dawned on me. One, that John, an accomplished man generally, was still learning and studying and, two, that I’m a lazy, undisciplined dog and that I learn just enough to get the job done, if that. The gap between his diligence and tenacity and my inertia is the Grand Canyon of vastness.

So, you’ve got John Snyder who bought a 1967 Martin D-28 guitar when he was still in high school in Queens and was playing daily when we met 30 years ago in New Hampshire. And I'm an octogenarian slacker who plays twice a year for fifteen minutes and hasn’t learned new song since struggling with “Fire and Rain” in 1972.

It got me to thinking which is a breakthrough unto itself. Here’s John a writer and photographer, a licensed Maine Guide, a pilot, a seaplane pilot, a boat captain (sail and power), a pilot boat skipper, and a lifetime learner and here I am flailing at the void.

On Tuesday I decided that I would learn something every day or relearn something I once knew and have since forgotten. What I’ve forgotten would fill a very large hard drive. I started with a couple of relearns. I figured that would be easier than something from scratch. On Tuesday I relearned how to take a time exposure with my Sony A7r 111a camera. That’s pedestrian stuff that should be intuitive but after two YouTube videos I figured it out and hope I’ll remember the next time photograph the night sky. Then Wednesday I relearned making a video with an external microphone and my iPhone. I did it first with the phone’s internal mic and then with a modest Comica mic. The external microphone did produce better sound, but the improvement was modest. I, however, was using natural light and looked like a nonagenarian with a hangover. Next, I’ll introduce fill light to see if I can erase twenty years. After that I’ll video an interview with an unsuspecting victim. And on Saturday I started learning Italian for an upcoming trip to Venice and locales as yet unchosen. There are enough similarities to Spanish that everyday Italiano will come quickly. What happened to Thursday and Friday? you ask. Those were rest days if you must know.

On my life of learning docket are relearning my folk set from the Sixties. Then there’s blues guitar that is made for my unintelligible rasp. There's really studying Spanish instead of treading water. Video editing is a daunting contender. Writing regularly and for more grand purposes than a weekly blog read by few and a bimonthly article for an online magazine should be primero on the list of growing goals but doubtlessly won’t be. That would take real commitment.

Thanks for the kick in the ass, John. You got my attention and respect.

As to Tom Russell, you're right. The dude can play and still has his pipes.

Grand Skies

Grand Sky #1

Grand Sky #2

The Grand Canyon is marvelous, monumental, and magical. I could go on till I run out of adjectives that start with M. Still, I find it hard to photograph and it doesn’t move me all that much. Maybe it’s too pretty and pretty alone isn’t enough. I don’t know how to take it beyond its comely face and to make it more. The skies that bless the Canyon are something else again and they’re what’s featured today. I am a sky guy no matter how you slice it.

Grand Sky #3

Grand Sky #4

Grand Sky #5

Given our early morning departure on Sunday I’m writing these few words on Saturday afternoon so it’s not hanging over me at dark o’clock Sunday night when we get home. Hopefully, I’ll just press Publish and it’ll be on its way to you.

Fate and Circumstance

Eye to Eye

Lindsey Enderby and Pam Morgan were thrown together by circumstance and, so it seems, fate. Lindsey had already battled Parkinson’s Disease for twenty years when a year and a half ago he suffered two strokes and sepsis that landed him in the dreaded Taos Living Center. He hated every moment he was in the place that is often called the Taos Dying Center since half the population of the establishment is waiting to pass and another quarter are staring vacantly into space. The strokes caused Broca’s aphasia that limits his ability to communicate, to literally not to be able to find the words to express his thoughts. His good friend Sidney Bender, a retired Neurologist, believes Lindsey knows what he wants to say but can’t say it. That’s my take, too.

That's Pam reading Six Degrees of Separation from Lindsey Enderby 

And a doff of the hat

Pam in charge

When he was finally released from the Living Center, he required full time care. And that’s when Pam, a retired nurse, entered the scene. For a time, Lindsey had two caregivers each working a 12-hour shift. Then Lindsey and Pam connected on a deeper level and became a couple. Pam became his sole care giver and partner.

Leather tough

In one of my recent visits Pam expressed her interest in having portraits of them as a couple. I said, “Of course.” I photographed Lindsey at his western memorabilia store, Horse Feathers, eighteen years ago and the ones I took are among my favorites ever. I did a blog post “Six degrees of Separation from Lindsey Enderby” to memorialize the event and to suggest that he’s connected in some way to precisely two billion people. In 2005 he was a steely eyed movie hero, a strapping six-foot two hundred pounder. The dude was a god. Today there’s 50 pounds less of him but he’s still a specimen. Good bones.

So, we set up a portrait session which proved challenging. Lindsey wasn’t completely engaged, and his attention wandered. Neither Pam nor I could coax a smile and he often avoided looking into the camera. So I depended on candid shots and the smiles that happened naturally. I left the session feeling that I had failed to hit my mark. But later I found there were enough decent shots to save the day. My percentage of keepers was muy low but there were a handful of keepers. They are mix of natural light and a single 2’x4’ softbox.

As I’ve declared in the past, when I photograph someone, my goal is to show them as their perfect selves or better yet better than that. That’s what I’d want from my photographer. I fear I came up short with Lindsey and Pam. Serviceable is the term I'll use.

After Thoughts

Blanket of Snow

As I stare down the rifle barrel of 82 years, I’m moved to take stock, to reevaluate and ponder my priorities in late middle age. It’s not that I’m dissatisfied. It’s that I’m not satisfied. That may be a distinction without a difference. But I know the difference. I plod ahead with the minor tasks which take so much time I don’t attempt the challenging difference makers like the book that’s become a punchline or the great adventures of my dreams. I told a friend recently that I live in my head instead of doing something of import or devoting the time to actually learn something.

This splash of blue is prompted by a handful of things not the least of which were my sales at Peggy’s and my Side by Side art opening Saturday night where I sold precisely one photograph. And it was a holdover from our two person show in 2021. I sold nary a one of my new images despite presenting what I thought was my strongest body of work so far. It was definitely a what’s the point? moment.

Steve and the proud owner of Blanket of Snow

 Steve, Jody and Peggy, the star of the show. 

A feel-good moment was a lovely woman who drove 12 hours from Dallas just to see the show and to buy Blanket of Snow which she’d seen earlier at the gallery. She agonized over the purchase and went to the bar around the corner to contemplate the purchase. She really struggled with the decision. Perhaps it was the price. She had a glass of wine and shared her quandary with the bartender who told her, “See this glass of wine? You won’t remember it tomorrow, but you’ll always have the photograph if you buy it.” She came back to the gallery as it was ready to close and bought the photograph. The image was wrapped, and Peggy and I drove Jody and the picture back to her hotel. To see that the photograph was so important to her and that she’d gone to the trouble and expense of the journey was touching.

Another gift was the friends that showed up to support us. I heard from several of them that it was the strongest body of work they’d ever seen from me. Some of them were excellent photographers so that was most rewarding. And among the supportive friends most own at least one of my images, and I there's.

Chief among those supportive friends were Nancy Silvia and Hiroshi Murata who asked if we’d like have dinner after the show. We agreed instantly. We love Nancy and Hiroshi. We picked the most expensive restaurant in Taos expecting to pick up the tab. But Hiroshi grabbed the check and would not be dissuaded despite my protestations. He said, “We’re paying because we're celebrating your excellent show.” And that was that. We insisted that when we visit Santa Fe next time we’re paying. At least we'll try.

Then there was the shock of the decline in friends I hadn’t seen in three years due to Covid. God, it was shocking. One had lost dozens of pounds and looked unwell. Another looked beautiful but was using a cane because of an injured hip. And the third with rheumatoid arthritis could no longer shake hands. His right hand was a claw. 

Sudden decline in your peers will get your attention fast. It tells you to take care of yourself and do what you want to do while you still can. You've heard that admonition from me about a thousand times, maybe more. My back’s a mess and I’m two inches shorter but I can still do almost everything I used to do. What’s a little discomfort?

Refer to “to take stock, to reevaluate, and ponder my priorities” up top.