The Good Cutter

My friend Juma Archuleta said goodbye late last year.  He was a larger than life character whose barber shop was a bastion of manly men, irreverent commentary and of neatly stacked magazines of, ahem, educational value.

I wanted to document the waning days of Juma’s shop aka Raoul’s Brotherhood of Love and floated the idea several times without success. Because he had been given a terminal cancer diagnosis he worried that the story would really be about his decline and imminent demise so he demurred and I didn't press.  It was to be about the shop and the end of an era but how actually would I separate the two. Probably couldn't.

Juma, full name Emiliano Juma Archuleta also known as Raoul, chose to be a barber right out of high school in Animas, Colorado and pursued that dream in Denver in the early sixties.  He would have been 72 next month.  He told me several times that he'd fold his tent when he had completed fifty years of barbering. He wanted to retire on his own terms with plenty of living left to do but the disease didn't accommodate the dream.



He was a bon vivant, a raconteur, a patron of the arts, an astute observer of the political world, and one dapper dude.  Why did guy with his intellect and erudition chose to be a barber? I wish I had asked.

 

Whenever I was away from Taos for more than a couple of weeks one of my rituals was an early morning visit to Juma’s for a cut and, more importantly, the latest on the murky world of Taos politics. Juma always knew who did what to whom and why weeks before made the Taos News. I swear he could predict the future.

 

And, credit where credit is due, he was one hell of a barber. He told me that right out of barber school he went to work for a barber in a Denver hotel, maybe The Ambassador, and that he “was lucky” because his boss in the shop was “ a good cutter.” Gotta love the lingo.

 

Juma was a really good cutter.



 

 

Furrowed Brown

I made three overnight treks to the McCullough potato empire last year, one for planting, another when the vines began to sprout and again to photograph the harvest. On the last occasion I got down to soil level to capture the diagonal lines in the tilled earth.
  
Massive combines dig the rich San Luis Valley earth, tear the meaty russets from their vines and feed them into giant hoppers that deliver them to warehouses spread all over Monte Vista.  The giant machines are refueled in the field so the process never has to stop.  Combines pick, trucks gather and workers sort the potatoes for size and quality from sunset to sundown for about a month of eighty hour weeks. 1.2 million hundred weight of bakers takes monumental effort and serious choreography.

Kiss me you fool

Don’t know about you but I think Llamas are just about the cutest things on four legs. Sorry dogs. The impish creatures are bemused, ironic, haughty and, may I say, coquettish in some absurdist way. The llamas shown here are a couple of Stuart Wilde’s Wild Earth herd from up Questa way.  And they’re rescue llamas. Who knew there was such a thing?

Stop and look

This was taken a couple of years ago almost to the day when the valley floor was drizzly and raw while snow fell above 9,000 feet and the Sangre de Cristos were shrouded in windblown clouds.

Frank's Pizza

If you've read this blog for very long you'll remember my unplanned overnighter in Green River, Utah last August.  That's the burg that was closed due to lack of interest but that yielded a bunch of poignant photographs like the erstwhile pizza joint called Frank's.

Short and sweet this time.

Then again

The Sketches of Winter series has enjoyed a blissful retirement these last three years. The thing is a done deal, finis and terminado. Yesterday's newspaper and so forth. Then again, when is a portfolio ever finished especially for me? So while snowshoeing at 10,000 feet near the height of land on NM Highway 64 between Tres Piedras and Tierra Amarilla this stand of twiglets appeared.

And this little number stripped bare by the wintery winds.

As to the fog series, it finally resides on my website. To see it go to www.steveimmelphotography.com and click on, surprise,The Fog Series in Portfolios.

Let me know what you think.

In the beginning

According to the gallery book that I put together for Open Shutter’s Tones of Black and White exhibition, the Fog Series began in 1970 with a photograph of a shambling old barn in Mendocino County just inland from the town of Mendocino on the way to Ukiah. I still remember the moment that I jumped out of our VW Beetle to catch the iconic scene.  Ever since the mysteries of fog have lurked in the deep reaches of my creative self only to emerge one summer morning at the Presidio of San Francisco in 2009.  It happened again while shooting the Putney Rowing Regatta on the Connecticut River of southern Vermont and once more on a more focused trip to the northern California coast this past summer. 

Here's that image from long ago. That it's from a scan of a forty three year old 35mm negative is pretty remarkable

Tones of Black and White

Tones of Black and White opens at the Open Shutter Gallery of Contemporary Photography in Durango, Colorado next Friday, January 10.  I am one of five photographers in the show, two of whom are luminaries, Mitch Dobrowner for his dramatic sky filled landscapes and the legendary Paul Caponigro for landmark still lifes and much more. James Cammack, Marshall Gould and I round out the roster. To be in a show with Paul Caponigro is pretty special and a major surprise.  I just learned about Paul and Mitch on Friday and have pretty much been walking on air since.

Included in the exhibition are eight images from my Fog Series, ones that were taken at the Presidio of San Francisco, Point Reyes National Seashore (both above), the Connecticut River Valley in Vermont (Just below) and the Maine coast. There's also one from a rare foggy day on my back forty here in Taos.

According to the press release from Margy Dudley at Open Shutter the show takes photography back to its visual roots and the photographers in the exhibition display elegant black and white images using different tones and perspectives. From Taos, NM Steve Immel’s sepia toned photographs of foggy landscapes elicit a feeling of quiet contemplation. Marshall Gould from Milpitas, CA provides crisp storytelling and composition. James Cammack from Bayfield, CO renders humorous and touching street photography. Mitch Dobrowner’s stunning black and white landscape photography and the timeless still lifes of legendary photographer Paul Caponigro complete the exhibition.

If you are know my Sketches of Winter series, the high contrast black and white photographs that resemble pen and ink drawings and have next to no midtones, you'll see that the images in the Fog Series are quite the opposite in that they are all about the grays,  toned as they may be. I've included a representative Sketch of Winter, Solo, to show how very different they are and yet how similar in abstraction and point of view. High key or low key they're all from the same warped mind.

Little school on the prairie

I was heading toward Devils Tower in eastern Wyoming when I chanced upon this beauty of a one room school house in the middle of the plains. The little edifice was all prairie geometry and plaster with a flag pole that pierced the forever sky.  At the moment that I set up to take the shot something went kaflooey, that's the technical term, with my go to lens, the inimitable 28-135.  The whirring death throes of its little motor caused unruly flare, foreground blur and a general softness that were downright aesthetic, one of the many happy accidents in a long photographic life.  

Buffalo Jerky. Good

When I drive to and from California, and there have been four such occasions in the last thirteen months, I take blue highways through Navajo Nation and avoid a mind numbing stretch of I-40. Navajo country which covers a huge swath of northwestern New Mexico and northeastern Arizona draws me for a host of reasons notably its empty vastness, its soaring skies and the isolation of the Navajo people in their nation within a nation. There I find a kind of peace and the occasional chuckle. 

To take full advantage of these big skies and monster vistas I suggest you click through to the physical blog page rather than limiting yourself to the email notice you receive. On the actual blog you'll get a much better presentation and have the opportunity to see the images full screen. Always a plus.

Postcards from my post

As my California safari wound down last August and I was Jonesing to get back home I crammed three legs of my long look back into a single day.  That’s not what I would recommend but, hey, Oakland, San Leandro and another trip to Fort Ord were left and we do what we have to do.

Fort Ord, you may recall, is where I spent the summer of 1960 in the deprivations of Basic Training in this man’s Army.  It’s also the location at which I took several hundred photographs in April about half of which I erased in a fit of, shall we say, stupidity. So Fort Ord would have to be the last event in my photo triathlon. I am, if nothing else, a highly trained triathlete.

All of the basic training barracks were located on a slight hill looking down on the rest of the base with a glimmer of the Pacific visible behind them.  Frankly, I didn't remember the sea of two story housing units or that they covered the entire hillside. C company of which I was a proud member is really the only one that I recall. Such was the single mindedness of my warriorly efforts. Either that or copious quantities of 3.2 percent beer.

This shot of the sneakers, the empty IPA and the military handout entitled "Starting a new job on the right foot" is darkly ironic.

Technicolor Memories

I was watching the season wrap-up of Anthony Bourdain’s CNN show Parts Unknown when Tony, that’s what his friends call him, said something like, “I like to tell stories that interest me and I try not to repeat myself. And I figure that if the tale interests me there’s a good chance it will interest you.” That’s a very liberal paraphrase. In fact, it may bear no resemblance to what he actually said.

With the gist of that premise in mind I realized that I want to tell stories. In Spanish the word is historias. It may seem like a minor revelation but it gave me a long needed, seven years to be exact, understanding of why I do the blog in the first place. It even provides a little direction going forward. The best of my posts tell stories. Or the best ones tell the best stories. Something like that.

After Oakland we moved to San Leandro and in San Leandro we lived in two places. I think.  The first was an apartment that we shared with my mother’s older sister, Fern. My memories are sketchy but I do recall the sweet aroma some kind of pot roast that involved cooking sherry that my mother kept in the cupboard. Might have had a salty taste. Just guessing. I learned to swim in San Leandro when somebody said, “Jump in. You’ll figure it out.” Since I don’t remember any screams or thrashing sounds and haven’t been saddled with a lifelong fear of the water I guess the sink or swim lesson worked.

From the apartment, of which I have a fuzzy two level image, we moved further east to what I recall as a single family house. With advancing age, maybe eight as the fifties loomed, my arsenal of memories grows. Among them is one of the teacher who let me read books of my choosing and at my own pace. That was probably third grade. Because my reading was several grades ahead of my class it made a whole lot of sense and her allowing that freedom is one of my fondest school day images. Good for my self-esteem, too.

In the field behind my house I snuck my first smoke.  My buddy and I had a tree with a knot hole that hid a pack of Fatimas or Spuds quite handily. You’ve got to be seventy to remember those monikers. Who stole the cigarettes remains a mystery but I know it wasn’t me since Mom didn’t smoke.

Within walking distance, we didn’t have a car till I was in my mid-teens, were the barber shop, a café and a movie theater, the Bal.  All resided on East 14^th Street near the corner of 148th Avenue in the still surviving commercial hub of our neighborhood. In that barber shop I got my first haircut that ended with hot shaving cream and a straight razor. I cannot tell you how grown up I felt. In the café I first had diner fare like hamburger steak with mashed potatoes, brown gravy, canned peas and sliced white bread. Hot turkey sandwiches, too.

But mostly I remember the Bal which would have screened its first movie when we lived there. I don't recall the theater’s grand opening but it had to have happened about that time. Maybe we watched She Wore a Yellow Ribbon at the Bal. I know we saw it in first release so it almost has to have been the there. Joanne Dru and the Duke in living color against the backdrop of Monument Valley in 1949. 

The Bal’s the most vivid touchstone of my San Leandro days. Maybe that’s because it the old auditorium is living a second life as a music venue lo these 65 years later. That it still stands, as does our old apartment house in Oakland, is somehow touching.

Take some black and whites and call me in the morning

All week I planned a post that would show a typical day for a certain gentleman living la vida loca in Antigua. But after a whole lot of fussing I find that I'm horribly uninspired by the images I was going to use to tell the story. I fear that I have contracted a particularly virulent form of jaundiced eye with a dose of writer’s block for good measure. Here's a little black and white for what ails me. 

Ticket to Paradise

It came down to Monterrico with its famed black sand beach or Tikal with the largest archeological site in the Americas.  So I had to choose between soaking in the rays and assorted bebidas or unearthing the mysteries of the Maya.  Ever the student I opted for the beach.

 

The alleged 2-1/2 hour trip to Monterrico was just shy of 3-1/2.  That’s what happens when you live on Guatemalan time.  After a slight climb out of Antigua we descended from about 6,000 feet to sea level and saw the mountains fade in the distance as the countryside became farmland then jungle. The cool Antigua breezes changed to hot, humid and still at the coast.

The web and my Moon guide identified Pez de Oro as the best hotel choice in Monterrico. Situated right on the pencil lead beach Pez de Oro was built palapa style and decorated in a colorful style much like that of Mexico. There was no hot water, a condition shared by all Monterrico hotels, but hey, the surroundings were tropical and the nearly deserted beach called my name.

I figure Monterrico to be around 2,000 people with a main drag of small stores and restaurants leading to the beach. Most of the hotels line the beach while others are slightly inland. The town was quiet during my two day visit. What action there was happened at Johnnie’s Place which served Ceviche Peruano which was simply incredible.  The dish, photo included, was succulent chunks of sweet white fish “cooked” in citrus with onions, sliced chiles, kernel corn, pieces of what seemed to be a squash of some kind, avocado and cilantro. It was so good I had it twice. My Monterrico scorecard shows three ceviches, two filetes de pescado. That means that every non-breakfast was seafood just the way I planned it.

At dark o’clock, that’s 5am amigos, Saturday I took a launch into the mangrove and reed lagoon behind Monterrico with my personal boatman, Eleazar. We slipped beneath a leafy canopy in Apocalypse Now darkness and watched the sun rise over a flotilla of water lilies and sea grasses that are home to 350 species of birds. Egrets darted across the lightening sky as Eleazar poled our flat bottomed lancha through the placid waters. From time to time we stood still in a mood Guatemaltecas would call muy tranquilo.

After yogurt, fruit and granola at Johnnie’s and a brief nap, I decided to take a barefoot run down the beach toward Hawaii. Hawaii was the next village south and I’ve got signs to prove it.  That black sand, arena negra, needed a warning sign.  I limped back to the hotel with blisters the size of quarters.  Running along the water line where the surf cooled the sand was a total blast but the last 50 yards across the embers to the hotel was absolute agony.  My feet haven’t hurt like that since I ran from lawn to lawn to the public pool during the summer in Phoenix.  I don’t think my pain receptors know the difference between rare and well done so I repaired to the local farmacia for anti-biotic cream, gauze and tape. Happily, by Tuesday I could run with little discomfort.

But for the poverty Guatemala could be paradise.  The cost of living is among the lowest in the western hemisphere, the produce is outstanding, the coffee sublime and the temperatures blissfully mild.  A beachfront house in Monterrico lists for under $200,000.  Alas, poverty and crime are realities so there’s a semi-automatic in the hands of a rent-a-cop in every other doorway.  But still.....