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Environmental Self-Portraiture, 1970s Style
Continue ReadingI pushed from Las Vegas to Santa Fe, New Mexico stopping once to spread blankets on the ground and nap under vivid constellations; eating nuts, jerky and raw vegetables, drinking flawless spring water I drove a foreign car which steered like a tractor, rolling with barely space for a suitcase, ice chest and spare tire. […]
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Eyes No Longer Here
Continue Reading“The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms.” From “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot Mr. Eliot’s poetic image evoking a graveyard has stuck with me over decades — broken jaw of our lost kingdoms. […]
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Gail & Hannah On Their Special Day
Continue ReadingEarlier in life I frequented parades, where I photographed bystanders and participants alike. Berea, Kentucky celebrates each September a food delicacy — Spoon Bread — with processions, demonstrations, foot-races and dancing. The bread is a gooey cornmeal concoction bordering on pudding; it is sweet, containing fresh cream and eggs in copious amounts. Thousands of the […]
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Keeping One’s Hand In
Continue ReadingA photographer will perceive images no matter the situation. Confined to one’s home — lacking a natural or portrait motif — a domestic still life will exist nearby to arouse your interest. Below an atmospheric photograph taken in the next room also looking inside-out:
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Concerning The Elvis Mythology
Continue ReadingI know for sure Elvis is gone. I visited his grave once. That happened in the yard at Graceland Mansion in Tennessee where I sensed only his symbolic reality with no animating presence. Beside me three fellow tourists lined up in a different attitude, folded their hands and bowed their heads, behaving as if they […]
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Approaching Arabic
Continue ReadingKnowledge of Arabic opens a civilization stretching thirteen thousand kilometers wide — from Morocco eastward to Indonesia. In that vast territory not everyone speaks with the Arab tongue in daily life, yet most build their spiritual life upon the Koran, delivered to the Messenger of God Mohamed by visionary experience in the idiom of the […]
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Rustic Pickup — Symbol of a Culture
Continue ReadingIn my thirties I lived four years in a once-thriving Ohio River town, now with just 800 living souls whose numbers fall steadily. In a district of pine-covered hills extending 400 square miles, the burg and the territory had during my time just 4,000 inhabitants in total, major part living in backwoods enclaves, each claiming […]
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Mother of the World
Continue ReadingCairo they call Umm-i-dunya — Mother of the World, a massive, dirty, noisy and crowded place alive with kinetic energy — for the past thousand years a Muslim city, before that the site of layered kingdoms and monuments, and long before that it formed part of the ancient route for human migrations out of Africa. […]
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An Unusual Self-Portrait
Continue ReadingIt is a portrait within a mirror-image, an excellent likeness; however this picture has importance for me because of its setting. While traveling by automobile in Turkey we came upon a railroad museum. I began to explore one of its locomotives then noticed a specially-outfitted train car nearby. I stepped inside and realized I had […]
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