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Found Still Life, #2
Continue ReadingI found this collection of ancient cameras on a street in Cairo, Egypt. The vendor has made no effort to protect his merchandise from the soot and sand raining daily on the city. For me it is a still life with many resonances, evoking a city of great age known for its ruins, where […]
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A Found Still Life #1
Continue ReadingI cannot take credit for this still life. I did not create it, only found, framed and captured it. I do not know who arranged this work of imagination; it was probably the Russian curator of what has now become a state museum. This austere prison cell resembles the one where Feodor Dostoevsky was held […]
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What I Owe Mr. P.H. Emerson
Continue ReadingPeter Henry Emerson was a 19th Century British photographer intensely active beginning in the early 1880s, and ending about 1895, after which he photographed for his private consumption and did not publish. During his prime years he created a portfolio entitled “Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads,” a watery area near Yarmouth, north […]
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Is This the Arizona You Imagine?
Continue ReadingThe Arizona State Tree above, in a rendering I think unsuitable for Arizona Highways. Below, another collection of ubiquitous trees — the sculpted cottonwoods, foregrounding thick clouds.
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Waking Up In Yemen
Continue ReadingI spent my first days and nights in Yemen with this view from my sleeping room. This is sunrise in the ancient part of Sanaa, the capital city, where the buildings and alleys, stone gates, walls and walkways have not changed since Medieval times. The markets are lively here; their chaos and colorful aggressive vendors […]
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A Prayer Before Running
Continue ReadingI would stand near the thoroughbreds and mounted jockeys, observing them walk into a tunnel leading to the track. I noticed the human athletes wearing an array of expressions, from confidence and swagger to fear and anxiety. I caught this rider in the midst of a prayer. His face seems thankful and touched by […]
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When Will Our Civil War End?
Continue ReadingYou might live a whole life west of the Rocky Mountains and not realize this: the Civil War never ended, not for an army of amateur actors recreating historical encampments and battles. The war has not ended for many other modern people alive now in the Old Confederacy, who identify with a disappeared way […]
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Luxor Madness
Continue ReadingIt begins when you hit pavement in Luxor — a city upriver in Egypt on the Nile, and home to the biggest religious complex ever constructed: The Temple of Karnak, a human cultural analog to the Grand Canyon. Many folks live here in poverty hustling for a living, and survive on money extracted from […]
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Practicing De-Familiarization
Continue Reading“Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things….The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and […]
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