I caught an interview with Joel Meyerowitz on WNYC this week that is worth passing along. Meyerowitz mostly discusses his new book, but he digresses a few times to more general topics. The money quote, in response to the claim that “nature photography is riddled with cliches,”:

“I think cliches are in all of our minds. It’s so easy to point. You step into a place and you say “Look at the flower, look at the sunset…” I think serious photography takes a different kind of complexity and looking that requires some kind of relationship between things rather than objects alone…”

Personally, I did not fall in love with Legacy the way I expected to. The book includes some wonderful photographs, but all in all it feels a bit scattered to me, and many of the images don’t do much for me. I love to hear Meyerowitz talk about photography, though; he is very thoughtful and well-spoken.

“You and the place you are from are not a chance encounter; it is something beyond destiny, it is something so meant to be that it is beyond words.”
Jamaica Kinkaid

Maps are a special category of object; simultaneously tool and art, abstract yet representing something very real. I have a soft spot in my heart for archaic maps in particular, not just for the romantic patina of their age, but also for their use as a tool in research. Recognizable landmarks are distorted through the distance of time, new roads are built, and rivers change course. This information is not simply a curiosity, but a genuine link to our past.

I recently came across the David Rumsey Map Collection, an incredible online resource. Over 1500 historic maps have been scanned and added to their digital collection, which is completely free to explore. I’ve gotten lost night after night digging into this archive, so much so that I’ve even started having dreams about the maps I’ve found.

The maps can be downloaded in a special format called MrSID, which is great for viewing, but doesn’t allow the export of high-resolution originals. One of things I was most excited about in discovering this archive was the possibility of printing them out and putting them up all over my house. I’ve started with a small group of maps from Brooklyn, most from around the turn of the 20th century, exporting them tile after tile and then stitching them together in Photoshop. The result is something like this:

Narrows-Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn, 1891, by by Bien, Joseph Rudolf
Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection

It’s a highly detailed map of Brooklyn from 1891, most notable for the stunning details of Jamaica Bay, before Robert Moses had his way with it. This is the result of approximately 40 stitched tiles and creates a very nice print at about 12×18 inches. Which is of course the first thing that I did.

The curators of the collection have generously chosen a Creative Commons license for this work, which means that other users are free to download, modify, and share the images in any way they choose as long as they include proper attribution. Here’s a link to the full resolution TIFF file (72MB) of the map above, courtesy of the David Rumsey Map Collection. I will be posting more as I create them.

Brooklyn, like any city, has seen it’s share of changes over the last 100 years. Notably, many of the waterways south of the Flatlands were completely filled in by Robert Moses when he built the Shore Parkway in the 1930s. I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring this area of the southern coast: Coney Island, Plumb Island, Barren Island. It is significant to note that these are islands in name only now. I sometimes title my pictures with archaic names, just to make sure they’re not lost.

All in all, roughly 12,000 of the original 16,000 acres of wetlands in and around Jamaica Bay have been filled in, and what little that remains has had to be reclaimed from industry and waste and is still quite toxic. Make a visit to Plumb Beach some day and you’ll see what I mean.

I’ve lived in Brooklyn longer than any other place in my life. I now say that I’m “from” Brooklyn, even though I wasn’t born here. My wife was born in Brooklyn, which makes me a native by marriage. We’re about to buy a house on 2nd Street, and I’ll probably live here for the rest of my life. Having been in Brooklyn almost ten years already, there are an awful lot of personal landmarks that make this place very special.

This is the location of my first apartment in New York City, where I was living in September, 2001. I had a clear view of lower Manhattan from my living room, and watched the smoke rise from the site of the World Trade Center for weeks.

This is where our new house is. It’s about a block from the canal, I expect we’ll have waterfront property some day.

This is where I took the photograph that first helped me realize that I have a personal vision, and made me feel strongly that I needed to follow it.

Brooklyn is so full of personal milestones that I hardly know where to start. I hope others appreciate these maps as much as I do; I will continue to post them as I build up my own personal collection.

Riches Field, Brooklyn, 2009

I’ve picked up steam on my Outer Lands project again, after having to abandon it for several months over the summer. As I was working on the project through the late spring, I started to realize that the light and the colors were going all wrong. Now that fall is here and things look right again, I am going to push myself hard through March or April and get as much done on the project as I can.

For November, I’ve decided to offer three different options for the print of the month! You are welcome to choose any single image or combine all three for a discount (see below).

The first photograph is from Mill Basin, Brooklyn, nestled in the crook of the Belt Parkway. This is one of the first locations I discovered when I first began shooting my Outer Lands series last year. I’ve been back a half a dozen times since then, and am always impressed by the subtle beauty of this area. It’s hard to believe that it’s in New York City… until you get to the caution tape, which I will leave up to you to interpret.

Mill Basin, Brooklyn, 2009

The second photograph is from Patchogue, New York, on the southern shore of Long Island. I missed the ferry to Fire Island that day, and I’m glad I did. There’s something about this house that feels a bit haunted to me, which felt appropriate for the season!

Patchogue, New York, 2009

The third image is from Connetquot State Park, also on Long Island. I discovered Connetquot after a long day of photography further out on the island. I was exhausted, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take a few minutes and take a look around. It’s a gorgeous place, and very much worth the visit if you get the chance.

Connetquot State Park, Long Island, 2009

I am no longer offering subscriptions for the print of the month, but I do still offer discounts if you would like to purchase more than one print. This month, for example, you can get all three 8×10s for $65 or all three 11×14s for $125, which includes shipping. If you want to mix and match with other prints let me know and I’ll apply a discount for you.

Portfolio of all three images:

Pommes et oranges, Paul Cézanne, c. 1899

I recently picked up the book Proust Was a Neuroscientist, written by Jonah Lehrer, and I am enjoying it quite a bit. On a basic level, the book is about the intersection of art and science, which happen to be two of my favorite subjects. Specifically, Lehrer makes the case that artists over the years have predicted certain things about the nature of human perception that have later proven to be startlingly accurate.

I came across one paragraph in particular yesterday about Cézanne that hit me like a bolt of lightning. It’s a perfect summary of what I was trying to get across in my comments to Simen last week. As usual, my skills as a writer failed me, and I appreciate that someone has already done a much better job of explaining this than I have.

To recap, I was trying to describe the process that I have experienced while making my own photographs wherein I am able to separate the formal qualities of the image from recognition of the subject. I used the phrase “taking photographs of what is actually there,” which I think just confused things. The best analogy I can think of is the Magic Eye posters that were popular years ago; you look at them in a very specific way, let your focus drift, and a secret 3-D image appears.

My mental process while taking pictures is a little bit like this. After I’ve found a site that I like for a photograph and get the logistics of the camera out of the way, I spend a few minutes trying to absorb everything I can about the scene. I sometimes try to frame out the image with my hands in an approximation of the eventual photograph. If my mind is cooperating that day, at some point I am able to become completely immersed in the scene, to the point where nothing else exists. I become highly tuned to the forms within the picture while simultaneously losing any sense of recognition of the scene. This is the moment when I figure out whether or not the picture is going to work and if so, exactly what it should be. If I am successful, the end result is an interesting picture, rather than a picture of an interesting subject. The distinction is hugely important to me and I think it has become the main motivation behind my work.

Sometimes this mental state is easy to find, and sometimes it’s impossible. One of my odd-ball side projects lately has been to try to identify the nature of this state and figure out how to get there more often.

To return to Jonah Lehrer and this paragraph about Cézanne:

Cézanne often spent hours contemplating a brushstroke. Out in the open air, he would stare at his subject until it melted under his gaze, until the forms of the world had decayed into a formless mess. By making his vision disintegrate, Cézanne was trying to return to the start of sight, to become nothing but “a sensitive recording plate.” The slowness of this method forced Cézanne to focus on simple things, like a few red apples set on a trapezoid of a table, or a single mountain seen from afar. But he knew that the subject itself was irrelevant. Stare hard enough, his paintings implore, and the laws of the known universe will emerge from just about anything. “With an apple,” Cézanne once said, “I will astonish Paris.”

Lehrer might be a overreaching a bit here when he says that the subject itself is irrelevant, but the point is taken. With the right kind of attention, even the most humble subjects can offer extraordinary insight.

These vintage 16mm Kodachrome movies of a family vacation to California are beautiful and completely charming. I recommend clicking through and watching them in full-screen HD, if your computer can support it.

San Francisco, 1958

Home Movies at DisneyLand, Parts 1 and 2

Uploaded by Jeff Altman.

Looks Like Portugal is undoubtedly the central piece in the collection, in which the viewer sees a brightly painted door left slightly ajar, revealing a vestibule adorned with colorful and “ethnic-looking” ceramic tiles. The piece leaves the viewer to ponder: “Where was this taken? Looks like Portugal.”

Today’s humor, via McSweeny’s

1: This is the last week to see the small but compelling show of Roberts’ new work We English at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn. I liked it so much I went back twice.

2: Andy Adams at FlakPhoto is having another Facebook giveaway, and this time he is offering three signed copies of We English. All you have to do is visit Flak’s Facebook page and post a link to your favorite photo from the FlakPhoto archives. For the record, I went with Pablo Lopez Luz.

3: You can see the whole series on the We English website.

4: My favorite from the show:

From the series We English, by Simon Roberts

5: I really enjoyed reading through Roberts’ blog for the project, even though I didn’t discover it until it was already well underway. Here’s a post from two years ago of a scrapbook which shows some inspiration for the project.

Blake remarked a little while back that it is rare to read negative criticism online, and my observations tend to agree. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered this. They’re talking about me! And it’s wonderfully negative.

I decided that it would be fun to cut and paste the feedback here and offer a point-by-point response. After all, there’s some genuine food for thought in there and you usually have to pay someone for an honest opinion these days.

From the I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night and [PHOTO] Every Day – Artist’s Corner thread in the Penny Arcade Forums, page 46, retrieved on October 19, 2009:

erisian pope: Can a snapshot be beautiful? Sure! Can it be art? Of course! Can I even identify the differences in some examples that work for me versus those that don’t? Nope! (William Eggleston is a constant enigma to me, some of his work totally speaks to me, some doesn’t; more recently I have a confused relationship with Dalton Rooney).

Eggleston is an enigma to me, too. I think he’s probably an enigma to most people, which is part of the reason he’s so interesting. I find that I don’t like more of his work than I do like, but the ones I do like, I really, really like. And I, too, have a confused relationship with Dalton Rooney.

erisian pope:So what do you think about William Eggleston’s work? How about Dalton Rooney’s work? (Eggleston is commonly accepted as a great photographer, Rooney is contemporary and not widely recognized that I know of, but has some attention)

I am bewildered by a trend I see among contemporary photographers towards kitschiness, americana, documentaries of suburbia, and other ways that the mundane and often ugly gets showcased. Eggleston may be the inspiration for this trend, but regardless of its roots I find little appeal in it. (Lauren Greenfield mostly fits in this category in my mind). But can the trend be utterly devoid of merit and still have traction? I guess so.

You kind of lost me on a lot of this one. I feel like you’re trying to associate me with Eggleston somehow, which doesn’t really make sense to me. You are correct, however, when you say that I am not widely recognized. Are you sure you’re not thinking of someone else?

CommunistCow: I like maybe 1 out of every 20 or 30 photos from Eggleston and I don’t like anything from Dalton. Then again I judge older photos a bit differently than I do newer photos. The same way I judge older movies slightly differently than new ones because of the differing equipment, processing, and style of the time.

CommunistCow does make a good point, though. My new plan is to just stick everything in a shoebox and wait 40 years until I’m dead. Hopefully whoever finds it will know what to do with it.

erisian pope:So if you don’t like Rooney (and neither do I, frankly) do you have thoughts on why his and other similar mundane works are getting attention? Have you seen this trend that I’ve seen?

What is this attention you keep going on about? I’m almost positive you’ve got the wrong guy.

erisian pope: I asked my wife the same question and her take on Rooney’s work (the one example I coerced her into viewing) was that his work is extremely literal. He photos exactly what is there as opposed to people (like me) who look for the perfect subject or the perfect moment or people (like you) who create the perfect light, etc. His work is all about what is immediately there. I think she or I even used the term “unflinching eye.”

I think us seeing candor in his work and you seeing “bucking convention” probably are two pieces that combine in his work. I think you’re right about them going against the grain.

I just don’t understand who the audience is. Art focused on aesthetics makes sense to me. Art focused elsewhere always eludes me (with journalism as a slight one-off. but good journalism still has an eye towards aesthetics).

OK, now we’ve got a little something to work with. Even though I am writing this tongue-in-cheek, I am genuinely touched that someone has spent enough time looking at my work to form a real opinion, good or bad.

“His work is extremely literal”

This is true in the sense that I don’t manipulate or distort what I see with goofy angles or camera tricks. I do like to think that my photographs are open to interpretation, though. If I were to try to describe my style to someone, I would probably say that I try not to get in the way too much.

“He photos exactly what is there as opposed to people (like me) who look for the perfect subject or the perfect moment or people (like you) who create the perfect light, etc. His work is all about what is immediately there.”

Completely true, and I’m surprised to hear this used in a negative way. When I first became interested in photography, I was attracted to novelty: alt-processing, low angles, wide angles, perfect lighting, perfect moment. Until I realized just how completely boring and shallow all of that is. Anyone can learn how to operate a camera and decently light a subject, the rule of thirds isn’t any big secret, and anybody can wait ten days for the perfect sunrise over the Grand Canyon or whatever it is.

What’s the point in doing something that anyone else can do? If someone else might as well take the picture, then let them take it! Or, even better, go buy a postcard, it will probably be much better than any picture you or I can take.

“I think she or I even used the term ‘unflinching eye.’”

Again I can’t figure out how this could possibly be considered a negative thing, even though I think some of my work veers towards the romantic I suppose it’s all a matter of degree, and I’m going to choose to take this as a compliment, too.

“I think us seeing candor in his work and you seeing ‘bucking convention’ probably are two pieces that combine in his work. I think you’re right about them going against the grain.”

If by “going against the grain” you’re talking about the guys taking pictures of the Grand Canyon, then yes, they’re a bunch of idiots. But as a general rule I try not to think too much about what other people are doing when I’m taking pictures, because it really messes with my head.

I just don’t understand who the audience is.

a) Obviously. b) There is no audience. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You’ve got the wrong guy.

These devastating photos by Chris Jordan show the effects of pollution on albatross chicks on an island in the north Pacific ocean. Although the images are disturbing, I also find them to be completely mesmerizing.