Sortino, Sicily, 5x5 Palladium Print

A very long day on the road outside a small town in Sicily.

Sortino, Sicily, 5x5 Palladium Print

Sortino, Sicily, 5x5 Palladium Print

Archaeology, Siracusa - 5x5 Palladium Print

I had a productive weekend in the darkroom. Now that I’ve had a chance to do a whole bunch of prints, I am going to go back and do some fine tuning. I’m also excited to try some larger prints. I’ve been printing at 5×5 so far, which looks great, but I am very curious to see what some of these images would look like at 8×8 and larger.

I’ve also been going through my contact sheets from Sicily and found a few interesting photographs that I didn’t notice on my first pass through. I think I now have about 30 photographs in the Sicily series altogether. Isn’t it nice when that happens?

Side street, Siracusa - 5x5 Palladium Print

Cactus, Cefalù - 5x5 Palladium Print

I can’t spend enough time in the darkroom right now. I am printing at a feverish pace.

La Rocca, Cefalù - 5x5 Palladium Print

Lo Zingaro - 5x5 Palladium Print

Lo Zingaro is a natural reserve near Scopello on the eastern coast of Sicily. It is rugged and beautiful, but most people are there for the beach rather than for the hiking. The beach is difficult to get to, nestled in a cove and completely sheltered from the outside world.

This is my first finished palladium print. It measures 5×5 inches and looks much, much nicer in real life than it does on the screen. I still need to make a few small adjustments to this image, but overall the process seems to be working quite well. More to come!

Sicilian cities decay in the most graceful and beautiful way imaginable. I had such an incredible time roaming the back streets of Siracusa and Palermo, especially late in the day when the shadows became deep and the textures of the buildings stood out in high relief. This dog was mellow and very friendly. I have no idea why he was wearing the muzzle, maybe he just thought it made him look tough.

Try clicking on these images, I think it is worth seeing them larger.

The photos from Sicily are coming along nicely. I have finished developing film and I am now scanning, processing, and beginning to think about editing. Editing is definitely going to be a big challenge for me… when I left for Sicily, I had no idea where the project was headed and my focus was a bit scattered. Now I have at least 30-40 photographs that I like, but I know that a lot of them will not make the final cut as I try to put together the story. At least when I am able to continue the project (hopefully next spring, although not in Sicily), I will have a better idea of what to look for.

I need to get a first cut ready soon, because Platinum/Palladium printing begins next week. I’ve ordered all of the necessary chemicals and equipment and am doing a run-through with my professor on Tuesday. I’m sure my first few attempts will be pretty miserable, but I’ll be posting them anyway!

One of my favorite side trips while in Sicily was to the necropolis of Pantalica. Sometime around 1000 BCE, thousands of tombs were carved into the walls of a deep gorge running through the hills of eastern Sicily. It is now a protected national park.

The guidebook was unclear on specifics, but it seemed like it would be about an hour on the bus to Sortino, plus another hour to walk to the park. I packed food and water accordingly, knowing that it would be a hot day.

Three hours after leaving Sortino on foot, I finally arrived at Pantalica. It had been a difficult hike, with lots of hills and valleys along the way. There had been nowhere to get water once I left town, so I was already running low. I stopped for a quick lunch when I got to the entrance of the park and then descended into the gorge. Steps had been carved directly into the rock, worn away from thousands of years of use. Thousands of tombs and larger caves dotted the sides of the cliffs. It was a truly awe-inspiring and humbling moment.

I didn’t get to explore as much as I wanted because of the water situation; I had to turn back and head into town after only about ninety minutes in the gorge. I ran out of water about half-way back to town and dragged myself the rest of the way. I arrived in Sortino exhausted, dehydrated, and covered in dust from head to toe, but extremely satisfied with the day’s adventure.

This trip reinforced two things I think I have always known, but never really solidified in my mind. The first is that I am a desert person. I love the climate of the desert, I love the landscape, I love the vast amount of space between one place and the next. I attribute this at least partially to the time I spent growing up in Joshua Tree, and I am going to continue this series of photographs in southern California and Baja Mexico next year.

The second thing that was reinforced for me on this trip is the fact that I am a wanderer, to an extreme degree. I was happiest when I was out climbing mountains, hiking long distances, getting out and away from the city. This, too, I attribute to growing up in Joshua Tree. I had to walk for miles to get to school, to visit friends, or even just to go to the store. My hours of wandering back then gave me the chance to explore the world, and I think that I got a chance to revisit that feeling of discovery in Sicily.

A few hours alone in the desert gave me the chance to concentrate and really engage the visual side of my brain. This is not something that is instantaneous or even easy for me; I am easily distracted and it usually takes me a little while to switch gears. This is especially obvious in my contact sheets from that day; the first roll is so-so, and the fourth is a bit weak again because I was getting tired. But the two contact sheets in the middle are full of visual ideas that feel fresh and new to me. Having that time to really focus and let the landscape sink in had a tremendous impact on the quality of my work that day.

My wife’s aunt and uncle live on a farm in a little town about an hour outside of Palermo. This is the view I saw out the window every morning when I woke up.

I’ve finally got enough film from the trip developed and scanned to choose a few photos for the website. I still haven’t gotten to the film from Pantalica, a giant necropolis outside of Siracusa where I think I took my best photos. These are from Monreale and Monte Pellegrino, just outside of Palermo.

Two years ago, I took a trip that changed my life. My wife and I were traveling together in Italy—being tourists, visiting family, eating great food—and out of nowhere, I realized that I was meant to be a photographer. It was a bolt out of the blue and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. I had a small point and shoot camera with me at the time and knew nothing at all about photography. But I returned from that trip somehow knowing what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

In the two years since, I’ve been continually surprised by how prescient that realization was. I’ve gone deep, deep down the rabbit hole, spending entire days in the art library at Brooklyn College, devouring book after book of photography. I remember the exact moment I discovered the work of Harry Callahan. The same goes for Robert Adams, George Tice, Walker Evans, and Stephen Shore. Oh my god, Stephen Shore. There was an entire world that I had no idea existed, and now I am completely immersed in it.

I’ve looked at thousands of pictures in the last two years and taken thousands of pictures myself. I’ve often been unsteady and unsure of myself, like a newborn deer taking my first steps. I’ve taken some wrong turns along the way, but for the most part I have steadily improved. I know an awful lot about the technical requirements of making a good photo. I know how to put together a composition. I am developing a visual style and learning to work within a theme. But most importantly, I’ve learned a lot about myself. I’ve learned about the great unknowable questions that live inside of me, and I’ve learned that I can get ever closer to answering those questions with a camera in my hand. I don’t think that I’ll ever get all the way to the bottom of all of this, or at least I hope I don’t. What do you do with a Rubik’s Cube that’s already been solved? You put it on the shelf and admire it. But I do know that every big step along the way leads to art-making that satisfies me on the deepest level.

I’ve just returned from another two weeks in Italy. Much like the last trip, it was revelatory. I have spent the last two years preparing the foundation for this moment, and I feel like I have taken that next step. I worked myself to the point of exhaustion. I climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and walked for days on end. At one point, I was fairly certain that I was going to die. (Never leave for a day-long hike in 95+ degree heat without bringing as much water as you can possibly carry… words to live by.)

I’ve only seen a couple of contact sheets so far, but I am falling in love. I’ve already noticed certain new patterns of seeing that emerged as I became more attuned to the landscape and to the climate. I think these patterns will be emphasized when I begin printing these photos in platinum in the fall. I will share a few images once I’ve gotten further along with developing and scanning, and then I’ll move on to printing the portfolio. I am very much looking forward to watching this series of photographs take shape and releasing them into the world.