Archive | quiet islands

With a little help from my friends….

By John on December 22, 2012 in beauty, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, rangefinder camera, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, Uncategorized, working

Ancramdale, New York December 22, 2012 07:45hrs

I have found through trial (many trials) and error (many errors) that I can accomplish very little in life without the assistance of those around me. Whether it is the gentle and loving care for my mother, my continuing work at the Aegean Center or any spiritual journey I may undertake, I cannot do it alone, nor do I really want to anymore. Yes, there are times when we all need a little solitude for reflection and meditation, but overall I long to embrace the company of my fellows, whomever they may be.

I return to Greece in just over a month. Christmas will come and go and the New Year will ring its bells and I will, I hope, have some work to show for the time I have spent here. I am opening up my darkroom and am about shooting film (both 35mm and MF) as well as recording some digital images. Besides my Leica M8 I have resuscitated my old Canon Digital Rebel, the first decent digital SLR I used. It needed a new battery so I picked one up from Adorama. I hope to use it as a point-and-shoot while I am here, reserving the Leica for more contemplative images. The MF film work is up in the air. Maybe I’ll work on some more short depth-of-field images and bring the negatives back to Paros. The 35mm film is being used in a really old Canon AE-1 with a 50mm lens. In both cases I am shooting Kodak Tri-X 400. If I am industrious I hope to begin developing by the end of this week and printing by 2013. 2013! Imagine that…A lot of water has flowed under the bridge, over the dam and out to sea since I started this blog. It seems like a lifetime ago that I switched gears and turned onto this road, a journey that fills me with endless gratitude and wonder.

It snowed early this morning before I awoke. The weather outside is grey and leaden, a wintry wind is reminding me that all things must pass and, as they do, new opportunities for knowledge and growth appear on the horizon. In some cases it is better to have loved and lost than never have loved at all and I have to believe that there is something better for me down the road. As a friend and I were remarking this morning…one door closes, another door opens. Life is a series of hallways and corridors. Take a risk and turn the knob.

My never-ending thanks to Kit Latham for all of his wonderful support in the much needed update of this blog space. You will notice that the old images of the Bosnian Roma are gone, replaced with more current and relevant images from my portfolios. To have them off the site is a great relief to me. They represent a time of my life that has passed. I have also cleaned out much of my gallery site, letting go of a tired and used vision for something a little more current. In a few days there will be an even larger shift. Siga-siga, as we say on Paros.

JDCM

Darkroom work and questions…

By John on November 18, 2012 in 4×5 photography, beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, silver darkroom, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working

In the past few weeks I have begun printing some of the images I made last summer during my island hopping following the spring 2012 session here at the Aegean Center. For the most part, they are photographs of the stone walls that criss-cross the Kyklades landscapes like so many topographical scratches: property lines, terrace farming, some ancient, some new. The proofs are working out fine, but I have begun to grow uneasy. I am still coming to terms with the idea of ‘art’ and my photography. True, I can compose within the format, be it square or rectangular, but am I an artist or am I simply a skilled documentarian? The same applies to the portrait pieces I am photographing with my 4×5 and then using the scanner to render them into a digital format. This is not my discussion alone, but one that has been on the table since photography began. Is a photograph art?

I was told tonight by someone at a cafe that if a photograph ‘moves him’, creates an emotional response, then it is art. I’ll buy that. So what kind of emotional response is my ‘wall photography’ generating? Nostalgia, loneliness, sadness…The scenes are desolate, full of ruins and, in some cases, the detritus of man. Overturned ore carts, rotting and rusting in the harsh Aegean climate; volcanic chunks of stone piled two meters high to create the snake-like patterns running over hills one sees from the aft deck of the Blue Star ferry as they sail from Pireaus south. There are no people in these images. There are only the bones of ghosts.

The portrait work, on the other hand, is completely different. I am trying to capture the essence of the person, or people, in their own environment. Some are in studios, others at home. In each case I have been able to catch a glimpse of something that reaffirms the great possibility of life. The terrace farms may collapse due to misuse over the centuries, but these people will live on through the images I am creating. I am creating. I can create. Perhaps that is as close a definition for ‘art’ as I will ever get. Art is creation, a recognition of beauty and grace despite the ravages of time. I can be a creator of something. I can document with a deft hand, be mindful of the alchemical processes and thus reveal something to the world that I find beautiful. There is a lazy part of me that wants this feeling to go away. The realist in me understands that questioning is essential. Without doubt and self-examination, how can I possibly progress?

JDCM

Serifos, 2012

Andiparos, 2012

Dentistry and roast pork…

By John on November 12, 2012 in autumn, beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft

As everyone knows by now, Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States, his second term. I, for one, and happy although the victory is bittersweet for me. This is the first major election in which I have not participated. My absentee ballot for New York State never reached Paros. I checked on-line and I am still registered. Obviously a mix-up somewhere. New York went thoroughly blue, so it wasn’t a huge deal (my absentee vote probably would not have mattered) but I feel it is still important to participate. Enough of that subject.

During the fall break I was on Andiparos. One evening while enjoying the satisfying crunch of potato chips, I bit down on something much more crunchy than the crisps and, thinking it was just a fried chunk of spud, swallowed it. It turned out that the side of one of my lower molars had sheared off and that is what I ate. It did not expose the root, so there was no pain or sensitivity but it did necessitate a visit to the local periodontist–a Greek word, by the way. After short research I was given a choice between the authentic, mad Greek dentist full of charm and local color or the modern young fellow up the street who had been recommended by another ex-pat. I chose the less colorful, more practical path and made a visit to Panagiotis Hondros, DMD, Msc. He took one look and booked me in at the beginning of the next week. Long story short, he re-built my tooth for 60 Euros (last week) and this week cleaned my teeth for another 70. In the USA this would have cost me hundreds of dollars and I would have had to have waited a month for the first appointment. I was very impressed. I was so impressed I have booked him for some cosmetic work on a tooth that has become discolored following a root canal in my mid-teens. It will be a simple procedure and we start bleaching next week.

As I write this post in Pebbles Jazz Bar, overlooking the bay of Paroikia, I am also roasting a bone-in pork loin. Some would call this multi-tasking. Here they call pork loin ‘pancetta’, not to be confused with the Italian bacon of the same name. Here is the recipe:

1 bone-in pork loin, approx. 1.5 kilos

4 small onions and three carrots, sliced in half, both from Dimitri, the old man who sells vegetables here in the streets.

7 cloves of garlic, chopped

fresh rosemary, gathered from the hills just below Marathi

fresh oregano, gathered on a hike along the Byzantine Road above Aspro Chorio

sea salt/ fresh cracked black pepper

200 ml extra virgin olive oil, from olives grown near Boutakos

Mix the olive oil, salt, pepper, chopped herbs and garlic in a bowl to make a paste. Place the halved vegetables in the bottom of a roasting pan to create the ‘rack’ on which to rest the meat. Pre-heat the oven to 190C (375*F). Smear the pork, all over, with the paste and place in the pan, on the onions and carrots. Roast until done, about 1 1/2 hours. Take out of the oven and let the roast rest for about 10 minutes, then dig in. I plan on gnawing on this for the next few days. Below is a photo, before cooking, to give you a visual of what it should look like after it is prepared.

JDCM

Parian roast pork

Sunny days, cooler nights…

By John on November 4, 2012 in autumn, beauty, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, silver darkroom, skill and craft

The mid-term break here at the Aegean Center on Paros has drawn to a close. The first day of the rest of the session begins tomorrow with our Monday morning meeting, and back to work we go. As usual, most of the students went traveling, as they should, and many came back in time to knuckle down and get back into the swing of things before the final push begins: 31 days until the student exhibit and I, for one, have not done enough. Granted, I have been shooting a lot of film and developing it, but my digital projects have slowed and I haven’t been printing as much as I should. I am not worried, however, as I know what and how much I can do and how to accomplish these tasks, but the newer students are just now acclimating to the idea that they are here to work as well as explore. First the push, then the crunch and before anyone knows it, it is time to say ‘farewell’ to Paros, unless they are lucky enough to return in the spring, a session that breathes at a different rate then the fall.

As I write this dispatch from Pebble’s Jazz Bar, overlooking the quiet bay of Paroikia, in America the election for the President slouches towards the the doorsteps of millions, like a wary and red-eyed dog begging for greasy scraps. On Tuesday evening the tally will reveal the overall tenor for the next four years of that country’s leadership and how this beast will be fed. Of course, this election will effect the whole world. If Obama wins, I hope he will have a chance to do more than just clean up his predecessor’s terrible messes. If Romney is chosen to succeed, I fear the world will see what kind of mess can be created by a man with a parochial world view, a medieval stance on civil rights, freedom of speech and a religious background that I, for one, must call cultish at best. I imagine the worst. For a good idea of what this could mean, please feel free to read ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood. To think that a military theocracy is impossible for the United States in this age is to bury your head in the sand.

The days have been warm and sunny. There has been a shift in the breeze, from south to north, resulting in clearer skies and cooler nights. I am hoping for more rain this week. As the temperature slowly drops this becomes more likely, but the weather report doesn’t list this as a possibility. More good news along with the weather is that the water in the darkroom has dropped to a lovely 21C. This makes my life easier: small mercies for a possible bleak future. I hope Yeats is wrong but poets seldom are.

JDCM

Quiet Andiparos…

By John on October 27, 2012 in autumn, beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, working

I am visiting Andiparos for part of our fall break from the Aegean Center. I have been sleeping in and staying up late reading and watching movies. Today I drove around for a while and photographed some of the stone wall formations that wind their way across the rugged landscape. I am disheartened by some of the building I see going on–large luxury estates high up on the sides of the mountains, along the steeply sloping terrain, ruining the views of the sea. Still, with my Mamiya c330 I can extract the beautiful lines of stone from the uglier new constructions, taking them out of context by cropping out the obvious greed and ego of modern man. Such is my fantasy.

Throughout the day I have had the song “Wichita Lineman”, written by Jimmy Webb and made famous by Glen Campbell, stuck in my head. I have always loved the melodic loneliness and deep heart of this song. A friend, mentor and colleague reminded me recently that country music is just as much ‘soul music’ as the famous hits of Aretha Franklin. This song is a good example for it is in that broad expansive landscape that one hears the lonely soul of America, forever distanced from its European and Asian roots, forever isolated from the rest of the world. Webb wrote,

I am a lineman for the county

and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload

I hear you singin’ in the wire,

I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman

is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation

but it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south

won’t ever stand the strain

And I need you more than want you,

and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

Campbell has many religious and political views that I do not share but one enduring legacy that I admire him for, however, has been his musical work, his labor. As a member of the “Wrecking Crew” he was one of the most sought out session players from the 50s through the 60s. He wasn’t a mainstream star until later. Last year he announced publicly that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. He is currently on tour with his family, a tour which will be his last. When I read Webb’s lyrics again, hearing Campbell’s voice, I cannot help but cry.

County Line Road, between Washington and Marshall Counties, Kansas.
Photo courtesy of Robert Crowe, photographer, St. Louis, Missouri.

For more of Robert Crowe’s photography and prose, please go here.

JDCM

Some Emerson from an autumnal island…

By John on October 10, 2012 in autumn, beauty, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, silver darkroom, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working

The weather here on Paros has been a blessing. It has felt like summer in early October and although the students at the Aegean Center are working hard and discovering the rhythms of the school, they have also enjoyed the sun, swimming and island life. The heat, however, has forced those of us in the darkroom to take measures for chilling our chemistry. This is not a problem, but it does require an extra step or two if one wishes to develop film properly. We will begin printing next week and by that time the ambient temperature should have cooled and our lives will be less complex. The breeze moving down the streets and alleys this evening is more crisp and there was a heavy dew this morning. We are supposed to have some rain next week which will slowly turn the amber and silver-grey hills around the bay light green. I enjoy the change of seasons and this time of year I am reminded that Paros, and all of Greece, has distinct times of year beyond the sun-drenched blue and white stereotype of tourist advertising.

red tomatoes in a blue bowl

I realized the other day that I left my collected Emerson paperback in Italy, perhaps in some hotel. I imagine it slipped from my backpack and under the bed, forgotten in my eagerness to return to Greece. I hope it ends up on some shelf to be read by a passing traveler. I do have my ‘A Year with Emerson”, which will quote for today, October 10. He wrote about his ideal scenario regarding readers and how he would like to be perceived: “I would have my book read as I have read my favorite books, not with explosion & amazement, a marvel and a rocket, but a friendly & agreeable influence stealing like the scent of a flower or the sight of a new landscape on a traveler. I neither wish to be hated & defied by such as I startled, nor to be kissed and hugged by the young whose thoughts I stimulate.”

He also wrote,

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide
upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There
are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are
right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some
of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it
takes brave men and women to win them.”

Both of these concepts–the idea of the more quiet path, modesty being the philosophy and the understanding that one must always be true to oneself and not falter regardless of outside influences–inspire me to be a better person. The given fact is, of course, that I am human and will sometimes stumble, sometimes reach for glory or even react in a self-deprecating manner. Imperfection makes the best and most lofty ideals attainable.

(Tomatoes have nothing to do with this post. I just liked the picture. Think of it as an interlude. It is also 4 years old and from New York. Nothing to do with Greece, Emerson or anything at all, really.)

JDCM

Emerson on the beach…

By John on August 19, 2012 in 4×5 photography, beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, working

I sat on the beach the other day and listened to the waves lapping against the sloping sand. While the currents slowly rolled the soft-colored stones rounder, my mind drifted from the page I was reading to the motorboat out in the bay and then back to the page only to be distracted again by the clarity of the sky and shadowy islands lying not-so-distant from my colorful towel. I wonder if Emerson ever thought that one of his essays would become the subject of this writer’s musing or his book find its way to this sandy place? Probably. I am sure that his young admirer Walt Whitman would have felt at home here too. He’ll be next. “Leaves of Grass” during a wet Aegean February might be a good read for me. In any case, in his essay ‘Circles’ published in 1841, Ralph demonstrates prescience. In the modern world the concept of circles and cycles is common. Society knows the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘oneness’ as well as other ’round’ concepts. Buddhism is not the mysterious idea it was so many decades ago and the phrase “what comes around, goes around” has been in the modern lexicon since, I suppose, the early 1960s. “Ye reap what ye sow” has been around longer and means much the same thing. What Emerson speaks of, I feel, is something larger than that. Ideas come and go and those who live in the past naturally point in fear and condemnation towards any revolution of thought or action that may threaten their temporary power. That’s a good word too—revolution. It implies a turning. Seasons turn, wheels turn and the wheel inside the wheel turns as an analogy of an invisible world we may only glimpse in dreams or moments of sublime inspiration, connections with something larger outside ourselves. Then again, there I was sitting on a beach in an archipelago called the Cyclades, or “The Circle”. Hmm…Here is an excerpt from Emerson’s essay titled “Circles”, published in 1841:

“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it all this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea; they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice: here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam, by electricity.”

“There are no fixtures in nature…” Indeed. The waves roll and dissolve stones to sand, the wind shifts and islands disappear. My eye wanders from the page to the sky and back again. I blame the Meltemi for these ramblings. The wind rushes, sometimes feeling as if it is blowing through my head. In one ear and out the other.

JDCM

Emerson, beauty and hiking…

By John on August 8, 2012 in beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working

I have been hiking some more through the dry heat of the island and enjoying the sweat and the feeling of the hot air going into my lungs as I breathe. Most of the walks have been around 12 km and primarily on well-traveled paths or roads. That is a drawback since walking on pavement is terrible for my legs and back. Tomorrow I head back out to Kolimbithres, but this time I will skirt the rocky edge of the island, bushwhacking through the dry, thorny underbrush. The goal will be the same: the beach and swimming. I’ll try to get some pictures. I must say that I am enjoying the solo hiking. It allows me to clear my head and think thoughts both shallow and deep. I guess I just let them come and go as I walk, similar to a walking meditation in Buddhism. Awareness of the steps I take and the objects to use and avoid while hiking is part of the meditation. John Pack, the director of the Aegean Center believes that hiking is one of the ways we exercise the brain. I can see his point. As I walk though the uneven surfaces of rock, dirt and thorn my brain is calculating and sending millions of mathematical signals to my muscles and tendons, making sure I do not fall or slip. Mindful awareness and the physical world. Emerson would like that.

Speaking of the poet, I was reading him this morning and in his essay ‘Domestic Life’ he discusses the concept of beauty. For him, beauty is all but indefinable and certainly transient. Beauty, as he would agree, is in the eye of the beholder. He wrote, “Beauty is, even in the beautiful, occasional,-or as one has said, culminating and perfect only a single moment before which is unripe, and after which it is on the wane. But beauty is never quite absent from our eyes. Every face, every figure suggests its own right and sound estate.”

Beauty is fleeting, random, changeable like the weather. Thus have been my affections, although their emotional imprint remains fossilized and frozen in time. I look back on the record with wistful, sometimes misty, eyes and wonder what would have been had the timing been different, the light at a different angle, something…Beauty, though, to me at least, remains fixed. I still think of past loves as beautiful, for there was beauty in the thinking and acting. None of them, I must admit, retain any angelic nature of memory. Certainly nothing devious either, and I have never fooled myself into thinking that there was anything other than a normal, human connection at work. To think otherwise would be to elevate these affections atop a pedestal and denigrate my own existence beneath them. Neither of these are real. So I will remember Emerson’s observation that beauty, like the cherry blossoms below, is real and on the vine yet subject to the shifting climate.

JDCM

Cherry blossoms, Manassas, Virginia, 2008

Walking across Paros and flying through space…

By John on August 6, 2012 in craft, Cyclades stone walls, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, working

Since I have returned to Paros I have taken two excellent, long and hot walks. On Saturday I walked from my apartment in Paroikia along the back roads to the northern tip of the island. This area is called Kolimbithres and is host to three lovely beaches, an Eco-Park, a famous monastery and a fascinating boatyard, if that is your sort of thing. The whole walk was about 12 km ( about 7.5 miles) and I covered the stretch in about 2 hours. I had a quick swim and began hoofing it back to the bus stop. It really has been very hot here and even though I stayed well hydrated I felt it was alright to take the bus back to town. I tried some hitchhiking but there was no luck until a nice English couple pulled over and gave me a lift in their converted postal van. An excellent day of excersise. It was wonderful to experience the aroma of all the cedars and pines baking in the blazing Greek sun-a combination of resin and marble dust. Lovely.

Today I went for another long walk, this time from the small hill town of Lefkes, over the hills and down to the beaches on the eastern side of the island, namely Kalogheros, or as many folks call it, the Clay Beach. This is due to the massive clay deposits that make up the walls facing the sea and the nearby island of Naxos. You can smash small bits and mix it with seawater to form a paste and then spread it over any exposed skin. After letting it dry you dive into the water and wash it off. Your skin feels silky and smooth after having this spa treatment. To think that some people spend thousand for this elsewhere! It was wander through the parched, golden hills, dotted with old windmills, tiny churches, monasteries and miles of ancient olive groves. It is fascinating to think that these groves have withstood hundreds of years of raging wind, rain, snow and heat and are just now coming into their prime as fruit-bearing trees. I stopped by a small mountain spring I know of off the track and behind an old church and found the cold water flowing from the spigot at a healthy trickle in this hot, dry August. It was lovely to see the stone walls running through the vista. Some of them are also centuries old but are identical in many ways to those constructed more recently. I took some pictures and, once again, stayed hydrated. Once I made it to the beach I jumped in the water and swam about a bit then headed back to the bus stop in Prodromos for a leisurely ride back to Paroikia.

All of today’s journey began this morning in the upstairs ‘Big Room’ at the school. John Pack (and Gabriel Pack), our director (and son), had set up the projector so we could observe the landing of the most recent Mars rover ‘Curiosity’. There was coffee, homemade doughnuts and palpable excitement. It was a tense thirty-five minutes and, for me here on Earth, a reminder of how important these excursions can be, if not for humanity then at least for the idea that there is something out there that can still hold our human fascination. After that I began my own small journey, from one place to the other. Maybe not as pioneering a trip to Mars, but essential in re-establishing my own sense of place on a swiftly turning planet.

JDCM

Melancholia atop the Hotel Attalos…

By John on July 1, 2012 in darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

I am once again in Athens after a long boat ride from Paros. Tomorrow I fly to Vienna, en route to America and a month in the green, lush Hudson valley and my mother’s home. I was saddened leaving Paros today. I sat at a cafe and said goodbye to a new friend from Paris and as I walked to the port I hugged a fellow student farewell as she opened up the small cafe where she worked. The crowd to get on the Blue Star Paros was large and I waited in the sun for about 15 minutes until we boarded. One of our teachers at the school was boarding another ferry on his way back to Amsterdam and he was being helped by a good friend (to many of us) who, in a few weeks, will be saying goodbye to Paros forever. Her life path has shifted and will no longer include Greece or the Cyclades. I was struck by a melancholic mood as these interactions occurred and as I boarded my ferry I received a text from a friend who had arrived too late to say goodbye in person. We spoke on the phone and it was good to hear his voice. A few minutes later another friend sent me a ‘bon voyage’ text. So some of these ‘farewells’ were from a distance and not face-to-face. It felt as if something was missing. There is no substitute for the real thing.

I have come to an odd point in my journey through Greece. I have many questions and my future on Paros suddenly seems less certain than it did a year ago. There was a time where I needed university credit-that is no longer necessary. It is essential I establish my own existence outside of the Aegean Center if I am to survive happily on that little island. I am a photographer and need to be so with or without the Aegean Center connection. To rely on that resource for too much support (of any kind) would be unfair to them and detrimental to my own sense of self and stunt my intellectual and social growth.

I have made friends and lost friends at the Aegean Center over the past two years. I have made terrible errors of judgement regarding friendships and even recently the possibilities of love. This has had the effect of pushing me further into myself, thus finding an easier path to isolation and solitude. I know this is not always a good place for me to be, but I feel as if I have no choice. If I am to be emotionally secure then I have to be very wary, almost suspicious, of others. As my father has warned me, I can be too naive regarding people. Yes, there are some people I can trust, but more to avoid or at least be careful around.

So I leave Paros with a heavy heart. Few real farewells and only one or two ‘kalotaxidhis’ have left me wondering what my future in Greece will entail. I will work through the year since I have made that commitment to myself and others, but after that it may be time to move along. We shall see…

JDCM

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