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Teaching and craft…

By on May 26, 2013 in beauty, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, working

There is less than a week until our student exhibit at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts here on Paros.   It has been a busy three months for most.  Like all previous sessions there is always one or two students who fall away.  This spring has been no different.  One student left and returned home a few weeks ago.  Another has stayed here but has followed a different path from those found on our artistic maps.  So be it.  There is nothing I can do about either case.  I will say, in my own defense, that I was there for both of them in a professional capacity when they needed me and,  in the beginning, helped to guide them through some of our philosophies.  Their individual decisions to take different routes has no bearing on the Center, the teachers or my own labors.

This spring I was given the honor of filling in as Silver Darkroom instructor.  This is not a post I assume to be permanent.  All teachers learn that their own skills, craft and knowledge increase when they pass on what they know to others.  This has been my experience as well.  I have learned more about the art and craft of photography in three months than I thought possible.  It was knowledge that I had already accrued so to give it away freely only strengthened my own foundations.   It was not  review or regurgitation.  I found myself solving problems and asking questions of myself from a new point of view.  One important lesson is to be able to say “I don’t know.  Let’s find the answer together.”  What freedom to not suppose, to not be a fake!

There is an ethos to teaching.  It is not enough to greet the student, spend a few hours or days, and then set them free.  That would be tantamount to showing them a map and telling them to drive to California from New York without first discussing the possible roads west.  As the more experienced traveler it is important to guide these eager minds along the way.  Yes, let them take a wrong turn, experience a sudden detour or two and even run out of fuel, but do not abandon them in the badlands of inexperience.  Let them know that you are there, waiting up ahead at the next marker or traveling alongside.  I have practiced this and it has paid off.  I have gained a level of patience and understanding by remaining available.  I have set up appointments and answered their questions to the best of my abilities, abilities which have grown over the course of three months.  To some this may seem a sacrifice of my own personal time, my own independence.  It is quite the opposite.   I have never felt so free, so happy and, at times, so completely baffled.  At that point I turn to someone more knowledgable than myself.  Such is the nature of education, or it should be.

There is a quote from George Bernhard Shaw: “Those who can, do…those who can’t, teach.”  I must admit that I have found this to be very untrue and can only believe that GBS had his head (beard and all) deeply imbedded in his anus when he thought it up.  The quote should be “Those who can, teach.”    Learning is a cycle:  Practice>Teach>Learn>Practice>Teach>Learn>Practice>Teach>Learn…

Ralph Waldo Emerson had a better idea:

“Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.”

JDCM

Space and the end of Easter…

By on May 12, 2013 in beauty, Cyclades stone walls, Paroikia, Paros, quiet islands, rangefinder camera, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

I just helped a friend board the Blue Star ferry ‘Delos’, en route to Pireaus.  It is Sunday evening, May 12, on Paros and the Easter season has ended…finally!  The smell of lamb fat has rinsed from my hands, the out-of-towners are returning to their homes and the island is quieting down.  I was shocked by the crowds already on board the ‘Delos’ as well as those embarking.  Hordes.  Masses.  All with rolling luggage dragging behind them, seemingly forgotten in some small dusty corner of their minds.  Passive traveling at its worst.  Why is it that we forget about the items directly behind us and we tend to lead with memories from so long ago ahead as if they are current events? Hmmm…

On the other hand, the Aegean Center students enjoyed a lovely day out at sea with Captain Tassos and his crew for our spring “Boat Trip”, a somewhat circular route around Andiparos, stopping at Despotiko, then Taverna Zombos on the southern side of Andiparos for a mid-afternoon feast: gigantes, kolokithokeftedes, bean salad, xoriatiko salate, calamari, oktopodi salate, saganaki tiri…a true food event.  I needed some space, some time alone so I stayed back at the school and worked on my current painting, a view from a balcony overlooking a small courtyard adjacent to the school.  I had three hours of quiet for this and I managed to work very well, very hard and productively in that short span. Then I hopped in my trusty FIAT Panda, drove to the Andiparos ferry, went over, swam  at both Livadia and Agios Giorgos beaches, took some pictures (film and digital) and met up with the rest of the school for the above-mentioned meal.  Orea!

Here is an image from today.  A view of Andiparos–Leica M8, Voigtlander 28mm, ISO 160, F/16, 1/125, hyperfocus…clouds and wires

Some walls, a lamp,  sea, sky, clouds.  Enjoy!

JDCM

Greek Easter, Paros, 2013…

By on May 3, 2013 in beauty, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized, working

There was a time before my time, before the time of my sisters, my parents, my friends…

For some reason this phrase popped in to my head today.  For the past few days I have been helping a friend and mentor and her husband move house.  It has been an emotional and difficult time for them and I have been honored and humbled to help sort through decades of their life here on Paros, and earlier.  We have been separating the wheat from the chaff–a difficult process.

Much of what they wished to save has been in the form of photographs, or more precisely, photographic archives.  That is the only way to think of it.  Negatives of all sizes, black and white, color, contact sheets, prints.  Their time here has been documented and preserved in hard-copy.  There was little  digital imagery.  As I worked I felt something meaningful, truly palpable, while holding a negative up to the light, perusing a contact sheet or carrying an artist’s portfolio bursting with prints.  Compared to the lightweight, back-lit digital medium that takes up little space and weighs all but nothing, these items, this archive, made sense to me.  Maybe those of us in the digital age have become so accustomed to the ease with which we view, and then delete, images, or page through them via myriad viewing software programs that we are beginning to forget the importance of this process.

My point is that memory, that elusive, ever-changing spirit we carry in our soul, is something that should have weight.  It should take up space in our homes.  We should, every once in a while, take a photo album or box of negatives off the shelf, dust them off and hold them up to the light of day.  As we gaze, we smile.  We remember friends long gone or vistas experienced in a way that we cannot when looking at an LED screen or something of that nature.  We smile, or we cry.  We tell a friend, “Look…here…this is when we…” and then hand them the fragile transparency or piece of paper.  We pass on wheatthat experience.

We are all repositories of the past.  This brings me back to the idea that there was once a time before my time, before the time of those who came before me.  I have books as proof, books I can hold.  I have folders full of negatives, unprinted.  I am accumulating weight in the form of artists portfolios stuffed with prints.   I have held them up to the light of day.  I say, “Look…here…This is when I…

Happy Easter!

JDCM

 

News from Paros…a journey of small bites…

By on March 10, 2013 in 4×5 photography, beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, darkroom work, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized, working
Lupens blooming along the path to the monastery of Agios Kyriaki

Lupens blooming along the path to the monastery of Agios Kyriaki

The first week of the spring 2013 session at the Aegean Center has all but ended.  As I sit in Pebble’s Jazz Cafe, overlooking the bay of Paroikia, the sun begins a slow descent towards the faint outline of Sifnos to my west.  Since my return at the end of January the sunset has moved slowly north along the ridge of that island, the daylight has increased and the temperature has become warmer.  There have been welcome harbingers of a lovely spring: warm, breezy with high clouds and only sprinklings of rain, barely enough to dampen my laundry hung out to dry, birds singing in the bright morning…

My work for the next few months has been laid out for me, a buffet of grand proportions.  My own large-format portrait work, which I have written about before, takes priority if I wish to have the printing finished by the end of May and the work at the framers by June.  This is the beginning-of-the-end of a long-term project, the seeds of which I planted during  the winter of 2011/2012.  I have two or three more sittings to arrange and then I can begin crossing tasks off the list.

I am also teaching in the darkroom, guiding the bright and eager minds of our small cadre along the meditative paths of silver photography.  I have been impressed in this first week by their enthusiasm, previous experience and general attitude towards the idea of ‘slow photography’.  I can only hope that they, too, feel as if I am an able mentor for their journey.  There are two or three returning students working on the darkroom, which benefits everyone.

The third element is my return to oil painting.  I loved it the first time last spring and this time around seems no different.  Just today I was working on a piece and I was struck by how much I love oils: their malleability and fluidity, the ability to push them around on a properly prepared canvas…

The fourth menu item this session is a fascinating journey into the world of Johannes Vermeer, more precisely his use of the camera obscura in his work.  There are three of us working with Jane Pack and in the next few weeks we will construct a full-scale replica of the master painter’s  camera, discover how he applied it and use it ourselves to draw, and then paint, some still lives.

When I realized a few days ago the scope of the labors set before me, my heart and mind quaked.  I quickly spoke to an advisor which helped.  I know that I can accomplish all of these things, but like a plate of food at the above mentioned buffet, this kind of smorgasbord can seem impossible to consume.  Like any dinner, it starts with the first bite.   Before I know it will be the end of May and I will be ordering coffee and dessert.

JDCM

 

Spring unfolds at the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts…

By on March 4, 2013 in autumn, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized, working

The spring session has begun here on Paros at the Aegean Center.  The students have mostly all arrived, riding in on the winds and waves.  It poured rain all day yesterday and the streets turned into small rivers.  By last night the clouds had rolled away and today is sunny and bright.  I have many thoughts running through my head, so many raindrops, really, and in many cases just as discarnate.  Add them up, however,  and they are a flood, a river of their own.  I found it comforting to stop thinking.  I loaded up some Plus-X, grabbed my tripod and headed down the now undimmed streets of Paroikia.  Action, not thinking, always improves my day.

I will be painting again this session.  I will also apply the finishing touches on a large format photography project that I began last year, a series of portraits of people I know here on Paros.  They are students, ex-pats, local Parians…My Greek barber, Nikos, for instance, as well as the English owner of a local cafe.  A motley crew to be sure.  I will finish the principle photography and printing in the next three months, bring all the final proofs to Athens and have them matted and framed.  I hope to accomplish this before the end of June when I head back to America for a month.  When I return in August I will hang the show and open the exhibit.  It will be the culmination of my work here at the Center, my Masters Thesis in Photography, if you will.  I have no idea where the show will be.  I’ll stick my neck out again.  So far that hasn’t been the most successful venture here on Paros.  I have lost my head more times than not (certainly gaining wisdom) but what choice do I have?  “Action and more action…”, as they say…What follows my exhibition is anyone’s guess.  I suddenly feel lost at sea with the prospect of September.

I will be assisting again in the darkroom with the students, as I did last fall, so my energies will be focused on their work more than my own.   Like the weather moving in circles, alternating rain, sun wind and calm, the Aegean Center is part of the cycle of  change.  I cannot do much except sit back and trust the process, let the story write itself and accept the results.  Once again, to assume anything would be foolish, self-serving and arrogant.  As of this morning I am excited to work with five or six (maybe seven) students, some who have never handled silver emulsion and some with more knowledge.  We shall see how the session evolves.  I remember having many preconceived notions of photography when I arrived here on Paros three years ago.  They were soon dashed in favor of a new and vibrant dynamic.  As a lotus blossom, spring unfolds…

JDCM

News from the sick bay…

By on February 14, 2013 in beauty, craft, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, rangefinder camera, skill and craft, spring in the Aegean, working

The rains have come in to stay, or so it seems.  It is winter in the Aegean and it is damp and cold, the kind of damp that seeps into one’s bones and begs for all to just stay in bed.  There have been a couple of days of sunshine, but other than that it has rained, drizzled, poured down and showered.

Last Sunday evening I was sitting in my apartment reading when suddenly it felt as if all the energy had drained from my body and mind.  I was ill, I knew it.  I managed to stay awake for another hour or so but then I was in bed and out like a light.  The next morning I woke up as sick as one could be. My lungs were full of crud, as were my sinuses, swollen glands, etc…I took the advice of friends and went to the doctor who gave me a prescription for antibiotics, expectorant, throat gargle and high strength ibuprofen.  As the days have progressed I have improved but I feel I am not out of the woods yet.  Three more days of pills and I should be, well…right as rain.  Over the days friends have brought me food.  Chicken soup from one, a fish stew from another.  Today I was given some onions and carrots so I could make lentil soup.  These are some of the finest people I have ever known.

On another note, my quarantine has given me the chance to photograph my immediate surroundings from the viewpoint of the small balconies on either side of my flat and out my kitchen window.  They have an abstract quality that perhaps I would like to paint also; geometric shapes of varying hues of tan to white, blue expanses broken my myriad antennae.  I’ll post some images next week.

So it is movies, books, soups, plenty of fluids and lots of bed rest for me.  I have been reading Joseph Campbell and Edward Weston; James Bond and Harry Potter–comfort foods for the mind, body and soul.  The weather is supposed to improve by Monday and then John and I can get back to work building benches and so forth.

JDCM

Guidance, delineation and communication…

By on February 8, 2013 in beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, quiet islands, rangefinder camera, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, working

It began with lamp posts in 2005.  There was a quayside in Ermioni, a boat on dry dock and an ornate iron lamp post looking out over the still water at sunset.  Then there were more lamp posts in Bosnia, arcing around the gentle curve of a mountain road, leading to where…?

Now there are stone walls climbing and moving across the landscape of the Kyklades.  They have been accompanied by electrical poles, maybe telephone lines, I am not sure…

I have been photographing them for the past few years, mixed in with all the rest.  Driving back from an area here on Paros the other day I was struck by how these all are indications of the hand of man in an otherwise wild landscape.  I have a choice.  I can bemoan the state of affairs regarding these structures or embrace them as something more, strong vertical and horizontal lines, shadows of human needs.  I have thought of lamp posts as bringers of light in the darkness, guidance along dim roads.  The stone walls define our boundaries, of both self and property, for they are often too insignificant to keep any creature at bay.  The poles signify communication over distances.  Guidance, delineation and communication.  I would post some examples, but I feel that everyone has an idea of what I am speaking of without the illustrations.

It is raining here.  Last night the deluge dropped a hail of roaring ice in Paroikia.  It woke me at 4AM.  It also deposited all the red, sandy dust that has been blowing from the south, out of the deserts of North Africa.  This is the scirocco.  The air was clear this morning and as I drove south to visit some friends for coffee I marveled at the archipelago surrounding me: Sifnos, Serifos, Sikonos, Ios, Kimolos, Syros, Tinos, Andiparos…rugged walls ran through green hills, telephone lines stretched thinly into the blue distance and, even though the sun was bright, my heart was gladdened to see the occasional unlit streetlight along my path.  If I came this way on a dark and stormy night I would not become lost in the tempest.

JDCMBlue-Door-(behind-the-curtain)

Parian viewpoint…

By on January 29, 2013 in craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, rangefinder camera, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, Uncategorized, working

I returned to Greece last Friday and after a long and uneventful journey I found myself at the “Eleftherios Venizelos” airport, the gateway to Greece.  It was quiet at 16:40 hours on a Saturday.  Aside from my Aegean Air flight, there was only one other craft that seemed to be in use, a KLM A320 parked at the terminal.  This speaks to both the slower winter season and the decision for other airline companies to curtail their schedules into this country, a nation hit hard by both the global economic crisis and a media-fed-fear of governmental instability.  While the economics are true, the other claim holds no water.  This is a land of change and transition and so many people are preferring to sit on the sidelines and watch the drama unfold.

It was raining and the skies were lead-grey.  I hailed a taxi and as we headed towards the city I was struck by how green everything had become since my departure in December.  The traditional music coming out of the small radio  made my heart melt and run like the rain.  As we sped along the motorway, the driver handed me an orange.  “From my garden–this morning”, he said.

Change is a difficult stage of life for any organism, whether it is a country or an individual.  The best course of action is to change the dynamic.  When an old path isn’t working, one does not stay on the same road and travel with more verve.  One takes a turn at the next crossing, thus expanding the journey.  If one has a philosophy that is dear, it is important to keep this philosophy as a compass and at the same time open up prospects for new and exciting ways to implement the fundamentals.  12 years ago I grew weary of the career in which I had been laboring.  Instead of finding a new niche within that  limited community I shifted gears and turned off the main road and connected with a new highway.  Now I am in Greece, practicing my skills and craft in photography.  The remnants of the old ways are gone, leaving only memories and an ability to create this marvelous dish.   I can only offer advice based on my own experiences.  When something isn’t working, get out of the way and take a new road.  After all, change is the only true constant in the Universe.  Photography is the same.  There are so many variables within the craft, especially with the added tools of the digital medium.  It would be foolish and arrogant to discount them in an attempt to hold onto some mythological idea.

Speaking of that, I had a change of heart recently regarding the noted photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.  When he said, “In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry”  I have to applaud.   I agree wholeheartedly but it was disappointing to watch the documentary, ‘The Impassioned Eye’ .  This film revealed that he cared little for, and avoided at all costs, the developing of his film and printing of his images, a part of the journey that I feel is so important to the photographic life.  I believe that he was little more than a guy with a camera in the right place at the right time.  A small bubble has burst, but a bubble nonetheless.  Now I am a little more free than I was.  Change is good and necessary.  Change is essential.

A view of Agios Phokas, Paros.

A view of Agios Phokas, Paros.

More New Year’s ramblings…

By on January 3, 2013 in beauty, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, spring in the Aegean, working
Leica M8, Voigtlander 75mm lens, f/3.4, 1/125 sec, ISO 320

Leica M8, Voigtlander 75mm lens, f/3.4, 1/125 sec, ISO 320

It is bitter cold outside.  This morning the thermometer read -6F.  The sun is out and the snow is all but blinding as I look out the kitchen window at the frozen pond and the string of suet cages hanging in the still morning air.  The usual suspects are pecking away, probably using as much energy to fly back and forth from their nests as they are in the eating.

I depart America in about 3 weeks.  It has been a good visit so far and I have been reminded by its truncated duration of the decision I made a few months ago: to leave this place.  I am only a visitor now.  Yes, I have an office where I am typing this post, a bedroom where I sleep, a makeshift darkroom where I can develop film and even make prints if need be.  I even have a car.  While sitting at the table this morning, watching the birds and drinking my coffee, the thought went through my head that I had better get packing.  It is time to go.  Time to go home.  Time to go back to Paros and the home I am making for myself.  Everything is as it should be here, whether I like it or not.  I have a few tasks to take care of and my conscience will be clear.   Yet I am still in limbo.

And what is next…?  I really haven’t a clue.  I have some ideas, some concepts of the possibilities, but there is nothing firm, nothing definite in any of them.  Photography, painting, hiking…these aspects are in the mix.  Teaching?  I have no idea nor would I assume.  The Camino del Santiago in the autumn?  Moving to Athens, enrolling in language school…?  Once again, nothing to hang my hat on.  The only thing for sure is that that I have some airline tickets booked on certain dates and I have to be there to board the plane or I miss the flight.  Whatever happens in between is a crapshoot.

The 17th century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal wrote, “We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.”  I’ll write some more about uncertainty and not knowing later.  Hmmm…I just thought of something,  something I have been bitter about for a while.   Last summer I walked in a conversation and the subject was how sad it was that ‘he’ had not achieved self-actualization by the time ‘he’ was 35…I am just paranoid enough to think that those folks were talking about me.  If this is true I can only respond that I find it terribly boring that one would be “actualized” by the time they were 35.   What purpose then further growth?  I think this ‘actualized’ idea is just another post-modern trap perpetrated to help with the easy pigeon-holing of the human spirit.  Kind of like “finding your voice.”

JDCM