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Busy, busy, busy…

By on August 13, 2013 in beauty, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, quiet islands, spiritual journey, Uncategorized, working

The Greek summer holiday is upon us and Paroikia is mobbed with tourists from Athens and beyond.   The roads are crammed, the cafes are overrun and anyone with any sense stays away from town unless they really need to do something vitally important, like go to the hospital or something.  This will all end, for the most part, in about 5 days, but for now…

I went to Naoussa last night with some friends to see the opening of another artist’s work.   He is very technical, very intellectual and, I feel, on the cusp of something.  What I felt when I walked into the room was a sense of change, a shift and alteration of shape in his thinking and raison.  It was a transitional vibe.  Others did not feel that way, but so what.  He would say that too.  I am quite sure he is not particularly worried about whether or not people like his work, or even understand it in the same way as he does.  I, for one, was happy to go and see the event.  In regards to the holiday crowds, Naoussa is very different than Paroikia.  It is not stretched along the seafront but rather all crammed in together, like a white-washed, sun-burned and idiotic fist.  This made for dense crowds and the ‘wall-to-wall-people’ effect.  I am not a huge fan of that.  It was a relief to return to Paroikia, sit at a table with friends and have a late supper.

My own show is on the near horizon.  The 22 photographs are matted, framed and behind glass.  They look wonderful.  The space will be free on Saturday morning and, I hope, I can begin hanging my pieces that afternoon.   The posters start going up tomorrow and I have been handing out cards.  More cards to go out this weekend.  I have designed and put in place a new website specifically for this show and will send out an email blast to the mailing list this Sunday.  I don’t want anyone to see the show in it’s entirety until then.

I am pretty nervous about this show.  It is a big deal for me, perhaps bigger than I realize.  The future will tell…

I have decided to save some money this year and have bought a bike–a used mountain bike from a local bike shop.  I like it a lot.  I have been cycling to a local beach every day, jumping in the sea to cool off and then cycling back.  The weight I gained while I was in the USA will drop off and I save money and gas to boot.  In the off-season, it cost me 320 euros per month to rent a car.  This is extravagant.  The bike cost 375 euros and with the added helmet, pump, spare tube, etc…the bill came to 515 euros.  There are still a few items to pick up but they are not necessities.  If I can work my way back down to 82 kilos from the 88 I now currently weigh, then I will be happy.

One thing I have noticed is the obvious disregard the tourists have for bikes on the road.  Just an observation.  Perhaps I will start a movement based on the idea of banning all non-essential motor vehicles from the island of Paros, or at least Paroikia and the surrounding environs.  It would be a safer, quieter and more interesting place to live, that is for sure.  Imagine all the car rental companies renting bicycles instead?  Cheaper, less insurance, less maintenance…For now, I stick to the backroads.

JDCM

 

MY new bike...

My new bike…

 

 

 

Just a bleak update…

By on July 25, 2013 in skill and craft, spiritual journey, Uncategorized

Hudson Station, 2013I haven’t updated in a while.  My apologies.  Not much happening here in New York to report, really.  Not much I am too enthusiastic about here in the US, actually.  I visited New York City twice and although my motives were sound I was very disappointed by what has happened to humanity.  There are far too many people there and no one seems to be happy.  They are always on their mobile phones or some other application, as if these things will make them happy or even connect them to other human beings in some meaningful way.  They haven’t understood that by using the internet to connect with others they are merely closing themselves off to the realities of actual one-to-one contact.  This is the great myth of the electronic information age.   Online reality is fiction.  Also, the more I have been talking to other teachers and mentors about the kids of today the more we all agree:  few of them actually want to work towards a goal that requires effort or any real thinking.  They want the end result right now.  They want their hand-held devices to do the thinking for them.  The turn their cameras on ‘auto’ and let the machine create, not their minds.   They demand good grades just for showing up.

This was evident at the Museum of Modern Art yesterday.  I rode the train into the city to see a wonderful show by the photographer Walker Evans.  It is the 75th Anniversary of his exhibit of American Photographs.  First off….MoMA is a terrible museum.  It didn’t feel like a museum.  It felt more like a large shopping mall.  It was crowded and noisy.  People were stuck to their handheld devices as they wandered lost an unseeing through the many chilly rooms.  They impolitely took pictures of the work, not really looking or learning, but rather documenting in a poor fashion.  They talked loudly into their mobiles.  Children screeched, ran around.  I was appalled.  90% of the people there were only present so they could check MoMA off their NYC list.

The Walker Evans show was in a small room on the 4th Floor, not in the photography section.  It was shoehorned between the crass, colorful and superficial 1960s pop-art section and the large abstract works of Arshile Gorky.  These photographs are small, none larger than 8×10, and perfect.  Precious.  Lovely.  Evocative.  “American” in the best sense of the word.  Yet people were wandering in and out, disinterested and not comprehending the importance of these images, especially when compared to the emptiness of Warhol, Stella and Lichtenstein.   I left the museum after 45 minutes, disgusted.  Humanity is doomed.  We have already forgotten our history.  But MoMA has succeeded.  It is a perfect modern art museum.  It represents all that sucks about modern art and modern culture.  It is about fashion, fads and the next shocking big pile of expensive, market driven shit.  It is superficial and dead, cold and, in the end, not worth the real estate it sits on.  It is about the $25 adult ticket fare and the gift shop.  It is about money.  If you worship money, please go.  If you, like me, have grown so disillusioned by the cesspool that the US in many ways has become, then skip it.   It is a train wreck of culture.  Nothing to see here.  Move along folks.

JDCM

wire and wood

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

 

Still lives, Vermeer and constant change…

By on April 17, 2013 in Uncategorized

I post this dispatch not from Paros, but from the ancient and industrial Port of Pireaus.  I am sitting at the Terminal CoffeeFoodDrinks Cafe, adjacent to the Port Authority Police Station.  The Center has been on spring break for the past few days and I have taken the opportunity to head to Athens for some r&r and some shopping for the darkroom, and myself.

I have been photographing some of the still lives used by Jun-Pierre Shiozawa, the painting instructor at the Aegean Center.  These two are a small selection he has used for his negative space drawing class.  I saw them and found them fascinating and worth documenting.  They are colorful and difficult.  I will post some more later this week.

The third image (jug and pear) is the projection of a still life from inside the camera obscura, built by Jane Pack and the advanced painting students.  I was, at one point, involved in that project at a fundamental level.  I had to withdraw due to other responsibilities.  I was thrilled (and cramped!) to be able to crawl inside the camera with my Canon 5D MkII and my 35mm lens to make a capture.  It has not been altered in Photoshop other than a small amount of cropping.  The colors are as they were to my eyes.  pen-jar-sldove-slAfter looking at the image I am convinced that Jane and her crew have cracked the code to Vermeer’s camera work.  Amazing!

 

On a sadder note…the longtime cafe overlooking the bay of Paroikia where I have posted so many of these blog entries has closed.  Pebbles Jazz Cafe has been a fixture on the Paros waterfront for over 15 years.  Aegean Center students have sat and watched the sun set after a long day in their studios; musicians have played their instruments on warm summer nights for happy, sun-drenched crowds; Dimitri has smilingly brought coffees, wine and other beverages to those in need of the view, some peace and a vantage above street level and photographers have sat safely inside, blogging about the changes they feel while they sipped their filter coffees and listened to the winter wind shake the walls.   As one friend on Paros has said, hopefully,” someone else will open it up but the sunset remains the same.”  I have a t-shirt I bought there a couple of years ago.  I imagine it is a collectors item now.  RIP…

Vermeer-1

So I head back to the island in about an hour.  Three more days until the second “half” of the term   and there will be much stressing out and running around by the students.  Me too, probably, as I have not been able to get much work done with my own portrait project.  For me, I am hoping for a flurry of printing and then some work with a Greek translator for the posters, handouts and (cross your fingers!) maybe even a small book to go along with the show.  Right now I am looking at the end of August heading into September…Cross your fingers.  Cross all of your fingers!

 

JDCM

March 31…

By on March 31, 2013 in Uncategorized

In the West today is Easter.  It is also the end of Passover, I think.  In Greece we are still in the midst of Orthodox Christian Lent.  Our Easter Sunday is not until May 5, over a month away.  Spring has sprung.  Here at the Aegean Center we have two more weeks before our spring break and then, when we resume, only a month before the end of term.  Time certainly flies when you are having fun, and I must admit, I am having fun.  Don’t get me wrong, I am full-bore with work, but as a wise man said a few weeks ago, “Fun isn’t fun…work is fun!”  I have to agree.  Nothing makes me happier than to be either a) working with students in the darkroom b) printing my own work in the darkroom c) painting in my studio d) photographing people in my neighborhood with my 4×5 e)…Where do I stop?  Yes, much work, many challenges, much fun and more to come.

As I write this at Pebbles Jazz Cafe, looking out on the silver-grey sea, I am reminded that Confucius wrote “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”  This is not to say that I have a job or that such tasks are not without difficulties and trials, but that the rewards from walking through the fires of such experiences are greater than their immediately perceived headaches.  We are galvanized by venturing into the shaky unknown and facing what we fear.  Hence, the definition of courage: embarking on a course of action despite our fears.

I have been reading Homer’s The Odyssey, in a class taught by Jeffrey Carson, here at the Center.  I have read it before with him and a couple of times on my own.  I prefer reading it with a group and meeting once a week to discuss the reading.  I enjoy the interaction.  It is a simple story, really: the tale of a man trying to get home to his wife and family.  Nothing more really.  On the way he confronts dangers and strife, some of his own making.  Some emanates from external forces which he cannot control, i.e. the gods.  That’s it.  Not much else goes on.  The rest is more for flashy adventurous color thus keeping the guests interested while they eat.  Homer’s script still works.

A few of the other students have read it before in either high school or college.  They have taken classes in which Homer’s work has been dissected and rearranged to fit with post-modernist theory or some other deconstructive dialectic.  In the academic study of history this would be called ‘revisionist history’,  a plague of inaccuracy to historiographers.  I wonder what Homer would have thought of these interpretations?  It reminds me of this scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall…

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for differing opinions.  They make us interesting humans.  They are what attracts me to people.  For me, simplicity is complex enough.  This applies to my photography as well.  I have been printing some 35mm images I have made while on our Friday Hikes.  Upon review I find they are all the same, and I mean that in a positive sense.  They are textures, light and shadow–wide expanses of Zones.  Subject matter isn’t as important as it used to be.

I was going to quote some Emerson in today’s blog, but the entry is too verbose.  In keeping with Homer, I will borrow something from The Odyssey instead.  Shortly after the beginning of Book VII, Odysseus is walking through the seaport of the Phaiakians accompanied by Pallas Athene.   She encourages his bravery by saying, “The bold man proves the better for every action in the end, even though he be a stranger coming from elsewhere.”   Re-interpret that.  I dare you…

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

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.