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Mid-December update…

By John on December 12, 2013 in Athens Greece, autumn, beauty, biking, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spiritual journey, working

Phrenology at the Street Market. Leica M8, Voigtlander 28mm; f/5.6; 1/125; ISO 320

-I haven’t posted in a while. I have been busy with the ending of the 2013 Autumn Session at the Aegean Center. I have been very pleased with this session. My steep learning curve as an instructor has taught me a few things and I have been able to avoid some of the pitfalls common to any novitiate. My overall opinion of teaching is that the small rewards outweigh the tragic gaffes and stumbles. I keep searching for the Golden Key which unlocks the door. It has been a humbling three months.

-I am currently in Athens, making my way back to the USA for the Christmas and New Year holiday. I will visit with family, close and dear friends, and enjoy driving my car.

-It will be frigid in the little town where I grew up. This will make exercise difficult and lazing about watching movies easy. For the month that I am there I will probably join a gym and try to burn off the calories as I gain them. I have no desire to return to Paros 6 kilos heavier than when I left. One of the many benefits to living on Paros is the ability to get out and about without donning the kind of winter gear I will wear in New York. There is also no snow on Paros, or none to worry about anyway. This allows me to ride my bike. It’s all about layers.

-I was sitting in a café yesterday with some Athenian friends and I was astounded at the general din of this large, ancient and sprawling city. After the quiet of Paros, the noise is deafening. It troubled my sleep last night. I tossed and turned.

-I still adhere to the belief that I am not an “artist”, per se, or at least would rather not be known as one. Call me a “skilled technician” or “an able-bodied craftsman” or “a journeyman photographer”. The world has become a market for the “artist”, a place to sell goods, like a street vendor selling fruit, or perhaps something darker. In order for “the artist” to really be a mainstream success, he or she must conform to the trends and fads that guide the fickle opinions of gallerists and marketeers. For me, this is a trap. If I am creating to please the public, then I am on an ego-trip. It urges me to be the center of attention, in the limelight. I am not comfortable with center stage. Once in a while these lines intersect. The rest of the time I have to be patient with hard work, working long nights and being a wallflower.

JDCM

Session end approaches, etc…

By John on November 24, 2013 in autumn, beauty, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, Paros Portraits, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, Thanksgiving, Uncategorized

I have a lot on my mind these days and it feels difficult to try to sort it all out. Thoughts meander…

My most recent post was in the form of notes. I think I will keep it that way for today as well.

–The session here at the Aegean Center is almost finished. This week is the final full week of work. It is also American Thanksgiving and Chanukkah. Lots to do (food, work, art) and I imagine emotions are running high for those younger students who have never been away from home on these holidays. We will have a big pot-luck feast on Friday evening, since Thursday is a work day. We supply the side dishes. JP supplies the turkeys and gravy. I am making roasted butternut squash.

–The students who are working in the darkroom are making some interesting work.

–I have been able to noodle about with my own work, but nothing really substantial. I have tried some portrait work with minor success. Siga-siga. If one were to ask how I think I am doing these days, the answer would have to be divided into three parts: personal, artistic and academic. Personally I am doing alright. I am building solid social bridges to people in the community who have little to do with the school or the arts. I am biking a lot and feeling good about that that. Artistically I am, as I said, noodling around. I am letting the students have the lion’s share of the darkroom time. The third aspect is etsy-ketsy. I do what I can.

–Am I an artist-in-residence or faculty? I have no idea anymore. I have worked to define these boundaries within the small community in which I labor. I can only guess that I receive unknown support and back-up from those I respect.

–I am opening a Flickr site and will post photos there, images that never made it here and other things. Mostly travel stuff. I’ll add a tab to the website next time I post. Until then I have added an autumnal image: olive oil fresh from the press. Yes, it really is that green.

Happy Thanksgiving!

–JDCM

Fresh olive oil from the olive press at Kamari.

Notes from the mainland…

By John on October 31, 2013 in autumn, beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, Cycladic stone walls, Greece, rangefinder camera, skill and craft, stone walls, Uncategorized, working

October 30, 2013

–The weather is still hot during the day but the mornings are cool so I wear a sweatshirt when I leave the hotel. By 10:00 I am in my t-shirt. I have driven through hundreds of orange groves in two days.

–The ruins in Ancient Corinth are vast and the typical jumble. The Temple of the Corinthian Apollo is Doric. Lots of Roman stone. St. Paul was here.

–Akro Korinthos, 3 km up the mountain from the site, is massive. I have walked the walls. Easily as large as the outer walls of Dubrovnik…5km if I remember correctly. Walls built on walls…Mycenean, Byzantine, Ottoman and Venetian. Everyone knew a good site for a fort when they conquered it. Impregnable and all but hewn from the living stone. Few people there today. Some workman digging a new drainage ditch. They are stone-faced when I say “kali mera.”

–I have seen more Golden Dawn graffiti here than anywhere in Greece. Lots of spray-painted Greek meanders…this is a ubiquitous symbol. It is on my bathmat in the hotel where I sleep. It’s on tourist swag. Now it means something else, something terrible. They have taken a design everyone knows as good and twisted it with their broken thinking.

–Nafplio is not Paros. The mainland is not the Kyklades. There is a roughness here, less open than the Greece I know. Fewer smiles. Gruff.

–Epidaurus tomorrow and Schliemann’s second site at Tyrins. My last full day here and I want to make the most of my little car. I might brave the winding mountain road to Ermioni for lunch after visiting the theater.

October 31, 2013

–Epidaurus, Tyrins…quiet but there are still buses and tourists. Mostly older groups and I seem to be shadowing a school group of American kids. They were at my hotel too. Quiet as mice. A nice thing to experience. Corinth yesterday and the theater today. Also the Nafplio museum…

–The winding road to Epidaurus and grove after grove of olives and oranges.

Epidaurus: ancient script. Leica M8, f/2.8, 1/2000, ISO 320

Epidaurus: ancient script. Leica M8, Voigtlander 28mm, f/2.8, 1/2000, ISO 320

–A group of Russians at the theater…testing the acoustics with pebbles. Wonderful. Tyrins on the way back to Nafplio. Not much to see but an observation: the technique used to build the large Mycenean walls is the same as the wall building I have seen all over the Kyklades. No walls here, nothing crisscrossing the landscape. The Mycenean civilization was large.

–Blue domes are now terra-cotta tiles. I had forgotten that about the Peloponnese.

–When I was a boy, about 5 or 6, my grandmother gave me gifts from her time in Greece: a small model of a Greek house with a windmill, a komboloi, an Evzone figurine. She planted this seed. She was here.

–I am still enjoying my short DoF exercises. The stones, greenery and blue skies are perfect for this. Shooting at f/1.8 to f/4 only…

JDCM

A column section from Epidaurus. Leica M8, Voigtlander 35mm Nokton, f/2.0 at 1/4000, ISO 360

Nafplio, Ohi Day and some more…

By John on October 29, 2013 in autumn, beauty, Greece, Paros, spiritual journey, stone walls, Uncategorized

Temple of the Argive Hera, overlooking the Argolis Valley

It is the autumn mid-term break and I am off-island. I am feeling a bit of culture shock. There are so many people here on the mainland. So many cars…

I arrived here on Sunday, the day before ‘Ohi Day’. It was also the weekend of Agios Dimitrios, a saint of some popularity here in Greece. Everyone with a connection to the saint for their name day celebrates. It was a long weekend. Weekenders from Athens and Corinth mobbed the narrow streets. I had left the quiet calm of Paros and landed here. I felt like hiding. My meal that night was good: Gigantes, fried zucchini, lamb chops and the waiter tried to stiff me 10 Euros until I confronted him. He was so very apologetic. Kleftis!

Ohi Day was a grand affair and just before the big parade, I decided to not stick around. I took a long walk around the massif on which the Palamidi Fortress sits and then on my way back climbed the 900+ stairs to the top of this Venetian citadel. The view was lovely, but the tourists were there too. There was an American school group, and I observed how they behaved in a foreign country. Like bumpkins, I tell you, bumpkins. The Aegean Center students would never act as they did. I left the castle and went back to the town, searched out a car rental agency and rented a car for the next day (today). I ate a wonderful meal at a small taverna off the main drag and had some of the best skordalia (garlic paste) I have ever had. Superb gavros, too. No billing issues last night. I might go back there tonight.

Today I drove my little silver Hyundai north to the Mycenean ruins at Mykine. This is the spot where Heinrich Schliemann found all of the gold and proclaimed (incorrectly), “I have seen the face of Agamemnon!” Still, an impressive site and worth the trip. When I left I headed to Nemea and marveled at the ruins of the Temple of the Nemean Zeus. This was one of the centers for the Panhellenic games beginning in the 5th century BCE. Superb.

The clock was edging into the mid afternoon and I decided to call it quits for the day. I headed back to Nafplio. 15 minutes later found me at the ruins of the Temple of Argive Hera, an enormous jumble of stone and column sections of what must have been an imposing structure overlooking the wide valley. Like Mykine, the sea was visible and I imagined in its heyday it gleamed atop the hill from which I viewed the olive groves and vineyards stretching out before me.

I arrived back in Nafplio, parked my car and took a well-deserved siesta in my hotel room. Tomorrow is another big day. I will head a bit farther north and see the imposing Akro Korinthos fortress and Ancient Corinth. Thursday I return to Epidaurus after over 7 years.

The town has quieted somewhat, but the cafes still hum. I am still in Greece, but away from the island, Paroikia and the Aegean Center. This is good. I need time to let go, reflect and otherwise contemplate my place in the Universe and what that means. These imposing structures, their tons of crumbled stone and absent civilizations are a humble reminder of my abilities.

RIP Lou. Your dark candle burned so brightly.

The Temple of Nemean Zeus, Nemea, Argolis, Greece

Mid-October update…

By John on October 15, 2013 in autumn, beauty, craft, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, quiet islands, spiritual journey, working

This is a short missive from my table here at Port Cafe, overlooking the Bay of Paroikia. To mis-quote George III, not much going on here…except art, art work and art students working! It is always pleasant to feel the hum of busy schedules being negotiated, smell the aroma of oil paints, inks and darkroom chemistry and encounter Aegean Center students writing at cafe tables, wandering about with cameras and expressing their enthusiasm for just being here on Paros. One student exclaimed last night in the darkroom, “I love this process!” I can dig it.

There were times in the past when I would hear the ferries come to dock and realize that I could be on one of those boats, running from the changes that were necessary for my own growth. Two nights ago I sat on a friend and colleague’s roof terrace eating dinner. Four blocks away, the evening boat to Athens was putting in. I heard the massive chains that hold the ramp unwind, the garbled announcement for disembarkation echoing across the platia and through the narrow winding streets. There was a slight tremor to the ground as the massive diesel engines skewed the craft laterally in the harbor, righting itself against the concrete pier. It was a musical, nautical poem of industrial tones. My heart was struck by just how much I love living on Paros. I am at a hub, the islands in the sea like stars circling the Parian Galactic Center. I am here, now. With all that passes for current events in the news-of-the-world, I am pleased to report that calm activity is the name of the game here. The thrill is palpable.

Some of us went olive raking the other day. It was more a cultural experience than work, since the owner of the olive trees had paid workers laboring along side of the students and teachers. Due to my healing hand, I was not able to rake, but I did take some nice images of olives on the branch. I relished a shallow depth-of-field. I went as close as my lens would allow. With a Canon 50mm L-Series f/1.2, that is damn close.

-JDCM

Zoom, crash, boom…

By John on October 9, 2013 in biking, Paros

A very fun triathlon. Despite my brilliant hand-off, I am not deterred. Our team finished 4th with a total time of 55 min, 32 sec. I think I rode the 12k in just less than 30 minutes. Very nice. No broken bones, but six stitches on my left palm and some bruises and scrapes. Thank you to Minas and Vangelis from the Paros Rescue Squad. Can’t wait for the next event…

You know it’s fun when someone is bleeding…

Look! Nothing broken!

# 67…Not damaged in the crash.

JDCM

The weather turns towards autumn…

By John on October 5, 2013 in autumn, beauty, biking, Greece, hiking in the Cyclades, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spiritual journey, working

I woke up this morning to blustery, grey clouds and very cool temperatures. Last night, before laying my head on my pillow, I switched on my electric mattress pad for the first time since March. Yesterday’s Aegean Center for the Fine Arts Friday hike was sunny, brisk and invigorating, yet not the stuff of late spring or summer. Cries of “Wow!” and “This is amazing!” punctuated our oregano, sage and thyme-scented walk above the hill town of Lefkes. The air was so clear that looking north, I counted the houses on Syros and the already narrow channel between Paros and Naxos seemed a mere stone’s throw. In New England or northern Europe the leaves are currently a brilliance of fiery tones. It is autumn in the Kyklades so we inhaled the blue skies, dark evergreens, golden underbrush and brilliant light spilling around us.

Tomorrow I compete with a team in the Paros Autumn Triathlon. I will be bicycling 15km while my two teammates will be swimming and running, respectively. It is not a competition so much as a community event. The only race will be against myself. I am looking forward to this event and am very excited. It is important for me to realize that here on Paros I am more than just a man with a camera, or an ex-pat American in Greece. I am more than a summation of my parts, and that whole grows exponentially if I allow myself to be drawn to the larger, communal rings that ripple through my parochial nucleus. There was a time when I craved a closed system for necessary self-preservation. This attitude is self-defeating and limiting. I have been increasing my orbit over the past couple of years and this event will signal a shift in my personal trajectory. Excited, nervous and looking forward to it.

Lefkes, Paros, October 4, 2013. Leica M8, Voigtlander 28mm, 1/125, f22, ISO 320

A stop in Athens and a return to Paros…

By John on October 1, 2013 in Athens Greece, autumn, beauty, darkroom work, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, working

Last week I made my way to Athens, meeting up with the Aegean Center students and teachers fresh from their September sojourn in Italy. I was very nervous, not having met any of the new students yet and feeling as if I was under a microscope. Perhaps I was the one with the microscope, I am not sure, but that is how I felt. Anyway…

The 24 students all arrived safely and we made our way via motor-coach to the hotel in the Monastiraki area of town. The Hotel Attalos sits just below the Acropolis of the Parthenon and close to some of the best museums and archeological destinations in the world. The next three days were spent visiting these sites and listening to Jeffrey Carson’s excellent orations on history, culture and art. The Parthenon, the Parthenon Museum and the National Archeological Museum were our group destinations, but afterwards the students enjoyed enough free time to visit other places, shop and eat some excellent Greek food. On Saturday morning we all awoke very early for another short bus ride to the Port of Pireaus, boarded the Blue Star Naxos and made our way back home, back to Paros and the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts studios and labs.

The classes began yesterday and I have several students in the darkroom. Some have no experience whatsoever while there are others with some darkroom history behind them. It is a vibrant and excited group. They are also taking other courses so in order to meet with them it must always be after all their other commitments, later in the evening and never all at once. This will make necessary demonstrations (film and paper developing, for instance) difficult to arrange. I will work with what I am given and be grateful.

I have added a couple of images from the Athens segment of the art history tour…

JDCM

At the Parthenon, September 2013

At the National Archeological Museum

Bike-hiking and new gear…

By John on September 17, 2013 in autumn, beauty, biking, Greece, hiking in the Cyclades, Paroikia, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, spiritual journey, stone walls, Uncategorized, working

I have been exploring the island these sunny, warm days. I have found a couple of small, very rocky and rough beaches on the north side of the bay, facing Syros, north along the coast from the cave of Archilochos. They are all but inaccessible unless one rides a bike, hikes or has 4-wheel drive. A few days ago I went back to one of them with the goal of not returning the way I arrived. From a decent height I could see smaller paths and a narrow road. I knew I couldn’t bike it, and that I would have to push/carry the bike a certain way uphill, over rocks and walls, before I reached the road. According to the map, the road wound about until it reached the Delion of Apollo, one of the higher points on the island and an ancient temple site.

So that’s what I did. I biked down to the beach area, went for a swim, then packed up my panniers (more about them) and pushed the bike up the hill. There was some real problem solving involving a small gorge, some backtracking, plenty of thorns (shades of Sikinos!) but I eventually made it to the road. It was a pretty easy ride to the Delion after that and then a downhill ride back to town. It was only about 8 km but with all the uphill struggle and 15 kilos of bike and gear, I’ll add another few km to that count. A nice day, and fun.

I bought panniers for the bike. Now I don’t have to wear a day-pack anymore. This was making me top-heavy. The center of gravity has been lowered and I am finding them convenient and efficient. Below are four incarnations of my current mode of transport. There is enough room for all kinds of gear.

Beach Bike

Mountain bike

Hiking bike

Shopping bike

JDCM

Windy Monday…

By John on September 9, 2013 in autumn, beauty, black and white portraiture, craft, darkroom work, Greece, Paroikia, Paros, Paros Portraits, portraiture, silver darkroom, skill and craft, spiritual journey, working

The sun was brilliant today and the Meltemi had a decidedly autumnal feel. It has howled all day, and continues the howl through the tangle of electrical lines crisscrossing the small section of Paroikia I call home. The cypress trees whip back and forth and Bougainvillea blossoms, free from their thorny moorings, sail their over-saturated colors into my small apartment.

It is Monday, September 9, 2013 and I have taken down my exhibit. I have enjoyed the three-week long event. I think of my images differently than when I hung them. What was once ‘Giorgos and Giorgos‘ I refer to as ‘Don Quixote and Sancho Panza‘; ‘Erin‘ is now ‘The Vermeer Photograph’; ‘Angelika‘ I think of as ‘The Abstract Realist.’ Things change, the Earth tilts and wobbles, the days shorten, the air cools and we slide into bright autumn. I can almost smell the rain, but I know that is just an illusion.

Now I am filled with melancholia, ennui, a sense of emptiness. As I write this at Mikro Kafe I realize that in an hour there will be no need for me to open up the Aegean Center, turn on the lights and arrange the easeled sign outside on the marble steps. All of that is past. My portraits are safely in their crate, currently a large piece of furniture in my flat. The sign, too, is there, tucked behind a bookcase.

I have little choice but to get back to work. That is the best way to shake off these ghosts.

JDCM

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