Today is sunny and bright. I have opened my windows to air out the sick bay. I am feeling much better and have only two more days of antibiotics. Here are some images from the past week…
JDCM
Tag Archives | Paros
News from the sick bay…
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…
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.
JDCM
Parian viewpoint…
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 dilapidated hand cart on the Greek island of Milos. Mamiya c330, Kodak Plus-X, June 2012
This is a short post. Some of you have noticed that I have updated my blog. It is more spiffy, easier to change and I am liking the header photo idea. I have been taking some pictures to use specifically for this image. It changes my eye, this is for sure.
I have also spent the last few hours updating my photography site right here . There is link on the right hand side of this page, but this makes it easier. New to the gallery is a portfolio called ‘Kyklades Wall Project’ which is an idea I have bounced back-and-forth with Liz Carson for the past year. It is a medium format study of the stone walls throughout the Kyklades. I still have many islands to photograph, so this is just a beginning. I am hoping to make the best of them into a book someday. There is a reason for these photos, but that is my business. If you search for ‘island hopping’ in my blog you will find more details on these images…
I also cleaned up the b/w image bank. I have separated out the Greek from the American and the European from the Greek. Nice and neat. I have changed the slide show so that the photo captions can now be read and the user gets to move back and forth at will. Overall, I think it represents a more current file of my work to date. ‘Goodbye’ to the Bosnian color pieces and ‘farewell’ to the Roma of the Former Yugoslavia. They were getting me down.
Christmas has passed and 2013 is just around the corner. Then I have three more weeks before I head back to Greece, Paros, The Aegean Center for the Fine Arts, gavros, gigantes, horta and the next round of photographic adventures.
JDCM
With a little help from my friends….
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
Post time…Vienna…
I haven’t posted in quite a while. I’ll give the short-story to catch up and then expound a bit…
The student exhibition for the Fall 2012 Aegean Center was lovely. The students worked hard, expressed their individual talents and it showed. That’s all I have to say really, except well done to all! I am looking forward to the spring session and all that it may hold. Challenges, rewards, hard work, hikes, frustrations and solutions. It all makes up the rich pageant that is the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts.
I traveled to Athens and stayed there for two days. While I was there I was able to see an exhibit from the photographer Helmut Newton. I was surprised. I have seen much of his work over the years, in books mostly, so to see full-sized prints was stunning. There was also a movie, made by his wife of almost 50 years, June Newton. It portrayed a man severely maligned by the press and the photo-world as being a pervert and a weirdo. The truth was eye-opening. He worked hard, used incredible skill with no trickery and produced some of the more iconic images in fashion I have ever seen. His CV reads like a who’s-who of the fashion world: Vogue, Elle, Yves St. Laurent…the list goes on. His commentary was clear and the filmed interactions with his models proved beyond a doubt the level of respect for their professionalism and grace. At one point he said that his goal was to make a fashion shoot not look like a fashion shoot, but rather something from a movie. He also talked about the gear he uses, i.e. not much: a Hasselblad 500 and a Polaroid for the light tests. He switched to a basic canon EOS digital later on his career for the lighting tests. Very few exterior lights and almost no studios that looked like studios. His eye captured the realities behind the shoot as well as the focus. I left the show feeling like it was a good two hours spent in the afternoon. The next day I flew to Vienna and was greeted by the lights of a city in Christmas season and the weather to match. It’s cold here, folks. Last night it went down to 18*F. Today was cloudy and chilly and snow is predicted for tomorrow night.
I visited the Albertina Museum today to see the Albrecht Durer show. It was a huge event focusing on his work during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I. Many of the works mentioned in the Wiki article were on display for the first time in decades. I have to leave descriptions of those for the next post since I will include many links.
Tonight I dine on tafelspitz and then walk down to the Burg Kino Theater and watch ‘The Third man’.
JDCM
Darkroom work and questions…
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…
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…
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