Photos I took in the Month of April

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. —Agnès Varda

Quilts on the line, Spotsylvania Courthouse, April 2023

In-the-Making.

To make sense of the world. A really good book. “You Could Make This Place Beautiful” by Maggie Smith.

To make me laugh and give me perspective. More Wiser Than Me podcasts with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Not self-help. Funny and irreverent. Entertaining. A beautiful testament to the many ways to age where one size does not fit all.

To make life sweet. Sugar-Crusted Raspberry Muffins. (The myth of sugar addiction has been debunked. Why did I ever believe the endless diatribe of diet and wellness culture?)

To make way for a new project. I generally prefer to take pictures of whatever I am drawn to first, and then edit later. But sometimes it is overwhelming to sort and sift through my work and see the direction, the theme, the whole from the pieces. To help with this process of editing and sequencing photos, I often tape pictures to my dining room wall. This is effective but somewhat damaging to the wall. And so, I ordered felt wall tiles from Felt Right. My design is 4 feet x 5 feet. Square tiles, with a shiplap pattern, in a neutral ash color. I can arrange and re-arrange small versions of my favorite photographs using push pins. The wall is beautiful and the felt acts to dampen the sound in this room with lots of hard surfaces. It was super easy to install and I am totally pleased. (I do realize that it’s an easy thing to create a storyboard in Lightroom, but I am old-school and love the physicality of prints and movement.)

To make pictures. I’m using a Pentax 645N medium format film camera. I love that it’s much like an SLR experience. But unlike a complicated digital SLR camera, there is absolutely nothing about the camera that I find unnecessary. (Really, I’m tired of paying for the fanciest model when I only need the bare bones. This goes for cameras, cars, kitchen gadgets, clothes, phones, and a bunch of other stuff.)

To make prints. I’m ordering test pictures from several photo printing services. ProDPI. Nations Photo Lab. I’ve tried several labs over the last month and the variability is significant. I’m looking for an affordable service with quality results. I’m super picky about prints.

I finish the book by Maggie Smith and ask myself, How can I make this place beautiful? The answer is surprisingly simple. Pick up the camera and notice.

Course Corrections

Garden Shelf, April 2023

I’ve been listening to a new podcast, Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus wants to know why the hell we don’t hear more from older women, so she’s sitting down with Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett, Amy Tan, Diane von Furstenberg, Isabel Allende and Fran Lebowitz (and more!) to get schooled in how to live a full and meaningful life. Join the Emmy award winning-est actress of all time on her first-ever podcast, where each week she has funny, touching, personal conversations with unforgettable women who are always WISER THAN ME.

I’ve been giving thought to my own third act and what I would like for these years to look like. It feels good to look back. And necessary.

Working with film over the last 6 months or so has helped me to slow down and settle down. Learning something new has given me confidence and reassurance. Waiting to see the pictures, living with uncertainty. Allowing for frustration. Walking away and then coming back again. It feels like learning a new dance where we keep stepping on each other’s feet. But so worth it in the end.

For the last 8 years this space has been a lifeline for me. Part photography but mostly a journal to sort through my feelings. Creative expression is healing; it’s like medicine for me. And maybe for us all.

I’m ready to switch things up a bit. I’ll continue to write my heart out in tattered notebooks and journals long-hand with a ballpoint pen. But I don’t need this space for that purpose anymore. I do need a home for my work, and this will be where my photography will live. I plan to publish a post each month to share what I’m working on. Pictures I’ve taken. Poems and prose. Projects. New things I’ve learned. Directions and course corrections. Books, exhibitions, celebrations and challenges. I’m interested in living in that place where there is no one right answer, and I hope that sitting with things for an extended time will help my creativity to thrive.

Stop by or write anytime. I’m always happy to hear from you!

I’ll aim to post near the first of every month.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that the goal in photography was to make pictures about something rather than of something. In fact, I’m pretty sure I learned this axiom in multiple places and from multiple teachers or experts in the field. For a long time, I understood this to mean that that my photographs needed to be less concrete or maybe less superficial. They needed to express some theme or emotion. They needed to be meaningful, deep, evocative. For a while, this belief held me back, keeping me from just pointing my camera at what I noticed, as I paused to consider if the scene in the frame was, indeed, about something.

And then, as in most every learning journey, the fog began to lift and I could see my way clearly. The truth is this: I take pictures of what I am passionate about, what I am drawn to, what resonates with me, and most of the time, I have no idea why. At least, not in the moment. As I live with these pictures over time, returning to visit them like old friends, I begin to see connections between them. I can see how they relate and what meaning they hold for me. Just like relationships between friends, the connections between the pictures in a body of work are not always easy or obvious. The bonds are felt more than reasoned. And this is more than enough to tell a story or write a poem with pictures.

These two film photographs were taken in my hometown of Colonial Beach, Virginia. When I visit now, I am more tourist than local. In many ways, it is hard to watch the town grow—new condos going up and every spare inch of real estate being developed. But this will always be the place where I grew up. Where I swam in the river, had my first kiss, and graduated from high school. Where I returned week after week as long as my mother lived there. If it is home that grounds us, this will always be where I am rooted.

Photography has a lexicon that is sometimes predatory in nature. We speak of shooting or taking shots.

Seeking, finding, hunting for pictures. Capturing, recording and documenting.

I wonder if it would serve us better to think of receiving photographs. Being open to them. Accepting. Embracing. And nurturing them.