More Witnessing

Step Out for Fall, 2011

Once you start conditioning your mind and your eyes to being more aware of your surroundings, all sorts of things that you might not have normally noticed become visible. “Was that sign always there?” “Didn’t that house used to be blue?” "I never noticed before how the light strikes that tree."

Under normal circumstances our brains have a way of filtering out things we don’t want to see or lack knowledge to comprehend. The story is told of a cultural anthropologist who couldn’t understand why the African tribesman he took the London, a man who had previously never traveled more than a few miles from his Equatorial village, was more amazed by the city’s tall buildings than by an airplane. The reasoning, supposedly, was that the tribesman had absolutely no concept of manned flight and was therefore essentially unable to see, comprehend or be amazed by an airplane.

The late psychic Edgar Cayce once remarked that having the gift of clairvoyance was no prize, and that it was in fact as much a curse as anything. He explained that just as he might foresee happiness in one person’s life, he’d also see the sorrow coming in the life of another’s. For Cayce, the weight of that premonition was the source of considerable physical and mental fatigue.

Being alive and fully aware of the photo opportunities in your surroundings can be the same way because to be perceptive enough to notice those opportunities you have to notice and consciously register all of the things before your eyes, not just the things that are pleasant, pretty or easy on the conscious. 

Like the African tribesman, there might be a lot we see that we don’t want to see or don’t care to fully understand. But when you come upon a scene like the one above, you can’t ignore it. The juxtaposition of the homeless man sleeping on a grate in front of the Brooks Brothers flagship store in New York tells a sad story of our modern times.  While the man sitting on the cold sidewalk may not know where his next meal is coming from or where he’ll sleep tonight, each of the children in the poster in the window above is wearing hundreds of dollars’ worth of stylish and well made clothing that will likely be outgrown before it ever frays or the school year ends.

There are many photographers who do an outstanding job of telling these kinds of stories. I’m not one of them. When I see such sights my first inclination is to not intrude on the person’s life lest I be thought to be exploitative. But sometimes you just have to step up and tell the story that’s taking place before your eyes. 

Lift Up Your Heads!

“Lift Up Your Heads!”  2011

I’m pretty sure the Reverend Randolph Weber had something different in mind when he titled this sermon, something more spiritually inclined, to be sure. But for me, lifting up your head is one of the best bits of advice any photographer can remember. There’s just so much to see above eye level.

In November of 2001, I was asked to make a presentation to the department heads of my city government, an audience that numbered well over a hundred by the time you included the senior managers. It took place on a Friday morning. After the presentation, my wife and I joined friends who owned their own airplane for a flight up to New York City. While everyone else was getting settled into our hotel, I went for a walk around Midtown Manhattan.

I don’t know how it is with you. I’ve interviewed so many thousands of people in course of my professional work that when I visit a big city I feel like I recognize half the people I see. Of course, most of the people I pass on the street are indeed complete strangers. But when you’ve been amassing this backlog of faces in your mind it’s only natural that you look at people and feel like you know them.

As I walked along Central Park South that afternoon, I passed a man whose appearance caught me a little off guard. He wasn’t a celebrity and I couldn’t figure out any reason I should know him. Yet he was strangely familiar. We both looked at each other with the same puzzled glance, but said nothing and continued on our respective ways.

We had a delightful weekend in Manhattan with our friends. On Sunday morning we decided to split up. My wife wanted to visit Ground Zero, which at that time was still emitting smoke and heat. Our friends went off to church at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. It seems the Reverend Weber was a prep school buddy of our friend.

While in church they had an experience like mine. They noticed that the couple sitting next to them in the pew were very familiar looking. After the service was over and people were leaving the church, our friends intercepted the couple and apologized for staring at them through the service. It turns out there was reason for them to have recognized the other couple because they are all members of the same Presbyterian church in Virginia Beach.

It turned out we had all arrived in New York on the same afternoon and were staying at the same little hotel. The kicker of the conversation between our friends and the other couple is that as our friends related that they, too, were in New York with another couple, the husband in the other couple said, “And I’ll bet you’re here with Chris Bonney. I passed him on the street Friday afternoon and he didn’t say a word!”

As it turned out, not only was this guy a fellow parishioner at our friends’ church, but he is also one of my sister’s older friends and, to complete the coincidence trifecta, he’s also the guy who’d been in charge of the presentation I’d made the morning before we left home for New York.

It’s a small world. Life up your heads or you might miss something.

Schooner Days 2011

Schooner Days 2011 - 026, 2011

One of the overlooked pleasures of living where we do is the annual Schooner Days celebration in Portsmouth, Virginia. I’m always disappointed that so few people get into this event. As such events go, this is arguably one of the more authentic parts of living along the Chesapeake Bay.

Schooner Days isn’t just some contrived festival for tourists. It’s actually the culmination of the annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race, which can be a pretty thrilling and treacherous sailing race down the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore to Portsmouth. Last year’s race coincided with a nor’easter storm. Sailors, most of them on big old lumbering wooden boats, battled strong winds, heavy seas and lots of “green water over the bow.” For a race that can last as long as two days—this year’s winner came in at just over twenty-seven hours—last year’s sailors finally made it into Portsmouth later than ever and absolutely worn out.

 Schooner Days 2011 - 035, 2011

This year they had much better weather, more favorable winds and friendlier seas. The thirty-nine boats that took part in this year’s race were all cleaned up and shipshape in time for crew members to get a little sleep before heading ashore for an afternoon of beer, barbecue and camaraderie. (All except, that is, the hearty young sailors from a Maine-based Outward Bound program, who had to watch the party from outside the tent because they are underage for alcohol consumption.)

Neither my wife nor I are very knowledgeable or confident sailors. But we’ve always enjoyed being around sailboats. They’re something intriguing about vessels built to use nature’s winds. Most of the boats in this year’s race were once working boats, hauling cargo up and down coastal waters. They’re the real thing, low, beamy and practical. This year’s race winner, America 2.0, on the other hand, is a thoroughly modern 106’ carbon fiber sailing ship that usually entertains tourists on the New York waterfront. What she lacks in authenticity, though, is neatly made up for by the elegant lines of her deep blue hull.

 Schooner Days 2011 - 033, 2011

I don’t think there’s ever been a boat built that doesn’t require a lot of expense and maintenance. Wooden boats in particular are forever needing sanding, painting or any of a hundred other things done. Very few of the schooners taking part in this year’s race are privately owned. But I give this year’s sailors a lot of credit. Every one of the boats I looked at is in beautiful condition.

Schooner Days 2011 - 036, 2011

On the Post

The North Gate, 2011

No one blows Reveille at Fort Monroe any more to signal the start of the day or Taps in the evening to signal the end of the day. The parade ground is empty, the lookout towers locked up, the barracks and offices silent.

When the U.S. Army left Fort Monroe, Virginia, a few weeks ago, they not only left the history of almost two hundred years of continuous presence at the confluence of the Chesapeake Bay and the James River, but also left a nearly perfectly maintained slice of small town American culture.

A clergyman acquaintance once told me that one of the most unpleasant parts of his job was attending to the closing of churches. Closing a church isn't just a matter of desanctifying a sanctuary. It's a  formal concession that a community has lost not only population and the wherewithall to support a church, but also a vital piece of its faith, hope and charity.

I don't expect that the military has such emotional anxieties about closing a base. Fort Monroe provided important strategic service from the early 1800s up through World War II. From the top of the star-shaped walls of what was then known as Fortress Monroe, you could have watched the Monitor and the Merrimack fight their fateful sea battle. In the 1940s you would have kept your eyes on the horizon looking for German U-boats anxious to infiltrate the Hampton Roads-based U.S. Navy fleet.

 Quarters, 2011

In recent decades, though, Fort Monroe struggled to maintain a strategic purpose, an especially tough task in a population center that probably has more military presence and individual military bases than anywhere else in the world. Lately Fort Monroe had been the center for training and printing commands, functions that are now more  efficiently handled elsewhere. Hence the closure of the base.

Fortress Walls, 2011

What the Army leaves behind looks like an idealized version of a mid-Twentieth Century American small town. Spread across almost six hundred acres and eight miles of waterfront, it’s center is the original stone fortress and moat. Outside the moat are almost two hundred sturdy brick structures housing everything a small town would need: offices, homes for personnel of all ranks, mess halls, training facilities, playing fields, a fire station, police department, child care facilities, an officer’s club, a small craft marina and a theater. There’s even an informal pet cemetery that I’ve written about before. The streets and sidewalks are lined with lives oaks and neatly trimmed shrubbery.

Now it's all empty, a living example of what we not too many years ago would have called "the neutron bomb effect." Everything looks ready to be used, but there’s no one home anymore.

Silent Halls, 2011

When the Army left they turned the keys to Fort Monroe over the Commonwealth of Virginia. A public Authority was created to plot the commercial future of Fort Monroe. It's hoped that the original fortress within the moat will be taken into the National Park System. Everything else, though, will be up for grabs.

 Old Point Comfort Light, 2011

Now’s probably a good time to visit Fort Monroe. With just a few exceptions, everything’s clean, neat and freshly painted. The streets are clean and the sidewalks are edged. A visitor can go most anywhere on the old base without restriction. But over time, the grass is going to grow and paint’s going to begin to peel. It’s a labor of love and expense to maintain old buildings against the wind, the water and the salt spray of a coastal setting.

The political and social tendency of Virginians is to look backwards. We’ve a lot of American history in our roots. Fort Monroe could become static representation of a slice of history—not unlike Colonial Williamsburg—or it could become an example of the marriage of history, historic structures and modern design and technology.  I wouldn’t bet on the latter. But that’s where my hopes lie. 

Material Everywhere

In a Hampton Field, 2011

It really is true. If you just keep your eyes open there’s something to photograph most anywhere you go.

Like this chair.

I was driving home from a meeting last week and decided to stop by the site of a landmark home that burned down years ago. I was curious to see whether anything had happened to the site. 

The former home site is now part of a university campus. Nothing’s left of the old house but some of the brick foundation and a whole lot of “No Trespassing” signs.

It usually takes more than a few "No Trespassing" signs to scare off an intrepid photographer. But a work-related phone call intervened and my visit was cut short. On the way out of the site, though, I happened to look across the street and see this chair, complete with a soft cushion.

I don’t have any idea how the chair ended up out in this field, how long it had been there or anything else about it. My guess from the design of the chair is that it probably once belonged to the motel located nearby that was in its latter years used as a temporary dorm for the university.

I don’t know much about chair design. But although it looks somewhat dated this one’s pretty ingenious. Chairs are one of those things that you can easily go through life not paying much attention to. But if you do, you’ll notice that there’s an almost unlimited number of ways that a simple chair can be designed. The seat of this chair is cantilevered out over the back. At first glance, you might think you’d fall out of it. But the back legs lean forward as if to pull the arms and backrest forward. They’re also slanted so that it’s hard for the chair to tip over backwards. The lines of the chair go this way and that. But when taken altogether, the chair’s interestingly balanced.

Just sitting out in the field, this chair was, like it was waiting to have its picture taken.

   

The Prodigal Photograph

Squibnocket Farm, 2010

When you take a lot of pictures it’s inevitable that some will be forgotten. Squibnocket Farm is one such picture. It didn’t make it into my book of photographs from Martha’s Vineyard, and somewhere along the way it got shoved completely out of sight and mind.

About two weeks ago I came across Squibnocket Farm while looking for photos for an architectural photography competition. It was like love at first sight. I don’t know why it got put aside originally. But upon seeing it again it was as if I was back in the moment when I took the picture. I could feel the fresh, cool breeze of the sunny fall day when I took it. 

At about the same time I rediscovered Squibnocket Farm I got my new printer. So I decided to use this picture as my test for setting the black-and-white calibration of the printer. I liked the outcome so much that I decided to frame this picture and hang it in my office. 

Then my wife and I went off for a weekend trip. On Friday night I got an e-mail from a friend informing me of a juried photography competition at a local art gallery. I was interested in submitting something for the show, but was a little concerned that the deadline was just three days away.

Fortunately, when I bought the new printer I also bought a new mat cutter. So when we got home from our trip I set to work matting and framing three pieces of photography that fit the competition theme. Curiously, as someone who’s probably most often associated with color photography, all three pieces I submitted were in black-and-white.

I dropped my photographs off at the gallery on Tuesday afternoon and went on about my business. On Thursday I attended another art show that included two of my photographs.

The opening reception of the gallery show was on Friday night. When I met the gallery manager she noted that as a juried show not all of the work submitted was accepted. I’d found two of my pieces on the wall, but didn’t see the third one. So I jokingly asked where the reject pile was so that I could take my orphan picture home that night.

Then one of my friends noticed that the picture I hadn’t found, Squibnocket Farm, was actually hanging a little further along the hall. The gallery owner asked me to make sure I hung around because “the judge has something to say about your photographs.”

Long story short: Squibnocket Farm ended up winning First Place in the competition. The judge had nice things to say about it. I got a hug from the gallery owner, a prize check and a blue ribbon to hang on the picture.

All in all, not a bad night for a picture that went away and then came back into my life and a week later won First Place!

Variations

Variations on a Theme, 2011

When you write a song that becomes so popular that it’s becomes your song and you’re obligated to sing it any time you perform, that song’s bound to get old after a while. The summer amphitheater circuit is full of acts playing the old songs just like they played them thirty or forty years ago.

I find, though, that the musicians I most admire are the ones who can’t endure the drudgery of playing the same old songs the same old ways every night. In her performance here in Virginia Beach the other night, Mary Chapin Carpenter kicked off her show with a few of her most upbeat songs. Then she went into a set of more contemplative new songs that reflected the melancholy and recovery of her recent years. Finally, she slipped almost imperceptibly into a new arrangement of her anthem, The Hard Way, that caught more than a few people in the audience by surprise. Word by word we began to recognize the lyrics of this formerly hard driving road song hidden behind a new, much slower tempo and phrasing. I loved the original version. But I loved hearing a new take on it, as well.

 I’ve noticed that Bruce Hornsby does this a lot, too. He’ll take a hard driving song and turn it upside down, allowing you to see familiar lyrics and the pieces of the original arrangement rearranged into something fresh and interesting.

When I was a much younger adult I took piano lessons. It caused no end of frustration to me that I couldn’t seem to summon the mental and visual coordination necessary to read music well. It also frustrated my teacher that I was able to play by ear and, therefore, didn’t always need to know how to read music.

Her technique for getting around this was to have me learn the notes of something and then play it in another completely different style; say, a Chopin etude played in a reggae style, or a piece by Mozart in a blues style. The idea wasn’t for me to learn to play in the new style per se, but rather to compel me to comprehend the page of music enough to know the music well enough to transpose it to a different style.

Now that I think of it, my 9^th grade English teacher did the same thing. He’d have us write short pieces of prose and then have us re-write them in the style of, say, Ernest Hemingway or Time Magazine. This exercise taught us to recognize the style of different writers and to stretch our own style.

I’ve continued this exercise in photography. If I’m confronted with a situation I want to photograph but am not sure how to approach it, I’ll sometimes ask myself, “How would Andre Kertesz or Eliot Erwitt or James Nachtway photograph this moment?”  I don’t have to copy that person’s style to complete the exercise. But just forcing myself to try to see something from someone else’s perspective invariably identifies different options.