Train Story

Uffizi Gallery, 2001

My friend Suzanne is headed to Italy soon for a romantic holiday with her husband. Her mention of this trip brought back memories of our own Italian rail adventure.

Before we went to Italy the first time, friends were full advice about trains. Palmer advised me that many Italian cities have multiple train stations. Don't assume, when telling a taxi driver to "get me to the station," that you'll go to the right one. My sister added that were we to arrive at the track a few minutes early and find a train there, we should not get on it. Italian trains don’t always pull into the station until boarding is announced. That train on the track could be going somewhere else.

On our second trip to Italy, we booked passage on a train from Florence to Venice. I bought the tickets before we left home, understanding that they had to be validated in Florence before we could use them. Our hotel concierge offered to handle this administrative detail for us, and returned with an envelope containing our validated train papers.

A week later, my wife and daughter and I dutifully waited at the appointed track at Florence’s train station until our train was officially announced. We boarded, found our compartment and relaxed for the scenic ride to Venice.

An hour or so into the trip, a stop was announced for Bologna, a city famous for its university and covered walkways. I hoped we’d be able to see some of either from the train. Just before arriving in Bologna, the conductor stopped in for our tickets. I fished the documents validated in Florence out of a backpack and handed them over, confident that we were showing ourselves to be competent, sophisticated travelers.

Only the paperwork in the envelope contained documentation for one ticket, not three, and even that consisted of nothing more than a receipt. No tickets.

I tried to convince the conductor that I had purchased the tickets, three of them. But he made it clear that my paperwork was inadequate. His stern countenance made me consider that he might even throw us off the train. Our carefully inflated air of competence and sophistication was revealing itself to be just so much hot air.

We eventually figured out that the conductor had a machine hanging from his belt that would allow me to use a credit card to purchase three new tickets, which I did. The trip resumed. We saw little of Bologna from the station. But we arrived in Venice on time. You can see some video from our arrival here.

Months later, back at home, I happened to be cleaning out the recesses of my wallet. Yes, you guessed it. Stashed safely in the deepest pocket, up against an aging traveler’s check (for “emergencies), were the three original tickets for our passage from Florence to Rome. I used to have them framed and hanging in my office. But they got too embarrassing to look at and I finally threw them away.

Game Face

Chris by iSight, 2008

I was having dinner last weekend with a group that included my cousin Dan. We were talking about photography and I was observing that I’ve never seemed to get the knack for putting strangers at ease in order to do good street portraits. It’s not like people run from me. But I just haven’t mastered the art of that kind of encounter.

I was describing how much I respect my friend Gary Clark’s portraits. Whether he’s photographing the homeless on the streets of New York or Amish children in Pennsylvania, Gary portraits make his respect for his subjects clear. That doesn’t mean his portraits are all cute or predictable. Rather, whatever his subjects are doing, wherever they are, and whether they are happy or sad, you feel like you know the person, that Gary has captured their condition.

I was telling Dan how I wished I had that way of putting people at ease, and suggested that Gary must have something in his smile or approach that makes people want to sit for him.

Dan politely suggested, “Well, you know, that picture of you on your blog is kind of menacing. If you encountered that guy on the street and he walked toward you with a camera, you’d probably walk in the other direction.”

I tried to allow as how I don’t greet people with a scowl. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my way of dealing with people in street portraits is to look away from them. When I try to catch someone in a candid pose, I don’t pose them. I don’t even try to let them know I’m photographing them. If they look suspicious—and why wouldn’t they be if a menacing looking guy with a camera started zeroing in on them?—I take the picture and then turn smoothly and quickly without even looking up so that they’ll think I’m really taking a picture of something else.

Maybe if I interviewed a few hundred photographers I’d find that we sort out into at least two broad groups: the Observers and the Engagers. I’d be in solidly in the Observer group, content to stand at the side and catch photo ops as they pass. My friend Gary, on the other hand, would probably be standing in the Engagers group, those extroverted people who walk right up to strangers and start building a bridge to a good portrait.

For quite a while I’ve wanted to find some kind of photo workshop to broaden my skills. Maybe I should be looking for something for aspiring Engagers.

Live and learn. Thanks, Dan.

As for Chris by iSight, above, it’s there to prove to you that I can smile and make funny faces, and that if you leave me in a hotel room long enough with nothing to read or work on, I’ll probably just sit in front of the laptop and let it take silly pictures of myself.

Love of Architecture Dept.

Villard Houses, 2007

I don’t know when I first fell in love with the Villard Houses, located on Madison Avenue in New York. I think I first read about them in an autobiography by publisher and witty raconteur Bennett Cerf, who in the 1920s set up shop there for what would become The Modern Library and, later on, the Random House publishing company.

I wouldn’t have known about Bennett Cerf had I not grown up in a house where one of the few television shows I was allowed to watch as a kid was What’s My Line? If you’re too young to remember it, What’s My Line?, a guessing game which at various times featured a panel that might include any three of Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, Steve Allen, Fred Allen and even Soupy Sales, was the 1950s’ and 1960s’ version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Only on What’s My Line? the game progressed, if memory serves me right, in $5 increments.

The Houses were designed by McKim, Mead & White and built in 1882 for railroad magnate Henry Villard. Villard wasn’t able to hold onto the property very long, nor were many of its subsequent owners. With each sale the property was allowed to fall deeper and deeper into disrepair until, in the 1960s, there was serious concern that the Houses might be razed altogether.

The unlikely savior in this story was developer Harry Helmsley, who, in return for restoring the Villard Houses, was allowed to build and attach to the houses a most undistinguished 51-story hotel. You may recall stories of Helmsley’s wife Leona, the so-called “queen of mean,” who starred in the Helmsley Palace Hotel ads.

In the years since, portions of the Villard Houses have served as meeting rooms for the hotel and as home to both the Municipal Art Society and, for a while, the famous restaurant Le Cirque.

I try to go by the Villard Houses whenever I’m in New York. McKim, Mead & White knew how to create pleasing proportions in the structures they designed. The Madison Avenue courtyard is large, but still very human in scale. The interior spaces—visitors are welcome at the Municipal Art Society’s bookstore—are also large, but very approachable and comfortable. (If you go, avoid the passage to the hotel. It’s an awkward bit of architecture decorated by people who apparently believed you can never use too much gold.)

A Sign of These Times

Drama/Turtle*, 2008

This is a true story. It took place last Sunday afternoon.

Our neighbor, a retired school secretary in her late sixties who lives in a two-room cottage with a teenage grandson she looks after, was shopping at the local Home Depot store. As she came around the end of an aisle, she pushed her shopping cart in front of another elderly woman’s shopping cart. No one was hurt. Nothing was damaged. The carts just banged into each other.

Before our neighbor could catch her breath to say something, the other lady demanded, “Don’t you have something to say? Like, ‘I’m sorry?’”

Our neighbor immediately responded. “I am sorry. My mind is bit distracted”—she was scheduled to have heart surgery two days later—“and I wasn’t paying attention. I’m so sorry.”

The other shopper looked at her for a moment and then said, “I think you’re being rude.”

Our neighbor, puzzled at how to deal with such a person, responded, “Look, I really am sorry. I’ve apologized three times now. What more do you want?”

The other lady looked around in disgust and started to push her cart down the aisle. But as she passed our neighbor she looked back and hissed, “You must be a Democrat!”

I say, bring on the death panels!

* For those unfamiliar with them, Johnny Drama and Turtle are characters on HBO's "Entourage." I found this sticker on a car in Savannah, Georgia, during the lead up to the 2008 Presidential election. Notice the photographer not so well hidden in the reflection.

The Lonely Pursuit

7th Avenue Aerie, 2005

I can’t speak for other people. I don’t know how it is for painters, sculptors, illustrators, lyricists and choreographers. I find I have to be alone to do thoughtful photography. I have to move at my own schedule, without encumbrance from others. I have to be on my own to really see well.

Don’t get me wrong. I love traveling with my family and with friends. But that’s a different kind of travel. The priorities are different. Photographic observation has to fit into the group’s schedule and expectations, and those three things don’t always complement each other well.

I have to be able to walk instead of drive. Or if I’m driving, I have to be able stop the car when I see something, or stop the car and turn around and go back three miles and jump over a fence and dodge a “No Trespassing” sign to get the shot I want. Getting from Point A to Point B with me can take a while if something catches my eye along the way.

I have to go into bad neighborhoods that recreational travelers probably don’t want to see. I have to wait for trees or animals to get lined up right. I have to wait for the light or the shadow. As someone who works almost exclusively with available light, there’s no rushing light, no matter how hard you try.

Although the act of taking pictures takes seconds and some days I realize I’ve done my best work of the day in the first fifteen minutes, I still have to spend several hours at it. I have to stand in one place long enough to have a feel for it, to notice the sights and hear the sounds that are easily overlooked. I have to get past the mindless shots to get to something better.

One of our good friends is what I call a “speed traveler.” He says he “takes things in quickly.” I think he’s just got a short attention span. Once in New York we saw almost every inch of the Museum of Natural History, The Whitney and The Guggenheim museums in just over three hours, including walking to each museum and lunch.

The downside of this lonely photographic pursuit is that it is, well, lonely. A very successful day, photographically speaking, can be a very lonely day, socially speaking. You may encounter or meet new people in the course of making photographs. But it’s not the same as being among familiar faces. Two days of this in a row can reduce me to a babbling maniac, eager to talk to flight attendants, rental car return agents, newspaper stand cashiers, animals and trees. If I did it for a whole week I’d probably come out of the woods or off the street with a long beard, wearing the same clothes I started out with and be totally incoherent.

But I keep at it, ping ponging between being a total recluse and being a voluble companion, hoping that something productive will come of it.

Coincidence?

William Eggleston (left), Chris Bonney (right), 2009

I don’t know William Eggleston personally. But like a lot of other people I’ve long appreciated his championing of color in fine art photography at a time when the powers than be didn’t give a lot of respect to photography, much less color photography. I do a lot of color photography, so I’m grateful that the work Mr. Eggleston did pioneering color photography may pay off decades later for hacks like me.

I thought that was the extent of our relationship. But now it seems we have another connection.

I’ve been experimenting with some of the iPhone painting applications for a few months. I’m not a painter. But I enjoy trying to make something interesting with my stubby fingers on the little iPhone screen. Most of these works are scribbles, things I do in a couple of minutes when I’m sitting waiting for something else to happen. I don’t think much about them.

Then the current issue of Aperture magazine showed up yesterday. And instead of an edgy photograph on the cover, there is a drawing that looks very much like something I would have done on the iPhone using Paintbrush or Inspire.

It turns out the drawings were done by William Eggleston. They are described in the article about them as “vibrant” and “alive.” Obviously, Eggleston gave more attention to his drawings than I do mine. But I couldn’t help but be impressed that we were thinking along similar lines.

We Walk the Same Streets

Roosevelt Room, 2008

Much of my work is done in rooms like this. Empty vessels, the more neutral looking the better, where I convene groups of people to talk about things. Sometimes innocuous things like hot dogs. Other times serious things, like when life ends. Sometimes the people are selected at random. Other times they’re personally involved in an issue or agitated enough about it to be hostile.

In rooms like this I’ve been successful at getting people with social phobias to talk to one another. During discussions with teenagers about treatment protocols for bipolar disorder I’ve observed some cycle between depression and mania several times in an hour’s time. I’ve had people tell me all about their drug problems when all I wanted to know about was how often they eat chicken.

It’s like having a thousand first days of school. I welcome a group of strangers into a room and make them comfortable enough to tell me about their lives.

Most people who do this kind of work have an informal photo gallery in the back of their mind that showcases some of the more colorful group participants they’ve encountered.

In my case, there was Karl “with a K” from New Orleans, who always introduced himself as “Karl, Karl with a K.”

There was the large, overall-clad man in Minneapolis, whose demeanor and humor was so repugnant to other group members that they physically distanced themselves from him at the table.

There was the “tin man,” an Atlanta aluminum siding salesman who looks like a human version of Foghorn Leghorn. He was a big blustery guy, like John Goodman as Big Dan T in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? He wore a three-piece, baby blue seersucker suit that was a few sizes too small. His red hair stood tall like a rooster's cockscomb. His manner of speech and logic were cartoonish, and blissfully insensitive. In the space of a two-hour conversation about income tax he managed to insult every other member of the group—blacks, whites, Jews, gentiles and women. But he did it in such an innocent and pitiable way that the other group members couldn’t help but feel sorry for him.

Sometimes you encounter people in groups like these whose names you have difficulty pronouncing. Not long ago I moderated a group made up of people with particularly challenging Asian and African names. They were very kind and patient as I learned how to say their names. As I blundered my way around the table, I took confidence in knowing that at least I’d have no problem pronouncing the name of “Chloe,” the young lady who was last in line.

But instead, when I got around to welcoming Chloe, and even made a joke about how I’d get at least this one name straight, Chloe looked back at me with a peeved look and informed me:

“It’s pronounced ‘Cha-low.’ It’s French.”

Okay. Whatever.