My Photographic Journey
Recently, I visited The Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York. Established in 1985 by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, it is situated in a 1920s industrial building across the street from his former studio. The museum houses an extensive collection of his works. It also has an outdoor sculpture garden.
When I was there, the room in this photo was lit only by the daylight streaming through the windows.
I discovered this building with its colorful wall in Maras, Peru at the site of the ancient salt pans or ponds, known locally as the Salineras de Maras.
I was struck by how the rectangular colored shapes on the wall echoed the rectangular plots of salt, and how the edges on the wall’s painted shapes were modified to accommodate the roof line in the same manner that the mostly rectangular plots were modified to fit the contours of the terraced hillside.
There are thousands of these salt ponds on the hillside. An underground stream rich in salt and minerals water was discovered here by pre-Inca communities. They made channels to direct the stream into the ponds. The ponds are tended by local families much as they have been for centuries.
This place is a popular tourist attraction, especially for photographers. Who can resist the reflections made in the thin layer of water on the floor and the light from the sky entering through an oculus in the ceiling? I suspect hundreds, if not thousands, of photographers have uploaded their images of the Portuguese cistern to the internet. So how could I expect to make an image that would be different and distinctively mine?
Read MoreI continue to comb through my archives during the Covid pandemic. This is my latest find.
There is something about old, gnarled trees that resonates with me. They cannot run away from hardship and adversity to seek a better place to live. They must face whatever challenges life presents and adapt as best they can. Yet they always maintain their dignity.
Last December I traveled to the Hawaiian Islands. One of the gardens I visited was the Hawai’i Tropical Botanical Garden, located just north of Hilo, Hawai’i. The garden has a spectacular display of tropical plants, both native and exotic. Some of the images in my Tropical Dreamscapes series were taken here.
A section of the garden is devoted to palm trees, where I found this colorful design of roots at the base of one of the trees.
Birch Trees, Iceland, 2013
When one thinks of Iceland, typically it is of a treeless, barren land. So I was surprised and delighted to come upon this idyllic birch forest on a walk one day during my second visit to Iceland, in 2013.
Before Iceland was settled, trees covered 25–40% of the land, and birches were common. Over the centuries, trees were cut for building material, for fuel, and to make grazing land for livestock, leaving the land almost devoid of forests. Recently reforestation efforts have begun to bring back the trees.
Icelandic Fishing Village, 1973
In 1973 I visited Iceland, driving around in a VW bug and camping. Back then I found that the roads were not paved after leaving the Reykjavik area, and driving on gravel roads slowed me down and prevented me from reaching some of the farther destinations I had hoped to see. However, I did see some of the south coast, where I came across this picturesque fishing village and made some photographs, including the one above.
I recently traveled to Iceland again, but before I left home I decided to try to find out about the village I had visited 46 years earlier. I did not remember its name or its location, but I had a sense that it was not too far along the south coast. Using the internet I discovered that even today there are very few villages along that stretch of the south coast where I had traveled earlier. The village of Eyrarbakki is on a road that seemed like one I would have taken on my first trip, so I searched some images and found a recent picture taken near the same location as my older photograph, confirming my hunch.
I visited Eyrarbakki twice on this recent trip and was able to photograph the same scene at approximately the same location as my earlier photo—see below. The fishing boat is long gone; utility wires have been buried underground, and the streets are now paved. Although fishing is no longer an important part of the community, Eyrarbakki has retained much of its charm, and it is a popular destination for Icelanders and tourists alike.
Eyrarbakki, Iceland 2019
With a little imagination, one can pretend to be looking at a scene from the Middle Ages.
More images from Morocco.
Images from the Moroccan desert.
“The Kasbah of the Glaouis is not old, yet it is one of the most important sights of yesterday’s Morocco. The story began during the hard winter of 1893, when Sultan Moulay Hassan was stranded here. He, and his army of 3,000 was well taken care of by the two brothers Glaoui, Madani and T’Hami. In return of their services, they were given political power of Morocco south of High Atlas Mountains. In the years that followed the Glaoui brothers strengthened their position, and when the French came some 20 years later, they started a cooperation with them as well. By the end of the French colonial period, the Glaouis were almost as strong in power as the sultan himself.”
After Morocco's independence in 1956, the Glaoui family was evicted and the kasbah was left to ruin. These photographs are of the opulent interior rooms, slowly decaying.
For the next few posts, I will be putting up photos from a trip to Morocco this past April.
