OCTOBER 2021
NOTES ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY
Over the years, I have photographed and made documentaries of poverty, the violence of the KKK, thuggish mobs, legal peaceful demonstrations, riotous anarchists, neo-Nazis, police and others; I have photographed famous and not so famous people, landscapes, and many still-life images, especially of food; I’ve written over 40 scripts, directed and lit over 900 commercials for TV and more than 40 documentaries, with my latest, THIS GOOD EARTH, being contracted by Random Media in LA for worldwide distribution. Recently I have been finding a kind of joy and peace in teaching students and older people about photography and film and many cultural ideas surrounding them.
I will upload short essays about what I have encountered and learned about these things above, and also impressions about events I encounter in the world of culture (as the one below about the singer Barb Jungr) and also things encountered in my life. I hope you who have the time to read and look at these things, find some interest, beauty and provocations to respond to, all of which are welcome.
SEEING AND LOOKING
I came from a home that placed little value on culture and learning. I became entranced with photography when I was twelve years old and immediately began to absorb everything about photography I could get my hands on.
Amongst the photographers I encountered in books and magazines were W. Eugene Smith, Paul Strand and especially Edward Weston and his diaries called DAYBOOKS.
I came to understand that photography could reveal truths about life I was hungry to grasp, and truths I hardly knew existed, and to do so with great beauty. I found I could be suspended for many minutes by an image and begin to see into it. I would describe to myself in words what I was looking at, thinking what it was about and even why it had been made. I realized, unlike with music and film, I had to make the journey to the pictures to really understand them.
Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher and contributor to media theory, referred to photography as a cool medium, which viewers must motivate themselves towards, whereas film, opera and music are hot media, which reach out to engage the audience.
I imagined that the medium would carry me beyond my restricted childhood to a broader world filled with exciting people and events. Pulling myself up my short bootstraps forced me to confront many picture-making problems.
Photographing is a process of seeing, looking and then doing. It is about capturing a moment in time and fragments of the world (things, people), processing them in various ways and returning them as an offering to the world.
I came to understand ‘seeing’ was not just a matter of looking, but also what I understood via my culture and my developing visual literacy which aided what I could transform into meaningful ideas and vital emotions.
re-Appearances(The photograph above is of Ricky Romain, a painter , sitar player and composer, studying, looking as he investigates the world. This was made in 2015, while I was making a film about his extraordinary work.)
A REVIEW OF BARB JUNGR IN CONCERT
I recently attended a concert in London’s Zedel Bar and Brasserie, given by Barb Jungr, the multi-award-winning English singer/songwriter and playwright, known for her singular style and for her interpretative abilities of other’s songs.
I have been a close friend of hers for many years. Thus I always know there will be an enriching evening of great music beautifully delivered, interspersed with her informative and often humorous between-the-songs comments and histories.
Whether it was the mood I was in, or her connection with the Zeitgeist, I don’t know, but that concert of 10 songs by Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan climbed into my soul. Barb is always totally faithful to the meaning of the lyrics. While providing so many emotional nuances of a forsaken heart in LOVE IS JUST A FOUR LETTER WORD by Dylan, she began to shred my ‘ I am not going to show my feelings’ shield.
In SO LONG MARIANNE, by Leonard Cohen, she led us to ‘cry and laugh’ about surrendering a relationship that was wonderful yet condemned by time and by distracting wants and needs. With the central character – the singer – recognising his/her desire to love the other, but still to be free to embrace the angels, he acknowledges that independence is more valuable to him than the long-lasting relationship. This is the stuff of tragedy delivered with such tender transparency.
In Cohen’s WHAT HAPPENS TO THE HEART, while the lyrics so painfully reveal the wear and tear of life’s events on the condition of the human heart, Barb delivered it with inescapable regret for the passing of time and the uncontrolled nature of our fate, it was difficult to find a dry eye in the house.
This was the delivery of the infinite pain of existence and the purple pain of having loved another so deeply, ones’ being becomes a shade of the others, and since, as the French philosopher Albert Camus pointed out, while the soul wishes to survive, the corporeal reality of the body is to return to the universe. Barb has continually evolved as an artist, and a true poet or perhaps guide to the human spirit. Her ability to roll lyrics into her voice and then into our being has increased. That night it happened in front of us, but yet it’s depth of meaning is that of the trickster, providing balm for our ears and deep longing to our souls.
In Dylan’s FORGETFUL HEART, the lyrics tell us “we love with all the love that life can give, but without her, it’s hard to live”. What we hear is that ‘we cannot bare to live without the love of our life’. We cannot be left alone with only the memories. It’s beautiful, real, and heart-breaking.
And of course, in Cohen’s DANCE ME TO THE END OF LOVE, Barb takes us to that end, balancing on the cliff edge of our emotional reach, as she embraces all of history, from now to Babylon. Barb then asks to “dance her to the children who are asking to be born” and to ‘dance with her to the curtain which our kisses have outworn”.
Song by song, emotion by emotion, she filled our hearts with love and our souls with the utter realities of life’s struggles and life’s beauty. Don’t miss her next time she appears near you. Go alone or with someone you deeply love. To our souls, it is unforgettable.
ROASTED BABY BEETROOT
Young varying coloured beetroots with chunks of wet spring garlic, bay leaves and black pepper roasted in olive oil for about an hour, eaten with thick slices of Wobbly Cottage (from Broadwinsor Dorset) organics seeded bread. I used to shoot food in my London studio with home economists, stylists, 2 assistants and very big lights and cameras; now its a digital rangefinder, handheld under whatever light I can place it in and then printed very carefully.
