In The Show 1, I wrote about making pictures for an exhibition I had on Martha's Vineyard in 1995. In this one, we'll take a look at some of the work and I'll explain the foundational logic I used in making the pictures.

As the years accumulated I photographed sites built and unbuilt that were being managed by VOLF. In the properties where there were no buildings yet, I began to feel that there was a larger reason for the photographs being made. After all, my photographs would have historical importance as a record of what the land looked like before anything was built on it. While I still photographed the beaches and along the shore I found myself exploring much more of the interior of the island. Plus, VOLF was providing access to some incredible sites that otherwise I couldn't get to. 

The very poor and very old photographer Eugene Atget photographed "his" Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in reaction to increasing industrialization. The Paris he knew well was being changed forever by the automobile and electricity. He took on the task of documenting the city to record it for posterity. They are some of the most poignant and heartfelt photographs I have ever seen.

I carried in my mind many of his indelible photographs as I photographed all over the island. The late 1980s and early  1990s were a time of massive increases in building on the island. I was now on a mission to document parts of the island before they were changed forever. 

Plus I was using the current day equivalent of the camera he had used, a large-format 8 x 10 camera on a tripod, making black and white pictures by developing a few sheets of film at a time and printing the pictures in my darkroom.

This was a new and heady experience. Using my photographs for something more than self-expression, meaning that these pictures were far less about me and more about my subject and the photographs' place in time.

Let's stop here. Let me set the stage for the next one, The Show 3. I'll bring us to the exhibition that opened August 2, 1995, in Edgartown at the Martha's Vineyard Museum and some of the drama around it.

The next few posts will take us through the story behind the one-man show I had at the Martha's Vineyard Museum in Edgartown, MA in 1995. The reason I am writing about this now is that I am donating the full show, 21 prints, to the Museum in a couple of weeks to be included in their permanent collection. 

In 1987 I became a tenured associate professor at Northeastern University. I was the head of the Photography Program in the Department of Art And Architecture. Along with tenure came a release from the pressure of being in what's called a "tenure track" where your every step is scrutinized and criticized by senior professors in your department prior to applying for tenure. 

 Now that I was tenured I found myself thinking about my photography a little differently. Somehow, I was now legit. My University had voted unanimously to approve my promotion, all the way up to the President and the Board of Trustees. With real job security, I could do some things that might not bring me much exposure to critics and curators but might benefit others.

I started by donating my services and photographs to various nonprofits. The first one of these was on the island, called the Vineyard Open Land Foundation (VOLF), an organization formed to manage open land on the island, to advise owners on how to build with sightlines that obstruct less and so on. I noticed that their visuals in their publications were terrible, as they were snapshots made by staff members on site visits. So, I made a presentation of my work to their board, suggesting that they might take me on, at no cost, assisting me with access to their managed properties and let me loose. The idea was that I would make pictures, show them to the board, then they could use them should they wish. Gratis.

That is just what happened. 

I had photographed on the Vineyard for my whole career, and still do, but this put some real purpose behind my work in those years.

Over the next several years I photographed in all seasons, often being taken to a site VOLF wanted to have included in the survey.

I am going to end this segment here but let me finish by saying my photographs were used by VOLF for publicity purposes and I even mounted small shows of my work in their offices from time to time as well. Finally, I took on the design and production of a high-quality poster for them that used a landscape image of mine (the one you see above) and a top graphic designer from a prestigious firm, all pro bono.

Next up in The Show 2 we'll get to the show that hung in 1995 and to some of the work in it.

Stay tuned.

Martha's Vineyard. South Shore. Early spring 2019. Park car. Gear up. Walk out to beach. Turn left. Go down there a ways. Small stream, running from a spring back behind the dunes on the other side of Moshup Trail across the beach and down to the ocean. Classic.  The fresh water turning orange and gold below its surface. A world in the sand and rocks. Sunlight reflecting in the ripples of the water. Stop and look, for a miracle is taking place in small scale at my feet.

What to do? Shoot it, again and again, and again.

Witness. It's all that is needed. Yes, there is a camera involved and yes, it is me standing there in bare feet reaching out and pointing the lens down, so simple really.

Try it all different ways.

Timeless. Not trendy or current. Not necessary to build that logic, that rational. I don't have to make a case for these as I am just a witness, a conduit to the miracle. These could be made 40 years ago, although God knows photography is almost a different language now. It is that good.

Just pictures. Of course, that's like saying a Mondrian is just lines or Keith Jarrett's solo piano at the Koln Concerts is just notes. Hey, not boasting. I did very little here.

Look: farther back than making "art", farther back in the frame of references like student or professional or accomplished or expert, farther back than motivation or reasoning, farther back than any logic or system you may have, there is this: do you need to make things, to create? Do you have a requirement to make work?  Is that in you? Is making pictures the defining characteristic of your life?

All kinds of categories here. Hobby, pastime, pleasant activity, entertaining, pretty, decorative, passive, intense, driven, compelled, obsessive, aggressive, uncompromising, possessed, willed.

What do you want? Fame, praise, approbation, sales, acknowledgment, acclaim, admiration, a lasting legacy? And are these the kinds of things that motivate you to make art? I've written about this before but do you make your work by calculation or make it because it's in you, part of who you are?

I recognize aspiration, the desire to be something you are not or haven't arrived at yet. I get that. But what is there in you that you haven't found yet? And how are you going about discovering and using your creative self? And watch out: tread lightly here because there are many false prophets, looking to take your money and your heart.

I think you need to know who you are, comfortable in your own skin in order to be an artist. Not to say there isn't torture, angst, doubt, guilt, recrimination, insecurity rising its ugly head from time to time. 

Last, I believe we live in an age and place where art is not revered or respected, it is misunderstood and maligned. At least in this year 2019 in the US of A. More: not paid attention to, not important, not acknowledged. Terrible.

A topic for another time, perhaps.

Be well. 

Next:  the finishing, transporting, hanging of the American West show the 27th and then the 29th, a ten-day trip to shoot Wheat in Washington. Hope you will read along. Should be good. Looking forward to the "same but different" out there, this my 20th trip.

One more:

the beautiful walkway to the beach.

Bloody Hell! Where's the blog been? Well, I've been a little indisposed. There was some surgery and then recovery, there was even a half hearted attempt to write something and post it but in reading it just now I realized it was incoherent. I think this one will be better.

This is a post about a single photograph, one of mine made mid-winter in New England at Martha's Vineyard this past February.

I confess to being a little obsessed. Here it is:

Not so special, you're thinking. Some of you may even know where it is, right off the only road up island in Chilmark heading toward Aquinnah.

Actually, it isn't one photograph. It is about nine. It is many frames shot vertically and sequentially from left to right with about a 20% overlap, then stitched together. Lightroom will do this but will clip a very large file. I suggest Photoshop. What have you got? One honking large file and if you've been careful in exposure and focus consistency something that will go huge and well. The image you see now sits in my studio, framed at 84 inches across:

It is, in a word, gorgeous. Soft and diffuse flat light, with, rare for the Vineyard in the winter, no wind. The water calm and balancing the hazy light blue of the sky with the center growth pinpoint sharp and mimicked by the shape of the trees framing the reeds in front. Often large photographs disappoint up close. For instance, I found myself mostly critical of the large prints by present-day photographers hanging at the MFA in the recent Ansel Adams show. Not this one. Readable from down the hallway into my studio and spectacular from 8 inches out, my kind of big photograph.

Every time I enter the studio and turn on the overheads I am hit with a photograph that has tremendous impact because of its size but am just as impressed with it subtlety, nuanced color palette and resolution.

I also find this photograph reflective of my frame of mind, as I was dealing with a diagnosis of prostate cancer two weeks before surgery when I made it. All those questions and concerns now past me as my surgery is over and I am in recovery, slowly building my strength back day by day and with lab results showing no spread of cancer with just needing a checkup in three months.

Woohoo! 

After spending a night in NY, we headed back to Boston by way of New Haven to see the George Shaw painting show at the Yale Center for British Art and have lunch with Phillip Prodger. Phillip is the former curator of photography at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem and has recently returned to the States from London where he did a stint at the National Portrait Gallery.

Before I tell you the $26 story let me share some of Shaw's paintings with you.

Quite often these are large, on up to  5 or 6 ft, mostly enamel on metal. Here is the      opening statement

Don't know if you can read it so small but it speaks about his inherent preoccupation with the fine art of painting and the prevailing medium of the day, photography. 

These are extraordinary paintings, "take your breath away" beautiful and, for me, they both validate present day painting but validate much of my work that points at things like fences, that allows shadows, blank walls and everyday objects pulling back in space, made earlier in my career in black and white and now in color. 

photograph: Neal Rantoul from Fences and Walls

painting: George Shaw

painting: George Shaw

Affirming is the sense that Shaw and I look at the world  in similar ways. Uncanny, really, that someone unknown to me until now has been working in a manner that is somewhat aligned to mine. 

Looking for proof? Easy. Go to Edgartown Beach Club and the blog post:

here   (hint: the author of the series is me, working under the pseudonym Marc Meyers)