Just finished in a still somewhat raw space is a high rise apartment building on Water Street in Cambridge. Billed as luxury living, the apartments look out on a wasteland, presumably cleared for future construction, then on to the huge blue MBTA Commuter Rail Maintenance Facility (its former name was Boston Engine Terminal) just north of North Station and Boston Sand and Gravel in Charlestown, a business made famous as scenes from the The Departed and others were filmed there.

I didn't spend much time trying to photograph the building itself but was fascinated by a fence put up to separate the new from the old, to establish the perimeter of the property and to restrict the view out to what was a sort of desert.

I have no idea what the logic of calling these apartments Zinc (Zn) is but at any rate the powers that be decided that the vinyl covering  for the fence would be a great place to have some graphics too.

What was behind the "curtain"?

This MBTA facility, which I was able to photograph by sticking my camera through a gap in a gate.

This new series goes on to look at the fence itself, what's obscured behind it and the printed graphics which depict something quite bizarre.

Boston is in the midst of a building boom, much of it centered on housing. Zinc is typical with a media room, work out facilities, expensive apartments, underground parking and a close-by T station.

The full series is now on the site here.

Technical footnote: many of you know I purchased the Sony A7R Mk II last fall and have been using it along with my Nikon for several months now. This project is the first I've made with some of the photographs coming from the Sony. Although the shooting experience is very different I found the final TIFF files to be practically interchangeable. 

In this post I am referring to Portland, Maine, just about two hours up the coast from where I live in Massachusetts. Last month I wrote about returning to Portland to make pictures on a twenty year anniversary of pictures I made there in 1996. Appropriately, that essay is called: Twenty Years Ago. The original Portland series is on the site here.

I went back again this week to try to add to the pictures I made last month. Once again, humbled by the difficulty of making good pictures while walking neighborhoods and pointing a camera at houses, streets, cars, alleys, sidewalks and fences, I worked to transcend the ordinariness to speak to larger issues. I walked and photographed. This has been my form of street photography for a long time and it is both all too easy and very very hard to do. I had great light, both on a late afternoon shoot and an early morning one the next morning.

I started here:

just as I did last month:

As I walked along, looking and photographing, I learned that one thing was a priority in terms of interest and emphasis: color. So, while the pictures I made a month ago were originally rendered in black and white, and the originals made in 1996 were made also using black and white, this new series will be in color.

Of course, there's some back story to this change. In 1996 I was only a black and white photographer. I did not even consider color in those days. It wouldn't be for another 6 years that color would begin to work its way into my process. And now, I am primarily a colorist photographer, meaning much of my work is about color. For instance:

Great Salt Lake, Utah 09.2016 

So here I am, referencing work made 20 years ago, returning to the scene to make pictures there again when I came across this:

Here is the first in the Portland Series from 1996 and intended as a wake up call to the fact this was first time I made series work in bright sunlight and the first series I'd made at all in 12 years. Here's the original: Portland, Maine 1996 

And here is the same building this past week. With one tree larger and one tree gone, still bookended by a vehicle left and right, still looking like it's posing with a smile on its face, waiting to be photographed, perpetually sunny in disposition even though there may be doom and gloom around the corner. Made my day, of course, coming across this after so long.

Let me posit something for minute. Imagine using a thing you did long ago becoming the reference for what you do now. Imagine using that precedent you established, not someone else, but you, out on your own, making something that forms the basis for a thing you make now. You could be a potter,  an architect, a musician, a writer, doesn't matter. How would that thing you did back then influence what you are making now? And conversely, how does what you are making now affect the thing you made in the past? Is the older piece seen now through a different lens, informed by this newer interpretation? Of course, here we are looking at these two projects, one made and one in the making, from an internal perspective, that would be me, the artist making the pictures. What about the external? Someone coming to these two bodies of work from the outside, as you are. Would you choose to reflect back on yourself twenty years ago, asked to go there by looking at these pictures? Can I do that, light a path to that way of thinking, reflecting on you, the you you were then? I hope so.

In my current Creative Practice class at the Griffin Museum we are doing just that. Talking about and discussing ways to imbue pictures with meaning, to make our work resonate and vibrate with import, with things to say or question going beyond the boundaries of a photographic document as a depiction. My class is experienced and accomplished people working within the broad definition of photography who have a real history of creative expression.

Back to the pictures and to color.

I can't help but be reminded of photographer Harry Callahan's statement that we always make the same picture. That early work isn't less or inferior and newer work isn't more or better, that it is all part of the work we make. That means, of course, that we own it all, flaws and all, as much as we might like to dismiss what we think of as lesser work, or work made through a series of bad decisions, perhaps shown and published, even though we wish it hadn't been. This is true for us all.

Who would have thought that going back to Portland twenty years later could have  brought so much to the surface? Not me. My idea behind going back to photograph 20 years later really came about because I was curious about what it would look like, what changes there would be to the neighborhood. Little did I know.

Portland, Maine. Great town, btw. Much more alive and culturally active now than 20 years ago. If you go and like BBQ, check out Salvage. 

Twenty years ago I made a series of photographs in Portland, Maine. The series is on my site here. It might be helpful if you looked at those first, as they are the frame of reference this new work is based upon.

When I wrote several blogs about the work I discussed the photographs and their timing, the pictures made as the last snow was melting in March and the fact that it was the first group like this I'd made in several years. The posts start here.

Last weekend I drove to Portland from Cambridge on the twentieth anniversary of when I made the first pictures, stayed in a motel and photographed in about the same neighborhood I had in 1996 on a cold, bright and cloudless March morning to see what was different and what was the same. Not only different and the same about the neighborhood but different and the same about me too.

March 1996 Portland Maine

March 2016 Portland Maine

It was a humbling lesson.  I did not try to duplicate pictures or try to survey exactly where I'd been two decades ago. That would be dull, predictable and too much like a survey, for I am an artist not a  documentarian. But I did want to be in the same area, with similar light and then see what happened.

It was very cold and very early, the light as sharp, clean and crystalline as any I've ever seen with strong sunlight and deep shadows filtered and channeled by the buildings.

2016

Why would I presume that I could be as "sharp and clean" as I was twenty years ago? Was I trying to regain my more youthful self? Presuming that I could perceive and render with decisiveness? No. I was there to see if I could muster the forces inside to make relevant statements, to see if I had wit, perception, clarity and design in hand, to measure the level of my game. But I was also there to see if my perception of what a picture was had changed in the context of this familiar territory. We all agree we are the same person we were twenty years ago and yet we are not as well. There is so much that happens to us that changes us. Would this be perceptible in the pictures I made?

2016

2016

2016

I don't know that I can answer that, yet. 

Funny to have pictures you made twenty years ago rattling around in your head when you are making pictures now in the same place. Certainly I could work to repeat myself but that is something I have no interest in. Have you gone back to something you did in the past to re-realize it, to re-aproach it? Maybe its my being 69 years old at work here, I don't know. But this thing I am trying certainly has its challenges built in.

What did I find? I found that I learned that re-obtaining the feeling of exhilaration and magic of those pictures I made twenty years ago did not come so easily. Just because a veteran like myself points a camera at something with intent and purpose doesn't make it any better than pictures made by someone completely inexperienced and clueless. In fact, the very nature of having made pictures in the past that were good carries the weight of presumption and makes photographing now more difficult. Call it baggage. I did make one or two that day that sing but will clearly have to work longer and harder than just one March morning to make a new series that will be truly good. Scratch the idea that I can bring a high level of insight to reality at the flick of a switch, on call. I never could and I certainly can't now. As I said, humbling, but exactly as it should be. 

What a truly odd thing to be doing! To be standing out there on the sidewalk in 20 degree freezing sunlight on an early Saturday morning in March, pointing the camera at the side of a house and banking on the premise that I am perceptive, endowed with ability and discernment, able to speak of larger issues in this very small sphere of place and time. No wonder artists are so misunderstood!

2016

1996

A footnote about the tools I used: I found myself obsessing less about what I used. I did use a camera with a wider lens than I did in 1996 and a 5:4 rectangle for shape  to contain the width and exposure settings to try to favor the highlights so as to keep them from overexposing as they were very bright. This meant I lost some detail at times in the shadows. So be it. I was also framing looser as if what was on the edges needed less overt control or that I felt it was okay not to overthink it. 

In the previous post (here) I introduced a new series of my photographs called the Benson Grist Mill north of Salt Lake City in Utah. I made these in September 2015. This post will continue to look at these new pictures.

We left off having just made a picture of the log cabin and we were clearly heading someplace new. I walked down a slight incline and across a foot bridge that crossed the stream and up the other side.

This is the only vertical in the project and now you'll see the connection from the power cord in the previous frame to this one, I am sure. Usually I don't move things in my pictures and this was true here. I have no idea why the rope was spread out along the gravel like this. In pointing down with this lens I've made another picture that is not neutral or "straight" but it was necessary to follow the rope from its start to its end. To me it is pointing us somewhere and the next picture puts us in place to see that.

By repeating part of what was in the vertical we have no choice but to pay attention to this part as, in effect, this is a crop. Minor White was known for finding the picture in the picture. It was his way of telling students to move in and "essentialize" the picture.  I learned to do this in my own work with a fixed lens camera photographing a series in Newtown, CT (take a look at frames 19-24 here). I like the plane created from the side of the building on the right and then sliding along the back of the truck. The wide lens, held level here, makes for what I call a "fast "picture when taken out of being parallel to the subject. All that convergence on the right and then extending to the back of the truck sweeps you through the picture in an almost accelerating nature. Finally, you can't see what else is on the truck unless you move in very close and if you're reading this blog on your smart phone you can hardly see anything, so I'll show you:

and enlarged more:

I like the "Power of Pride" on the truck. Presumably it indicates pride in the USA. I searched for it and found it comes from a bumper sticker that looked like this: 

This photograph also hints at the greater world outside of this small park as, screened by a row of trees, you can see a mountain range off in the distance with clouds hovering over it all like an umbrella.

So here we are, back in "pairs" again and we are also now in the center and core of the series. 

Next up is another pairing and I used a device familiar to many of you, shooting and then turning 180 degrees to shoot again.

With first the sun at my back and then turning to photograph directly into it.

I recognize that among those of you that are purists there is no way you'd allow your  hand to be in the picture but let's be clear about who made those rules. Among  more conservative artists there are rules, I know, but really, in this day and age doesn't that sound a little ridiculous that you can't do something? These rules are more like long standing traditions. I think of Ansel Adams standing next to his 8 x 10 view camera making one of his iconic photographs. He might throw his hand up there to shield the lens from the sun so it wouldn't flare but he would make damn sure it was never seen in the photograph.  And that's fine, for photography was in a very different place then, in the 1930's and 40's, but that isn't far from being a 100 years ago, a very long time in this medium.

And let's be clear, I am in no way a documentarian. And this was an essential picture in the series.Why? Because of the path through to the world at large way back there in the frame. This is the only frame in the series where I allow you to see out with clarity and it is remarkable back there:

with layered content in the field to work your way through and mountains in the very background that give you a sense of the scale of the place. This is the land, after all, where this is: Great Salt Lake,

which was literally less than a mile from where I was standing at the Benson Grist Mill.

By the way, look at the shadowed barns on either side. See how they aren't totally black? This is simply amazing and attributable to something called "dynamic range" which is the ability to hold detail at each end of the tonal scale in something so very contrasty as this. This degree of dynamic range is new to photography in the past several years and yes, it is a digital thing. It is next to impossible for film to do this.

So, where are we going from here? To this pair:

 which moves us around to the side of one of the small buildings we've just seen as alleys and that is obscuring the others, and to here:

which brings us back very fast across the bridge and leaves those previous pictures behind. We are now placed to turn another 180 degrees to see what lies ahead of us, the final chapter in this little novella.  Forgive me, but this is a way of paying respect to where we've just been and saying goodbye to those pictures I just made. I don't do this often but felt it was warranted here, for the previous two pairs were the core of the series, the primary reason we are spending so much time on these pictures and why I worked on them and printed them over a two week period.

Now that we've moved on and are away from those, where do you suppose we're headed?

To something quite different and that looks, at first glance, hugely insignificant. But let's go closer:

to this which was, quite simply, so exquisite it stopped me right in its tracks, these leaves, a little back lit and floating from a branch above that it took me right out of the pattern of working in one vein that was well established in the 15 pictures preceding this. To add to the exceptional nature of this picture, note how it is virtually all out of focus except for the the plane of the leaves floating in the foreground. There are times when I feel very lucky when I make pictures and this one seems to be thrown in there as a sort of bonus. Well, whatever power (the good luck god?) that may be at work here, it has my everlasting gratitude.

So we are wrapping up now and I must admit we are going to do it in an anticlimactic manner. First here, the second to the last:

which returns us to our second and third frames hinting at something on one edge and then leading us to that subject, this time sliding to the right verses the left as before:

which is this last one and ending with the concept of coming around full circle prevailing as you can see the small cel tower or antenna poking through above the roof on the left. That's the same one we saw first in number four. Also this brings us back to the present due to its roof being modern and the sliding doors looking newer as well. Time has been been skewed a little in this series as there have been very few references or keys to where we are in time and that was intentional. Very often I'll include a present day car or something else to base a series in the "now" but that kind of device didn't seem appropriate here. The photographs being black and white adds to that as well, I think.

I do believe the last three function as an addendum, rather than going out with a  bang, but "it is what it is", that infuriating phrase that indicates that there is no more to work with.  I do find myself wondering if my physical condition (this was a few weeks before I had hip replacement surgery and I was working while in pain the whole time in Utah) played a part here, in that I was tired and sore after making the previous pictures.  When working to make a series I shoot about three or four times more frames than I end up using so I'd been at work a few hours already. Did I lose concentration ? Was I thinking about where I could get a beer, something to eat or just sitting down? I don't know, but it's possible. 

So what's the point with these pictures? What is all this work saying? The answer is locked in each individual photograph and also in how they relate to each other. I would think there could be 17 different answers, one for each picture, or maybe more if you began to address and answer what happens in the spaces between prints in the sequence. I for one wouldn't begin to presume that I could tell you what the pictures are about or say. I feel it is for you to unlock their meaning for you personally. Using this vehicle of the blog I can share with you some of my intentions and write about some of the work I did to make them but I can't tell you what to take from the pictures.

My next to last point: I wrote in the first post about the grist mill pictures that I was working within norms.There is so much trickery and gimmicks used in picture making these days. And I am not averse to using technical aids when I feel it adds to pictures. Take a look at South Woods Farms (which are HDR's) and Baldwinville as examples. But it isn't always necessary, or perhaps even seldom needed. A group of photographs such as these should rely upon the seeing, not technical wizardry used to make them. And my very last point. Earlier I used the concept of playing against a chord or a given key to make when arriving at the harmony more meaningful. That is called counterpoint. That's true here even though photographs aren't music. I would caution you against trying to find the "pictures that work" or that are keepers when looking at my series photographs and to think about the body of work as a whole. Of course, you and I both will have a favorite or two but we shouldn't think of those as standing on their own because they need the ones that precede it and follow it as well.

Once again, you may see these unusual, remarkable, exceptional and beautiful prints (not very modest, but I believe they are) at 555 Gallery practically on demand.  Just ask. For a sense of how they work together without all these words you may see them on the gallery page of this site as well here.

Thank you for looking and reading.

On the site: a new series from near Salt Lake City, Utah in September: here.

The Benson Grist Mill is a small tourist attraction of a restored grist mill north of the city. The mill building itself is large, three stories high and was powered by a stream. It dates back to 1842. The project ends up being in black and white as I felt that color would not add to the pictures. Working on these photographs over the past two weeks felt very much like I was working within my own tradition of making series work: black and white, wide angle lens, hand held camera and walking through a place or an area to make a sequential body of photographs. This way of working, what I call "series" work, came about a long time ago in the early 80's. I wrote about this discovery in a few posts starting here: 

http://www.nealrantoul.com/posts/nantucket-1980%20Part%201.

Over my now long career as an artist, making series work has lived as a core principal for me.

This is a little difficult to communicate effectively but ultimately I am often not so invested in a place that I photograph as what that place means in terms of the pictures I make from it. Another way to say this is to ask the question if I cared about the grist mill's history? What it was used for? The role that it played in the local economy of the time? Not so much. On the other hand, without this content, this subject in front of me that day, what would I have? Nothing. It is this Harry Callahan was referring to when he said that the "subject is everything". 

Let's take a look.

This is the title page. Benson Grist Mill is a sequenced and numbered portfolio of pictures, printed 20 inches across on 22 x 17 inch Canson Photographique Baryta paper, in black and white. 

The first picture in the set is this:

and it establishes that we are in some sort of farm or old village on a very bright and sunny day in the summer or early fall with paved paths, which would reinforce that this is a place for tourists to come see and that is correct. We see the bottom half of a log cabin, a lot of grass, some bushes and a shadow. Of course, in this one the big elephant in the scene is the shadow of a wind mill, which, as it turns out, we never see in reality in the series. This is a prevailing theme throughout this 17 print series. The shadow contained within the picture, without the actual object being shown. This image, were you to see it up close and personal, is sharp and exceptionally clean, the print is open and without color or toning with deep blacks but with detail contained within them,  Zone lll shadows, if you know what that means.

As we go through these it might be helpful if you think of the series as photographs in pairs, with some existing as spaces between the pairs. I will point them out as we go along. For this one we have the same building now described mostly in front of us with strong light on the logs looking almost bleached on this bright sunny day. Notice that the top of the building is cut off. I am known for this and it irritates many but I believe in the device, truncating the top peak as it contains the picture better. There is also something of an "arrow" in the shadow pointing us to the left to the grist mill which is coming up, but not quite next as we have this one before we go there.

Why? For its surface treatment, and for its sheer textural richness and beauty. Notice the shadow again here, never defined as to what it is coming from.

Let me take us off topic slightly for minute. In this set we have nothing revolutionary at all. I am using commonly available materials, am handling single files one at a time to make single pictures. I am hand holding the camera when shooting and am using a wide angle zoom lens. All of this is everyday practice digital photography. But, I am doing all this with as consummate a skill level of rendering as I know how to make based upon my over 40 years of experience as a photographer. Does it matter? I think it does but you would have to be the judge by seeing the actual prints. I would hold this photograph up as an example. Sliding your eyes over the surface of that door, this very old wood standing the test of almost a couple of centuries is a little like looking at the variety and subtleties of a landscape photographed from the air. 

Let's move on, into a sort of trilogy, out of respect for the structure itself, the grist mill that was built originally in 1842, the core of this little assemblage of buildings, shacks and barns, but also because in pictures, at least, it is magnificent.

So here we are at what would seem to be the very center of the series, the pictures of the grist mill itself. But I've gotten there only four pictures into the series. Why is that? Because it is a false center. It really isn't the main point of this series but only serves as a lead in and prelude to some other things I want to say farther down into the series.

So this one, turning things into obliques and angles, gives us a little of the front of  the grist mill but denies us much knowledge of the overall structure. This was really a decision made more in editing than the day I was making the pictures. Because I did stand back and photograph the front full facade of the building but didn't include it as it left nothing to the imagination. I would even go as far to say that it didn't have any "artistry". I know that may seem odd but the image (notice I am not showing it to you) was factual and boring. And you and I both do not have time for those.

So, next up:

Bang. Straight. No convergence as I am standing on a slight hill to shoot it and with a little sky showing along the top edge. A facade based picture with what looks like the sun almost dead on behind me, a little to the right perhaps. On the right, the same steps we saw in the previous frame, what looks like an antenna or a short cel tower in the background place us now in 2015, not 1842 and then the side of the building serving as the springboard to head us back to the ridge where there seem to be some buildings. We are headed there but not quite yet. And finally keep an eye on the fence as it will reappear here:

No longer so straight. Here I am letting the width of the lens have its due, rather than playing it conservative. Clearly the lens making things a little different. I remember working to make that center line of the edge of the grist mill be straight and then letting whatever else was in the frame angle out.

Are we having fun yet? I know I am. Let's do one more and then we'll save the rest for part 2.

Odd. Yes, this is our original log cabin but placed here as though we've looped back around to it from the grist mill. True enough. That is exactly the way it worked. In order to move farther on and end up on the ridge back behind the mill I needed to walk on the path you see to the left to a small bridge that crossed the stream. In terms of the project this is a little like hinting at something, denying it and then giving it to you. As a very poor pianist, I often play against a chord to increase tension and make the getting to the harmony in the cord itself more rewarding and satisfying. Same here. Note the extension cord coming out from the doorway leading to the black frame around which another picture is being framed, the continuance of the pathway in the far background, the verticality of this small one mimicked by the two windows. Finding a way to make a vertical photograph in a horizontal frame? Always fun.

I would think by now you might be mulling over what I said at the start.  About the subject being of secondary importance in relation to the pictures made from it. Another way to analogize about it is this: it might be helpful to think of what is in front of you with your camera as a list of ingredients from which any of us could make a wide variety of dishes for our dinner. As I parked my car and walked into the Benson Grist Mill with no camera, not knowing what it was, and scouted the location for a few minutes, made the decision that this was good and headed back to the car to get my camera I was thinking about logistics, of course (what lens, what ISO, have I got a fresh card, should I bring a backup battery with me?) but also that here I was, once again, about to embark on a series and psyched for the challenge of making pictures that might become a part of my oeuvre. In fact, that's just what has happened.

This is probably a good place to stop this post. I will bring Part 2 in quickly, in a day or so, and hope you will stay along for that one too.

I hope you are enjoying the look at this new work. Let me know by emailing me. Would you like me to continue? 

Neal's email: here

If you want to see the Benson Grist Mill series as prints get in touch with 555 Gallery in Boston. 

Next up: Benson Grist Mill Part 2