This is the last in a three part essay on the series called Newtown, CT, a portfolio of photographs I made in 1998.

In Newtown 2 (here), the last picture we looked at was this.

It is a transition or hinge picture in that it is used to get us to the next one, or two really. Before we go there I need to write about the structure as it becomes important as we move on to the next them. Its make up is that it is three horizontal bands, the pavement, the building and the sky one. Yes, it is very simple.

It also is the same way the next pictures are structured:

The same scene made first in sunlight and then with the sun behind a cloud. Also simple.This happened as I was standing there making the first one. A landscaping crew came in, probably before construction started, and clear cut the woods. This pair reinforce that all is not right in this assisted living facility in Newtown, CT. Personally, this was a big event for me as this was, I believe, the first time I did this, to place two pictures like this in a series. I believe it focuses attention on the choice I made and is an effort to draw attention not only to the fact that I stood there, camera in hand, and made a clear choice to make pictures of both sunny and cloud covered. Finally, for more on my thinking during this time it might be helpful to go back to the Lebanon, NH series, which are here. There are also three blog posts on the  series, which start here.

Here we go. A new subset and another new way for me to photograph.

What was I thinking?

Why did I do this? 

These make the core or foundation of the Newtown, CT series.

First of all let me give you some  inside information. These are made with a fixed lens camera, so I either cropped to make these or I just walked up the hill to make them in succession. I did the latter. I also printed them lighter as I made them to emphasize the increasing white in the frames. Finally, I made this subset completely intuitively, having no idea that I would use them in the final body of work. They were an experiment and completely out of the norm for me. 

This is the next to last in this long series and is there to allow us to begin to leave, showing us where we've been to some extent but also to contrast the bright white of the former set.

And this is the last. Remember the picture with the three bushes planted in the grass? Here we are again with three, this time with flowers in pots. But look how dark this one is. We are consumed with black here, so deep we don't really know what is in there. This is a very specific print, pushed way down to make a point and not residing in anyone's definition of a "good print".

We are now done with Newtown, CT. Before I close, let me give you some perspective as I look at these now 18 years later (I am writing this in the spring of 2016). Brutal and severe. That's what these pictures are. With the photographs wrapped in a deceptively conventional package of black and white photography and a late spring sunny day, the underlying message is harsh, critical and angry. I was angry at the inhumanity of the place, the sloppy design and lack of aesthetic that pervaded. This isn't a cost thing, it is a "care" thing. It doesn't cost more to think things through, to design based upon a care for our human condition and what it means to live in a place like this. The designers of this place did not have that concern. Not caring pervades throughout our contemporary times and culture and is a pet peeve of mine.

The methodology I used to make these pictures was both conventional and different for me. Remember that the way pictures like these are usually viewed is in a portfolio and they are seen one at a time, as in pages in a book. This means the sequence I made over several photographs of the unfinished building is unveiled one at a time in a subset of pictures that seem endless and increasingly microscopic as though we are analyzing something very far away with great detail. Exactly my point, like a scapel and yes, brutal. There is also an insider view being expressed here. Part of what we can do as artist photographers is move in on the mundane to analyze in minute detail allowing analogy to larger issues. I was trying to draw attention not only to the place and the living conditions but also to my own way of seeing. As such there is a personal statement contained within the overall structure of the Newtown pictures.This was something of a personal breakthrough for this photographer and I remember being very excited at the time at what I had done, hoping that I could pull it off back in the darkroom when I made the prints.

I hope I've been able to help in understanding these photographs I made. I know they are not pretty and although beauty often plays a large role in my photography, these are something different. I thank you for looking and staying with me through the three posts.

Feel free to let me know what you think. My email address is: nrantoul@comcast.net

This post continues to look at the pictures I made in 1998 of an assisted living facility in Newtown, CT. 

In number 8, the last image in the first post, which is here, we were looking at the backs of the housing units. Here I've walked up to the end of the row of them and turned 180 degrees to view them in the full context of the blasted out rock on the left. This is the third time I did that, turned to face what had been behind me.

My effort here was to show the rock in the context of the village and move us on to new things while paying homage to where we came from.

Now we're really going to look at the units or dwellings. In this case they look stacked up on top of each other like building blocks and with garages predominating. Note the one plant out there in the asphalt jungle of the driveway.

Forgive the digression but I need to write about the printing of the Newtown series. If you've read this blog for a while you know about the importance in my work of the Portland, Maine series, made in 1996. Those are here. I wrote several posts about them which start here. They were a group of photographs that brought me back to a fundamental way of working, which was the sequenced series. They also brought me into something very new and that was the making of series work in bright sunlight. I know, not so earth shattering to you, but to me it was a big concept. So here we are in 1998 two years after Portland, making a series in very bright sunlight. My point is, that the printing of Newtown reflects this: bright whites and deep blacks. Number 11 above does just that, with very bright whites in particular.

Let's move on, to # 12:

Yes, the rock again but with this car parked in front of it. Can we draw conclusions here? Can we use the juxtaposition to associate the timelessness of the rock against something so in the present as a car parked there at the end of the 20th century? Is that too much? And here we are in one of the key pictures in the series, looking at the absolute banality of three recently planted bushes, some rather rough looking grass and some trees, with a light gray sky. Remember the picture of just that rock, number 6? This is the plant-based equivalent and speaks to how caged in this place is. This one also establishes the subset topic for the next few pictures: the planting and surrounding trees.

Here again I've worked to contextualize the photographs, to place the very black perimeter so that we see it as a fence or a barrier.

This one, number 15,is a study in contrast from the previous picture, that one being so very dark to this one being so very light. Funny to think that white in photography, as in a gesso'd canvas, is simply the substrate itself. It is the grays and the blacks around it that convey a sense of brightness. This one looks almost bleached to me and blindingly bright.

Here it is in all its glory, as this photograph shows how the units are positioned in a long row opposite each other, little patio facing little patio, with our rock wall way in the back topped by, again, black trees, bushes planted somewhat haphazardly and an almost out of scale fire hydrant in the foreground. Finally, our puffy clouds again. I'm sure the importance of this photographs hasn't escaped you as this one really does lay it all out.

This will end this second post in the critique of the Newtown series work. 

I remember having some reservations about including this (which is #17) in the 28 print series but kept it in as it brought us back into an emphasis on pavement, at almost half the frame, and the row of bushes planted to ease the bottom of this rigorous structure as a sort of a "skirt". It also repeats number (#15) the light one with the single tree, but time no longer moderated by anything in front of it.

Newtown, CT 3 coming up, and the last.

Stay tuned.

Light. There was light here, in the flare from the sun trying to break out to the right. As it turned out this was a failed attempt as it went back behind the clouds.

This is the third post I am writing to analyze the series called Hershey, PA, a group of pictures I made in 1997. 

I use lens flare sometimes to connote something surreal or to draw attention to the act of making a picture using a camera, as opposed to this being a literal rendition of a place. It is not. It is an artist's interpretation of a place.  Flare is stoppable usually, by throwing a shadow in front of the  lens. It is what a lens shade is for. Sometimes I'll make two, one with flare and one without and then decide later which one to use.

This is a "hinge" picture in that it is the last time we'll refer to the pictures in the series that are the ones of the barns that were black in any kind of substance.  The barn on the left is the same one we've seen before twice, cut in half. The tobacco shed is over on the far left of the frame, there as a token only, not to play any major role in the photograph.

Once again this picture seems to hint at a way out in that way back there in the haze of the flare is the horizon and it is clearly open country. And, even though there is this big pole in the foreground, it is there to split the picture, not so much to act as a barrier to our progress through to the background.

Last, the building on the right is certainly the same barn we saw bowed out in the previous frame, seen here from the side and the object over there on the wall is closer and perhaps a little better defined but still not front and center. That happens next.

Ribbit. Yes, it was a green froggy. I remember thinking as I made this picture that I probably wouldn't use it. It was too ridiculous in a series like this, where the theme had been sobering and severe, that I couldn't get away with being flippant or light in this context. It would be like farting or belching in church, irreverent. But I did end up using it and it remained in all the ensuing almost 20 years, through shows and presentations and lectures. I like the contrast of it, the sense that we shouldn't take ourselves all too seriously. Why include it? Because it is so incongruous. To me, it tells me that there has been humanity here. Someone had to have placed it there. And I love that. The picture is not without portent, however, as the three windows open to a space that is about as black as black can be. Do you want to open the door to that barn on the left and walk into that space? Not me. Finally, the picture is one that has given us a break from the others that are the main content of the series, a breather, in effect. If you look at the series Nantucket or Portland or Yountville I didn't really do that with those.

Let's move on, as there are three more in the series.

Back to the barn, shown a few frames before. This time rendered straight and not converged as well as showing real integrity in the structure, its function prescribing an elegance. Besides not being willing to leave it so distorted, it is now lighter, not here to just present a bowed out form but to display its texture and surface. The hose reappears for the third time, although it is playing a less critical role and the concrete walkway is here less to divide the frame and more to lead us into the space. Finally, no green froggy on the left as I've moved on and am trying to bring us back into the series, and yes, it's true, it's somber tone.

Next to last. I have brought us back around to our two black forms as an homage to where we were earlier, but now on their back side, as thought we can leave them behind. I like to think of this as a partial completion of walking along the edges of a cube and here we are on the third edge, with the cube on our left. We also have a whole lot of open frame: field, trees and sky in this picture. In some sense we are already out, no longer having to deal with all the heavy stuff contained on our left. For much of the series, we've been on the inside just getting  glances out to the horizon. Here, we're on the outside.To my way of thinking this is a strong statement of being out, of escaping the more difficult and challenging place we've just left. 

Did you have recurring dreams as a kid? I did and the one that this picture refers to was me, riding around the circle of my friend CP's driveway on my tricycle by myself, happy and ignorant of what's going to happen, when the right rear wheel of the trike comes off and flies off over the bushes behind the stone wall.  As I get off my trike and walk over to the wall to retrieve my wheel from the very black bushes behind them I hear a really terrifying growl back there. Each night in each dream as I gather up my courage to get my wheel back, as I get closer the growl gets louder. And each night, of course, I wake up, knowing that this will go on night after night. I'm only about 6 years old but I am trapped in a kind of loop. The barns on the left are definitely someplace I don't want to go and, to my mind, the open field represents freedom and yes, even light as in giving life.

I have to butt in here, close to the end of three posts about this 13 print series, to make a key point. The way I've been writing about this series and many many others of mine is to share with you my sense that these pictures are so highly connected with each other as to be inseparable. Over time, that's how this process has evolved for me. Another way to explain this is to approach it from the aspect of training over a whole career. Although I certainly make pictures that do not directly connect to each other in a sequenced series, working in the manner of the Hershey pictures is where I live as an artist, simple enough. Harry Callahan said that he believed we really only made one picture in our life time.By that I presume he meant that we could only speak as artists with our own voice, that, at its most foundational level, we simply need to be true to ourselves. Easy to say, hard to do, but working in series is, fundamentally, my one picture.

This last one sits in a strange place for me, simultaneously containing but also allowing a visual look at what lies behind the gated fence. Why is it here instead of the previous one being the ending photograph? I think of this photograph as being enigmatic in that it presents a choice, with no answer apparent. To walk up and open the gate to freedom or to remain held in, knowing that there is a whole lot of stuff back there over my shoulder to deal with. Simple enough, really:  go forward or go backward?

That's it, the Hershey, PA series. Prints? Yes, they are about 12 inches square, made in darkroom days, pre-digital, although the negatives are scanned now and the work has been shown as inkjet prints as well as gelatin silver. The originals are priceless, at least to me, but may be seen through 555 Gallery in a response to your request, although I don't know that we will permit your handling them.Vintage series like this do not get split up. Purchase requests must be for the whole series. However, I  allow individual prints to be sold as inkjet prints made from scanned negatives.

I hope you've enjoyed these three posts. I know they take time and study, as I refer to other work and link those to the one I am discussing. Hopefully, you're willing to do that and that you find relevance in the process.

Another in a series taking a look at some of the tools I have used to make my pictures over the years. Last month I did a couple of posts on the Rollei SL66. Next up we're going to look at the Hasselblad Superwide (SWC). The SWC is a camera that has a rich tradition across many types of photography. Developed in the 1950's to fit a very special lens made by Karl Zeiss to a camera  body, it was a camera made to accommodate a lens rather than the other way around. It was also completely unique in the Hasselblad line of cameras and, indeed, across all of photography.

The camera used a fixed 38mm f3.5 Carl Zeiss Biogon lens, in a 120mm square format that used interchangeable backs. As it had no mirror, it was viewfinder-based with focusing determined by guessing the distance then setting the feet on the barrel of the lens. It had no meter, no electronics at all. It was also very small due to having no mirror so it really was a one-handed camera.

I had two of them. The first one I bought used in 1978 (from Phil Levine) and then sold it in 1984 to buy an 8 x 10 view camera. By 1996 I was back into one and bought it new. By this time its price had become very high and the body had been revised slightly.

What pictures did I make with it? 

What pictures didn't I make with it! 

It was the primary camera I used to make series work, my main vehicle of expression over my whole career. Here are a few, searchable on the gallery page of my site:

Nantucket

Yountville

Boston (in infrared)

Solothurn

Portland ( with a blog post explaining the pictures here) 

Newtown

Summerhill

Old Trail Town

Hersheyand on and on. All the photographs from the monograph published in 2006 : American Series

were made with the camera except for the wheat pictures, which were made with the 8 x 10.

Why was the camera so special? Quite simply it was the lens. 38mm on the 2 1/4 format is roughly equivalent to 25mm in 35mm. So this was a very wide lens. But it also was unique in that it fell off very little in sharpness and exposure in the corners and if kept level (hence the bubble level built into the finder) straight lines would stay straight. Plus, the lens was very sharp. The print of the boys on the dock from the Nantucket series is sitting downstairs at my home and is 43 inches square. It is very sharp.

Advanced students would occasionally approach me about this camera, thinking, if they liked my pictures, they might like to own a Superwide. Besides the obstacle of the camera's cost (about $5000!) the SWC was a highly specialized tool for making photographs. I would explain that this camera wasn't any kind of all-purpose tool to make pictures with. You had to be able to move in close to your subject and any work with an extremely wide-angle lens is always exacting. This usually discouraged them. I got so that I could guess the distance pretty well as there was no way to precisely check the focus except using the company's ground glass adapter. This was more for studio photographers and perhaps for some architectural work but it was cumbersome in the field. I would say 90% of the work I did with the camera was handheld. But over the years I got to know what I could and could not do with it. When it was the right tool for the job it was simply amazing. 

I don't know if people have the same degree of connectedness with their cameras these days or not. And I generally don't like to attribute huge importance to the tool used to make our art. But the SWC and I were figuratively connected at the hip. I still am in awe at what it allowed me to do, make pictures that span over 25 years of my career that are as close to me as anything I have ever done, seminal works that formed the basis for my practice. Finally, I learned much of the methodology from it that I still use today when I photograph, though I am now working exclusively with digital cameras. 

This is a 903 SWC, like the model I owned. I sold mine a few years ago.

The last version of the camera was called the 905 SWC. Hasselblad stopped making the camera in  2005. Odd but this last one has a reputation of being the worst in all the years the camera was made. Hasselblad was required to change some of the chemicals they used for environmental reasons to make their lenses and the new formulation made the lens less sharp.

Other people that used or use it? Lee Friedlander comes to mind and Harry Callahan made many of his beach pictures with one, using a 645 back instead of the square.

As you know, my work is represented by 555 Gallery in Boston. Want to see any of the above portfolios? Just ask.

In 1983 I made a group of pictures in the town of Solothurn in Switzerland. 

They were a breakthrough group for me. As big as Nantucket (my first series) or the Oakesdale Cemetery (made in 1997) pictures, these brought me into a new way of seeing, in making sequential  pictures and established and confirmed a methodology that serves me to this day.

This was the first time I linked pictures next to each other. Putting something hinted at in one frame then clearly stated in the next but with the whole scene around it changing. A concept totally reliant on the very wide lens I used being held level to deceive the viewer into thinking all was normal when, of course, it was not. Note the laundry drying rack coming right up into your face in the second frame. That's an indicator at the severity of the width of the lens.

I wrote recently about the  pictures from Arsenale in Venice made 20 years later. Clearly, the pictures from Solothurn are the precedent (on the site here). I don't know if you can learn something from them or if they read as relevant today, but they sure rocked my world then. Epiphany? Oh yes, for sure. The closest I can come to Solothurn in the present day is the The Wall, Chelsea, MA made in 2014. If I hadn't made the Solothurn pictures 31 years earlier who knows if I would have arrived at the same place.

Note the same crumbling wall in all three of the photographs above.

Part of the act or life of being a career artist has to be this: the ability to sense that you've arrived at something large enough to pay attention to, to remember, to use in your cache of abilities, to apply when you find yourself in front of it again. In my case, this way of working is clearly a subset of a larger structure, the series work itself. You must have that too, a way of seeing or a sensitivity to a certain form or shape or content that you've worked with before and are familiar with. Repetitious? No, I don't think so. Just working within a construct that has worked before and that is used again when relevant.

In looking at these again, now made 32 years ago (yikes!), I find huge differences in the way I was seeing back then compared to now. The pictures looked less "together", less formalized, less structured and tight. There is a looseness to the Solothurn pictures that I like very much. Blurry here? Whatever. The edge not perfect? So what.

Don't like that branch coming down and intruding into the frame? Deal with it. A little assertive and sure. I am not implying I am less now, just different.

Take that camera with its fixed 38 mm Zeiss Biogon lens out of level and all hell breaks loose. 

See why I was so excited? These three frames above sliding along that same wall with the shutters, the door, the propane tank, and the wonderful bonus of the hanging garment in plastic rendered in multiple frames was simply too much. 

And then we start a new chapter or section:

Completely irresistible.

Solothurn, CH 1983. 

Magic. 

Want to see real prints of these? Contact 555 Gallery and ask if they can be made available for viewing. But be careful: there is only one set of the original 1983 prints and I do not break up series work for individual sales. But know this: you can look all you want for free.