Looking Back at the Twin Towers

From the Archive | Polaroid

Twin Towers (World Trade Center), circa 1979

While compositional principles maintain constant importance over time, the meaning of a photograph's content can change.

During a year off from college, I lived in New York City, worked as a camera salesman and often photographed with a Polaroid SX-70. © John Nordell

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Is Photographing Art, Art?

Look | Sensory Inspiration

Three plus decades ago my high school photo class friends and I studied many photographers. However, the work of Tommy Alcorn (a young American photographer whose life was cut short by an accident at age 17) inspired and captivated us.  The black and white images were lyrical and seemed to probe the meaning of life.  Plus, he was a teen like us.

How old the tree?

When I took this image of a Civil War monument last winter in Deerfield, Mass., it reminded me that Mr. Alcorn had photographed statues in France and Italy.  The monument, erected in 1867 and constructed of brown freestone, is topped by a Union soldier who at some point lost his rifle.  Generations before Alcorn, French photographer Eugene Atget often chose such static subject matter. 

Bacchante and Infant Faun (1890)

I took this image of a Frederick MacMonnies bronze sculpture about a week later at The Clark art institute in Williamstown, Mass.  I used an old roll (circa 1997) of ISO 1600 film and only recently dropped it off for developing.

Atget, Alcorn and Me

When I saw the prints I pulled out my Atget and Alcorn books, both out of print, with varying degrees of page yellowing indicating relative and absolute age.

Deep connection I feel here, to my past, to the past.  

Tech Tips: Ansco Pix Panorama camera, no settings to set, 1600 ISO Fuji Neopan film processed and scanned at CTC/Vermont Color labs via Forbes Photo and Frame in Greenfield, Mass.

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Fair Play: Cows, Trapeze Artists and Pizza

Create | Bring into Being

I went early last Saturday morning to the Franklin County Fairgrounds in Greenfield, MA to photograph before the agricultural fair opened for business.

4-H Follies

These 4-H teenagers slept on cots in stalls near their cows and then woke up at 5:00 am to clean their animals for the day's competition.  Here they are hanging out, trying to keep warm, sending an occasional text.

The Flying Wallendas

The agricultural component is overshadowed by attractions like trapeze artists, pun-cracking clowns,   fair food and scream inducing rides.  "A man walked into a bar.  Boy, did it hurt."

Not Yet Show Time

Gorgeous light bathed the slowly awakening fairgrounds.

Tech Tips: Nikon D700, 24-70 mm, ISO 200-500.  Not Yet Show Time is intentionally out of focus. ©2010 John Nordell

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Lessons of a 3 Week Internet Fast

Look | Sensory Inspiration

Throughout the ages individuals have fasted from food as a spiritual practice of purifying body and mind.

Julia Cameron in her 1992 book, The Artist's Way (A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity), suggests a week of reading deprivation to "jump start" your creative process.

Well, aside from one day when I was teaching, I spent the last 3 weeks of August offline.  I loved it.  I read more books.  I wrote postcards.  I used the dictionary and phone book. Stress about number of hits, likes, tweets, etc. evaporated.  I only took vacation photos.  All in all, a welcome break from my normal routine.  I did not want to go back online.

 Townhouse Neighborhood

As my internet fast neared conclusion,  I became concerned about what I would photograph once I got back into the swing of things.  The world around me seemed bland.  I was not living up to this statement from my About page: "The ultimate satisfaction from a lifetime of creating art and finding inspiration is the awareness that everything around me is art and has inherent value."

I was not seeing art everywhere.  WHAT AM I GOING TO PHOTOGRAPH? I dreamed one night that I was camera-less in a chaotic city, thinking to myself:  "I need my camera to make sense of this place."

Last Saturday in Brattleboro, Vermont I dropped off a print of Townhouse Neighborhood as a donation to the Insight Photography Project's annual print auction fundraiser.  Afterword, I wandered into the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center.  Photographs!  Sculpture!  Video!  Installations!  Constructions!

I left the museum, my creative well of inspiration filled, seeing photographs everywhere.  I returned the next morning with a camera:

Retaining Wall Art

Self-Portrait at the Museum Door

Ode to Kertesz

Chain Link Fence

This process of shifting from feeling creatively empty to visually full, from seeing my world as uninteresting to delighting in life, is the essence of Create Look Enjoy.

And, after a rough transition, I am back online, with a more relaxed perspective.

P.S. If you are interested in meditation, I was interviewed by Benjamin Dean for his how-to-meditate website.

Tech Tips: Nikon D700,  ISO range 100-400.  Townhouse Neighborhood and Ode to Kertesz are in-camera multiple exposures.  With Chain Link Fence I shot at f22 at a 1/10 of a second while moving my camera.  © 2010 John Nordell

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Three Vermont Landscapes

Enjoy | Delight in Life

Jumping in a lake made by a dam on the West River in Townsend, Vermont cooled my friends and me on a hot August afternoon.

Swimming demarcation buoys, the dam and the beautifully curved hills fit snugly.

I put my plastic film camera in a ziploc bag to shoot partially submerged.

And what trip to an American beach would be complete without a football?

Don't a miss a meal at the nearby Dam Diner.

Tech Tips: Ansco Pix Panorama camera, no settings to set, Kodak Professional BW400CN, C-41 Process Black & White Negative Film ISO 400, film processed and scanned at Walgreens.

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