COMING SOON


Photographs from the continuing series, "Brass Valley Made in America," will be on exhibition through June and July at the Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury.


On Wednesday, June 19, in the library auditorium at 6:30 pm I will give a power point presentation of additional images from the book, accompanied by poetry and prose selections from it, and I will discuss discoveries along the tracks and in old industrial sites throughout the valley.



Friday, June 4, 2010

Broken

PHOTOGRAPHER'S JOURNAL - This was the first abandoned farmstead I found when I got to Peter's Valley last month. It's a short distance from the craft center where we all stayed, and I found it on my first drive up the road after I arrived.

It is often the details that speak most clearly to me. The suggestion of modern, overhead, garage doors usually make a barn unsuitable for photographs, and so I questioned my own attraction to this one. I didn't bother photographing it that first morning, but when I returned the next day the clouds were perfect. Unfortunately, another photographer with a medium format camera was set up in front of it for a long shoot. He had no interest in the clouds and was set up ten or fifteen feet in front and just left of the barn door. I struggled to find angles to cut him out or that placed him so that I could delete him in Photoshop, but such compromises rarely work. I knew where I wanted to stand. Fortunately 30 minutes later when the photographer moved, the clouds were still good, and finally I was able to stand exactly where my instincts told me to. Others may find the battered barn door incongruous. For me, it is the voice in conversation with the sky. I wonder what the other photographer got.