Winogrand visited UCSB in 1979. I shot two rolls of film walking from the apartment to UCEN for a cup of coffee. When he died in 1984, he left 2500 rolls of film undeveloped.
Film was the photosensitized medium in which photographs were “captured” and chemically processed. The scrolls represented 90,000 different moments, frames and ideas. But he hoped to capture something unique, something memorable in his constant ballet of shooting.
I grew up with a camera and lived in a global world where the camera was a window to something special. The symbol was something arranged and valuable. It took time. The symbol is not displayed on an LCD. Pressing the shutter button is a natural leap of faith.
Forty years ago, I stood in a dark, deserted herbal history museum in Paris and opened a shutter for 16 minutes with a Hasselblad (camera) on a tripod and waited and prayed. There was no iPhone, no Walkman, Discman. Il silence, darkness and time. I went home and posted the symbol. It is still the only symbol of myself hanging on the wall of my house. In later decades, the symbols were published, not published, not shared.
I have exposed, prayed, published and tasted.
Now I’m in front of a Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It is an area of magic and wonder. The paintings I did were based on gentleness as a subject rather than celebrity. Vermeer was my friend from an early age and this exhibition was not to be missed.
A swarm of visitors compete for the precious moments in which they can stand in front of these masterpieces of the seventeenth century. 450,000 tickets went on sale and disappeared within days. A couple of e-tickets were sold online for $2700 or more. Vermeer is the rock star of the Dutch Golden Age. He created this ray of soft light, this moment of stillness and reflection. The photograph captures a ghost of an express time and space. This can make the photographer and viewer all-powerful and invisible to the subject. in a magical way. The subject, painting, is not disturbed by the presence of the artist, oblivious to his gaze. Almost a magical or devoted superpower: this action defines Vermeer.
A previous photographer, Cartier Bresson, described this moment as the “defining moment”. The fresco museum visitor uses time to capture the symbol on a cell phone, then turns and takes a selfie, capturing himself with a jug of water. . . . The perfection of the Dutch Renaissance atmosphere – the window coming from the left. The portrait looks out the window. . . Outside the frame of the portrait as the cell phone captures (and corrects the colors) the photographer in the foreground 400 years later.
The more I travel, decades as a photographer, the more I learn about myself and the world. It was never a matter of “taking” pictures. It was about “being” rather than “doing. “Having a coffee or wine at 4 o’clock was more vital than making sure you saw it all. By seeking not to miss anything, everything would be lost.
As an artist, the global is perceived through a general lens, but there is also the impulse to look 180 degrees. What do you miss when you don’t look back? Defying the norm, the historical, perhaps the photographer is the star of his own film and the history of art is put into ornamentArray. A memory. I am looking to redirect my thinking.
Photography is not only what is in the frame, it is also what is omitted. I can capture a moment of symmetry and loneliness and the ghost that this global can be restricted. The global is so chaotic today, but maybe it was just as intimidating. in 1640 with the promise, but the violence of the colonial expansion of life?
Of the 37 surviving paintings (out of 60 imaginable that would actually have been created), 28 are now in Amsterdam. Vermeer painted the sublime contemplative moments that resonated throughout the centuries, but what is excluded are his 14 children and his wife shouting “When are you coming to dinner and can you do something to help those young people instead of just participating in their creation?”He had to spend much of his time as an art broker putting food on the table of this offspring. Perhaps the art of painting, his act of creation, his legacy, was a stampede.
The palette of physical oils of the seventeenth century was not obtained without problems. Go back 400 years and the curtains came from the Amazon or from the mines of Asia or, somehow, from the brutal hard work of slaves in the new worlds that the Dutch were conquering.
But I’m here. My own story, Vermeer, my surroundings and the life around me, the mobile phone camera and everything.
Is the camera a witness or testimony of its own presence?
I don’t criticize other people’s mobile phone photographers. I settle for everyone’s journey. Here’s Vermeer. Je will breathe and percentage of this infrequent area for an hour. I’ll make it count, but let me take a picture or two first. Maybe a selfie.
Amsterdam is a first step for many European postgraduate pilgrimages. It was for me and I looked for a percentage when the world welcomed visitors again. Maybe it was the opening of grassy cafes or the facades of sex workers’ dollhouses at red light. district. It appealed to the post-adolescent youth of the ’60s and ’70s. Now I review it, but the term 70 takes on a new meaning. I am over seventy years old. The legal weed and sex are still there, but I see them more as nostalgia than excitement.
“I photograph to see what the global looks like with me in the photo. “
Or as Popeye says: “I am what I am” Live and let live. One of the wonderful classes of the trip. And in the post-pandemic world, we want to replace and adjust even more.
My little garden in Santa Barbara is filled with tulips, a planting ritual since my first time an eternity ago. Then, as a tribute, we visited the Keukenhof Gardens, an hour from the city. The rivers of tulips seem to mimic the canals of Amsterdam. The colors defy description. Acrylic paints with hard edges placed on the ground would look pale and desaturated compared to the intensity of nature.
Crowds of other people appear around the static ers. If I choose to make the reminiscence serene, it may only make the hordes disappear. We’re moments away from “Hey, Siri, get other people out of the picture. “AI meets Photoshop and I can be silent, still, and contemplate.
Luckily, I signed up for the global documentation of tulips, colors that are herbal and bold. Kuchendorf Garden, the largest tulip garden in the world, has been closed for 3 years. Finally, in March 2023, it is open but only for a few months to celebrate flowers and deliver them. Cheering crowds crowd buses and trains and brave the misty, near-rainy morning. The food is boring, but the guards are faced with hordes of pent-up requests and seem to have run out of everything. however, tulips. Just being there has classical music on your mind. They are masses of flowers that form the history of a country and an anecdote of gluttony and rarity.
In 1637, a tulip would be sold for the value of a mansion on the Grand Canal. They were dramatic in their saturation and replaced by the virus and mutation. Tulips were also a component of the new “global” economy that enabled the advent of potatoes, green and red peppers, tomatoes and artichokes from Jerusalem. But the tulip bubble, tulipomania, was unique, a lesson for subsequent business cycles. as you can see. Brushstrokes on a landscape. Perfect for documenting and recording yourself in the middle of the color palette.
Now I wonder who I’m photographing for. Each has been documented, published and liked. Maybe I’ll make my own selfie to show my kids, my grandkids.
“Pass two bridges and turn left”, “Pass the third canal, after the main Amstel” Amsterdam is a pedestrian city. The Riksmuseum, Anne Frank, Van Gogh and Remembrant are the anchor points, intertwined with the canal, café and restaurant.
What about the camera and travel? The camera has been an all-powerful presence about to be invisible and capture an exact moment of time and space. Now the tool is part of the total and the user is the actor. The game has changed. The fourth wall was broken. Progress. Time passes. The woman with the earmuff is texting and the woman through the window with her pitcher is actually reaching for her cell phone.
The riverboat dresses two dozen people, and a woman joins in raising her arm to everyone’s face, oblivious to their action as she captures herself and everything in the background. His hand and camera are fifteen inches from my nose as he rotates to show his hair from that soft or position. Could it be the subject of Vermeer?
Maybe I’m just bitter or jealous of other young people’s enthusiasm for capturing themselves. . . If I take a selfie, it looks like an AARP commercial. However, Martha Stewart, 81, on the cover of Sports Illustrated in a swimsuit.
I allow the delight of visitors who descend the steep stairs to the selfies of the Anne Frank House in front of the respected newspaper. Who am I to criticize when I arrive here in a Mercedes Benz taxi?Do we all have to locate our own path in this world?
My husband is discussing the biography of Gabriel Marquez that he is reading. Travel, camera, book. These were the basics. Now I realize that you are quoting an audiobook that you are listening to. Platforms change. The written word is sonorous, a consistent comforting bedtime tale through your ibuds. Certainly, everything fits together and with the sudden interruption of Covid, it’s like watching a child grow up after a growth spurt. They are like others and you are more consciente. de not being provided on a day-to-day basis. After 50 years of revisiting Amsterdam, I feel a bit like Rumplestiltskin.
Maybe it’s time to reincarnate. . . I have the same brain but in a different framework than in the last fifty years. But Amsterdam is the same, the beginning of so many trips. Sometimes it is vital to go back.
Maybe now the quote can replace “I photograph the global to make sure I’m still a component of it. “Vermeer would have worked with a camera obscura, the photographic innovation of his time. Point of view with the generation that will be today.
I am now home and will walk back in the morning to Shoreline Park. I promise not to photograph the sunrise and, in fact, not to take a smiling selfie at sunrise. But maybe one day. . . And only if I send it to my young people and grandchildren. It’s such a beautiful sunrise. This only once. Maybe Winogrand of his time and it’s okay to photograph to see how I look in the photo.
The five-star Grand Hotel Amrath is a short walk from the exercise station. A cross between The Stanley Hotel that was noticed in The Shining and a masterpiece of Art Deco. There is an inflation of stars here, due to its proximity to the center and its uniqueness. But a decent and convenient sanctuary nonetheless.
I sign up for all the other teens who post pictures of their meals. But happily, those photos of my wife dining on celery turnip with portobello mushrooms and roasted onions are unique. The RED restaurant is perhaps the most memorable meal in a world of flavors that come from all over what was once the Dutch empire. The roof is a soft red box blowing green gum. Comfortable, elegant, modern and tasty.
An intersection of food and architecture is offered through river boats that populate the waterways like aquatic insects. The series of covered wagons on the water each have a storyteller and friendly staff offering a variety of storyless anecdotes, wines or cheeses. It’s an easy way to sit back and see the city from a different, older perspective, welcome at the end of a day pounding the cobbles. Remember that this is a difficult city to navigate by car and the canals are almost as sprawling as Venice. . Speculate on what it would be like to live on one of the 2,500 houseboats, which range from charming to decrepit. These were originally built to alleviate the housing shortage after World War II. Maybe Santa Barbara can learn? The canal cruise is a delicious and simple two-hour cruise at any time of the day, but this isn’t Paris. What the French city offers in grandeur and splendor, Amsterdam answers with charm and intimacy.
Not to be missed. I didn’t record in particular, but I experimented. Inexplicably, no one else was taking pictures, taking selfies. Each guest focused on their own thoughts. Sharing this area with this young woman and the horrors we are willing to inflict on ourselves again and again. Climbing narrow steps, not turning to capture or celebrate a symbol, but feeling a terrifying obligatory reminder. This would possibly be the only position where you don’t need to keep a symbol of yours, but think about the missing ones.
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