The masterclass of a life well lived

A few years ago I attempted to write a work of extended fiction. I’d written a few short stories and essays, some of which found their way into print. I had been following Hemingway’s advice to ready myself for the long haul by working up to it, like a boxer training for a bout--or something appropriately Hemingwayesque to that manly effect. So, I began this “extended fiction” (why is it that the word novel seems so daunting and intimidating?) and set a course to explore the only, for me, truly compelling theme. To wit, How should a life be lived?

Once, many years ago, in a distant existence, in a parallel universe, I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book about entrepreneurship. I had walked in those shoes for a while with a modicum of success and someone foolishly thought I actually knew something about the subject. I wrote my chapter and adorned it with a clunky title about which I am now embarrassed. In essence, the chapter title, spoke to my belief that creativity trumps everything else, talent, motivation, timing and all the rest of it. In business, and in life, creativity rules.
So, getting back to novel, my character, a successful dot com-er (I was writing at the height of the dot com bubble) decides one day to cash out and hit the road, to set out, at Twain said, for territories unknown. This guy was the perfect foil. He had plenty of resources--i.e. money--no commitments, a sense of self that reached beyond his present situation, albeit however well stoked he found himself, and nothing but time on his hands. The premise is quite simple: What would you do with your life if you could do anything you wanted? It is the most profoundly creative question a person can ask. At some point in your life block of Carrera marble gets dropped across your path and someone hands you a hammer and chisel. What do you do? How do you chisel out a life? How do you create it? I didn’t know what I’d do, so I wrote a novel to figure it out.
The ultimate creative assignment is the masterclass in a life well lived. I wanted, in the writing of the novel, to tackle this most personal of challenges. And here’s what happened. Nothing. Nothing happened. My guy, the character in my novel, having money and time and motivation, well, he was a bust. I could develop no creative tension in the narrative. In other words, I couldn’t answer the question, what would I do, if I could do anything I wished with my life. Was there no creative tension to my existence?
This is not an exercise in navel gazing. And I dread the cliche above all. So the question above will remain purely rhetorical. My existence and its creative tension, or lack thereof, is of no matter. Here is the point. Life need be carved out of raw material--created, in essence--to be, upon Socratic inspection, well designed. It ain’t gonna just happen. Sartre said that everything in life must submit to art. Creativity is a solution seeking expression. My protagonist had no challenges, and therefore his life lacked the luster of a well polished coat of creativity.
Make of it what you will. But know this: the act of creation is the purest of expression. Draped across the robust shoulders of life, it is at once profound and beautiful.

...on the street...

In today's New York Times Magazine, Randy Cohen, The Ethicist, takes a question regarding public photography. It seems a man was taking videos of women sunbathing in Central Park. He seemed "creepy" and when the sunbathers dressed and left, so did the man with the camera. "What should we have done?" was the question put to Mr. Cohen by an observer. (The article is linked above if you want to check it out.) Mr. Cohen points out that the videographer was within his rights, regardless of how questionable the action appears. He continues: "How much control each of us has over our own image is debatable. Some street photographers assert that they can record a true picture of life only by catching subjects unawares. Others argue that photographing someone without consent violates the dignity and self-determination of that person. And some regard it as ordinary courtesy to ask permission before photographing someone, particularly when there are disparities of wealth and power between photographer and subject. It can feel like a form of petty colonialism for a well-off Western tourist to casually shoot the inhabitants of a poor country, as if they were exotic wildlife. But 'street photographer' is too lofty a designation for the guy you saw."

Ten years ago, photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia was sued over an image he made of a man on the streets of New York. He was following in a long tradition of street photography defined by practitioners ranging from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand. The rights of photographers to capture images for editorial and artistic use is long-standing. The diCorcia case was dismissed, but it raised a worried eye-brow in the art and photographic community.

I spend most of my photography time on the street. Some friends, unbeknownst to me, were watching me shoot recently in a public square. I was circling around a hot dog stand, watching, occasionally lifting my camera to my eye, snapping a shot or two, then lowering the camera and slipping it behind my back, while I leaned against a tree. (My camera stays in my hand, the strap wrapped around my wrist.) I spotted my friends after a few minutes, eating at the outdoor cafe. They confessed that they'd been watching and commented that no one seemed aware of me. I took that as a compliment. I wish to practice stealth photography, I told them. To Mr. Cohen's comment, I strive to capture my subjects unawares. I want to be the observer, not the observed. Sometimes that is easy. Most of the time it is not.

Is there a problem ethically? If I take your picture while sitting next to you on a bench and you don't know it, have I acted in an unethical manner?

What would this man think if he knew I had taken this shot? That I posted it here? This gives me no compunction. I have acted honorably, both in taking the image and presenting it. I have, by my measure, done right by these folks. I have upheld my personal responsibility as a photographer. The legal question, diCorcia not withstanding, is settled. The street photographer is within his or her right to practice the craft. Conversely, I saw an image in the making yesterday, on the street, that intrigued me, but I knew it would be problematic. There was no way to make an image of the disturbed man in the wheelchair without appearing to exploit or disrespect him. Ethically could I take the shot? Sure. But I walked on, my subjective measure of appropriateness compromised. I think there are enough troublesome images in the world, without me adding another one. To Mr. Cohen's point, Yes, I wish to document life--and those are my terms.

Forty degrees at seven o'clock

It's Sunday and morning, my favorite time of the day ("light so low upon the Earth...Oh, the woods and the meadows..." wrote Tennyson); it's chilly, forty degrees and Maggie and I stretch out our walk and head down the Prom, abreast of the water, as the sun breaks through the clouds. There are two German Shepherds on the beach and a woman bundled up in sweats. I can see the panting dog's breath. The woman looks over one shoulder, then the other, reaches down and grabs her sweat shirt and pulls it up and over her head. She steps out her pants and reveals a modest one-piece swim suit. The dogs play and she jogs into the water and dives. I stay and watch. She surfaces.
"How's the water?" I ask.
"Great," she replies, "warmer than the air. Come'on in."
I decline.
She continues--mind you, the sun is breaking through the clouds--"It's like a self- baptism."
Baptism aside, the morning was just fine, thank you very much, from the beach.

B&W

I friend recently asked why I had chosen black and white for an image, rather than color. Good question. I don't really have an answer, but will venture some meandering thoughts.
Henri Cartier-Bresson said that black and white is, by definition, abstract. That is a good start. One step removed from pure reportage, black and white is the first attempt at interpretation. It is different from reality.
I was channel surfing this evening and saw a collection of clips from I Love Lucy and Dragnet and other era broadcasts that I grew up with and the thought occurred to me that much of my visual youth was trained by lack of color. That said, there are simply some photographs that I know interpret better without color. But that is simplistic.
Thirty-five years ago when I traveled abroad for the first time, I had two cameras with me. One loaded with color slide film, the other with black and white negative film. The transparencies have survived. (I held one to the light this afternoon, in fact.) The black and white negs are lost to time and moves and inattention. But now, now with the ability to shoot my digital camera and compare between what to present the image the issue is forced.
I can't answer my friend directly. I asked Steve McCurry a couple years ago (Steve is the National Geo photographer who captured the image of the Afgan Girl, thus setting him up, well deservedly, for life.), I asked Steve why color? He said, simply, color sells. Black and white does not. So enters the marketplace. There are bills to be paid, after all.
But back to the question, why black and white and not color. I confess, I think almost every single image is better in black and white. Color is distracting. But then if the subject is color (Constantine Manos, American Color, for instance) that is something altogether different.
Why poetry when there is prose? Sometime art is found in prose. Moretime art is found in poetry. But it is, I'm sure, harder. What of water color and oil? The medium makes the difference.
Again, back to the question. Simply, I like black and white more often than color. And when I'm out and about and shooting, I think in those terms more than not. That is, I see a composition and see it in terms and shades of blackness and less so, that is tilting to white. And when I review the image and compare, I know.

A one-dog night.

The Rangeley region, a beautiful place of mountains, lakes, loons and moose, is about three hours north-west of homebase, Portland. Carole and I packed our bags (sleeping bags, that is), tent and essentials (coffee, that would be), told Maggie to jump in the car and headed up early yesterday. Our campsite was on the lake and was one of the most beautiful places I've ever pitched a tent. We planned a long weekend of reading and hiking and fishing, an homage to the end of summer. But tonight we are back in Portland. This man can only tolerate one night with a dog in his sleeping bag.
My beloved Maggie is as skittish as she is beautiful and last night, the three of us snoozing by the lake were awakened first by the call of the loon, then the scampering of a skunk (confirmed by sight and smell...), Canada goose calls and lord knows what else--and each noise and rattle drove poor Maggie to a deeper level of crazy and alarm, and, well, when she smelled the skunk and started digging into my sleeping bag (I could only imagine her white-panic apple-size brain firing snapazes filled with dog messages of escape: flee FLEE.) I unzipped the bag, releasing hard-earned degrees of comfort and warmth (it was about 35 outside) and she darted into my bag, like it was a den. Maggie tremors when she's frightened. She dug her nose into my arm pit, pushed her shaking forty-five pound torso against my side and sought comfort. I am the first to testify to the love between a dog and a man. There is nothing like it. But there is also nothing like a freighted dog in your sleeping bag for eight hours. By morning I was spent. Of course, Maggie slept like a baby, safe and sound. So, one night of man-dog sleep is all this guy can manage, so we bailed. Now, she is curled up and happy on her bed, creature of comfort and routine that she is. And I am counting down the hours (minutes?) before I can attain unconsciousness.
The call of the loon across the misty lake surface will never hold the same appeal.

Tonight, 8.27.09

The Pretender has returned and the fishermen are off-loading the lobster, the catch of the day. They had to go out far today, I'm told, and though I don't know what that means exactly, I hold visions of rolling seas and high sun and salt in the air far from the mainland. I will need a fleece tonight, like I did this morning while walking Maggie. I can't image this summer coming to an end.
I made pouched salmon steaks tonight with a butter sauce. The sauce needed a quarter of white wine, and of course the rest of the bottle, well it couldn't go to waste and the cook was thirsty and of course it is gone now and so the night rolls in and my coffee will soon be whisky and my cigar gone, but Ray LaMontagne will continue to sign in my ears regardless of the sun, the cigar, the drink, the wine.
The ancients saw the end of summer as the end of life and the end of everything alive above the earth; they saw youthful maidens adorning themselves with wings and preparing to fly off, leaving, them, us, behind. So, tonight, the maidens are across the water and if I squint and look directly I can see them checking their harnesses and getting ready to flee. But not yet. They are not released just this soon. Stay awhile, please. Please.

The Maine Project II

The domain name, TheMaineProject.org, is now registered. And the entity now has a federal EIN number. The mission statement (I really dislike these things, "mission statement," along with "core values" (a value is a value) and "branding" (what am I? A baby cow?): The Maine Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting life in the state of Maine.

As the bumper sticker reads, Maine, The Way Life is Meant to Be. Let's look into that, eh?