I don’t know what it is about Iceland that lends itself to CinemaScope aspect ratio, but I can’t drag myself away from it. (I wrote about my feelings on the ultra ultra wide here.) Nothing much to say, other than omg is this the most beautiful place or what?
landscape
Éblouissante sous le soleil couchant. /
“Au bout d’un cap, une ville apparaît, dont la ligne, droite, éblouissante sous le soleil couchant, semble courir sur l’eau”
(At the end of a cape, a town appears, whose line, straight, blinding under the setting sun, seems to run upon the water. )
This quote is from a passage in La Vie errante – Maupassant’s travelogue whence I stole the name of this site – about Hammamet, which may well be my favorite town in North Africa. But that’s another story for another time.
Because this is a story about Macedonia.
And it’s not even a proper story, at that. Just a few photos of the most astonishing, brilliant, sparkling sunset I’ve ever been privileged to behold. The vivid rich colors dashed across the sky and painted the waters of Lake Ohrid like something out of a dream.
If I hadn’t already loved Ohrid, I would have been sold at that moment, but as it was the sunset was the perfect bow on a perfect day. One of life’s simple and perpetual pleasures that no mere photograph can do justice to, but I tried.
Pictures of a Floating World /
The most magical gift I've ever given to myself was wrapping up almost exactly two years ago, and the lapsed time between then and now has neither diminished the experience nor given me a greater ability to express what made it magical.
Magic, I've found, is hard to explain.
I suppose one simply must believe.
It's fitting in that: I have described it as the nearest thing to a religious epiphany I've ever experienced.
In typical fashion, I remembered mere weeks before its opening & closure that I had wanted to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Floating Piers. (The timing is this: the piece existed for a brief three weeks or so.) My initial impulse was to say, "too bad, so sad, you didn't plan this in time." Some nagging little voice in the back of my head pushed me to explore the possibility. "Sure," it urged me, "you probably won't pull this off. But there's no harm in playing it out."
One of the things I find most difficult in life is trip planning. I loathe it. Having flights booked well in advance gives me an anxiety of sorts that seems ridiculous (and isn't all anxiety just that, ridiculous? Then again, it’s a major part of my day job, so...) but it's a struggle all the same. And when I'm grappling with the planning monster, the easiest fix is to call my mother, who lives for this kind of thing.
"Hi, Maman" (yes I call her maman and no she is not French) "I think I want to take this trip but it's kind of crazy."
My mom is that devil-on-your-shoulder in the best way possible when it comes to spontaneous travel possibilities and almost always just that push I need. (She's a little more wary of jaunts to "unsafe" places, but Europe is always firmly on her oh-just-do-it-you're-only-young-once list.) As fate would have it, she’d always wanted to see one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s works in person and still lamented that she’d passed on The Gates.
Things just started to come together. Reasonable flights? Found. Hotels near Lago d'Iseo? Sold out. Hotels within a train ride away? Absolutely. The perfect dress with orange accents and matching earrings? Certo! I think all the penance I've paid to the travel gods in terms of missed flights and cancellations and delays delays delays was finally enough for them to give me a break.
The next thing we knew it was 5 in the morning on the closing day of the show, getting ready to hop in a taxi we had ordered the night before. In a stroke of brilliance and quick debate, we asked if the driver would go all the way to the lake instead of dropping us at the Brescia train station. As always, certo.
All the energy and excitement and anxiety and whirlwind of the previous weeks fell away into pure serenity and delight the second we stepped on the piers. Neither one of us could stop giggling at the alien sensation of walking on the piers as they danced atop the surface of Lake Iseo.
I'll make one attempt at characterizing the physical experience. The Floating Piers were composed of plastic wrapped in spectacular golden (orange when wet!) fabric, crossing the Lago d'Iseo (a less well known – but equally beautiful – lake found between Lakes Como and Garda) from the town of Sulzano to the village of Pescheria Maraglio on the creatively named Monte Isola (literally "mountain island") and then stretching back out into the lake to encircle the tiny private Isola di San Paolo.
The plastic cubes bobbed up and down with the motion of the lake, some areas soaking and oddly squishy and others quite dry in the hot July sun. It was slow going, perhaps, but not a soul was rushing. Nearly everyone had at some point or another a childlike gaze of wonder or lost themselves in a cloud of giggles. It was a surreal, joyful, magnificent experience, and indeed a final gift from Jeanne-Claude.
When I look across all the adventures I've been fortunate enough to have, this ranks at the top in no small part due to the fact that it seemed meant to be. I may never find the words to explain it, but I carry it with me always.
Snakes + Funerals /
In Mexico City (and in returning from Mexico City), I felt an urgency to create. A rush of frustrated energy. A rebirth of a part of my soul I'd thought I'd lost for good.
(No one said I wasn't dramatic.)
I returned to digital photography in the latter half of 2014 for purely documentary purposes. Film stocks were vanishing right and left, and I'd moved 2,500 miles from my C-41 lab, just to add a layer of complication. It never felt quite like art. It still feels like studio work or stock.
Digital photography without introspection, without focus, and without process is easily soulless. Sterile, perfect, real images of real things. In truth, the medium is limited only in what you allow yourself to do with it, and adherence to supposed orthodoxy seems unnecessary at a time when producing any work is a struggle itself.
In seeking satisfaction for these urges, this energy, I thought – for whatever reason – of Fritz Lang in Le mépris giving his commentary on CinemaScope and went instantly to that aspect ratio. And much to my surprise, it worked. It worked for crowds. It worked for small, self-contained scenes. It worked for the lush tableaus of the Icelandic countryside, to the surprise of no one. Had the opportunity presented itself, I’ve no doubt it would have worked for snakes – and funerals.
You can take a look at the full gallery below or here.
