Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Two mooring lines, Tobermory

The artist Andy Goldsworthy’s mode of work could not be much further from that of my landscape photography: he assembles his art within the landscape, gathering and using materials from the surrounding area, whereas I forbid myself from moving so much as a pebble or twig to improve the composition. What we do and how we do it are very different but there is, for me at least, a resonance in spirit.

I do not mean to suggest that what I do reaches anything close to the creativity, quality or power of Goldsworthy’s art. He imbibes the landscape and then responds in imaginative and painstakingly constructed sculpture; I merely frame what I see and move on. Nevertheless, despite the separation in our talent, technique and skill, we seem to be reacting to similar triggers and I take some encouragement from that. I had lost faith in natural mystery and wonder, my prime motive for making photographs; seeing Goldsworthy’s art rekindled that feeling in me.

Hopefully, “fair use” rules allow my inclusion of a few small photographs of some of Goldsworthy’s sculptures but I am not comfortable using anything larger that might risk crossing the line between fair use and any perception that I might be passing his work of as my own. If you like what you see then you must really go on and find more and larger examples from the references below, from a Google search of your own, or (better yet) by visiting some of his longer lived works at museums around the world.

The above three images are Copyright © Andy Goldsworthy.

See also:
    Conversation: Andy Goldsworthy, Art Beat, National Public Radio
    Andy Goldsworhy: Roof, National Gallery of Art
    Andy Goldsworthy Digital Catalogue DVD (Volume One: 1976-1986)
    Andy Goldsworthy, Morning Earth article

Metaphor?

Ironically, this was the last photograph I made in 2008. The picture prefigured my entry into a long creative funk. It was not until today, fourteen months later, that I rediscovered and processed it.

A day or so after the image was made, December 7th, my hard disk crashed and the next week was burned in the effort to restore my luckless home desktop to working condition. The web site and the blog, hosted several states away, were unaffected. My digital image catalog was safe in multiple onsite and offsite backups. Nothing significant was lost except time and my last vestige of motivation. My Christmas present that year was a faster video card and a copy of Warhammer Online (a World of Warcraft competitor); I anesthetized myself first with an online fantasy world and then, four months later, with a science fiction one (Eve).

In 2009 my cameras came out of the closet only for our vacation in the UK but otherwise gathered dust and flat batteries. I am satisfied with some of the results from the UK trip but for much of the time I was working on auto pilot, unable to fully penetrate a wall of emotional apathy. The broken computer was not the cause of this malaise, it was just the pebble I tripped over when I had already run out of energy. I was bored in my professional life and, approaching 51, past my apogee and lacking a sense of wider meaning and purpose.

This one blog post and a couple of new galleries does not guarantee that the doldrums are behind me but a renewed interest in my job and a Netflix instant queue encounter with Andy Goldsworthy have given me some hope.

See also:

Isle of Mull, 2009
Other Places, UK 2009

Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers & Tides (2001) on Amazon or Netflix.

Snail track in fallen leaves

I see color before I see form or content; it was the yellow of the larger leaves that brought me to them, but it was their form that keeps me looking still. And while I look at the form I see the content and ponder it.

A wonder is so farre aboue our wit,
That Angels stand amaz’d to muse on it.

William Drummond of Hawthornden

Green Fence

Sunday morning’s walk with the camera was not particularly productive but I am happy with a couple of pictures and this one in particular. It’s usually color that gets my attention before form and these greens did that. For some viewers this will be a welcome relief from the blurred images of recent posts (but I will return to them in a couple of days); and it is proof that I still take photographs rather than just recycle old images.

I don’t know for sure whether the greens originated in a weathering treatment applied to the fence when it was made or the result of algae encouraged by the sprinkler heads along the base of the fence. Whatever the cause, it is vivid.

Trumpet, Preservation Hall, New Orleans

As promised, the final image of the low light blur jazz player triptych from Preservation Hall, 1990.

More than 18 years has past since this photograph was taken and I wonder if he is still playing? Is he still alive? Is he still a member of the Preservation Hall band? Knowing that this was taken around Easter of 1990, an expert on the band’s long history could probably tell me who he is and answer these questions. Me, I’m feeling the noeme of Roland Barthes: all I know is that “That has been“.

12/8/2008, Addition: Ron left a comment to say that this is a photograph of Wendell Brunious and that he is currently living in Sweden but may return to New Orleans. You can learn more about the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at their web site: http://www.preservationhall.com/home.php; if you are visiting New Orleans, Preservation Hall is a must see.

Trombone, Preservation Hall, New Orleans

Second of three low light blur jazz player images from Preservation Hall, 1990. One more to come in the next post and then I’ll add some new images made this morning.