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I laid yesterday afternoon and watched the light fall into dusk. That wouldn't be all that unusual for a photographer I suppose except that I was sick, stuck lying on my couch, listening to my partner Jenn read aloud from a book about Cook's voyages in Australia, and soaked in the warm late summer sun as it slowly journeyed to and beyond the horizon through my front window, over the garden and distance west hills. What made it unusual was that it was a journey over four hours.
It was an absolutely gorgeous self-indulging journey and one I would never have made if I had not been sick. For the first time in many years, nearly a decade, since an afternoon on the northern Serengeti, I just watched light. I watched it do that most magical thing - change the world.
It reminded me how impatient we are to not indulge ourselves in such an incredible journey. How for granted we take each daily event of magic. And perhaps why there are so few great photographs, and yet so many cameras.
When I was very young in my to-be-a-photographer journey my friend Ernst Haas had a stuccatoed monologue with me one afternoon, what I wrote down from it later was - "Go for a walk one day with the light, you will come back changed."
If you look at his work - B&W or color - you can see many walks, countless walks, walks with and without people, walks in cities, in countrysides, walks at night, and in the heat of the day, but all these walks have one common companion - Light. I think he took far fewer photos than he did walks with light. Thinking back on my precious time with him I'm certain of it. And that idea has triggered a rebirth in my photography, my need to create photographs, a need for more walks; and an idea for an essay, maybe a book, at the least a way to start re-seeing the world I perambulate - A walk with Light.
Every now and again someone sends me a link to a photo or series of photos worth sharing. These support the "ya gotta be good, but never turn down being lucky": http://www.pbase.com/redionne/kingkong
Also, if you just want another touch of visual inspiration check out the daily posting of images from around the world on the BBC Day in Pictures online and MSNBC.com The Week in Pictures.
Last week rain finally fell on Portland, and my garden, and the roads I ride, but every drop of it was lapped up with joy and welcome - like a friend long absent.
Nearly daily I read articles addressing water issues which 'ping' my thinking about how to approach and communicate the our planet's growing water concern. Like the water problem itself, the solution for me photographically is equally elusive. Most of those stories, like this -Water reform is 'needed in Asia' - on the BBC news online, go unnoticed amidst the global panic over economies, wars, terrorists, etc. Ironically, in the coming years, regardless of how our car companies fare, and what leader is this week threatening his neighbors, water will remain at the core of our economic and security woes, it IS our woe. Yet for now, and likely until the day the tap runs dry in the homes of America and Europe, it's a problem to postpone. In the mean time:
- 1.1 billion people live without clean drinking water
- 3 900 children die every day from water borne diseases
- 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation
And the statistics flow faster and with more clarity than the water we need - if you are interested check out the World Water Council and International Water Management Institute to get a broader perspective.
Over on my Japanese gardening blog (diary) I made note of the rain returning here to "my" little planet - it was a very personal reunion - both to my thirsty little green friends and my water bill, which has soared in trying to keep the little green friends alive. And that has made me think and post this blog - water isn't personal enough - "enough". Enough is the key word. How do I create images that tell what "enough" is, means, feels like, to those impacted today, so that those who are not will sit up and say, "hang on, we have a nightmare on our doorstep!" We simply, we the American/Europeans of the world, don't face the problem in a personal way daily or any day usually, we don't walk miles for a gallon or two of "clean" water, we don't have our children dieing agonizing deaths in our arms from ghastly sanitation conditions, so it doesn't really exist as a problem.
Hang on, be right back....
Whew, thanks.
I was really thirsty spouting all that, needed a glass of water, wow, that was easy, just turn on the tap, fill the glass.
Back to the blog....
In search of a solution, both to my creative challenge and, more importantly, to the real challenge, I wonder if it doesn't lie in a garden a top a mountain chain in the Highlands of Paupa New Guinea. There 25 years ago I met the Huli people, the "Wigmen of Papua", the spectacular fellow in the picture above, in their tiny mountain valley high above the world and it's problems. Where the Huli live is near Eden, the Tagali Valley , but off the map, most maps anyway (Google map it - it's a blank spot). The soil is lush, alive, and the rain falls with Swiss-like regularity. Literally, stick anything in the ground and it will grow. And that's what has me thinking. From childhood Hulis are gardeners - every man, woman and child works in the gardens. So pervasive is gardening in the Huli culture that even young men passing through the bachelor cult igari haroli must succeed as gardeners - specifically they must grow an orchid-looking bog iris plant (padume). Durning this period they also learn a series of chants important to their passage into manhood, one of them is the "Water Chant". (Women may likely have similar passages but as a male I was not privvy to them.)
For other, but similar reasons I use to thinnk wouldn't it be incredibly valuable if when entering college every student was handed a small seed or seedling and we said "here, care for this and see it grow, and at graduation, in addition to your 'other' studies, you must present this little plant, alive and flourishing, to graduate." Imagine how that would change our lives? Imagine how that would change the way we view life? Imagine future generations of young people who actually value life?
And now I wonder - Imagine how that would make us view every drop of water we use on this planet?
