Photographs like this one are, for me, something like visual “palate cleansers.” It is really only about composition, shapes, densities, lines, and, of course, light. Whether you feel that understanding these things is central to photographs or, alternatively, simply underlies the other things that photographs are about, the fact remains that these basic visual qualities are a big part of what attracts many of us to the medium.
I’m not 100% sure where I made this photograph. I know it was in San Diego, and I’m pretty certain that it was at Balboa Park, and I strongly suspect that it was inside the Museum of Photographic Arts. To me, the photograph is a bit deceptive and is a bit more complex than it might initially appear. I’ll leave it to viewers to explore that notion.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.
Detail of a small section of the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.
Perhaps I was channelling my inner Atget when I made this photograph a few years back. I was wandering around San Francisco with a camera — a favorite activity in non-pandemic times — and I ended up at the Palace of Fine Arts near the waterfront. It is a remarkable place with a remarkable history. Originally constructed as part of the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, it was the only structure that wasn’t taken down afterwards. Originally meant to be a temporary feature of the Exposition, it deteriorated and was eventually completely taken down in the 1960s and reconstructed by the mid-1970s. .
Something in the photograph illustrates how I do (and do not) see when I’m making photographs. One one hand I and other photographers often see things that others might miss. On the other hand, because we are focused on one way of seeing our subject we may entirely miss things that are completely obvious to others. Sometimes we “discover” these elements of our photographs later. (Someone pointed out that a difference between photography and painting is that the photographer cannot know everything in the image.) In this case, it was only years later that I noticed the rather striking symbols that appear on the surface of this building — symbols that no sane person would include today. This led me to some quick research that suggests that in 1915, and before the atrocities of WWII, the symbol in question had an entirely different meaning.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
George Cleve conducts the Symphony Silicon Valley in rehearsal
Bear with me. This may be a long story. I’ll start with some basic facts concerning this photograph. As some of you may know, I have been working on a long-term project to photograph classical musicians. This is related to a sabbatical project at my college, and one goal is to document aspects of the lives and works of classical musicians that might not typically be seen by those who only get to come to see performances. For this purpose, I have been “embedded” with a couple of groups for over a year. It has been a great opportunity, and I’m grateful to the musicians and others who work with them for allowing me a kind of access to their lives and work that they might not afford to just anyone. It helps that I know many of them, that I’m married to one of these musicians, that my academic training is in music, and that I used to perform with people like these. All of that also helps me be sensitive to things that other photographers might not as easily see. (This is a long story in and of itself, and I’ll save that for later.)
The conductor of this concert “set” is George Cleve. His name is not exactly a household word, but his experience and skill and musical sensitivity is of the highest level. My experience with George goes back many years, to a time when he conducted orchestras in which I occasionally played (San Jose Symphony and the Midsummer Mozart Festival Orchestra) and one for which I served as orchestra stage director for a few years. In a surprising coincidence I even took a conducting class from him when I was an under-graduate music major “back in the day.”
Conductors are not always patient people, and there are many reasons that this can be the case. The work they do is unlike almost any other work that I can imagine. Even though I’ve been around music for many years, I still find it difficult to offer a really good description of the complexity of the role—which includes elements of ring-master, leader, coordinator, passionate interpreter, analytical listener and teacher, and much more. Truly watching a skillful conductor—and preferably not while performing, but instead while your full attention can be on the watching—is an illuminating experience. From the visual perspective of a photographer, the appearance of the conductor is in a continuous state of flux. His or her facial expressions change faster than you can follow, and subtle movements—a quick glance, a hint of a smile, a momentary intensity, a curving motion of the hand—convey things in a fluid way.
But I have one more story about George, and it involves that conducting class. His was an intimidating presence for young music students. I recall him at one of the first classes asking, “You do all have the nine symphonies of Beethoven committed to memory, right?” Wrong! Though we quickly set about trying. (That task takes far longer than a college term!) I recall a day when we were to individually conduct the second movement of the 6th symphony for him. As I remember it, we entered the room alone to face him and conduct as a pianist played a reduction of the score. One after another nervous students entered and soon emerged from the room, often seemingly crushed by the realization of how little they understood what they had to do. It was my turn. I entered and faced him and began to conduct. In my recollection, which is probably no longer completely accurate, he quickly stopped me and said something along the lines of, “No, no, no!” But then, for reasons I never quite understood, he gave me a musical gift that I did not expect and which has remained with me since then. Instead of telling me I was done, he said, “Watch me.” Standing a few feet in front of me and conducting as if the full symphony was where I stood, he put on the full show for me, intensity of expression, cues to all, the perfect physical expression of what did and could happen in the music, and I saw what it actually might mean to understand and lead such a performance of such a piece… even if I never learned to do so even close to his level.
This week, at the rehearsals that included a different Beethoven symphony, I finally had the opportunity, decades later, to thank him for that gift.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
A weathered tile and concrete wall at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.
I’ll throw things a bit off-kilter here and interrupt the stream of landscape images from the Sierra Nevada with a minimalist photograph of a tile wall that I made while walking around in San Francisco in July. This may not be quite as simple a photograph as it first appears, and in larger version or print it becomes more apparent that the tiles are varied and weathered in interesting ways that produce a range of textures and colors.
I do a certain number of “minimalist” photographs – some of the urban landscape and others of the natural landscape and seascapes. Sometimes when I’m photographing some of the urban subjects I get some very strange looks from passers-by! I guess it must be hard to imagine why some guy with a fancy camera is pointing it straight at a wall in downtown San Francisco when so many other seemingly more compelling subjects are all around. Or else they might wonder if there is something there that they just don’t see.
