Tag Archives: art

Stairwell, Winter Shadows

January 23, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Shadows of bare winter trees on windows in a Metropolitan Museum stairwell.

This is perhaps a bit of a mind game of a photograph. I’ll explain why in a moment. I made it while visiting the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art on a cold winter day last December. We were there mainly to see the David Hockney exhibit and then, once we realized what it was, the remarkable Michelangelo exhibit nearby. It is also true that we were there on that particular day partly because that was when we happened to be in New York, partly because we wanted to see the exhibits, and partly because it was a freezing cold day! For visitors to New York City in winter, the museums are good options when it is just plain too cold for a lot of outdoor stuff. (Nonetheless, we still did do a lot of walking in this frigid weather.)

This little corner of the museum is at the end of a series of galleries where an open stairway connects several floors together. There are windows, but they are covered with a sort of fabric scrim that allows diffused light to enter, blocks views of the outdoor landscape, but does project the shadows of nearby trees. The bare, winter branches silhouetted on this window and others nearby caught my attention. But the more I looked the more I saw the almost bizarre and perspective-defying combination of lines from the angled wall, the floor and handrail, and more. In the end, this photograph is perhaps of several things, but also about the strange conjunction of their forms.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Structures and Objects, Photographs: Urban/Street

W!

January 10, 2018 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

“W!” — Colorful painting and graffiti on metal door, New York City

Continuing my current pattern of wild back-and-forth swings among subjects, today I retreat from the foggy California wetlands and head back to New York City for some wild color. There’s nothing in the photograph to let you know this, but it was a bitterly cold winter day when I made the photograph. Almost nothing stops me from walking with my camera when I visit New York, though the 20 degree (and colder!) temperatures and biting winds did their best on this day. We started walking in Lower Manhattan, near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal (a very windy place!) and headed uptown on a somewhat random path. The route took us through some places you might not bother to visit on a tourist trip to the city, but it did turn up subjects like this intense example of street art painted on the roll-up door of a small business. If memory serves, this was the day that we finally made it to Veselka, the Ukrainian restaurant. As we walked and got colder and colder, the thought of borscht and other goodies became more and more attractive. Veselka did not disappoint.

About this photograph and its dissonance with other work I post, such as wilderness landscapes, seascapes, and migratory birds. I know that some photographers prefer to focus on a particular range of subjects. (There are fine reasons for making that choice, in fact.) But I have at least a couple of reasons for photographing a wider range of subjects. First, I come from a background in music, where the idea of performing only one style of music (say, Baroque trio sonatas) all the time seems incredibly constraining — so seeking out a wider range seems nature to me. Second, I like to think that these different subjects are still united by whatever it is that constitutes my way of seeing… and that there might be a bit of the landscape photographer in the city and a bit of the street photographer in the landscape work.

TWO

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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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Museum Windows, Central Park

December 31, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Visitors sit in a Metropolitan Museum window overlooking Central Park, Manhattan

At the end of 2017 we spent a week in New York City, mostly visiting our “kids,” but also visiting the city itself. It was a very cold week! Daytime temperatures stayed below freezing — sometimes way below — for five days straight, and nighttime temperatures were in the low teens. On a warm day in New York, it is great to be outside. On winter days like these it is also great to be outdoors in Manhattan… just not for very long! On this day we eventually joined the throngs headed to warm museums, picking the Met, where there is a big David Hockney exhibit that I wanted to see.

I photograph in New York often enough to begin to understand the place a little bit — though nowhere near to the level of those who live there. But I still have plenty to discover, and on this trip I discovered — realized, more accurately — in a conscious way how good the light can be there. This is especially so, I think, in winter. The sun is low in the sky and its light often comes in a low angles, reflecting and silhouetting, and frequently appearing right in my frame of view. I made this photograph quickly while walking through a hallway at the museum where groups of people were taking a break on the ledge of these windows, against the bright backdrop of a soft-focus view of Central Park trees and a bit of the Manhattan skyline.

Photographs: New York City, Photographs: Urban/Street

Hockney Observed

December 30, 2017 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Two museum visitors observe a David Hockney Painting

We have been in New York City during the past week or so, on one of our frequent trips to visit sons and daughters-in-law there… and of course to also simply be in New York. (And, did I also mention “eat in New York?”) It has been cold — something like 10-15 degrees below normal during our visit — and among the practical cold weather activities here are museum visits. We already knew we wanted to see this David Hockney exhibit — we had seen the big Hockney exhibit in San Francisco a few years ago, and we just saw a SF Opera production of “Turandot” that used a Hockney-designed set.

So we joined the throngs on a very cold day at the Metropolitan Museum and went inside to see this exhibit. (Having not done our research ahead of time, we were unaware of the Michelangelo show also taking place, but we managed to visit that, too.) The exhibit was, not surprisingly, very popular and crowded, with a variety of work from across Hockney’s career — lots of the usual stuff, including two of his Grand Canyon landscape paintings. I made this photograph as two people stopped to view one of them.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: art

Stairwell, Winter Shadows

W!

Museum Windows, Central Park

Hockney Observed

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.