The 31st annual Yosemite Renaissance Exhibit opens this weekend in Yosemite Valley. Come on by if you are in the park! The free opening Artists Reception is on Friday, February 26 at 5:30-7:30pm in the Visitor Center Gallery. The show then runs from Saturday, February 27 though May 1.
Yosemite Renaissance features artists who work in and around Yosemite and the Sierra. It includes a range of media — photographs, painting, ceramics, sculpture, and more.
I’m honored that one of my photographs was again included in the exhibit — for the fourth year in a row. This time it is a photograph I made at Devil’s Postpile National Monument last year: “Basalt Columns, Lichen, Autumn Plants”
People standing on tile near Frank Stella’s “Black Star” at the Whitney Museum
On our December 2015 visit to New York City we had a chance to visit the new Whitney Museum for the first time. We see the early construction phases on several earlier visits when we went to Chelsea and were pleased to find that it is now open. We went there one morning, began on the top floor, and started to work our way down. (I’m a bit notorious for being able to spend what some regard as far too many hours wandering slowly through museums. Eventually the others in my party left. I stayed and finally joined up with them again hours later.)
The museum’s collection is, of course, fascinating. But the building itself also fascinated me — as a structure it its own right, its placement in its Manhattan surroundings, how it is used to display art, its outdoor areas, and the opportunities it gave me to include people in photographs. I did virtually no photography inside the building, but on the outdoor terraces and walkways it was an entirely different situation. These areas were perhaps the most attractive parts of the architecture for me, with upper levels thrusting out over the Chelsea landscape, and lower levels spreading out horizontally. From below it created a sort of industrial landscape of metal angles, and from above the views downwards were quite something. This photograph looks over one of the upper balconies and straight down onto a tile-covered terrace where Frank Stella’s “Black Star” resides and was being photographed and contemplated by visitors.
A small portion of a colorful graffiti covered wall, Brooklyn
I used to have a firm policy of virtually never photographing graffiti, and when I couldn’t avoid it I would remove or modify it in post so as to not be part of the sharing that might encourage the sort of graffiti that is really simple vandalism. I still avoid photographing simple “tags” in most cases, especially when they offer little more than the evidence that some anonymous person wrote on a wall. I also have this nagging feeling that photographing graffiti-ridden cityscapes can too easily become a street photography cliché.
However, I’ve become more open to the idea of finding and photographing the accumulative juxtapositions of layers of drawing, painting, posters, and weathering that show up on some urban walls. That’s my way of explaining why I stopped to photograph this Brooklyn wall, moving in close to find compositions among the colors, lines, and shapes that have built up over time and which have been revealed as time has weathered away later layers.
Street art in a doorway, bouquet of flowers, London street
It has been a very busy day and another busy day is beginning, so this will be a short post today. As we walked past this spot in London on a summer 2013 visit it seemed that perhaps not everyone had been equally enthusiastic about the Olympic Games coming to London…
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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