Photographing people is not a major part of my photography, and when I do it is more often along the lines of people in their environment rather than portraits. But every so often the mood hits, and I do a series of such photos. It happened a bit during our May visit to Dublin — perhaps because it was such a busy, people-filled city. This is the first from that visit, but there will be more.
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Stairwell, Winter Shadows. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
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.
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.
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Hockney Observed. New York City. December 26, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
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 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.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | LinkedIn | Email
All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.