“Ginginha da Casa” — A man talks to a woman selling ginfinha from her home in the Alfama, Lisbon.
A while ago I shared a near-portrait of one of the Lisbon neighborhood ginginha vendors. This photograph takes in a larger perspective on one of the actual neighborhoods, this time in Alfama. Ginginha is reputedly the “national drink” of various parts of Portugal. (Yeah, I know, to some extent that may be tourism talk.) It is a sweet cherry liqueur served by the shot at sidewalk stands.
The stands are all over the place. The first one we encountered was at a stairway near the railway station in Lisbon. Another more famous one is nearby, not far from Rossio Square. But the most fascinating ones are those set up in the doorways and windows of peoples’ homes. Here a woman sells the drink from her doorway, and a passerby pauses to chat for a while.
A man walks along a London street while conversing on the telephone
Recently I’ve been realizing that the image of people using cell phones is quite probably going to one of defining images of this period in time. Being part of it, I’m not sure we are quite conscious of how ubiquitous it is nor of how profoundly it has changed the activities of people and how they act in the urban environment. For example, a few years ago I joked that it used to be that you could tell tourists in the big city by how they wandered around gazing upwards — but that now you can identify them by looking for people walking around while staring straight down and screens.
So this photograph is partly a reference to and inspired by this idea about the phone and its ever-present visually defining role in the current era. Of course it is also about the fellow himself, who has, at least to me, a fascinating appearance. It is also about the surrounding urban landscape with its colors and angles and so forth.
Many of you are familiar with Charlie Cramer’s beautiful photographs, but this week you have the chance to hear him make beautiful music, too. San Francisco Bay Area residents can join me and quite a few other photographers and musicians for a performance this weekend.
Saturday, January 18
7:30 PM
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church
1957 Pruneridge Ave., Santa Clara
The concert features organists Charles Cramer, Mike Cala, and Darryl Parker… and Charlie will talk about his photography and host an exhibit of prints, and more. See you there!
“A camera trained on the organ console will give us a big-screen view of all the organists in action – and a close-up view of all the buttons they have to push! The program includes Cala performing an improvisation accompanying a short silent film and Cramer’s illustrated presentation, _’How I Became a Photographer and Met Ansel Adams.’_ He’ll talk about the many connections between music and photography. Adams started off as a pianist, and Cramer will present some rarely-heard recordings of Adams playing the piano. Also included will be some of Cramer’s photographs. (http://www.charlescramer.com/) You can see more of Cramer’s prints at the reception following the recital.”
(The photograph seen here is Charlie’s “Bare Trees, Red Leaves” – used by permission of the photographer)
Arthur Tress discusses his photographs with a group of photographers at his exhibit at the De Young Museum, San Francisco.
Back in early March, Adobe invited a number of San Francisco Bay Area photographers to meet with photographer Arthur Tress at his show at the De Young Museum, “San Francisco 1964.” (Thanks, Adobe!) After we assembled in the lobby and had a moment or two to speak to some of Adobe folks, including some working on the just-released new version of Lightroom, we adjourned to the gallery. In this photograph, the group listens to Tress (barely visible at the far side of the taller) as he walks through the gallery and talks about his work.
Tress and a photography curator introduced us to the show and shared some back-story and perspectives on the work it includes. The photographs are all black and white images shot in medium format during a period when Tress first came to the west coast in 1964, a year when a lot of interesting stuff was happening in The City – including the first US concerts by the Beatles, the “Goldwater” Republican convention, civil rights demonstrations, and more. Tress’s photographs are interesting on several levels: as a record of aspects of the period that we might not realize we have lost (especially to this photographer who was a child living in the Bay Area at that time), as a record of actual events, and as an often-witty commentary on much of what he observed.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer 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
Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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