I love taking photos.
Less than two years ago I wouldn't think of writing that. I enjoyed other people's photos without any interest in taking my own. Too much time spent on finding the shot, framing the shot, focusing the shot, taking the shot, retaking the shot, finding another shot---any event or excursion swallowed up in all-consuming, unending sub-routines. The
now would be hopelessly misplaced, the glimmering moment only enjoyed if it could be captured
for
later. No, better to take it all in as it presents itself, a memory formed as soon as my back is turned, maybe kept, maybe lost. Let the world be.
About a year and a half ago my friend Katie got a new camera and had no use for her old one, which she gave to me. It was a little Sony PowerShot, the kind of camera that looks more like a cell phone, a point-and-shoot piece of fluff by any professional standard, but a good camera nonetheless. Having previously steered me toward both a laptop and a cell phone without a green screen, Katie felt confident that I would slip further from my anti-gadget, anti-technology perch and immediately latch on to this new device. I did. In fact, I very soon realized that it was a direct path to two favorite things: Plants and Art.
Living two blocks away from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco is a bona fide civic fortune, especially when the closest attraction is Strybing Arboretum. Anyone with any hortisexual tendencies will end up there for hours, exploring plants from South Africa to China and Japan, California natives to a redwood grove, Brazil and Chile to a massive succulent/cactus garden, New Zealand and Australia to a South American cloud forest. I had been taking full advantage of the place well before I had a camera, but when I first visited with the intent to take photos, I realized that the opportunity to take pictures of these beloved plants wasn't as exciting as was the chance to
frame those pictures.
I have no aptitude for the visual arts. Everything I've ever tried to draw, paint or sculpt has turned out less than mediocre. Even as a little kid I knew I wasn't talented in this direction, so I didn't spend much time trying to get any better. Still, I had interest. My parents had several of those unwieldy, bulky, coffee-table busting art books, like "COMPANION TO THE LOUVRE" or "CEZANNE: A LIFE IN ART", and I spent considerable time studying the images within. Actually, I just made those particular titles up, but you totally got the idea.
As I looked, certain paintings and sculptures stayed with me after I put the book away, much like a tune plays in your head long after you first hear it. It was as if these images had always existed, that they were
beside time, unchanged by the rivers of events roiling around them. Long before I could have understood or explained why I liked these pictures, their balance of form, color, light, perspective, leaped into my brain and made themselves at home. Even though I couldn't
make anything of these ideas, I could appreciate and
feel them. So what if I couldn't draw or paint or sculpt? I still felt the joy associated with creation just by looking at art pictures and absorbing their balance. Fortunately for me, I found other areas of expression in my young life--music and drama--that allowed room for eventual accomplishment. But that's
work. Photography is play, at least for me. It's a chance to be the painter without the paint, to make without making. As a kid, I used to imagine massive, angular, invisible 3-dimensional shapes made of air floating hundreds of feet up, tilting at odd angles. It was both lazy and abstract, but why not? They could effortlessly be there if I thought them, a mobile of my young mind spanning the sky. It kindled an early fascination with the notion of things
existing in and of themselves, a quality that the art book images possessed. Only much later did I realize I could pull these invisible airy polygons to earth; they could encompass the angle, aspect, and depth of a photo.
Most of my pictures are of plants, landscapes or architecture. The stillness of hills and trees and flowers is easier to capture for sure, but the
beingness is what I'm after. It gives me a chance to be like James Joyce, paring his fingernails and surveying his dramatic poem as it generates itself seemingly without his guidance. A side-lit calla lily growing under the white kerchiefs of a dove tree, a hummingbird motionless on an old puya stalk, cypress and eucalyptus trees submerged in misty fog. Walking in Strybing Arboretum, you will encounter these worlds within worlds quietly emanating timelessness at every turn. It's a beautiful jewel in the city's diadem, and lately out-of-towners are being charged to enjoy it. Who knows how long it will still be free for SF residents? I'll be going there as much as I can, catching nows for later.
