Back in September of 2013 Wendi and I made our second trip to France, the first having been a trip to Paris in 2011. During that second visit we split time between Paris, Mont St. Michel and Provence. I have definitely shared a number of images from both Paris and Mont St. Michel on here, but I don't believe I have shown you any of the images that came from the time in Provence. Heck, I haven't even processed all those images yet.
Why?
I am not entirely sure. I could cop out and say it is because none of the images really excite me like the images from the various other parts of France we visited on that trip. But I don't think that is a fair or accurate summation. I think it is largely due to my not knowing what I want to say with those images. Photography is a conversation. We go to create images and we are creating sentences, paragraphs, short essays, novellas, epic works in our minds. But we as photographers have to know what we intend to say for the photos to be truly effective. What good is standing in front of an audience and blurting out a string of non-cohesive words, even if they are really really good words like sassafras or palimpsest.
But knowing what you want to say in the creation of your images isn't always the easy thing to puzzle out, especially when traveling. Knowing what to say about a place requires an understanding of it, and heading into Avignon or Nimes I didn't know quite what I wanted my message to be because I was just making the beginnings of understanding what those places meant to me. I still don't have all the pieces fit together. In fact, to create a really coherent statement would require at least one more trip and further exploration and pondering. The thing is, if I went back, many of the images I already have would probably become very useful, would suddenly find themselves as key pieces in a larger body of work. There is value in the photos I have, but there are just too many missing gaps still for that value to be fully understood by me.
I am ok with this. It is part of the process, I realize. This is helpful. It gives me a long view on this because some of these gaps may not be filled for decades if it takes me that long to go back. I'm ok with that too. But still, it does tickle me in a way to have this whole mini-collection of images sitting on drives gathering virtual dust.
I don't think it bothers me not to share them. Nor does it bother me, like I said, to realize they represent a body of work that cannot be completed as it currently sits. I think what it does it kick off some internal curiosity that I possess to work around the obstacle of it being unfinished, to find ways to find value in what is there. It is the notion that though I can see an incomplete value, that there is likely a value to the images as they are that I am not seeing. My photography is often driven by the half-sensed notion that there are things I am missing. It is an important factor in what makes me work the way I do. I will always miss more than I catch. I am fine with this too, but oh man, do I love the hunt for that stuff.
And so I continue to sit and look at these images from the streets of Avignon, from the ruins of Les Baux de Provence, from the otherwordly colors of Roussillon and I wonder just what is already there that I can find.
So I am going to try to make a point to share a few of those images with you in the near future. They may only be tatters from a larger tapestry, or maybe I can weave them together into a more concise thread. We'll see.
Tags: Avignon France Provence Hasselblad film Tri-X square Medium Format arrow Europe film is not dead B&W street photography Old World
© All Rights Reserved
Avignon was our base of operations during the week we stayed in Provence. We got a small apartment that was on the sketchier side of the tracks but so close to the historic center of the city that the benefits outweighed the drunken nightcrawlers asking for change in French every evening.
Avignon is an old city. Really really old. Like going all the way back about 2500 years old. A lot has happened in it since then, too. It has a papal palace for example, you know, like how Vatican City has a papal palace. For a brief span of time the Catholic church "enjoyed" two popes, an eastern one and a western one, the latter taking up residence here. Avignon also has this neat bridge, the pont d'Avignon (more formally known as the Pont Saint-Bénézet, which you'll see an image of at some point I am sure).
Being an old city though, the streets just wind there way here and there. Getting lost is the rule, not the exception. And this evening represented by this image, get lost we did. Granted, getting lost is usually what I do when exploring cities like this. I just stuff a map in my pocket, set a couple of loose goals and then head out, taking turns where my eye or intuition lead. Once you get used to these old European cities, it generally isn't too hard to get un-lost. But for some reason Avignon sucked us in and gave us a good time trying to get back out. I don't remember exactly what kept us so lost, but I remember we ended up crossing almost the entire breadth of the inner city despite our intentions otherwise. What eventually set us right was the fact that the whole historic center of Avignon is ringed by a massive medieval wall, so once we ran into that, we just had to follow it around.
But somewhere between then and there, we paused for just a moment in this spot and I made this image.
Tags: Hasselblad film analog film is not dead Avignon Provence France Europe urban street scene Medium Format 6x6 Hasselblad 500C
© All Rights Reserved
One of my first trips to Europe was a visit to Rome. I remember standing in the Colosseum running my hands across the rough stone walls and being amazed. I was touching stone that had stood for nearly 2000 years. But it wasn't the age of the stone that so blew me away, it was imagining, or trying to imagine, all the lives previous that had run their hands across that same stone. Perhaps it was a family attending games in the newly opened arena in the year 80 AD, or maybe it men going to fight in a competition there 200 years later, or laborers, priests, thieves and conquering raiders. And then you crank it down another level and wonder, what was that family in the year 80 thinking? Surely they had concerns about the local politics, pride for their son/daughter, excitement over the coming entertainment. Or maybe they were just hungry and wondering what to have for lunch. Maybe they were in love, maybe they had business machinations rolling around in their brains while they took in the spectacle. Maybe they were as amazed by the whole thing as I was about 2000 years later. Maybe we were thinking many of the same things. Maybe not. And the number of hands, and lives, that have come in between. How do you quantify that number? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Billions?
The moment I stood in then was paved by the feet of countless lives before me, and each of those lives carried hopes, fears, dreams, concerns, adulations, and on and on. When I stand somewhere like that, old and weathered, by both time and human passage, these are some of the things I think and feel. It is one of the reasons I like old cities so much. You don't get an experience quite like this anywhere in nature. Yeah, sure there are old mountains and ancient oceans, but it isn't just about the age of the place, it is the parade of humanity that has marched through it over those intervening centuries, and the impact each of those lives has had.
I was thinking about all this and a bit more on this particular night in Avignon, standing in a dark, narrow, twisting alley off the rear of the papal palace. It is moments like this that I feel a bit both in and out of that parade. You can never really step out of it, but sometimes you can gain a bit more perspective on that which has us in its inexorable pull.
Tags: Hasselblad film France Avignon night Kodak Tri-X analog 6x6 Medium Format Europe travel humanity blur long exposure Black and white
© All Rights Reserved
I don't remember what drew us to Bonnieux. Maybe it was the fact that it was a quaint-looking French town sitting atop a hill overlooking kilometers of farmland around it. Maybe it was just happenstance, we needed a place to stop for lunch on our circuit around Provence that day. I do remember we had visited Nîmes that morning, seen Colosseum-like Roman arena still standing there and we would finish the day in the ruins of Les Baux de Provence. In between was this small French town where we were lucky enough to hit market day. We picked up some fruit, bread, meat and the most amazing bottle of lavender lemonade (so amazing I spent time back home in the states trying to figure out some way to buy this stuff and get it shipped here). And then we wandered. Mostly up, mostly winding. As we ascended through the town we passed out of the market district and found ourselves in a warren of old, stone streets with shops tucked into corners here and there. Old chairs, old books, old paintings (some new ones as well) sat out here and there to entice passerby.
Nothing much of consequence happened that afternoon in Bonnieux, but it was still one of my favorite afternoons spent in Provence, succeeded only by the afternoon we would spend a day or two later in the coastal town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the middle of the Camargue. But more on that another post.
Tags: Hasselblad film analog 6x6 120 France Provence Bonnieux Old World
© All Rights Reserved
I am always fascinated by the signs of time's passage: the grooves worn in stone steps by shuffling feet, or the toes worn off of a famous statue in a famous basilica, or here, the knuckles of a bullfighter outside a Roman arena. The millions of hands and feet and even lips that had to combine to create this, and all those lives taking part in this grand dance across history... and all those lives lost to the relentless march of time. When you stop and look at something like this long enough, you see much more than worn metal or stone.
Go see for yourself: goo.gl/maps/bZ0bY
Tags: Nîmes film analog Pentacon Six TL Medium Format arena 6x6 Kodak Tri-X B&W France Provence 120 film is not dead
© All Rights Reserved