Sometimes the things I like the best about a photograph are on the periphery. What is that metal laticework protruding in from the right? Where is the rest of that bench? Whose legs are those? I like the stark geometry and the sun-stressed color palette of this image. It needs to be seen really large,…
Tag Archive: sculpture
Crouching Rabbit, Hidden Detail
Here’s another in my unsung-decorative-details vein. I spotted this hardworking hare while I was hunkered down to photograph some nearby foliage. I love this rabbit! It’s quietly and unassumingly adding some delight to a mundane bench. There was no specific call for it, really. There’s nothing especially functional about it, and I would guess that…
Adam & Eve
Most of the really beautiful things I have in my home once belonged to my parents. These two small ivory figurines, who live in a vintage glass bell jar, are among my most beloved possessions. At one point, my father thought it possible that they were carved by Tilman Riemenschneider, which would have made them…
The Right Way Lost
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita. Midway down life’s road I found myself in a dark woods Where the right way was erased. When I first encountered the Inferno in college, I thought it was the most beautiful poetry I’d ever heard….
Ice Tree
Winter can’t last forever, can it? A Year Ago: A Winter Garden Dumbarton Oaks garden is one of my favorite places in Washington. To be more accurate, it’s one of my favorite places anywhere.… [read more]
And the trumpet shall sound!
I’ve nurtured my sense of wonder this year by taking notice daily of the beauty around me, and also by keeping up — as best I can in a lay fashion — with the astonishing developments in science. Nothing brings a sense of awe like an appreciation of the vastness, glory, and complexity of the…
Fruit of the Tree
Some say that the apple of the garden of Eden was a pomegranate. The Greeks believed that Persephone was required to return to Hades each winter for having consumed pomegranate seeds in the underworld. These days, they’re claiming that all those antioxidants and whatnot will prolong your life. The womblike pomegranate—red and round, with the…
Juxtaposition
Most, although certainly not all, photography is fundamentally editorial in nature. It’s about the frame: what gets included (and where) and what gets left out. It’s not additive, like painting (which usually starts with a blank canvas), or subtractive, like a sculpture created by carving (where material that was originally present is removed). Photography’s lens-derived…
Inside/Outside
Okay, I realize I said there wouldn’t be a lot of pictures of artwork. Well, sometimes the artwork tickles me just right and I feel the need to share. I had brunch with Deb and Abbie, and although we’d planned to see a movie, the power went out at the building with both restaurant and…