it happens every time…..that is, every time i go to the beach to relax …after two weeks or so of t-shirts and barefeet and jealously watching pelicans magic flight as they skim the faces of the waves, i always make the "decision" to "give it all up" and move to the beach….
after all, my best memories of childhood are growing up at the beach memories….. and the salt smell and waving seagrass and the mesmerizing pounding of the waves breaking on the sand all become so hypnotic that i have to force myself to remember anything else or even think about anything else…
and to make the decision even more solid, i have both of my sons who travel the world making films, living at the beach with seemingly little inconvenience and a terrific lifestyle….and there is another whole cast of "characters" down here who seem to have managed to carve out a permanent beach vacation…..
why shouldn’t i too live a beach life???….become a "beach bum"….well, maybe not a real beach bum…..but a working beach bum….after all, i do have ideas for shooting at the beach and it is not too hard to imagine a beach based workshop…..i mean, can’t we all discuss photography sitting in the sand around a campfire in the late "hot light" and with blue crabs steaming in the pot???
i mean, do i really "have" to live in new york with all of its seductive energy ?? would i quickly become bored with the beach??
well, i will give it some more thought…..today i have the perfect travel companion to work my way away from the beach vacation…i will fly with my mother back to her home in durango, colorado…..my mother likes the beach ok, but she is a hard core "mountain person"….she will give me good advice….she always does….
by wednesday i will be back in new york…by the following wednesday i will be jammed into a too crowded too loud disco club in seoul, korea photographing korean youth culture….and i will most likely be enjoying every minute of it….totally into it……wrapped up in a culture that is not mine……temporarily mesmerized by the pounding beat of the techno sound system, just as i was by the waves breaking on the beach…..surely the beach will not be on my mind at all….
are all of us just flat out schizophrenic??? all of us jump from one world into another….all the time…it is the nature of what we do….all of you , whether art photographers or photojournalists, become "transported" from one set of spacial and psycho relationships into another with the quick stamp of a boarding pass…..is this healthy for us ?? more importantly, will i ever become a beach bum???
O, David…..
my grandmother used to say to me when i was young (and getting ready to leave her and my grandfather for the summer to return home): “honey, its too early in the morning for tears…”. ;))))…since, i’ve always been an easy one for tears, hasnt seemed to stop; )))….thank you, genuinely, for your kind and thoughtful and remarkably generous words. They mean a great deal to me and I cherish them and shall reward you in the fall with both a bottle of fine icewine and an even finer hug(s)….
so let me, for your audience, return the favor….
DO WHAT DAVID ALAN HARVEY DOES!!!…
I dont mean just make beautiful and sad and heart-pulpy photographs. I mean live, bridge distances, create community, open your selves to the fact of this breathing life. We are nothing without one another, for even in our often isolated and lonely pockets of self, we realize that without the other, we are nothing but blood and bone and air, that too quickly evaporating. David Alan Havey has, without surcease, sung the song of life. He, continually, has created, unselfishly, community. I do not know what richer way to spend a life than to tell stories, to share them and to listen, above all listen and encourage others to do the same. There are few people in this swelling world that spend, often at their own expense and work and lives, ensuring that others are healthy and fed and encouraged and brought to life. David, in the most essential way, is a teacher and builder of things: lives and spirits and essences. I mark the measure of a person by the character of their lives, the navigation of their spirits, large or small. We all know David is an extraordinary photographer, but for me, this is less important than that he continually seeds those around him with encouragement and life and challenge. We are nothing without community. So raise high the roofbeams y’all. That is the essence, for me of a character.
Do what DAH does because there is little meaning in the tending of your life but that: to give back, to arch yourself into this life and drink upon it and share that and inspire others. As a photographer, the only thing that has ever matter to me is that my work (and its a constant failure) is only that: oxygen, a part of my bone and flesh and life. Not more important, but just as integral. I spend more time listening and watching and thinking than i do shooting, because I want my pictures to be simply that: the character of the living of things. I was once asked for advice (my advice now would be to shoot, listen and drink with David ;) ), and all i could say was this: shooting comes from a place that has little to do with photography: the rhyming of your life….
DO WHAT DAVID DOES….
and this for you David:
my grandmother use to tell me: ‘bob, life is like a square dance: stay under the barnroof long enough and you’ll arm your partner…’ I believe in that: that we are meant to be connected and will connect with those people who feed us and in whom we are nurture and can nurture: distance, truly, and time, an irrelevancy. I wrote yesterday the same to Tamara Voninsky, my friend from Sydney. The older i get, it just become more cloudy: that we, miraculously and in wonderment, join our lives with others with whom are lives bloom. I met my wife when i was 35, though she was urchined on the other side of the globe…i met david through the backdoor of LS and this forum, without ever intending to meet him or thinking even about magnum photographers or frankly, photographers at all: we are bowed and bridged to people, a constellation of lives that make our lives rich and i always feel blessed and always amazed at the people who i can join my life with: i dont believe in fate, but i do believe in propinquity…like the greeks idea of soul mates: those people who we were attached at the ankle before being cloven will eventually find each other…my life, folks, has been a testament to that….my friendship (soon to bloom this fall in real life; )) ), with david is an example of that…
do not seek out others, but live as well and as honestly as you can and your life will join for those to whom it was meant…
i feel happy and blessed to know and talk with David because, like all the people who enter our lives, my life would have been poorer without….
thanks david…
bob
thanks david for comments about sam abell…there is something good in each and every of us and that is what I want to discover…i went shooting very early this morning and took with me your idea about doing crazy things…i asked this guy (paul) to be my sbject for the morning…he accepted…we talked about our lives, what we like…we decided to go and see a boxing event on the island soon…that is what photography is for me: the meeting of people who would not meet otherwise, the sharing of a portion of our lives ….
all the words shared with another human being will not be captured in a still photograph….that is to me a major limitation…how to capture this moment in all its dimension? how to stay close from the experience? when I photograph, a im just saying, I have been there with X, and trust me we had a good experience together for a moment in life?
Arie
Michael, I use a browser with popup blocking so I didn’t even know slate has popups, sorry.
colin…
sorry, i missed your comment first time around…yes, i think it is possible to “have both”…why not??
nick…
will you come to perpignan?? i have a feeling you are shooting something very interesting…