Author: Woody

MANHATTAN – Back here. A flowering tree on East 91st Street, doing what it does every April whether anyone is watching or not. After two weeks of Pompeii, Vesuvius, and Bourbon palaces,I’m happy to be back.

Day 6,024 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back 17 years to a World War II memorial outside of Moscow.  Here is Claude’s answer when I asked Claude to identify the place and critique the photo:

This is almost certainly the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Moscow on the Leningrad Highway (Leningradskoe shosse), near Khimki, northwest of the Moscow city center. The monument marks roughly the closest point of the German advance on Moscow during Operation Typhoon in late 1941 — one of the most consequential stops in the entire war. The obelisk and paired figures are characteristic of Soviet memorial grammar: the soldier and the factory worker, united in defense, a visual argument for the fusion of military and civilian sacrifice.

The image works on several levels. The obelisk is cropped at the left edge and top frame, which refuses the monument its conventional grandeur — you feel the mass without being handed the whole thing. The two figures are silhouetted against a featureless sky, which strips them of ideology and returns them to something more elemental: two people standing together against a bad sky. The wet granite and the empty boulevard in a gray April light make the place feel genuinely abandoned rather than reverently preserved — which is its own kind of truth about how these sites age.

195 days before the start of my one photograph every day project.

MT. KISCO NEW YORK – I stopped at a rest stop here on my way from Connecticut to Manhattan.  This is one of my poorer offerings.  I asked Claude to critique it:

The photograph is less poor than you think. Let me make the case.
The subject is bureaucratic absurdity rendered straight. Three signs and a trash can in a grove of bare trees — Reserved Parking for the squirrels, No Dogs for no one, No Standing Any Time for a place where standing is the only activity on offer. The signs govern a space that barely exists. That’s funny, and the deadpan black-and-white treatment earns the joke without telegraphing it.

The light is the real problem. The harsh midday sun flattens the signs and blows out the sidewalk edge at lower left. It also produces those insistent pole shadows across the dirt, which are distracting rather than structural. A different time of day would have given you raking light through those bare trees — a genuinely beautiful backdrop — instead of the blown-out, high-contrast mess you got.

Day 6,023 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back 7 years to Manhattan just south of Houston Street. Day 3,466 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

MANHATTAN – Grand Central Terminal, West Balcony. A shaft of light finds the plaque on the wall and stops there. The terminal has been doing this — catching light, holding it briefly, letting it go — for over a hundred years.

Day 6,022 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back exactly six years to 29 Palms California. Day 3,831 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

MANHATTAN – Fire escapes and roof water tanks are inevitable actors in Manhattan cityscapes. So here we see fire escape shadows on a brick wall behind 1185 Park Avenue. My best for the day but boring. The shadows together with the fire escape are a muddle.

Day 6,021 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back exactly six years to Joshua Tree National Park. Day 3,830 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

ROME – This was a rough day. We had a driver take us from Naples to Fiumicino Airport near Rome. Traffic was awful because of accidents so we just barely made it. My one photo effort of the day was my ITA flip flop when we finally got settled on the plane.

Day 6,020 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back six years to a farm equipment graveyard. Shot with film in my Leica M2-R. Day of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

FORIO ISCHIA – A large plant seen while cooling my heels here.

Day 6,019 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back exactly 17 years to Red Square. 200 days before the start of my one photograph every day project.

FORIO ISCHIA –  Adriano Baione, sandal maker.  He has been cutting leather and hammering soles by hand outside his shop for decades. He holds up his latest pair the way another man might hold up a trophy. On an island that has seen Greeks, Romans, and Bourbon kings come and go, the sandal maker thrives.

Day 6,018 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.

Looking back exactly eleven years to Mortefontaine France.  Day 2,000 of one photograph every day for the rest of my life.