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*STREETPHOTOS
of the
WEEK
#11
to #20
September
19, 2006 to November 21, 2006
A
several-year private Email Exhibition by G.
Mark Smith -- now also available to the public at
WWW.StreetPhoto.Com...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #11/
Close Call
The
Volcanic Eruption on Montserrat/ Salem, Montserrat/ (September 22,
1997)
10:46 am
Issued on September 19, 2006
* If
you're in the Oklahoma City area in the next few weeks you can still catch
Streetphoto of the Week #11 and three other G. Mark Smith streetscapes live
at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, included as part of the four-month-long
Crossroads international invitational street photography exhibition
curated by New York art critic Mason Resnik, former editor at Modern
Photography, Popular Photography, and ShutterBug Magazines. For more detail
go to:
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jul/01/exhibit_features_work_lawrence_photographer/
-----------------------------
*
a backstory to Streetphotos in Time ...
I
call my
favorite streetphoto portfolio Streetphotos in Time because it's the only
collection of streetphotos I issue to the public that were made during the
enactment of history and the only portfolio where you'll find a date more
specific than the year attached to the title. This slice of the calendar is
thick with historical anniversaries for me -- significant places and significant
historical events I've been lucky enough to attend around the globe.
Streets I've photographed in their times.
Out of the first 13 Streetphotos of the Week (up to and
including the October 3rd issue of Streetphoto of the Week #13 to be sent out
two weeks from today) five are attached to historical events that occurred on or
around the date of issue at the location of the photograph. Streetphoto of the
Week #5 was an image made 16 years ago in Warsaw, Poland during Freedom Summer
1990. Streetphoto of the Week #8 was from the Flood of New Orleans at the
one-year anniversary of last year's disaster and Streetphoto of the Week #9 was
from the five-year anniversary of the day after 9/11. And today's Streetphoto of
the Week #11 is from nine years ago this Friday when street photography provided
me the most spectacular moment of my life at the scary end of a fierce volcanic
eruption in the Eastern Caribbean.
The #5 Warsaw photo (Five on a Bench) was
defined by a season in a year.
The #8 New Orleans flood photo (Devastatingly
Beautiful) was defined by a fortnight in a year.
The #9 September 12 photo (Killing the Messenger)
was defined by a date.
The #13 St. Petersburg, Russia and Cologne, Germany
photos that will be featured in the October 3 diptych issue will also be defined
by a day in a year (the date that Leningrad was was renamed St. Petersburg
during the Russian Revolution of 1991 and the same date a year earlier in 1990
when Germany and Europe reunited).
But as with earthquakes, volcanic eruptions are not
defined in time by just the year or just a season or even by just the date --
they are instead defined by date and year and also by the precise time the event
occurred. In 1982 a 7.0 earthquake nearly got me in El Salvador and thus I'll
never forget that it happened at 2:22 am. Likewise, I'll always remember that my
first significant volcanic eruption from frighteningly close range occurred at
10:46 am -- -- -- on September 22, 1997.
Field
Note:
September 22, 1997
*
a
backstory to Streetphoto of the Week #11 ...
From
the G. Mark Smith streetphoto journal: Molten Memoirs: Essays, Rumors, Field
Notes and
Photographs from the Edge of Fury
Gary Mark Smith/ Pack-a-Lunch Productions (1999)
-------------------------------
I
finished my
banking business over at Woodlands and reworked myself back into the Death Zone
around a far more serious army checkpoint than I’d weaseled past all week. More
serious since the weekend eruptions and especially since all those new dire
warnings came out last night. I got back to the cafe -- and having missed
breakfast -- I’d just ordered an early lunch and was having a discussion with
Kilimanjaro at the bar about Eric Clapton’s “Guitar God status” ---- ----
---- and suddenly Alfred's dogs started barking wildly and Chicken Joe’s
free-range chickens started squawking and someone on the street screamed
“MOUNTAIN”---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- and I was about to get way more
volcano than I’d bargained for...
*10:46 a.m.
I
was right near the open door and I stepped outside at once ---- ---- ----
and just about pissed my pants.
The mountain I was on began exploding near the top, and although so much
happened in the next few seconds, it seemed to progress in slow motion and
to take much longer then it actually did. It wasn’t quite as much of a
time warp as when I fell off that ice cliff in Quebec in 1974, but it came
close at times. The top of the mountain opened up and a column of exploded
mountain, ash, pumice, and superheated gases rose so fast and so high that
it was as if someone had turned on a fire hose inside the mountain. The
rising column sucked the clouds into its vortex (dissipating them) like a
black hole must do to light. The first half mile of the eruption column
was accompanied by volcanic missiles of some size that arced out with
black smoke tracers and returned to earth or splashed into the sea in a
two or three-kilometer vicinity of the peak. The shooting column rose
incessantly and when it’s friction and heat hit the crucial height, the
air around the column exploded with volcanic lightning (St. Elmo's Fire),
flashes that were not so much like bolts as they were like huge
(momentary) children’s sparklers. We could hear the mountain gushing and
rumbling and the muffled bangs of repeated explosions, but in hindsight,
it was much quieter (surrealistically quiet) up close than you’d
think such a violent and huge thing should be. And then a small but rarely
detectable earthquake shook us slightly for a moment or two. The eruption
column accelerated in its undaunted rising and by then it had made it up
to about two miles high, when we noticed the new distant sound of far-away
jet engines. And then an incandescent white dot appeared two miles back
down the eruption column near the dome, and it instantly dropped all our
heads away from the column and the sparkling lightning overhead.
Even though the roar of the mountain and the reports of
the thunder continued and grew a bit louder, the holdouts of Salem could
hear nothing for the next minute or so except the beating of our own
hearts in our throats. Even though I’d come to Montserrat of my own free
will and was fully aware of the possibilities, and even though I felt the
heat of yesterday’s flow as it oozed on the flats and into the sea, the
thought of me being in the path of one of these barreling and boiling and
tumbling killers sickened me.
However terrible it was, the scene was also
breathtakingly beautiful. To me, it was spiritually enlightening and was
surely the object of my volcano quest. Yet it was rushing at me and
overwhelming me and it was sure to kill me.
I didn’t see how anyone could be ready for that kind of
slap on the face, and there it came...
I did not panic, but I was in despair. I thought I’d reached the end of
the line. The incandescent glowing stream (usually too ground-hugging and
low to photograph from a “safe” distance), grew longer and closer
and I knew from its speed that it was too late to flee and I honestly
thought then and for the next long minute or three that I was a dead
street photographer.
-------------------------------
About 100 Salem holdouts (roughly half of the total amount) fled north in speeding cars during the first few seconds of the flow. The people I was photographing took a long hard look at doing the same. At one moment I photographed several of them subconsciously touching the only thing that might save them, a car. (see photo)But they decided to stay and they were my study, so I stayed with
them, and it was all eyes on the thing that would kill us within a half
minute.
A visiting safe-zoner came flying down the ash-covered
road from the Desert Storm kiosk bar observatory in her car, slamming on
the breaks and sliding to a halt, jumping out and screaming at us to
“FLEE TO THE NORTH! ---- FLEE TO THE NORTH! ---- FLEE TO THE
NORTH!”
She was justifiably hysterical. If I hadn’t had a
mission that I still thought I had to concentrate on (and even stay still
to perform), I’d have joined her. A late-morning patron of the bar stepped
up and hugged and comforted his friend and he repeated to her in a steady
voice, “It’s too late. It’s too late.”
The white hot flow was now at a size that was perfect
for the 50-mm image I’d been preparing for all my life. At the same time,
I was about to be incinerated by the subject of my last photos, and I
squeezed my own quiet panic into a split second as I prepared for the
moment (I thought about Janet and the cats).
Since it appeared I was going to die, I figured I might
as well go down swinging. I made a shot of the pair as they broke apart a
bit and as they refocused their attentions on the thing that was doing us
all in ---- ---- ---- and then in an instant, the flow took an
unmistakable turn toward the western shore. The man’s right arm shot up in
joyful hope (See Streetphoto of the Week #11), and I also made that
photograph, as the ten of us on that street instantaneously cheered in a
chorus. I was happy because I knew I had just photographically raised the
bar on any of those other great moments I’d captured during the eruptions
on Saturday or Sunday as part of my mission here. And now the deadly
1000-degree ground hurricane had turned down another valley where nobody
lives anymore.
However, the sickening 400-degree+ gray surge of ash
and suffocating gas already airborne (the thing the scientist’s said would
kill us) didn’t turn and it kept barreling and boiling and tumbling right
toward us, disappearing the incandescent flow behind it with its curtain
of debris and heat.
The surge continued to assault us, eventually stopping, but
so close to the broken front door of my tent we could all (one way or
another) feel the heat of it. As the black wall of the surge loomed in
front of us dangerously close to burning Salem, Kilimanjaro exclaimed to
no one in particular “That’s it! Too close for me! I’m outa-here!”
He turned his back on the near miss and he began to walk north with a
purpose. And now there were less than 100 holdouts in Salem, pacing
around, arms folded and thinking about tomorrow again. On his way out of
town Kilimanjaro looked up and then pointed directly above our heads (see photo).
I made that photo and I followed his point and also re-focused on the
eruption column, which had leveled off in the high-altitude winds at
12,000 to 20,000 feet and had mushroomed out from the volcano and had now
expanded its front past Salem in width and was directly over our heads.
The column was big, so impressively huge, that I could only capture a
slice of it with my camera (see photo).
I was too close, too close ...
And then as the the blood flowed back to everyone's faces and
the tension eased and we all dared to imagine again that we might see
tomorrow -- -- -- the eruption warning sirens began blaring in Salem ( a
minute late, as it were) and everyone still holding out in the Death Zone
laughed the nervous laugh of an insecure survivor.
Still petrified by the fury -- but now also cynically amused by the folly
of man ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #12a
Bareback Rickshaw SPAM-Scape:
The day the
SPAM-Mobile came to town ...
Bonner Springs, Kansas/ (2006)
Issued on
September 26, 2006
... and dedicated to my dad who grew me up on Spam ...
*(bonus)
Streetphoto
of the Week #12b
Pondering America?:
Classic!;
It's All About the SPAM !!
Bonner Springs, Kansas/ (2006)
... caught in the wild while making street photography ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #13a/
Reunification Kiss
Koln (Cologne), United
Germany/ (October 3, 1990)
Issued on October 3, 2006
Good Day.
Today is October 3rd
A Very Significant Date in the Contemporary History of the Streets of the World
...
It's the date Germany and Europe reunified (see first attachment), the date in
the eyes of those from St. Petersburg, Russia that the Soviet Union fell (see
second attachment), and it's probably the date the terror war era began --- ---
--- we just didn't know that yet...
*
a backstory to Streetphoto of the Week #13a
...
Streetphoto of the week #13a was made 16 years ago today in the first minute of
German
and European Reunification at 12:01 a.m. at the base of the colossal Koln
Cathedral.
As I was taking the photograph, I was reminded of that picture made in Times
Square in New York in August of 1945 (VJ Day) -- the one by esteemed
photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt -- that famous streetphoto of the American
Sailor dipping and kissing the American WAC (nurse) in the first minutes of the
just-announced end of World War II.
And as I pressed the shutter I realized that by capturing this German man
dipping and kissing this German woman, that I'd made an image of the end of
World War II for the defeated Germans 45 years after our victory -- an image
that mirrored (if not even coming close to matching) that famous Alfred
Eisenstaedt photograph.
Then a couple of
years later in New York (in 1992,) on returning from a bathroom break during a
portfolio review with the International Center of Photography reviewer Ruth Fahl
-- a portfolio review that included Streetphoto of the Week #13 -- Ms. Fahl
(evidently a well-connected woman) handed me the telephone. I said "Hello?" and
on the other end of the line was Mr. Alfred Eisenstaedt himself. He told me
that, "Ruth has told me all about your work and your kiss photo from
Reunification," and then he asked me if I might leave a copy of it at the ICP so
he could see it. Of course, I agreed, and I told him how honored I was that he'd
asked. He thanked me, and I thanked him back again, and then (stunned) I hung up
the telephone to resume my portfolio review.
Later, a few weeks after I'd returned to my studio in Kansas, the photo showed
up in my mailbox with a short note to me from Ms. Fahl extending Mr. Eisenstaedt
appreciation ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #13b/
A Russian Clean Sweep
Leningrad to St. Petersburg/ the Soviet Union to
Russia/
(October 3, 1991)
Issued on October 3, 2006
*
a backstory to Streetphoto of the
Week #13b ...
Streetphoto of the week #13b was made 15 years ago today in the early hours of
the day that post-Soviet Leningrad was renamed St. Petersburg -- as the deposed
empire fell and the Russian Revolution of 1991 cleaned house and bloomed ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #14/
Diet Sleep/
Florence, Italy/ (1990)
Issued on October 10, 2006
*
a backstory to Streetphoto of the
Week #14 ...
The man in the waiting room at the train station in Florence came dressed for a
nap, what -- with two stars and a quarter moon embroidered on his shirt. Perhaps
a long wait for his train inspired the man to close his eyes and the woman
sleeping hard on his right may have inspired him to stretch out a bit to the
adjoining seat. The glass wall between the tracks and the cafe supported two
Coke advertisements, one directed at cafe patrons inside, and the other
beckoning those in the waiting room outside. And perhaps the Diet Coke ad facing
out had subliminally inspired the matching pose of my diet sleeper.
I was so inspired by the complex connection of thought accidentally occurring
between fashion, people, infrastructure, and product -- that I was willing to
miss my train to Venice to nail the moment.
Diet sleep.
Hurry up and wait.
It’s what we get when we’re on the run – and we always take what we can get ...
*Streetphoto
of the Week #15/
Ipanema Art Fair Rain Kiss/
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil/ (2004)
Issued on October 17, 2006
*Streetphoto
of the Week #16/
Fighting For a Seat
In a late-night New York City subway car under Harlem, USA/ (1986)
Issued on October 24, 2006
*
Happy Halloween !!
*Streetphoto
of the Week #17/
Odd Man Out/
Toronto, Ontario Canada/ (1994)
Issued on October 31, 2006
*Streetphoto
of the Week #18/
Tangier Blue Woman/
Tangier, Morocco/ (2005)
Issued on November 7, 2006
*
a backstory to
Streetphoto of the Week #18 ...
After issuing Streetphoto of the Week #18 during the 2006 midterm elections, a
hard-at-work journalist friend of mine and I had the following exchange about
the photograph:
Gary,
I’m sitting here in the office
watching election results, and your photo was a welcome arrival. I always
wonder about the people in your (pictures). In this case, where is the
“Tangier Blue Woman” going, and why did she choose blue? I choose colors
to brighten up my life; I wonder if she does the same?
Jan.
Jan,
I have one TV tuned to the Jayhawks and one to the election returns. It appears
that I'll feel like a winner every which way tonight. Except that I voted all the judges out of
office, and I doubt I'll get much satisfaction there ...
I often wish a photograph could be an instantaneous movie short -- so I could
show all at once what's around the corners from the compositions.
If you walked into the photo and took a left and walked 50 yards in the
direction the Tangier Blue Woman came from, you'd encounter a very small square
(any size opening in the narrow closed-in streets of the Kasbah qualifies as a
"square") with a public water fountain and a couple of palm trees. It was a
quiet place during the ten minutes I was there with only several people per
minute passing through or using the well, and the sound of the water splashing
from a hole in an ancient rock and masonry wall into the fountain bath below was
soothing and exotic.
If you walked into the photo and followed the Tangier Blue Woman to the right,
after only about 100 yards of strolling past several hashish parlors -- you'd
spill out of the Kasbah at the bustling port of Tangier, and the sudden open
sight of so many huge oceangoing ships on the vast blue Mediterranean Sea along
with dozens of dock cranes poking the huge sky for miles would startle you --
after having spent a couple of days wandering the four-to-eight foot wide medina
"streets" where sky was often hard to find. Then you'd notice that the dank and
dusky odor of the walled-in city had evaporated with open sea breezes and with
the wafting aromas of street vendor's treats.
It's your best guess why on that day she chose blue.
All I can figure is that she sensed the moment and appeared in the blue
purposely, just to compliment the orange/yellow scene I was stalking and giving
the canvas the color harmony and spunk it needed to transcend to Streetphoto of
the Week material.
Well, probably not ...
... but that's how it feels when I'm working in the zone -- like I was on that
day last year in the Kasbah of Tangier ...
PS.
Democrats 225 - Republicans 195 (incomplete)
KU Jayhawks 90 -Emporia Sate 55 (Final)
gms.
*Streetphoto
of the Week #19/
Lady Luck?/
Las Vegas, Nevada USA/ (2004)
Issued on November 14, 2006
*
... a short Vegas tale
I think being cynical about Las Vegas while you’re having fun there is a good
thing. If you can’t be cynical about Las Vegas, what can you be cynical
about? Of course we all eventually get there -- and WOW -- it sure is something,
isn’t it?
A freaking Disneyland for adults chasing smarmy virtual fantasy and meaningless
lifelike fun.
Whenever I find myself in Las Vegas I do what most folks do. I peal off a
hundred dollar bill to blow at the tables, a hundred dollar bill to blow at the
bars, a hundred dollar bill to blow on bad entertainment -- -- -- and then I
squander the rest on food and water.
The last time I was in Las Vegas I stalked the corner of Fourth and Fremont for
more than an hour waiting for just the right Las Vegan to wander into my
downtown Lady Luck free fire zone -- hoping to illustrate my ongoing “Streets
of Las Vegas” thought process. That is -- trying to capture in a patient
single image one of the notions about Las Vegas I typically carry around with me
as I gamble and drink and scratch my head about what the world is coming to.
About how enticingly phony and embarrassingly fake this over-hyped dream is and
about how (by mission) it’s rigged by false hope to take my money and run ...
And then suddenly out of nowhere, the street sweep appeared -- -- -- a Real
blue collar symbol of the global street that I enjoy featuring in my concepts
wherever I work in this world. Like when I'm shooting under the Real
Eiffel Tower in Paris; or while I'm in the Real New York City; or while
I'm astride the Real canals in the heart of the Real Venice.
I think being cynical about Las Vegas is a good thing ...
*another backstory to
Streetphoto of the Week #19 ...
After issuing Streetphoto of the Week #19, I had the following
internet exchange about
the photograph with a like-minded friend:
Gary,
That was perfect, that shot!
I can't even bring myself
to go there once...it makes me too depressed.
Talk
about cynical.
Kristin.
Kristin,
Because I live in a constant acute state of cynicism, whenever I hear that I'm
being forced through circumstance to end up on the streets of Las Vegas. I'm a
little less disconcerted than I should be. The last time I heard I'd be going
there (due to a Janet phone convention) I actually laughed out loud and said
something like, "So be it --- now let's make the best of it ..."
You see, there
is one silver lining to getting stuck in the place for a
few days drinking and gambling and scratching my head about what it's all coming
to. That's because when I'm here in Kansas -- or any other actual place -- I
have to internalize my constant acute cynicism for the good of the people, for
the good of everyone around me.
However, in Vegas -- for just a few days -- I feel free to be cynical out loud
-- and that can be therapeutic ...
gms.
*Streetphoto
of the Week #20/
the windy Holiday Flag Pole Pop Dog SkateScape
collection
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
New York, USA/ (1996)
Issued on November 21, 2006
*Have a Better Thanksgiving than Snoopy:
*... Police investigators report that
a juvenile repeat offender identified as
Bart Jojo Simpson
has been remanded into custody as a
'person of interest'
To The Next 10 SPotWeeks
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