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This exhibit was originally displayed in the lobby gallery at Naropa University, opening in October of 2002. (Give it a minute to load)
THE BEGINNING
Beginning in September 2001 I got up every morning thirty minutes before dawn and I drove to a spot on a hill above the city (Boulder, CO) to witness the seasonal track of the sun along the horizon, and to photograph the morning light. It was for me a kind of ritual and study. Slowly I began to recognize patterns. The behavior of nature, of animals and of the earth and weather. I learned the awakening of the city. I learned the flow. The current. For the most part it was steady and predictable. But not infrequently it bore upon it ripples from some stone, cast in the water upstream; subtle evidence of activity around the bend; something stirring underneath. Now and then it flooded its banks in a surge of high water. Or, more commonly, calmly, some snag of humanity drifted along, visible from the bank. One day a woman quietly appeared, clutching a rabbit to her breast. She had brought her rabbit to watch the sunrise. And she spoke to me, saying, "I just wanted us to see the sunrise together one last time." There was nothing I could say at that moment. I did not speak, nor did not take her photograph. I did not want to intefere; profane the ceremony. It is a sacred thing, to stand on the verge of the day, with your rabbit, and celebrate a final dawn. But immediately I began to wonder. What is it that makes this the last day? Is she dying? Is her rabbit dying? And then the thought arrived, as I had not eaten yet, of rabbit stew. "Just one last time before you flay it?" A cruel thought, perhaps . But, if one were to eat their rabbit, as people occasionally do, then this would be a way to honor it. To let the full strength of it flow into her veins.
In the city there are not many rabbits. No space for the deer. We move too quickly in our automobiles. No room for ceremony; our rituals edited by necessity. Imagine twenty thousand people on the hillside at dawn each morning, clutching their rabbits. And so we trade ritual for ritual. The rabbit for a refrigerator. And we gain by it. We gain efficiency. We gain time, to pursue prosperity. But we have lost contact with the beast. And we lose by it. We lose the visceral connection to life. We lose the strongest part of the rabbit. We lose the spirit. A refrigerator holds only flesh. And so the strength of the rabbit evaporates in the dawn. It seems a waste of the rabbit. And the refrigerator is much too heavy to carry up the hill. So this woman stands before the rays of the morning sun, embracing her rabbit, flesh and spirit, in a sort of catholic gesture. And I was struck by it. Later I turned toward my own temple, at the foot of the hill, where devotees were now gathering. I began the descent, to the soothing rhythm of my own benediction, "Body of Juan Valdez, blood of Juan Valdez."
What follows is a collection of images from many places and times, but mostly from that sacred hill where once there was a rabbit.
SUNRISE
When I began this getting up in the morning (about 4 hours before usual) I naively intended to drive to the top of Flagstaff Mtn. for a clear view of the approaching dawn. As it turns out, those pesky Parks people won't let you onto the park road until after sunrise. I grudgingly settled for the first pullout at Panorama Point, but later was happy for it since I could sleep 7 minutes longer.
CRESCENT MOON
Taken just as the crescent slips behind the trees. What appears to be the full moon is actually illuminated by earth-shine only. Accomplished with high speed film and a huge telescope. Note how the crescent part of the moon (between the trees) is over exposed. Shot from North Boulder Park about 2 hours after sunset.
SELF
Not much to say here. Late night. Coffee. TV busted. All intimate relationships blown apart.
NINI
This is Nini. Yeah, I know, she looks a lot like a leaf. But...a good looking one. Anyhow, I'm sure it's her hand holding the leaf. And I have attached a small photo of me to a tree in the extreme background, so this is sort of a group shot. No...wait a second. I think it's my hand. If it is, then Nini is at least close by, probably just to the side. She is definitely in the shot as far as I am concerned. Backlit. Chautauqua Park.
MOON AT SUNSET
These infernal clouds get in the way of everything. But as if to make up for it, the Boulder Parks people had closed my favorite vantage point so that the vegetation could recover from my earlier tramplings. Which is good, because it keeps away the riff-raff. And as it was one of those fantastic warm late fall evenings, I was not about to lose a chance for a peaceful nap on the once meadow encrusted hilltop. This exposure was made well after sunset, and the clouds are lit primarily by moonlight.
ORANGE
For me the most fascinating aspect of seeing the sunrise everyday was watching the sun march southward along the horizon, then return northwards, and head back south again. There is something visceral and primal about marking the seasons by the position of the rising sun. It is similar to the sensation of watching a campfire, but in very slow motion.
JIM
I am aware that it is difficult to see Jim in this picture, but I assure you he is absolutely very close by. Some of the photons that have impinged upon the film were certainly reflected directly from Jim to the pine cones to the lens. This was taken on Lumpy Ridge outside of Estes Park. I was taken by the 2 distinct generations of cones.
FLATIRONS
Winter is the best. Don't have to get up as early, the color lasts longer, the lenticular clouds are frequent and the coffee shops are open by the time I am done. This morning, however, I had a nasty surprise. While calmly racing down the hill on the way to the Trident cafe I had my portrait taken by photo radar. The coffee was good. The portrait, inferior.
SKIERS ON MT. AUDUBON
Far from the influence of Park Rangers, I took a blessed nap in the high tundra in the vicinity of Mt. Audubon in mid-spring. I awoke to the sight of a marmot eating my boot. I offered a sandwich in trade, but it was not the least bit interested in my avacado-sprout-hummus on sourdough. Descending past Blue Lake I got this shot of the skiers. They had climbed Audubon and then skied from the very top all the way to their car via these snow chutes on the north side. Now, as to the photo itself, it is just possible that you might not actually be able to see the skiers. But you can see the snow chutes reflected in this meltwater pool.
RED AND BLACK
It is not uncommon that there will be two episodes of color for a given sunrise. The first can occur up to forty minutes before the sun hits the horizon. The first one can be quite distinct, is usually short in duration, and vanishes quickly. It can be both subtle and dramatic. Later the second one opens in the fashion with which we are all familiar. I have not noticed the effect at sunset, but I presume that is the result of the mountains or of my observational habits. This is a long exposure of early light. It would not appeal quite like this to our eyes. This was small on the horizon and not bright.
LISA
This is a photo of Lisa before she became my ex-girlfriend and, even later, my sister-in-law. Well, it's her hand anyway. I am reasonably sure of that. This is in the Coral Sand Dunes National Something-or-other. A beautiful place, though we found ourselves camped next to a couple apparently plotting a murder. We did the only reasonable thing and moved to the next campsite over. I suppose that it might actually be my hand. People have said that our hands look very similar. Anyway, she was certainly close by. Hand swept through sand. Fast shutter.
SNOW BERG
The annual breakup of snow bergs on Lake Mitchell is not a well attended event.
PEAR
Street recently paved. Fresh rain. Beautiful, but I needed a subject. Pear employed. I believe it would have been a more compelling image had I used a banana. Unfortunately I had eaten it before the rain. Oh my God! The peel! I should have used the peel! Now there would be a photo with a story.
SANTA FE
Window in a restaurant on one of those quaint little gallery streets.
APPLE
This was taken the same day as the Pear, but it is not authentic fresh rain water. It is later in the day and I had to wet the street with water from the hose to make it black. These days I would be shot for such a crime. But those were different times, and we had water a plenty and with not even a second thought we would waste it as though it were gasoline. This is a crabapple from my neighbors tree. He cut it down this year, and so I can never duplicate this shot.
AMBER
This is a photo of Amber. OK, I confess that Amber was near this tree only in a relative sense. I was in Canberra, Australia, and she was in Boulder, USA. But I was thinking about her. It was early evening in Canberra though still dark in Boulder but the moon was low in the sky over both cities and it is more than likely that some photons emitted from the sun were reflected by the moon to Amber and then back to the moon and then to the sky over Canberra where if they were blue photons they would be visible as the atmospheric back-scatter (blue sky) which silhouettes this tree. Everything on the earth is nearby.
morning chill
Dawn. Minus five degrees. One of the numerous Boulder creeks. The color is fairly accurate. Though it was much dimmer than you see it here. Very cold. Somehow I got to the site with only one glove. Switching it from hand to hand. Stumbling over crusty snow. Spider dangling from a web, alive but unable to move. I gave it a gentle breath of warm air, but the heat broke the web and the spider lay there on the ground, unable to move. The ducks did not appear to suffer, but my hands were slowly freezing. Retreat. It was just so much colder than expected. How can you know? It looks so beautiful; inviting. But you've got to find out, I suppose. despite what your friends say.
MY HOUSE
This is my house. From the roof I have a clear view of the western horizon. I feel it is my duty to watch the sun actually set. After all, what if the philosophers were right? Does a tree fall and all that rhetoric. I am glad of the opportunity to watch the earth rotate in peace. From the roof I have a clear view of my place in the universe. It is as though the mere elevation change of 15 feet is enough to displace me from the frenetic microcosm of society in which we are all ensconced. It is a completely new perspective. I can see that there are other lives, other ways, other things. From the roof I have a clear view into my neighbors house. If I move the chair to the edge I get a clear shot into their living room. My TV fritzed again, so now I just take binoculars up, although the programming is not always what I prefer.
VENUS AND THE MOON
For these moon shots I was up extra early at the Panorama Point pullout. For three days in a row a man walked past at about 4 am carrying two plastic grocery sacks with unknown contents. Going from the hills down to the plains just like the birds, only about 2 hours early and on foot. Not so odd really, but it was the sensation that was memorable. Dark, quiet, alone on the side of the mountain, and then a rustling, a familiar sound of grocery bags coming from where? Two white shapes loom up, separated by a darker shape. He walks past without a word. Like the sight of an eagle passing close on the ridge on which you are standing. Or perhaps a bear through the trees at the edge of the forest.
LIGHTNING
Jamey and I spent many hours on the high mountain ridges of the Rocky Mts. As you might expect we encountered frequent storms of all types. One rich gray afternoon on the shanks of Mt. Audubon Jamey's head began to buzz. At first we thought it was an insect in his hair, but then a snow flake landed on my hand (I'm positive in was my hand) and it began to buzz also. The snowflake was acting as a tiny speaker. When in contact with my hand it acquired a like charge and was thus repelled, but the moment it lost contact with my skin it lost whatever charge it had and was attracted back to me, this all somewhere in the range of 2000 times per second. What this meant was that we had acquired charges from the ions streaming off the ground and up into the oppositely charged clouds. Jamey looked at me and noticed my hair was standing on end (this all was an age ago, when I had hair). It so happens that lightning follows these streams to the ground. But did we care? One day Jamey even took a small fluorescent light bulb along and when the hoped for storm materialized he was standing there holding the bulb over his head and his hands were buzzing and lightning was striking on the nearby hilltops. Jamey has children now and so he will not do this anymore. I however have no such ties to this world and so it is that this photo was taken a recently from the roof of my house in full embrace of the marvelous storm.
BLUE, ORANGE AND BLACK
This image has an aspect of false color to it. The contrast twixt the blue and the cloud colors has been enhanced by the camera. I have taken the shot with an indoor temperature setting which creates a darker more startling blue. Nevertheless, this is absolutely the way in which the live scene felt. This is the way to create the sense which flowed over me as I stood there in the early morning on the hill in the fresh light.
THE NEIGHBORS
To get up or not to get up, that is the question. If I get lazy then I will look out the window at the appropriate time and attempt to ascertain if it will be a sunrise worthy of sleep deprivation. This is impossible to determine. But when I am really tired I will work the odds, and if it appears that the dawn is lazy also then I will go back to sleep. This particular morning there were no predawn clouds apparent and so I slept, only to be awakened by a blazing orange pouring into my room. Usually the best color lasts only a few minutes, not enough time to get to a clear vantage. Too many times have I bolted up to Flagstaff Mountain only to see the color fade enroute. This time I just put on my nightgown and went and got this shot of the neighbor's house. Well, you can't actually see their house, it is just out of the frame, but it is there, I assure you.
THE FOX
Saw the fox this morning. Later, in the spring the fox and her kits were always about, sometimes lounging in the road itself. But not this day. Winter. Dark as it gets. Cold. Early. Sitting in the dirt waiting for the moon. Fox comes to talk. Sniff. Departs. Dawn arrives. Talks. Does not sniff. Departs. Coffee.
WAVES
There is always noise rising up from the city. At 4:30 it is gentle and slow. It grows. It becomes a restless ocean of sound. Louder. Tires on the highway. Waves rushing up onto the beach. City in motion. Waves rolling in from the deep sea. Trash trucks crashing dumpsters on their backs. Huge waves breaking and booming on the outer reef.
DANCE
Rhythms. Everywhere rhythms. People going to and fro. The planets going 'round about. All is a dance. The appearance of the jogger at the same corner at the same moment each morning. Rhythmic motion. The birds heading out and back. The man with the camera at the pullout day after day. A dance. Spring and fall and spring and fall and spring. Inhale. Exhale. (cough). The Prayers, the characters, the children, the dust, the rich earth, the spring. I would swear that in the winter the temperature drops by several degrees, a steep decline, precisely at dawn. Got the TV working again.
C'EST LE FIN