John Michael Swartz

A cold but sunny day in the low 30s F. These days I'm more aware of people staring on the street. It could be the un-mannered mustache which is only recently more commonly worn by people my age. Or something else I'll never know. It does not really concern me. [Update: I'm realizing that this may happen more often when I'm carrying a camera or a cello on my back. 📊]

I have difficulty embracing the icy blueness of the deepening winter in my pictures. I have difficulty balancing so many nearly-neutral colors in post. (A friend has offered me a 2011 Apple cinema display which I'll be picking up tonight. It might be a nice upgrade to my current Asus.) And in the moment I feel that I ought to resist the pretense of forcing whatever colorful facades or detritus I can find into a sad garbage composition. It's often an exercise in just being okay with the way things look at this time of the year. Nevertheless, witness the keeled over artificial Christmas tree on an astroturf patio, strung out with its gold tinsel boa. I couldn't resist.

The Almond Path is a single switchback down the northern side of a hill, encircled by Atlantic Avenue, distinguished by a large number of pine trees whose rusty needles and ashy cones carpet the slope. The efficiency of a road or hiking trail are not required, so it goes down then up and down again. It seems less visited, less maintained. A good place to be left alone.

I pushed myself to finish some of the vaguer, poetically ambitious photos taken here. Ones in which are a collection of optical and spatial circumstances evocative of a mood I'm still working to name. And which also present the difficulties of shooting into the sun, conveying "uphill" and other slopes, etc.

It is evidently difficult to do this sort of close-range landscape. I need to look for examples of it from other photographers. I think it's in keeping with my explorations of landscape photography as the circumstance of physically being somewhere at any given time: that way of making a photo not so that you can show somebody something exemplary of a particular place or thing, but rather, something that made an impression, caused feelings, caused a pause in the walk.

In particular, the piney Almond Path reminded me of the lonely walks I took home from my junior high school for 3 or so years. The hills and canyons I walked by in Paradise Hills were filled with that particular odor combination of dry pine and eucalpytus, and occasional floral or decompositional notes. That time is also marked by my pubescence, which adds to the intensity and urgency of the feeling. I think the pictures of the path covered by pine duff, the gropey branches, the isoated hillside structure… they should feel a little erotic, a little dangerous and creepy. Like cruising.

For reference, here's a very technically sub-par 4x5 photo of a typical scene from my childhood neighborhood. You can see how the weird sidewalk just sort of ends in what used to be a large dirt lot. Some years ago, it was developed into apartments. I used to take my cello to the adjoining park to play. Usually it was empty, but sometimes there were hot skater boys whom I hoped to somehow attract with my mad skillz.

Finally, here is an interesting poem to Peter Cooper by Joaquin Miller, inscribed on Cooper's monument in the 17th photograph.

Give honor and love for evermore
To this great man gone to rest;
Peace on the dim Plutonian shore,
Rest in the land of the blest.

I reckon him greater than any man
That ever drew sword in war;
I reckon him nobler than king or khan,
Braver and better by far.

And wisest he in this whole wide land
Of hoarding till bent and gray;
For all you can hold in your cold dead hand
Is what you have given away.

So whether to wander the stars or to rest
Forever hushed and dumb,
He gave with a zest and he gave his best
Give him the best to come.