Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
This magnificent piece of wood is holding up a glass table top in one of our friend’s garden. I was sitting sipping a vodka and tonic when I noticed it. At first he jokingly said that he’d pulled it our of our lake, but finally admitted that he’d bought it. It certainly makes a nice base for the table. For me it was all about the textures and the contrasts.
Seen at a nearby flea market. I loved the variety of the toys and their vibrant colors.
Taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX-3 with, I believe, its wide angle attachment.
Sculpture by Renée Sintenis.
According to Wikipedia:
Daphne (/ˈdæfniː/; Greek: Δάφνη, meaning “laurel”) is a minor figure in Greek mythology known as a naiad—a type of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater. There are several versions of the myth, but the general narrative is that because of her beauty, Daphne attracted the attention and ardor of the god Apollo (Phoebus). Apollo pursued her and just before being overtaken, Daphne pleaded to her father, the rivergod Ladon, and Ge (Gaia) for help. So Ladon then transformed Daphne into a laurel tree.
While researching this statue I came across this blog, which also had a poem that I rather liked. It seems to have been written by the owner of the blog who, co-incidentally lives/lived about four miles away from where I did when I was living in France.
Daphne Transformed
I was born in sweat and traces of blood,
then grew young and tall and smooth,
lips like apricots. His desire was relentless
as he stalked me through mortals’ fields,
and I was trapped in velvet skin, sweating shame
beneath his fetid hunter’s breath.
Today I’m unassailable in my leaves and ivy chokers,
replaying days of freedom,
storied nights of goddesses and men….
It’s been so many years since he transformed me,
and no one dares to touch my cracking bark.
Books will tell you I was beautiful, then saved,
but I know the curse of beauty, how I’ve changed,
that tears are merely amber and what myth is.Alexa Intrator
June 2012
When I first took this picture back in 2012 I didn’t like it very much. It seemed to me that there wasn’t enough separation between the statue and the background. Looking at it now, three years later I’ve changed my view. Now I see this a strength. Today I looked at the picture with fresh eyes and at first I didn’t really know what I was looking at. I took a while for my brain to figure out that this was a statue. I think this ambiguity adds a bit to the picture.
Many years ago (in the 1980s) when we were still living in Dix Hills, Long Island we had a cat called Ginger. Then I was transferred to Switzerland and the cat went with us. Five years later we moved to France. The cat went with us. Eventually in 1998 we came back to New York and, of course, the cat came with us. Eventually Ginger passed away at a pretty ripe old age. The house seemed empty without her (this was before we got a dog) so we decided to go to the local ASPCA to find another cat. I liked a small long haired calico female, but my wife preferred a large male white shorthair. We couldn’t decide so we decided to take both.
For some reason my wife wanted to call the white cat Lester, but our elder daughter said that he didn’t look like a Lester – he looked like a Sammy. So we decided to name him Samson, although we always called him Sammy. Not surprisingly we decided to call the calico Delilah.
Sammy was certainly not lacking in personality. The very first day we had him we couldn’t find him in the house, eventually discovering him in the unfinished ceiling of our laundry room. He endeared himself to the people building our new kitchen by going up onto the roof and lying there watching them – with half of him overhanging. He would disappear for days and neighbors some distance away told us that they had seen him wandering around. He seemed to like a good fight and on occasion would come back covered in blood (particularly noticeable because he was pure white) – and with a look on his face that appeared to say “you should have seen the other guy”.
Although we didn’t know it when this picture was taken he wasn’t to be with us much longer. You can see in the picture that he’s rather ‘pear shaped’. It turned out that this was a result of fluid accumulation resulting from a failing hear and we lost him not too long afterward. We still have the great memories though.
Main House
According to Wikipedia:
Olana State Historic Site was the home of Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape painting. The centerpiece of Olana is an eclectic villa composed of many styles, difficult to categorize, which overlooks parkland and a working farm designed by the artist. As well, the residence has a wide view of the Hudson River valley, the Catskill Mountains and the Taconic Range. Church and his wife Isabel (1836–1899) named their estate after a fortress-treasure house in ancient Greater Persia (modern-day Armenia), which also overlooked a river valley.
Olana is one of the few intact artists’ home-, studio- and estate-complexes in the United States; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. It is owned and operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and is also supported by The Olana Partnership, a non-profit 501(c) organization. The main building is an architectural masterpiece designed by the architect Calvert Vaux working closely with Church. The stone, brick, and polychrome-stenciled villa is a mixture of Victorian, Persian and Moorish styles. The interior remains much as it was during Church’s lifetime, exotically furnished and decorated with objects from his global travels, and with some 40 paintings by Church and his friends. The house is intricately stenciled inside and out; Church designed the stencils based on his travels in the Middle East. The house contains Church’s last studios, built as an addition from 1888 to 1890.
We visited Olana in August of 2008. My wife did the interior tour and told me that the inside of the house was quite spectacular. Unfortunately I had to remain outside. We had brought the dog with us and he wasn’t allowed in. Nor could we leave him in the car as it was much too hot. So I had to stay with him and we didn’t have enough time for me to do the tour after my wife had finished. I’ll have to visit again some time.
Terrace with Hudson Views.
The view from Olana.