Photographs and thoughts on photography and camera collecting
A sign on this front facade identifies the building as “The Cable Barn” and a second sign (in black, lower down and to the left) provides the date 1869 and indicates that the building is an historical landmark. The Town of North Salem, NY website suggests that the building was/is used for “Storage of Town Equipment”.
As you approach Carmel while driving along Route 301 from Cold Spring you come to small rise on top of which is the Old Putnam County Courthouse. The first thing you see is the spectacular facade with its large, ornate columns.
The website of the New York State Unified Court System describes the courthouse as follows:
The Putnam County Courthouse is situated prominently in the hamlet of Carmel, the county seat of Putnam. The courthouse overlooks Lake Gleneida and is a fine example of the Greek Revival style of architecture. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. Up until December 1988, when it was closed for repairs, it had been the oldest courthouse in continuous service in New York State. After Putnam County was separated from Dutchess County by the State legislature in September 1812, half an acre of land was designated for the construction of a courthouse. In 1814, the original courthouse was completed. The builder, James Townsend, was also the owner of a nearby forge and was the first man to attempt to get iron from what became known as the “Tilly Foster Mine.” Mr. Townsend incorporated locally forged ironwork in his construction of the courthouse. The first court session was held on February 15, 1815. By the 1840’s the first courthouse was too small for the growing population of the county and a new building was proposed in 1842. It was to be built in Cold Spring, a growing Hudson River community. But owing to a clause in the deed prohibiting construction of the courthouse on another site, the new building was erected on the same site incorporating parts of the earlier structure, especially the old jail. Repeated renovations inside the building have all but destroyed its history but the exterior has remained largely unchanged for its circa 1847 expansion and updating when the stylish temple form with a giant portico, Corinthian columns, and belfry were added. The four columns and their capitals are of particular merit, architecturally, having been constructed from designs meant to copy those found on the Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. Another renovation, in 1855, saw the construction of a jail to replace the jail which stood at the northeast corner of the courthouse and yet another jail was constructed in the structure in 1907. That jail finally closed in 1977. From the mid-1800’s through 1966, the Putnam County Courthouse not only housed the jail, but the County Sheriff and the sheriff’s wife, who, as the jail matron, cooked meals for the prisoners. The top floor of the courthouse was partially destroyed by fire in 1924, but it was repaired and rebuilt exactly as before. However, in the early 1980’s county officials became concerned about the growing disintegration of the courthouse. Deliberations on how to renovate and rehabilitate the historic structure went on for several years. Actual work on the courthouse began in 1989. The architect’s goal was to maintain the exterior style and to return the interior to its original floor plan. The project however, was plagued with many problems and it was not until June 10, 1994 that the historic courthouse reopened. Funds were not available to restore the jail. The cells still remain, and are used primarily as storage space. Currently the courthouse is home to Surrogate’s Court offices. The county office building, located next door to the historic courthouse, was first built in 1822. Since that time, it has undergone many re-creations and revisions. The 1936 expansion created a suite for the county judge and surrogate, a children’s court room and the county library. The county library became the Putnam County Supreme Court Law Library. In December of 2007 the Supreme, County, and Family Courts relocated to it’s new facility located directly next door to the Putnam County Office building, it’s former location. This new location is 4 stories and includes additional courtrooms, waiting areas, a spacious library, holding area for inmates and the Office of the Commissioner of Jurors.
I was attracted to the symmetry and stillness of the scene. Reminds a bit of something by Eugene Atget (although not as good).
Otherwise known as Purple Loosestrife. It’s quite pretty to look at, but is considered an invasive species. Unfortunately it’s growing all around our lake.
According to Wikipedia:
The purple loosestrife has been introduced into temperate New Zealand and North America where it is now widely naturalised and officially listed in some controlling agents. Infestations result in dramatic disruption in water flow in rivers and canals, and a sharp decline in biological diversity as native food and cover plant species, notably cattails, are completely crowded out, and the life cycles of organisms from waterfowl to amphibians to algae are affected. A single plant may produce up to 2.7 million tiny seeds annually. Easily carried by wind and water, the seeds germinate in moist soils after overwintering. The plant can also sprout anew from pieces of root left in the soil or water. Once established, loosestrife stands are difficult and costly to remove by mechanical and chemical means.
Plants marketed under the name “European wand loosestrife” (L. virgatum) are the same species despite the different name. In some cases the plants sold are sterile, which is preferable.
In North America, purple loosestrife may be distinguished from similar native plants (e.g. fireweed Chamerion angustifolium, blue vervain Verbena hastata, Liatris Liatris spp., and spiraea (Spiraea douglasii) by its angular stalks which are square in outline, as well by its leaves, which are in pairs that alternate at right angle and are not serrated.
Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967. © Estate of Diane Arbus
I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with Diane Arbus of late. I think it started when I read about the exhibition: Diane Arbus. In the beginning at the Met Breuer. Of course I’d seen some of her more famous pictures (the twins; the boy with the hand grenade; etc.) but I didn’t really know much about her. I felt like reading something about photography so I browsed around on Amazon.com and came up with this: Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer and bought the Kindle version. I don’t usually buy electronic versions of photography books because I like to see the photographs in their full glory. However, the reviews of this book indicated that there were no Arbus photographs in it because the author hadn’t been able to obtain rights to use them. So I figured I wasn’t losing much by getting the e-book. It was an interesting (and long – coming in at over 700 pages) read, but I missed not having the photographs.
So I thought I’d get a book with Arbus photographs and bought: Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph: Fortieth-Anniversary Edition . This book is virtually the opposite to the Lubow book in that it’s almost all photographs and virtually no text. What little text there is is mostly in the form of Arbus’s words taken from interviews and recorded lessons. She apparently didn’t like to teach (doing it mostly for the money it brought in) and doesn’t seem to have been particularly good at it. It’s more a series of disjointed thoughts than anything else. The pictures are impressive though.
Finally I found a number of articles on the internet, the most interesting of which was: Freak Show by Susan Sontag. Where Lubow is largely postitive towards Arbus’s work Sontag is much more negative saying at one point:
The ambiguity of Diane Arbus’s work is that she seems to have enrolled in one of art photography’s most visible enterprises—concentrating on victims, the unfortunate, the dispossessed—but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve.
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After all of this what do I think about Arbus? Her reputation certainly doesn’t come from her photographic technique. The exposure isn’t always right. Composition seems to be off. Her fans are effusive about her ability to bring out the “inner person”. In “Looking at Photographs” John Szarkowski says of her:
With rare exceptions, Arbus made photographs only of people. The force of these portraits may be a measure of the degree to which the subject and the photographer agreed to risk trust and acceptance of each other. She was interested in them for what they were most specifically: not representatives of philosophical postitions or life styles of physiological types, but as unique mysteries. Her subjects surely perceived this, and revealed themselves without reserve, confident that they were not being used as conscripts to serve an exterior issue. They were also doubtless interested in her. At times it may have been unclear which was the mariner and which the wedding guest.
While this may be true for many of the “freak” pictures I don’t believe this is the case with many of her pictures of “normal” people. As described in the Lubow book she often used techniques (making people wait; making them hold poses for very long periods of time; making the sessions excessively long etc.) designed to frustrate and annoy. The famous picture of the boy with the hand grenade may serve as an example. The contact sheet containing this picture is available on the internet. It contains 12 photographs, 11 of which show the boy. In ten of these he looks like a perfectly normal child. Arbus chose to use the twelfth picture where he looks like a psychopath. Did she capture his inner personality (Lubow interviewed the child for his book and he certainly doesn’t seem to have become a psychopath) or did she “cherry pick” a picture where he finally showed his frustration for a fleeting second?
So I’m not entirely sure where I stand regarding Diane Arbus. While I have some concerns and doubts I still find myself fascinated by her work and I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe it will become clearer over time?
I will probably make a trip into the city to see the above exhibition though.