By the roadside 10: Lythrum salicaria

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purpleloosestrife-1

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.

A bit of an obsession with Diane Arbus

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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.

Untermyer gardens revisited – ruined gatehouse

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untermyergatehouse-1

According to the Untermyer Gardens website:

The Gatehouse was built where the Greystone carriage trail crossed the Old Croton Aqueduct. The Croton Aqueduct, constructed to carry fresh water to New York City, ran 41 miles from Croton on Harmon into New York City and was in use in Untermyer’s time. Now the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail runs 26.2 miles from Croton-on-Harmon to the Bronx. (Note: I think there’s an error in this description. There is no such place as “Croton on Harmon”. The town is called “Croton on Hudson” and it’s Metro North railway station is called “Croton-Harmon”. According to Wikipedia: “During the days of the New York Central Railroad, the station and shops were known as Harmon. Trains continuing north of Harmon, including the flagship 20th Century Limited would exchange their electric locomotive for a steam or diesel locomotive to continue the journey to points north and west.

This is taken from the Vista Overlook. I’d heard that there were a couple of interesting reliefs on the gate posts and I wanted to go down to see them. However, I didn’t feel that I should leave the tour and I couldn’t go afterwards as we had to go to eat. So I went back yesterday. As the description above states the gatehouse is by the Old Croton Aqueduct trail so I thought I’d take the dog for a walk and also get to see the gatehouse up close. Unfortunately I started my walk down the trail too far away (virtually in Hastings-on-Hudson) and I never did get to the gatehouse (I had to get back to meet my wife). We had a nice walk though – on a piece of the Aqueduct trail that I’ve never been to before. So it wasn’t a complete waste. I intend to go back though.