Birds do it

   Birds do it.  Bees do it.  Even ordinary fleas do it.  Let's do it, let's ... walk around Copley Square on a sunny afternoon in spring and sit for spell on a bench and let the sun warm our face and see even ordinary pigeons do it. 

"I wanted to be an artist and I couldn't draw."

   This one could be called “Helen Levitt speaks to me from the grave."

   Ms. Levitt died recently at the age of 95. I had never heard of her until I stumbled across her obituary in the Boston Globe.  It described her as “a master of street photography whose images of children playing in New York during the late 1930s and early '40s are classics of 20th-century photography … .”  

   She was, according to the Globe, “famous for her diffidence, rarely sitting for interviews and sometimes going years without taking photographs.” She once said that people often asked her what her photographs meant, "And I don't have a good answer for them. You see what you see."

   And how did this diffident master become a photographer?  She dropped out of high school to learn photography by working for a commercial photographer in the Bronx.  "I wanted to be a photographer," she said, "because I wanted to be an artist and I couldn't draw … ."

   And so she made her art the way she could.  

   So should we all.

   Here’s to all the untrained masses who tote their digital cameras around in their coat pockets and briefcases and bags -- looking, looking, looking, for something that calls to them. Something that compels them to snap away, confirming for themselves and maybe others, too, that there is beauty in the world and that they see the world with something of an artist’s eye, even if they lack the artist’s hand.

  

"I have a weakness for birch trees ..."

 The photographer Richard W. Brown lives in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom where, in addition to compelling landscapes, he captures intimate domestic portraits of old Vermonters and their stoves and woodpiles and dishes and cats and gnarled hands that could only be made by a caring neighbor.  On his web site, Brown says, 

When I photograph Vermont, I am drawn to the last remnants of hill farm life, and the hidden, still wild corners of the state. I am especially moved by those mundane but telling moments that reveal simple truths about the day-to-day lives of the people who continue to nurture this beautiful but begrudging Eden. I am drawn to certain subjects and themes. I have a weakness for birch trees, barns, draft horses, cemeteries, landscapes with sheep or cows in them, bodies of water, still or moving, the moon, rising or setting, and anything old or decrepit that bears witness to past Vermonters' short time in this obstinate paradise … . 

   My own weaknesses to this point seem to include water birds, …

Asian bittersweet, …

and fresh snow.

Hobby wisdom

   "Disparage not another man's woman, nor his job, nor his hobby, nor his drink."  I wrote that down once, after someone teased me about ordering a Manhattan.

   Speaking of Manhattan, and hobbies, and disparagement: Manhattan is where I bought my first digital camera and started doing what millions of people do -- snapping photos and downloading them to my laptop. I spend many a happy hour editing, sorting, culling, and just flipping through them. There's a reason why millions of people do it. It's fun.  

   But like any hobby, it's not for everyone. My sister-in-law, for example, says, “What’s the point of keeping a bunch of pictures on a computer, and not doing anything with them? I mean, I don’t get it."

   "Well," I should have said, except that I don't think that fast, "The point of keeping a bunch of pictures on a computer, when you have taken and arranged them with some care, is about the same as a lot of things people do for recreation. It is an outlet for the natural and healthy human impulses to be creative, maybe even artistic, to engage in the world, and most of all, simply, to play. It’s a hobby, for crying out loud –- a relaxing diversion from work and responsibility and the generally dispiriting news of the world. That's the point, and it's a pretty good one." 

   So cast no aspersion on the man with his digital camera and his computer and his pictures of people on the street or the woods near his house, the evening sky, the corn stubble peaking through snow in a field along the river in the town where he grew up. He has a hobby. It's the man without one who needs watching.