Throughout July I've got a solo show running at Pearl River Public Library.  Family, Friends, Artists & Artisans is a collection of portraits taken over the past 3 years.  Preview the show at this link: http://johnaiello.zenfolio.com/p896288015

We're all 50 this year, the whole class.  Some of us have been luckier than others.  Some of us are gone.  It'll be interesting to find out what 30 years has done to the rest of us.

Scoot McDowell, class of '82

Maybe to avert or soften the blow of an impending (late-)mid-life crisis, came up with this project of reshooting my HS yearbook.  Nervous about it already, but head is now spinning on this project rather than hair loss, etc.  Starting in a week.  Just a few sketches to show for it so far.

Show at Valley Cottage Library and

Shoot for NYLA Calendar

 

Sometime in November my Mac collapsed under the weight of over 10,000 photographs, all taken within the last twelve months.  Pictures of old friends posed as apostles, pictures of monks, priests, a gravel quarry in fog, an abandoned psychiatric hospital, the back kitchen of a Chinese restaurant, a bee keeper, a harpist, a zen drummer, a barber and his son, 350 Read posters, macro shots of fingers, flowers, food, shots from the plane window, the cloisters, the met, my wife, the kids, trees, the hudson - all of my world, essentially.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All of my world, but clearer than before, lingered over, considered as abstraction and as reality.  My world and the light that touches it: morning light, dusk, flash light, bug lights, lights covered by blue tupperware containers, window light.  And then all of my world re-examined on the screen.  418 people in the Read posters, each face looked over closely, the old ones smoothed a bit, the young ones cleaned of dirt and mucus.

Things never before considered suddenly becoming obsessions: fashion photography, Avedon, Beaton, Penn, Nick Knight.  Food photography.  Looking, looking, looking.

 

Curious about trying narrative possibilities in photography and paying homage to some favorite paintings in the process.  Also setting contemporary, quotidian scenes under old-master style light.  Still trying to add on to Haverstraw collection, as well as spiritual stuff.

Photography as a Spiritual Practice

I got my first good camera five months ago, in November of 2012, a Nikon D3100 DSLR.  I had a little point and shoot prior to that, but never took more than vacation, holiday or birthday party shots.  I was inspired to take photography more seriously by Jikai, and also by my old college roommate who is a long-time art director.  Jikai made the suggestion that I start carrying around a camera after I had repeatedly expressed frustration over not having time to pursue the arts I have formal training in,-music and fiction writing.  Over the course of becoming a homeowner and a father my creative output was reduced to nearly nothing.  There were no longer any blocks of time for writing music or fiction.  But, quite surprisingly at first, by carrying a camera around I was able to incorporate creativity into my daily life- for the most part the life of a suburban dad and part time librarian.

   Without intending it to happen, photography has quickly become a core part of my practice.  Zazen, kinhin, photography:  I've come to think of these three practices as progressive steps, each one enhancing the others, each one increasing in activity and increasing my interaction with the world while allowing me to remain in a mindful state.  In the case of my photography practice, I experience a heightened sense of awareness and, at the same time, a heady re-orientation as I see the world of things as limitless forms, rather than as trees, houses, birds and so on.  Time, whatever it may be, cannot, of course, be frozen by a camera, but my photography practice causes me to slow down, if only for a few moments each day, and really take something in; to see the essence of something.   

    I think a good, successful photograph will have the same effect on the viewer as it does on the photographer who took it; encouraging both to look beyond definitions and assumptions, to merge with the subject for a more direct, uninterpreted, un-intellectualized experience.

    I've included here some pictures that are overtly religious in subject matter, others that, like traditional Japanese art, look to nature to convey a sense of the sublime.  Other images originated as scenes or compositions that I happened upon and felt caught, or startled, or suprised.  Other pictures here deliberately begin with the "mundane," the "commonplace" or the "cliche" -a bottle opener, shadows on the sidewalk, a pigeon, shoes, a sea shell- and attempt to reconsider their significance and their intrinsic beauty.  Others consider beauty itself as a focal point.      

19th century hand-drawn maps of the place show the river front dominated by huge leveled fields for brick drying.  The bricks, made from the local clay deposits, were shipped down river on barges and used to build many of the row houses, tenements and skyscrapers of lower Manhattan.  100 years later, the brick industry long gone, the basin at the shore front is still creamy red with marble-sized brick fragments and red chips in the sandy silt. 

Where nearby towns like Nyack are full of wooden Victorian-era homes -Queen Anne's, Carpenter Gothic, etc- in Haverstraw the same styles are made in brick, as are the churches, schools, and business along Main Street.

 Where nearby towns

 

 

Still working to get one of these snuffed candle shots with an interesting composition.  Until then, the Arabesques strike me as both beautiful and spooky, like maybe the Shroud of Turin might pop up in the curlicues.  The phrenology head is a piece M and I found 10 years ago or so in an antique shop in New Hope, Pa.  It made me think of DeChirico paintings.  So I took it out in the early morning to try to replicate the mood in those canvases: the long, sharp shadows, the deep, vanishing-point perspective, the desolation and forlorn atmosphere.  Fog pix shot in Haverstraw Bay, steps from the village library.  Apple orchard, again in fog, is DePiero's.  If not for the fog the encroaching corprate buildings would be in every shot.  Unexpected "snow" day had me looking close at hand for pictures: the silouetted plants (nods to Penn) are basically straight out of the camera, the fresh snow providing the pristine back drop.  Bottle opener abstracts, same day, patio lights difused in the back, color tweaked.  The trapeze shots were all done in the space of 10 seconds while stopped at a red light at Houston and the West Side Highway, sunset.

Still figuring out the camera.  Slide show includes pix from Rockefeller Center, the Palisades Mall, the Tolstoy Center, the Village, Harriman State Park, the Fellowship of Reconciliation Mansion, and around the house.

A lone tuba player, Christmas carols echoing throughout the mall; a Victoria's Secret glass mannaquin (sp?), a little, stone out-building at the Tolstoy Center, white paint and vines; a Pearl River alley; the boys at the Fellowship of Reconciliation Mansion on the day of a performance by my group - the Hey Hoe Woods Quartet.

 

 

 

 

All quick shots, taken on the 15-minute walk from the parking lot to NYU, or the return trip at night.  I'd like to get back to these spots, when there's time to settle in and wait for the right light and find the best vantage point, rather than shooting on the move.  It's the only part of the city I know of that's not on the grid system, somehow you can feel that.  Can't imagine a village on a grid.

   When I was a kid, 65 degrees on December 1st would have been a big deal.  Now we're pretty much used to it, despite whole groups of people (even some smart ones) still denying climate change.

It's scary to me, unsettling.  But it made for a beautiful,haunted morning: the trees 2-d cut outs, a Japanese watercolor, or a Whistler landscape.

 

The one of the bicycle wheel that snuck in here was taken in the underground parking lot at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

The sound track to this one is the demo a piece I wrote for viola & cello, played by my friend Greta and me. 

     On the first few days with the new camera, before I could really even focus the thing, I started looking close to home for the overlooked.  I'd driven past this place hundreds of times, but never imagined the extent of the ruins and moodiness behind the gates.  Shot first on a rainy morning, then the following gray afternoon, these pictures might have been only the tip of the iceberg: sunset or dawn shots, spring, winter, there might have been a lot more.  But what's not in view are all the signs :"warning asbestos."  Apparently this entire little village of 50 buildings or so was condemned and then abandoned sometime in the 1970s, I'm guessing. 

What struck me most were the doors left ajar, windows cranked halfway open, vegetation like lace spread everywhere. 

I started shooting furtively, but by day two I was getting more and more brazen.  The signs said to "Keep Out" of the buildings, but there was nothing to say the grounds were off limits.  Everywhere I turned there was something else to look at.  But finally, while shooting the soaring brick smoke stacks of the old facility's power plant, an official of some sort appeared out of nowhere and asked me to leave.  Why?  Somehow the place felt like a museum to me.

At least I got these images.

 

The sound track to this one is the demo a piece I wrote for viola & cello, played by my friend Greta and me.