This tomb effigy communicates so much emotion to me even as a only a photograph. Every time I look at it, I feel both the artist’s grief and this underlying love for his wife. My recollection from the description in themuseum is that artist who was a painter by profession took up sculpting just to make this which makes it all the more incredible. It’s located in the Met’s Gallery 700, a light filled and airy space, which creates quite a contrast to this monument to one mans grief.
Hamilton may have gotten a blockbuster musical written about him but Benjamin Franklin has always been the founding father that fascinated me the most. In the 4th grade, I wrote school report on him. That Franklin made so many important contributions in so many fields is just amazing to me. This bust is part of the Met’s collection.
These two statues, Hiawatha and Minnehaha, reside in Gallery 759 in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. One of my favorite podcasts, The Memory Place, has a series of 8 episodes each focusing on different pieces of artwork at the Met. I had wonderful time listening to these episodes while viewing the artwork at the Met and that’s best way to experience them. However, most of the world is shutdown right now and visiting museums is not possible so we need ways experience things beyond our homes without leaving our homes. And in that context, listening to these episodes while looking at photographs of the artwork is a compelling way to do a virtual visit to the Met.
The podcast episode Two Small Sculptures is about these two small statues. The episode is a masterpiece. In the episode, Nate DiMeo, the creator of the Memory Place, tells a beautiful and haunting story about these two statues, the then famous poem, The Song of Hiawatha, from which two characters originate and about the arist, Edmonia Lewis, who created the statues. DiMeo’s story vividly illuminates how culture myths, like that of Native Americans being noble savages, give cover to atrocities.
The National Museum of Atomic Testing chronicles the history of the Nevada Test Site in America’s nuclear weapons testing program. The museum is located in Las Vegas and the test site itself is 65 miles away. The actual test site is close of enough to Las Vegas that in 1950’s tourists could see bright flash from nuclear tests from Vegas hotels. Vegas actually marketed its proximity to nuclear testing as a tourist attraction. The museum does a great both documenting nuclear testing as well as probing the impact the Atomic Age had on American culture as a whole. The overall experience is pretty somber as it dawns the visitor that had these weapons been used, they could have easily wiped out the human race.
After visiting, I wanted to go visit the test site itself. Doing so requires an advanced reservation and tours are only happen monthly so I haven’t actually done it yet.
The other thing I’ll mention about the museum is the its well air-conditioned which makes a comfortable thing to do during the scorching daytime heat of the Vegas summer. I visited in June and few hours out of the sun was a welcome relief.
Almost every time I go to Vegas, I visit the the Bellagio Conservatory. The displays are always stunning and rotate seasonally. I’m looking forward to visiting again once this Coronavirus virus crisis has passed.
I’ve been to Las Vegas many times and the strip is alway bustling and crowded except for early in the morning. From pictures I’ve seen on the news, the Strip is now surreally deserted. Las Vegas, the perpetual party, is on hiatus which hasn’t happened in almost 60 years.
This week is going to a very tough one for New York City so I thought I’d share image from better days there. This is from a summer evening in July of 2018. Warm evening light lit up the sculpture at the top of the facade of Grand Central Station as I walked down 42nd Street.. I know New York City will get through this tough stretch, though the human cost will be high. I look forward to my next trip there.
This image feels appropriate for a week where much of the world is shut down.
I made this image in Mumbai in February of 2019. This street approaches a temple. As I was photographing, a random person accosts me telling me I can not photograph there. There were signs up saying the temple can not be photographed but I’m at least half of a block from the temple and this part of the street is absolutely not the temple. Random person is yelling about how he’s going to call the police. I point out to him that signs say no photographs of the temple and this is no the temple. Rando insists photographs of the “temple area” are prohibited and I must delete my photographs. I have no doubt his claim about the temple area is completely and utterly false. But to get him to go away I delete the photographs. Cameras use descendent of the ancient FAT filesystem from the DOS days on their memory cards so it’s easy to undelete stuff if you haven’t written more images so I undelete the images later. In the US, I would have yelled back at this idiot to call cops so I could ask them to arrest him from wasting the police’s time since I know aside from national security installations, it legal to photograph anything thanks to the 1st amendment but in foreign countries, I try to avoid unnecessary run-ins with the police.
We’re are coming up on almost 2 weeks since the shelter in place order was issued in the Bay Area and I’m really missing being able to go out and create new photographs or simply go out to dinner. So, I’m instead going to through old images that I never got around to publishing. This image is from Half Moon Bay in January.
