In Tom's Neck 1 and Tom's Neck 2 we looked at a new set of pictures I made a few weeks ago on the island of Chappaquidick, off of Martha's Vineyard, MA.

In this post, we'll finish the Tom's Neck series.

But before we conclude, I also worked to extend from some of the "facade" ideas, to lend to the depth of the project but also to allow some actual depth (foreground to background) into the pictures as well.

I did that by beaching the boat, getting out and photographing conventionally, both with the moderate wide angle lens I'd already been using, but with a longer lens as well.

I was seeking to  convey a greater immersion into the landscape, as opposed to sitting outside of it and photographing like an observer.

I also used files shot aerially that gave a broader perspective on the area from a different angle:

When photographing aerially it becomes hugely important to "get it all". This simply means to circle areas that are crucial, to photograph them with front light and back light too, as reshoots are almost always not possible.

As I headed farther down the inlet that is Tom's Neck in the kayak I was confronted with a choice. I could go down to the very end where there is a sandy beach and a point:

or contain the series within the framework I'd already established. I chose the latter.

I know, if you've followed along and are invested you may be saying, "Neal, you idiot! What were you thinking?"and I will have to live with that. My reasoning was that the series was beginning to head off into something different and would therefore dilute the impact and cohesion of the other pictures. I was already doing quite a bit in a group of pictures: telling a story, representing a finite area with pictures taken weeks apart, from the air and from a boat. Let me show you what I did conclude with. After making several more like this:

and

I paddled across the inlet to get more distance from the Neck than before:

and

Then, for the last picture, paddled back across the inlet to turn the boat around 180 degrees on what I'd been photographing, putting Tom's Neck at my back, and made this picture:

For the first time we are seeing what else was out there. This isn't that unusual a thing for me to do at the end of a highly sequenced series, where I tell a story or take us on a journey. It is also structurally similar to the first in that it is three horizontal bands. 

For the sake of the blog I can show you what all this is:

(Thanks  to Google Maps)

The red X marks about where I made the last picture from. You can also clearly see where I had worked for all of these pictures, from the Dike Bridge at the bottom of the map all the way up to Tom's Neck Point.

The last photograph is the image that intends to lead the way out, or to another place or perhaps another series over the horizon, yet to come. What's on the other side of that spit of sand, beyond those bushes? 

So that is the new series of pictures I made above and in the water of Tom's Neck  on Chappaquidick Island.

I hope you like them. It is not hard to let me know what you think: Neal's Email

BTW: I leave for Paris in a couple of days. When I get there I will drive down to northern Italy to stay with friends, then drive back for Paris Photo the middle of the month. I plan on posting while away. Hope you can come along for the ride. Will I photograph? Is the sky blue?

Thanks for reading.

In the first post (here) on this new series of pictures we looked at the written introduction and the few pictures that set the stage for the subsequent photographs. Now we'll be getting into the main body of these pictures.

Before we get there, I need to make this point: I knew, before I was going to make these pictures, that I was on to something important for me. While I can't say that they will be seen as important photographs by others I can say that I knew these these pictures would move me ahead as an artist, that, if I didn't screw them up, I was about to make real "work". Not try, hope for, aspire towards, or presume but to make work that would stand as fundamental within my oeuvre. 

As I paddled down the length of Tom's Neck that day I came across several variations on a theme.

I used all these pictures and their formats throughout the series. A word about the prints: they are 21 x 14 inches printed on 22 x 17 Canson Photographique Baryta paper. 

I also made a few that referenced where I was, such as:

That little building is the entrance to the Cape Pogue National Wildlife Refuge, where you can, with a permit and a four wheel drive vehicle, drive along the beach at the end of the island.

As you work your way through the Tom's Neck series of pictures, every third or fourth print does this:

which, in effect, provides you with a map to what is is being presented in the pictures taken from the kayak.

But also notice that your perception of the area is drastically altered by the inclusion of the aerials. There are many elements seen in the aerials that are not even considered or thought of in the pictures made from the water. Such as: ponds, fields, layers of trees and a rich landscape beyond the "front" or "facade" seen from the boat. This is one of the key points of the series for me; that our understanding of an area or region is altered by our perspective on it. I know, very obvious. But not so obvious when drawn out for us in pictures that show us just how powerful those differences are. 

The analogy for me is the old American western towns with false fronts on their buildings, made to look more significant and substantial than they really were.

This from Old Trail Town, Cody, Wyoming, a set of pictures I made in 2004 (here).

You can almost look at these pictures made from the kayak as two dimensional, flat and planal:

But I didn't just stick with that one point or idea. I was trying to make a variety of pictures too, to maintain my interest and the viewers as well, but also to broaden and deepen the set. I also needed to deal with the idea of how do I end this.

In Tom's Neck 3 we will do just that.

Stay tuned.

This is going to get a little complex but bear with me. I will split this blog into three posts as it would be too long otherwise. This is about a piece of land, some pictures made a few weeks ago, an airplane and a kayak.

Let's start here:

The Day Before I left the Vineyard This Fall

The day before I left the Vineyard this fall I put the boat on the car, drove to Edgartown, put the car on the Chappy ferry, drove to the parking area next to the Dike Bridge, unloaded the boat, put a camera in the boat and paddled out to Tom’s Neck to photograph.

First Time

First time putting a good camera and lens into the boat with me. Always before, the camera would go in a Pelican case in the hatch, sealed up. I would then put in, paddle, beach the boat,get out, open the hatch, shoot whatever, then put it all back in and paddle on. This time I wanted to shoot from the boat while it was in the water where I positioned it. This was using the kayak as the platform to photograph from.

System

I developed a system. Paddled and looked and headed down the Neck a couple of times before committing. Came back, got the boat about right, pulled off the spray skirt, dried my hands, picked up the camera, photographed, reversed the above and paddled on. It worked.

The Following

The following pictures were made along the ocean facing side of Tom’s Neck running north from the Dike Bridge. The bridge made famous by Ted Kennedy as it’s where Mary Jo Kopechne died in 1969, jammed and trapped in an upside down car several feet deep in the water of Poucha Pond. Ted Kennedy wasn’t able to save her that night. But he and his family sure worked hard to save his political career after that night. Safe to say that evening changed the trajectory of his career and his life. And ended young Mary Jo’s life.

At Any Rate

At any rate you are looking at a two part series. This being the short stretch of land nestling up against an inlet of water photographed from the air in a plane and from my kayak in the water two weeks later. Why? Because it is exquisite. To me, it is a garden of Eden, looking like some sort of paradise. But also because one approach informs and enriches the other. Look, photography is changing, becoming ubiquitous at a phenomenal rate and used in unimaginable ways compared to just a few years ago. Remember, when Harry Callahan made a double exposure in the 1940’s with his twin lens Rollei, one frame right side up and click the second upside down, he was doing this for the very first time in the history of photography. We are very much beyond that now.

Interested In

I am interested in nudging photography forward to the best of my humble abilities. Yes, these are conventional looking pictures at first glance. But, upon closer looking, they are different. People assume that I work solely within tradition. Not true. I work within the knowledge of tradition as it serves progress. To me, progress is seeing things differently and beautifully.

Tom’s Neck

The Tom’s Neck pictures are like that: an effort to extend traditional definition and understanding into a new way of looking at the landscape. The aerials informing the other, the ones from the kayakdeepening our take away of the aerials. Even this statement, this introduction to the pictures, is an effort to extend, to deepen and to more fully explore photography’s capabilities and extraordinariness.

•••

Still with me? Sheesh, are we going to get to pictures here? Yes, yes, yes: we will. I promise.

So, what is all that wordage up there? It is the artist statement to the full series about to unfold. It sits at the front of the set, as a kind of title page and introduction all in one. I know it is long but the Tom's Neck pictures require a little time and thought to wade through them and explanation as to methodology and philosophy. 

So, let's carry on.

Next up and the first actual photographs are these two side by side:

These set the stage in which we are about to work. They provide context and aren't arty or pretentious, they are simple statements: this is how the pictures were made, these are the platforms the photographer used to make the following pictures. I believe the logistics count here. 

Next print in the sequence? The first real substantial photograph in the series:

Pretty straightforward, yes? Let's look at it a little as it forms a precedent for subsequent images. Only water in the foreground so I must have been standing right on the shore or, shooting from the kayak. Bingo, you know I am in the boat from the way the intro set this up. In fact a lot of the pictures in the series look like this: water, content and sky; a classic three horizontal bands landscape photograph. Before we leave it, take note of the birds nest sticking right up there. This is really an osprey nest or possibly an eagle's nest, not really intended for a seagull, but that's what was up there the day I was out photographing. 

If you had to guess what was to come next it would seem to be important to show the other approach here, to  have right up front like this an aerial, and ideally, one of the same scene so simply shown here.

And there it is. Now, I can't really make these pictures all on the same day or even in the same week, unless the sun shines on me and the photo gods are fully aligned. In fact, I made the aerials a few weeks before I made the ones from the kayak. But look carefully and you can see the birds nest that references that we are in the same place from a very different perspective. But also notice that there is much more conveyed in the aerial; in effect, it maps the future efforts on the more grounded ones, the boat ones to come. Notice, in particular, the bare tree on the right side of the frame.

There it is, up close and personal, no longer looking like a placeholder on a map but fully engaged and occupying front and center in a picture that just changed our previous format to four bands of horizontals: water, grass, trees and sky from the  previous three.

So now we're set up structurally, we have a few preliminary pictures that provide us with a framework. We know we're going to see some pictures taken from the boat and some pictures taken from the air of the same stretch of shore along Tom's Neck on Chappaquidick Island in October, 2014.

Cool. In the next post we're going to get into the main body of the series.

Stay tuned.

In the early fall of 2008 I fell and ruptured my quad tendon two days before I was leaving to live in Italy for three months while on a sabbatical leave from my teaching position at Northeastern University. How I fell is far too bizarre a story to tell here and I won't subject you to details.

At any rate, I was promptly in surgery, then laid up at home, then in rehab and taking a cab to physical therapy, my leg in a brace, starting to get around on crutches, etc. etc. By January 2009 I had deferred the sabbatical and was back at teaching, initially on crutches.

Where was photo during that fall? Nonexistent, of course. To someone who is wedded to the medium this was like being starved or alone on a desert island without a camera. By late fall I was just being allowed to drive. I could loosen the hinge on the brace on my left leg, lift my leg up into the car and drive.

I chose Quincy, about 30 minutes from Cambridge where I live. I remember the first time I went. I got myself extricated from the car and hobbled on my crutches for about 20 feet, sliding along on about an inch of snow. Realizing this was insanity, I turned around, got back in the car and drove home. On the second trip I used a  camera on a tripod while stumbling along on crutches and managed to make some initial pictures. They weren't very good but it was a start. As my health improved I went back and back and the series developed into something as my leg allowed me to do more.

Quincy Quarry has a rich history. 

Arthur Griffin's picture of young men diving off the cliff into the water below ended up on the cover of Life Magazine:

The Quarry also had the reputation for a place to dump stolen cars and dead bodies. The films Gone Baby Gone and The Departed come to mind. It was filled in with dirt from the Big Dig in the early 2000's. 

Since I was interested in the graffiti spray painted on the cliff walls, I took the project from an initial few prints made in black and white and transtioned slowly to color.

This is really a project about color, with the idea that photography works well as a comparative tool. Colors are more striking when contrasted with black and white.

This then allowed me to move in closer and to really look at the elegance and aesthetic of what these night time taggers did.

And what they did with color.

Do I know how clichéd a subject this is? Do I know that graffiti is a constant theme used by students in photo programs in big cities across the USA? Yes. Doesn't make it irrelevant, does it? And it didn't feel to me like I couldn't make a contribution as well.

I've now put the full series up on the site here.

I would  be interested in hearing what you rethink of these. You may also subscribe to this blog. 

Reminder: The Focus Awards are at the Griffin Museum this Saturday, starting at 11 am for brunch. See you there.

I flew yesterday. Another flight over Martha's Vineyard. This one had some specific destinations in mind. I'll get to those but I wanted to share what else we flew over. I fly with Mike out of the Katama grass strip airfield outside of Edgartown. Mike provides biplane rides for tourists wanting to see the island from above. When we fly though, he pilots a Cessna 172. Why? Because for aerial work you need the wing above you not under you.

Today's flight was simply wonderful: clear skies, little wind and cool but not cold temperature. I'd been trying to go up for about 10 days but the weather was not cooperative. Yesterday it was perfect.

This one, directly above, is on Chappaquidick Island and is where there has been a great deal of erosion over the past couple of years.

This one above is from 2012. Quite a difference.

If you've been reading the blog for awhile or are a subscriber you know this isn't the first time I've made aerial photographs of Martha's Vineyard. Actually, the photographs I make of the island are part of a larger project of photographs of all the islands off the Cape. So, why keep going up to make pictures? Because, as time has gone on, I am now thinking of and using aerial photographs differently. Initially, I was just going up to see and shoot what was interesting, beautiful, striking or alarming. Now, I am mostly working on a specific project to photograph one area at a time. This approach started in Iceland while I was on a residency in 2013 and has continued on the Vineyard. I photograph the same area from the air and on the ground and pair the two in one series. Why? Because our take away from these two vantage points is vastly different in each case. Each one informs but alters our comprehension of the other. The challenge for me is to shift slightly our understanding of landscape photographs and, ultimately, how we look at them.

I hope you like these. 

 You can reach me at: Neal's Email

BTW: Reminder that there is an opening at 555 Gallery in Boston this Saturday evening from 5-8 pm. The 16 photographs of mine in the show are from the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia and the Spallanzani Collection in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Some are new prints, in color, that are gorgeous!

See you there.