Water, water everywhere!

The snow has melted. At least most of it has. There’s still some ice hanging in the shadows of the gorges and thick dirty piles along the creek bed at the park. But the streams are big, the lake level is really up. We’ve had some good rain and are expecting more today.

Generally this is a love/hate time of year for me. I’m so happy to feel the warmth of the coming Spring, the sunshine after so many gray days. The days are getting longer and it feels so good to come home after work and still have daylight to enjoy. To not have to build a fire or carry out the ashes from the wood stove or to just be able to drive home without my jacket on and walk the dog without being bundled up. I walked out of the high school the other night after an event there and could hear the spring peepers. I love that sound as much as any sign of Spring.

On the down side, everything is wet. The ground is saturated and soft. There’s a layer of dirt on everything from the melted snow and the landscape is pressed flat. I’ve been pumping our cellar for two weeks but the water table is up as it always is this time of year and the water just keeps seeping in. We live in a Greek Revival house that was built in the 1820’s and the cellar is just old stone with large slabs of slate laid on top of dirt for a floor, so there’s not much to keep the water out save our submersible pump in the low corner. The water never gets more than a couple of inches deep in the low areas, but still takes weeks to dry out.

There’s a motto in Ithaca on bumper stickers and t-shirts everywhere, “Ithaca is GORGES”(a play on the word). And that’s the truth. The Finger Lakes area of upstate New York is blessed with a landscape so diverse and beautiful that is unlike anywhere else. The lakes lie in a north/south configuration splayed across the middle of the state. There are eleven lakes in the Finger Lakes group.

Cayuga Lake is the longest and widest at 40 miles long and 3.5 miles wide at it’s widest point and is 435 feet deep at it’s deepest. Ithaca sits at the southern end of Cayuga Lake. The lake is fed by countless small and large streams which have cut beautiful gorges through the stratified rock over millions of years. Ithaca claims to have 150 waterfalls within a ten mile radius of the city many of which are quite spectacular, particularly at this time of year when the waters are surging. Taughannock Falls, just down the road from our house, is the tallest free fall of water east of the Mississippi at 215 feet, taller than Niagara Falls.

Our house sits on the edge of a spectacular gorge that drops over 200 feet to the bottom from the edge of our yard, and at the south end of the property is a spectacular view of Frontenac Falls. This waterfall is one of the most beautiful, yet least known in the area because it is surrounded by private property and a large camp owned by the boy scouts.

Most of the other large waterfalls in this area are within state parks. So we are blessed with our own spectacular waterfall that roars in the spring and after any heavy rain. In the summer when the air is warm, with our skylights open at night, we can hear the beautiful sounds of the falls, spilling down the cascades to the creek below. From our back yard we can also see the lake and the distant east shore which catches the western sunlight at the end of the day and glows warmly as the sun disappears.

When I stand in our yard and look across the gorge, and down to the lake, or down onto the falls from our overlook, I can’t help but wonder how this area must have looked and felt when it was populated only by native American tribes. When the paths along the gorges were walked by bare feet and moccasins, when the points at the mouths of the streams were surrounded by native villages and the lakes were home to handmade canoes.

There are 128 species of fish in these lakes and the area, even with modern development, still supports white tailed deer, black bears, coyotes, fox, beaver, and other wildlife, hawks, eagles, falcons, herons, geese, vultures, owls and all manner of other species. At the top of Cayuga Lake is a giant wetland, Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, that fills with migratory birds as the seasons change and is a nesting area for bald eagles and countless other birds.

The lake is a beautiful summer playground. Sailboats, fishing boats, powerboats, jet skis (not my favorites), and wind surfers scatter across the lake from one end to the other. The inlet on the south is the home for the rowing crews of Cornell and Ithaca College and often hosts competitions on weekends, but is almost always graced by some crew practicing or perhaps just a lone rower in the early morning light at sunrise. The boats are out breaking up the ice as soon as the temperature begins to rise in the spring to make way for the long thin skulls. Ithaca also has a Dragon Boat club and these boats are often seen rowing down the inlet and out into the lake in the afternoon sunlight.

We are blessed with abundant water. Our area depends on the tourist and vacation dollars in the summer. Our lake changes with every season and every morning sunrise. Sometimes covered in fog or still as glass, other days tossed with waves and sprinkled with sailboats. The gorges are richly carved sculptures, lush and green with ferns and moss, surrounded by deep woods and spider webbed with wonderful walking trails.

It was this landscape that brought me to Ithaca in the first place. The streams, the waterfalls, the lakes, the damp earth, the woods and the wildlife. It is a place of great beauty and spiritual energy and many who come to visit or go to school never leave. It’s no wonder.

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

Let There Be Light

I’m not sure what the draw is for me, but as I look back at so many of the pictures I take, particularly the urban landscape type of pictures, an amazing number of them are of windows. When I looked back at my post of images from Willimantic, CT, most of the pictures contain or are about windows. So I began to think about windows and what they represent. Why we photograph them. What is their symbolism?

Windows began as holes in the walls of dwellings to simply let light and air in. It was the Romans who first began to actually glaze windows. But it was the era of the cathedrals that made the window something special. Large openings in cathedral walls needed glazing, but large pieces of glass were not available. So the windows were filled with a mosaic of glass pieces assembled with lead strips in between. This not only allowed for the glazing of extremely large areas, but also for the church to inspire and teach and pictorially put forth imagery and symbols of the faith for those who could not read. The windows were seen as the sources of “light from heaven”, or divine light. They also illuminated these huge cavernous structures with great beauty and color which helped to add great interest to the attendance of church services. They were a place for the additional expression of early Christian art by the craftsmen and artists of the times. As time has progressed, the stained glass window has changed in style with the architecture of the current age but has remained a mainstay in the church. It has also been a point of beauty and decoration among homes and larger buildings over the years.

Whatever my attraction is to windows, perhaps that is part of the reason I not only have photographed them so often, but also chose the field of stained glass art as a business for about twelve years of my life.

Windows are places of inspiration for many. They represent many things in our lives. “The eyes are the windows to the soul”. Windows are the divider between our private lives and our public. They are the source of light and the point from which we see the world, while protected within our dwellings. They offer a way to bring nature inside. “The picture window”. The framed landscape that is ever changing.

Many great poets have written about the view from a window. Carl Sandburg, for instance, has poems about what he sees and how he’s affected by the view from his window. In paintings by Vermeer, soft window light provides the illumination, but the open windows themselves represent the entering of outside temptation. Windows in art are often used to create a sense of depth, to frame a picture within a picture.

But they also symbolize many things. Curiosity, mystery, vulnerability, awakening, freedom, the vision of that which is unattainable, voyeuristic pleasure, our separation from the outside world, the place of invasion, the place of welcoming, the entrance to the bed chamber for the secret lover, the point of fear for the lonely child at bedtime, the place to leave the candle burning for the wayward soul.

Windows are not only for looking out, but for looking in. The shadows dancing on the shade at night, the warm and happy lovers dining while the estranged stare yearningly in from the cold outside, the child wishing for the ultimate Christmas toy or the passing office worker staring in at a pair of red pumps still three weeks pay away, or the young couple gazing in at the engagement rings at the jewelers. Windows are art. They are for the display of our desires. They are there to tempt us and tantalize us, while keeping us safely segregated.

A partially open window is an invitation. Windows hide what’s inside, they are places of discovery. “The window to the mind”. Windows are places of vulnerability. An opening in a wall, a place where we can be seen and discovered. Windows stimulate our curiosity. Windows offer a view of what is outside. Outside our personal existence, outside our own experience. They are a place of fantasy, like Wendy leaping out the window with Peter Pan. A broken window is a symbol of a violation, or abandonment. A barrier that has been breached. Why are windows such targets for children’s rocks and wayward baseballs?

These are all reasons, I suppose that windows are such an attraction for me. I am constantly seeking images that offer a story, images that allow me to imagine. What lies behind, what story exists on the other side of a window? Windows are a natural picture frame. What better place to look than through a window?

At A Window

GIVE me hunger,

O you gods that sit and give

The world its orders.

Give me hunger, pain and want,

Shut me out with shame and failure

From your doors of gold and fame,

Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!

But leave me a little love,

A voice to speak to me in the day end,

A hand to touch me in the dark room

Breaking the long loneliness.

In the dusk of day-shapes

Blurring the sunset,

One little wandering, western star

Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.

Let me go to the window,

Watch there the day-shapes of dusk

And wait and know the coming

Of a little love.

Carl Sandburg

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, all rights reserved.

I have a love affair….

…with trees.

Since I was a boy balancing on the roots of the large oak tree in the front yard of my childhood home or climbing the massive branches of the giant magnolias in front of the Decatur recreation center, I have loved trees. I have been a tree hugger since way before the term was ever popular.

It was my love of trees, I believe, that lead me to set the goal years ago of reaching the California old growth woods when I drove across the country to the Southwest. It was the draw of sitting at the base of a giant sequoia, standing and looking up the vast trunks of these ancient trees, feeling so minuscule and temporary next to some of the biggest and oldest organisms on the planet, that was a necessity to me. Something I not only desired but felt truly compelled to experience. Some of these trees have survived since the time of Christ. They have outlived storms and droughts and fires and earthquakes. They have survived, though barely, the onslaught of the human push west in this country and the logging industry and our desire for their coveted tight grained, bug resistant lumber. These trees are magnificent. They are a treasure. They deserve respect. They deserve to be cherished. They held me in awe and filled me with sorrow at the thought of cutting such incredible living things. They were worth the trip.

As a boy, family vacations often took us north to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia and North Carolina, the lower end of the Appalachian chain. The woods of the north Georgia parks were thick with oaks and large evergreen trees towering above the rhododendron and mountain laurel sheltered in their shade. I loved walking on the soft padded surface of tiny hemlock needles, smelling the rich damp forest. Trees large enough for a child to hide behind in a game of hide-and-seek.

The Appalachian trail begins here and stretches all the way up through the Smokies and the Shenandoah and the Allegheny of Pennsylvania, the Green and White Mountains and Berkshire Hills of New England, all the way to Maine and Quebec. From the pines and hemlocks and hickories and oaks of the South to the spruce and maple and aspen and birch of the North. In the Spring they are dotted with redbud and dogwood and wild cherry. It’s a beautiful experience.

Since moving north to New York, I have developed a great affection for many of the species that are native here. I had never experienced the real New England autumn with maples ablaze with red and orange and gold until moving to New York in the 70’s. The woods here are rich with these trees and their colors are spectacular.

I have also developed a deep love of sycamore trees. Their mottled bark is like a gorgeous exotic lizard’s skin. They can be tall and statuesque, or short and massive and spreading. They congregate around water, by lakes and stream beds, giving shade to the frogs and pockets of trout and the fishing blue herons along the creeks. They are stately and beautiful often standing as the lone tree in the fields of rural farms. They have great variety and personality.

I have a great passion for beech trees as well. These trees have a beautiful sculptural bark like the skin of an elephant. Large homes around this area are often graced with copper beech with their deep red leaves and sprawling branches creating wonderful shade. In winter, the beech trees tend to hold their leaves all winter long, hanging like pale brown paper lanterns among the bare branches of the New York woods.

Along the shore and inlet to Cayuga Lake here in Ithaca, the walkways and parks are lined with willow trees. These are the first trees here to get their leaves in the spring and the last to loose them in the winter. Their drooping branches are fitting for their location by the water echoing the ripples on the waters surface with every breeze of the summer. A perfect picnic spot.

In my numerous trips south to Florida I have always loved the highways that travel through the southern Georgia pecan groves. Beautiful, graceful trees spaced in wide grids. And as you go further south, the expansive paper company properties stretch out covered with row after row of tall, slender, fast growing pines. The ground beneath them carpeted with pale red pine needles and palmetto palms, a haven for armadillos and rattlesnakes.

Once on the coast, the sprawling live oaks with their Spanish moss, the stands of tall slender pines, and the palms of all varieties provide a wonderful contrast to the dense forests of the northern states. I have made a project of palm trees when I am in Florida. I love their variety, their graceful curving fronds, and the swishing sound made when the ocean breezes stir them.

Trees are wonders of our world, examples of living life in balance, standing firm and strong, yet yielding and flexible. I’ve had fantasies that trees are talking with one another as we speed about like flashes of light, they live in their own slow motion world, meditative and wise. Or that when we see the trees wave in the wind, that it is not the wind stirring the trees, but the trees waving about in celebration, creating the breeze. When I pass, perhaps my cremated ashes will be spread at the bottom of some great stately tree, that I might be absorbed through the roots and become part of this beautiful living thing, standing quietly, enduring and graceful. That would make me happy.

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

And that has made all the difference.

Yogi Berra, in all his wit and wisdom, once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” More than likely a reference to Robert Frost’s sentiment in The Road Not Taken. And Thoreau once wrote, “When you think your walk is profitless and a failure, and you can hardly persuade yourself not to return, it is on the point of being a success, for then you are in that subdued and knocking mood to which Nature never fails to open.”

It doesn’t matter whether my walk is a nature walk or a city walk or a drive through the rural countryside, if I can simply go about my explorations with sufficient openness I will usually be rewarded with images I like and didn’t expect. When I take a road trip by myself I usually try to allow some extra time so that I might take myself off the beaten path and travel the back roads for a while. I’ll take a random exit off the interstate to drive the two-lanes for a while in search of photos and experiences that are easily missed when driving the expressways. These excursions have produced important images for me. I particularly remember stopping on the roadside in the Catskills one day on my way back from New York City to photograph a group of fall trees by a small pond. The image later was translated into a stained glass installation for a client in Binghamton.

My Sunday morning photo excursions have often proven to be the most profitable for surprises. I took a trip one day in the mid 70’s to Lawrence, Massachusetts.

I had never been to Lawrence before. Nor did I plan to go there. It was simply a Sunday morning wandering and that fork in the road ended up there. It was also one of those Zen types of photo shoots where everything happens in a single role of film. Almost every image I shot that day was a “keeper”. I love those days.

Lawrence is on the northern outskirts of Boston on the Merrimack River. It was once a thriving mill center for textiles and was the site of the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 when numerous arrests and many deaths of striking mill workers, including many women and children, eventually led to higher wages for all New England mill workers.

The town saw a decline in the 1950s with the closing of many of the mills. When I was there the population seemed to be mostly Italian but today it is heavily Hispanic and the site of redevelopment along the riverfront since about 2000.

The day I walked the streets of Lawrence the town was quiet and the streets were empty as they often are on a Sunday morning. I could occasionally hear music from open windows and smell breakfast cooking in the triplex apartments and houses along the city streets. I could imagine the families rising slowly, prodding the children out of bed to prepare for Mass. The storefronts were closed and many were vacant in the slack economy. The buildings and storefronts had the look of a city that had changed little since the 50’s.

I love the feel of the aging mill town, the ethnicity and culture apparent in the stores and the neighborhoods. The backbone of blue collar America. The descendant families of migrants from Europe and the more recent influx from Latin America and the Caribbean. Lawrence had a very similar feel to that I experienced in Willimantic, CT more recently.

It’s important to take that fork in the road. To divert ourselves from the normal everyday path to keep from getting complacent and bored. Walk a different path to work, take the next left. When in search of visual rewards the familiar often hides new visions. Can’t see the forest for the trees so to speak. It becomes necessary to shake up our everyday experience and feed it with new pictures, new roads to someplace we’ve never been before. Whether across the ocean or simply across town doesn’t matter. There’s always somewhere we’ve never been and pictures to be taken.

All images are copyright © George Cannon / All rights reserved.

Ornamental America

Most of us are collectors of a sort. We surround ourselves with objects that make us feel good. Some are personal adornments like jewelery, or perhaps they’re other things like art or nice cars or lawn ornaments. And usually we want others to see these things we collect in hopes that they will make someone else feel good as well, or at least take notice. We make a personal statement that says, “this makes me feel good so I’m going to keep it around and put it where other people can see it too.” Or perhaps we feel creative and make something we feel is attractive. Why not display it where everyone can enjoy it as we do? Or maybe we simply find something that is still useful in some way and see no reason to dispose of it, so it becomes decoration, something used to beautify.

Right after I got out of high school my best friend at the time helped me get a job working with a land surveying firm. We spent most of our days doing small surveys for real estate sales and occasionally larger property boundaries and some engineering layout for apartment complexes and subdivisions.

One property outside of Stone Mountain comes back to mind in particular. It belonged to a guy who was known as the “Mad Striper”. He painted pin striping details on cars by hand and had a well known reputation as a master of this craft. We arrived at his house to do a normal survey of the property and I was immediately struck by the unique decoration of the home and yard. It was a typical house for the area. Probably three bedrooms and of modest size. Nothing unique as far as architecture. But the yard was quite unique and unlike anything else in the neighborhood. The driveway was flanked by two white, low brick pillars with concrete lions on top. More brick pillars were spaced across the front and sides of the front yard with a heavy black chain strung between each one. The yard had been cleared of any grass or vegetation and was covered with bright white coarse crushed stone. There was a concrete birdbath/fountain in the middle of the yard with a large central statue of a Greek style woman, and chains bordering the walkway to the front door. I think the idea was not only to make a bold decorative statement, but also to keep the yard on the lowest maintenance level possible. No grass to cut or leaves to rake here.

As I’ve collected photographs over the years, I have begun to work on a number of series. One of my favorites I call Ornamental America. I am always amazed as I drive about the country, no matter where I am, that Americans seem to take great delight in the placement of all manner of unusual things in their yards as decoration.

From painted rocks to wagon wheels to plumbing fixtures and old appliances used as planters to lawn jockeys and garden gnomes, whirly-gigs and artificial wildlife, flags and banners and silhouette cut outs and little painted figures that look like some fat woman bending over in the garden. The list goes on and on and often includes very creative and imaginative constructions. One of my neighbors has crafted several figures in his yard made from clay flower pots joined together. He has a small person in the front yard, a large female in the back yard, a large male figure sitting under an arbor on the side of his house, and a small dog out under a tree. And as the seasons and holidays change, he costumes these figures in appropriate attire. Right now the little guy is dressed for St. Patrick’s Day. But they might wear outfits for Christmas, or Easter, or Halloween, winter scarves or summer aprons, even a New York Yankees baseball uniform.

Some people go with trends, the wishing well, the lighthouse, the butterflies on the side of the house or ceramic kittens climbing up a tree. Others obviously craft their own creations from found objects and salvage.

Some are religious shrines like the statue of the Virgin housed in a buried bath tub stood on end, and some are shrines of other varieties like tributes to fallen soldiers or lost loved ones. Some are like totems for luck or to appease the gods. Some are patriotic and some are humorous and whimsical.

The homes range from well-to-do to rural shacks and house trailers. Some are manicured garden spots and some have the feel of a junk yard. There are retired men in garages every weekend making endless numbers of whirly-gigs and folk art yard ornaments. And when we drive south we are sure to pass the road side lots filled with concrete castings of all manner of lawn sculptures.

So I look for these yards and for creative expressions of home owners, and I add these to my collection of Ornamental America. Of course not every decorated yard qualifies for inclusion. It must be unique in some way. Maybe it’s the quantity of items that make it stand out. Maybe it’s the creativity. Maybe it’s the stark quality of the lone item standing by itself as a small monument. And these lawn icons are not always easy to photograph. They are on private property after all and in most cases I can’t just wander into someone’s yard and shoot what I want. And I have found that as subjects, they are often difficult to compose in a way that conveys their unique quality in association with their surroundings.

As documentary photojournalism they are a challenge. But for me, a fascination and a joyful ongoing project. An American folk art of the times.

All images are Copyright © George Cannon, All rights reserved.