Light

Today’s forecast was rain, all day rain, but in the morning the sun appeared and found little openings between the gray clouds that have blanketed Lisbon for days. I wanted to get out and stretch my legs and decided to take a chance. I wore my camera strap under my coat, in order to protect the camera should it start to rain, and started to walk in the direction of the Gulbenkian Museum. I had been to the grounds several times but had never been inside.

Calouste Gulbenkian amassed a huge fortune and an art collection which he kept in a private museum at his Paris house. An art expert said in a 1950 issue of Life magazine that “Never in modern history has one man owned so much.

Link to Wikipedia page on the Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.
Link to the museum’s website.

I took more photographs than I expected to and wondered why some days are good for photography and others are not. Or, why does nothing look like a photograph on some days and on other days everything IS a photograph? It had been gray for days, so perhaps the light was simply inspiring. But, I am convinced, it is also in the head!

The first photo of this slideshow was taken outside the museum’s entrance. The second and third photos are of amazing glass pieces… but I was more fascinated by the light on the tree outside and so I focussed on that. The next two photos are of windows with sun screens and the garden beyond. The following photos were taken on the way home. There is the arch made of red cubes, the leaf attached to a wall, and the flattened and wet mango box. Oh, yes, I love mangos, especially the Keitt variety. I tried that variety in Santa Fe a few years ago and was hooked! During the season we have a mango every day. The next photo is of three doors opening to a workshop of some kind. The doors are red and the light streaming in from a glass door in the back is exquisite. The last image is a traffic cone that seems to guard a bike path. It may be my favorite image of the day.

Some thoughts about the museum. It was strange to think that these rare items from Egypt, Iran, China, Turkey, Japan, etc, had been owned by one person. It somehow felt wrong to me. At the same time I was grateful that this owner started a foundation and is showing these items to the public. Who do you think is most likely to do something like this today?

Last Night’s Twitch…

Sometimes simple is better. Last night’s performance had no technical difficulties. Perhaps I was taxing my aging laptop too much by trying to use two additional USB cameras. It did work once and then never again.

For the slideshow that has come to bookend my streaming performances I picked images from a tour in Japan in 2009. Travel has become difficult, if not impossible, and I thought some virtual travel was in order. Traveling without moving. Armchair travel. The slideshow progressed towards photos that were very impressionistic and all about the color and the light. Here are a couple of samples:


I have always enjoyed the color photography of Ernst Haas and Arthur Meyerson and in these photos I think I was able to express a little bit of what moves me about their vision.

Since the photos of the slideshow were taken in Japan I drank tea instead of wine. The cup was designed by the Japanese-American designer Isamu Noguchi. The tea itself, however, was Chinese Pouchong tea. I love that tea and have been drinking it since I discovered it at Ten Tea in San Francisco’s Chinatown around 1992, or so.

I hope you enjoyed the evening. There will be another performance on Tuesday morning at 11:30am, Santa Fe time, and then I will take a break from live-streaming. I will be back, but I don’t want to set a date for it. Maybe it’ll become more of a surprise thing… just some morning or afternoon or evening that I feel like playing on Twitch. If you follow me on Twitch they will inform you when I start streaming.

Digital Dharma in Manhattan

December 10th:
Digital Dharma preview in New York. An intimate evening of art, music and ispiration.

Click here for more info.

I donated some of my photos to the movie and will perform solo with a new slideshow of my Tibet photos.