Apologies for no Sunday newsletter last week, I was traveling for a few days.
First off, I know in the last several months I was spreading across various platforms but I’ve also been working hard on my website. Lately I’ve been aggressively consolidating under that one roof and trying to keep it dynamic: frequent updates, the blog/newsletter, RSS feed, print sales, and a dedicated Workspace page for interacting virtually with students and collaborators. At the same time I’ve pulled back from doing some of those things on places like Substack and Ko-Fi. To me it just feels so much better - and avoids both algorithmic and oligarchic ick-factors (how’s that for alliteration?) - to build on your own real estate.
Notice I’ve more clearly made my homepage at billcrandall.com a place to see anything new at a glance. Why not bookmark it? Besides the blog (where this newsletter comes from), there are additions every week, like a feed. New projects, new additions to projects, new print offerings, etc. My goal is to update as often as social media.
Today you’ll find a new batch of international landscapes from my archive, which were just added to the World section of the Prints gallery. Well, as much as I love nature, I almost never do straight-up landscapes. Usually they are what I think of as human landscapes:
The Blue Lagoon in Iceland. From our first visit there many years ago, before they jacked up the prices and you didn’t have to book in advance like now.
Kiev’s Independence Square (aka Maidan) during the Orange Revolution, remember that? Felt like such a hopeful turning point at the time. Little did anyone know what was still to come.
A orphanage for baby elephants we visited in Nairobi several months ago.
Boats launching from Soumbédioune fishing village in Dakar.
A hopeful moment in postwar Kosovo.
An Arabber’s horse-drawn produce cart in West Baltimore.
A cityscape of Tallinn, from a brief visit after my 2013 residency across the water in Finland.
A farmer and his wife doing their morning chores in Poland (can’t recall the village name).
A overexcited guard dog greeting me and a friend in southern Serbia on a long-ago road trip (that ended in our detention by the ex-Yugoslav military, but that’s another story, maybe I’ll repost it soon).
Again, check them out on the homepage or the Prints gallery page.
As step back and look at them together, I have the distinct feeling like maybe I want to say ‘see, the world is pretty cool and interesting - and worth fighting for’.
Lots more to come, hope you’ll consider becoming a collector. From a friend and recent satisfied customer:
“I’ve been meaning to write and say two beautiful photographs arrived last week. They were perfectly packaged and printed on serious, heavy paper. We can’t wait to frame and hang them!”
I made my first images in Paris one day last week, sharing a few little impressions below. Besides the fact that I’m living out in the ‘burbs and don’t get into the city much, as I mentioned last time I haven’t been sure what to shoot here. I know that sounds crazy, I mean it’s Paris, right? But the last thing I want to do is what other people do, or feed everyone’s preconceived notions of this city. Tbh I admit I came here not sure that Paris is for me, but also not sure that Paris is even the Paris of our collective imagination.
But I also don’t want to do a critique of the city. That would just be sort of a bummer, and we don’t need that.
Instead of rejecting the idea of old romantic Paris, I decided to see if I could find if it actually exists and what that means to me. I know, sounds super easy to fall into cheesy clichés, that would be a huge challenge.
My first instinct was to see if I could find a particular old atmosphere. I was thinking of how Haussman’s early 20th century renewal bulldozed most of what was left of medieval Paris. I’ve had the nagging feeling Paris is again on the cusp of another new phase, or is already there. Like most cities, partly becoming a commercialized Potemkin version of itself. So if musty remnants do in fact exist I’d better hurry.
I searched up some of the old Left Bank literary/artist cafes to see if there were any ghosts there. Les Deux Magots, Cafe de Flore, and Le Procope are all pretty close together. Most looked nice enough and had lines of tourists waiting for lunch, not surprising. The last one, La Palette, formerly known as an artists’ cafe, spoke to me a bit more over my croque monsieur.
On the way there I stopped in a used book store. The woman working there saw my camera and started rummaging for photo books to show me. One of the first ones she produced was by Josef Koudelka, my favorite photographer, and it was the exact small edition I carried as a photo student until it literally fell apart.
Ok, karma was starting to speak and I tried to listen.
She couldn’t get her card reader to work, so I couldn’t buy it, so I set it down and took a photo of it, catching the light on a little pedestal of books. Like the holy grail.
At a vintage store later, an oddly random piece of ductwork somehow struck me in a similar spirit. I don’t know why. The owner got mad at me for not asking first, oh well. I usually prefer forgiveness over permission.
At least I was starting to get a feel for what I wanted. I think. As I used to tell my students, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for if you don’t know what you’re looking for.