... okay, so we didn't exactly reach 90°n, but with a brisk wind and mid-day temperatures well below freezing it sure felt like the north pole ... cindy called, "let's take our cameras for a little wandering" ... i accepted the invitation, but stipulated hers was the task to "make a plan" ... we met up in brunswick, where we enjoyed coffee and tea and bagels before strolling up to the museum of art on the bowdoin college campus to enjoy the "surrealist photography" exhibit ... i like the museum's entrance, it's a tardis on steroids sort of thing ...
... naturally, once what i affectionally describe as my "visual autism" kicks in everything regardless of scale becomes interesting to me ...
... actual henri cartier-bressen prints, i was in heaven ... some of the works by man ray, however, reminded me of what one of my first photography mentors said, "if it looks like a naked woman, it's pornography, not art, but if it looks like a green pepper, it's erotica, and thus artistic" ... photography wasn't allowed in the photography exhibit, naturally, but there were other displays to enjoy, too ...
... in the olden times they seemed to aways want to bust the noses off sculptures ... (yes, i know, seems like something else always got removed, too, from the sculptures of males, that is ... i believe that was just one of puritanism's particularly peculiar perversions) ...
... i'll confess, when i'm in a museum i'm not much for reading all the little signs ... as i recall, this was a mask from some particularly expressive south pacific culture ...
... after the art museum, we went over to explore the perry macmillan arctic museum ... as always, i was brought to thinking that if i was a bazillionaire i'd have room after room after room in my house devoted to nothing but displaying the art of the cultures of the arctic circle ...
... i always laugh, thinking how the "impressionists" and the "surrealists" claim it was they who invented these styles of art ...
... such genius, portraying a musk ox as so approachable ...
... while there was a lot of information about his wife and family life, i found no mention of his "special girl friend" in the arctic, teen-ager aleqasina, nor, for that matter, was there any talk of their two children ... i found no giant photographs of matthew henson, either, and there didn't appear to be any discussion of the fact that they probably didn't actually reach the north pole ... (of the latter point, however, i suppose a five-ten mile error was pretty good considering the conditions and the technology he had to work with) ... while cindy explored the exhibits at her own pace, i wandered the rest of the building ...
... sometimes photography is simply looking up ...
... after the museum we walked back downtown to enjoy a nice lunch of indian food ... oh, the sheer joy of fresh naan bread ... the kitchen helper was amused, i think, at my "sale's pitch" to the owner that he should open a restaurant in the vacant store in robert's building ...
... stomachs full, we wandered down along harpswell neck, where we walked out onto a frozen over bay ... this week last year, wearing a t-shirt, i rode the countryside on my motorcycle ... new england, go figure ...
... sometimes photography is simply looking down ...
... or across ...
... did i mention looking up ... ??? ...
... we drove over harpswell sound, negotiated the wicked sharp curve to cross the gun point cove bridge onto ore's island, then wandered down the spine of the island, finally crossing the waffle-stone bridge to finish our little journey down bailey island way to dead-end at jaquish gut ... low tide, still water, sun at just the right angle, for the first time in my life i could see the rocks at the bottom of the gut ... the hundreds of millions of years of tilted rock strata were punctuated with patches of ice ...
... cindy has two of a photographer's most important tools, the super-duper-zoom lens and a puffy down-filled jacket ... wait ... yes, there's also a smile the cold just can't figure how to defeat ...
... just arrived by email, me, trying to see ...
... a wonderful day, shared made even more so ...