Perhaps you are wondering why I was in Guadalajara instead of Acapulco or Puerto Vallarta. Guadalajara is the capital of the state of Jalisco, in the Pacific western region. It is a fine city with great restaurants, shopping and friendly people; and it is also the home of the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara: UAG School of Medicine, where many Americans attend medical school.
I was a visiting professor (cardiology) there and I got to lecture in a large auditorium with a glass booth high up in the back where they did simultaneous translation. That was good for me, because my Spanish was limited to a few phrases like, “Mas Dos Equis por favor” (which means, “Another ‘Two X’s‘ beer please”). I had reason to suspect those translations because, when I launched a one-liner, only the Americans laughed — they were the ones without earphones. Maybe it’s about how you tell a joke.
In the photo, I approached a group of school kids, and they immediately morphed into the Marx Brothers. This is one of my favorite photographs and it was published.
Guadalajara is where mariachi music was invented. It is fun and lively, but when you are in that area, it seems like wherever you go, the mariachi follow. “Jalisco, Jalisco” is, of course, played a lot in that city.
Edith Piaf the French chanteuse wrote “La Vie en Rose” in the 1940’s, and she made it a hit. In 2007 a movie was made about her which also was called “La Vie en Rose.”
Here is Lady Gaga with a fine version from the movie A Star is Born. The scene is set in a drag bar where she meets the Bradley Cooper character.
Eileen has been my main model over the years, although our two boys had lots of photos also. What makes a snapshot a portrait? I can’t say exactly, because who’s to say when that transition happens. But I always to try to make my photos into something more. Of course, if you are shooting portraits, it helps to have natural models, like in this photo where 4 blue eyes are staring at me. Stephen turned out to have green eyes.
At some point I gave up color photography, but now, with Blogfinger and digital, I have returned. My photographs are always done with natural light—ie no flash. This one was shot with window light and a lamp in the back.—–Paul
MISS PEGGY LEE: “Them There Eyes” But Peggy, they’re blue!
SOUNDTRACK: From Phillip Glass’s opera/ballet “The Witches of Venice.” Glass wrote this work in 1995 for La Scala in Milan. It is based on a fantastical children’s story, set in the magical city of Venice. This is the “Plant-boy’s song.”
Today, the glow of the moon, of the moonrise, or the moon over the ocean, or over the river….makes me think of Andy Williams. I first listened to his new song, “Moon River,” playing on my car radio one night in 1961. That evening I was alone in my old Plymouth driving home from a date with my future wife, Eileen. I knew that “Moon River” had to be our song.
Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics, and Henry Mancini the music. It was very beautiful, but I never exactly knew what a “huckleberry friend” was; somehow I imagined I knew what kind of friend that was. Today I finally looked it up, and the Urban Dictionary says, “There are your good friends: people who love you. And then there are your huckleberry friends: people who’ve known you for years and have stuck by you and love you no matter what.”
Here are some of the lyrics from a song that was featured in the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s:”
“There’s such a lot of world to see
We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ’round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me”
Photograph by Anne Brigman. A large show of her work opens on Sept. 29, 2018 at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Internet photo.
Ad published in Camera Works. Design by Edward Steichen, 1906. Click to read it.
By Paul Goldfinger, photography editor at Blogfinger.net Re-post 2018. Part of our ongoing series about female photographers.
Anne Brigman (1869-1950) photographed in the early 1900’s. Her best known works were landscapes featuring nude women–herself and others at the Sierra Nevada.
The work was considered radical, but early innovators of photographic art considered her images to be “ground breaking” and “ahead of her time” including Alfred Stieglitz, the publisher of the first major photographic magazine Camera Works.
Wikipedia says, “Anne Brigman was an American amateur photographer and one of the original members of the Photo-Secession movement in America (founded 1902) which was a major force in promoting photography as an expressive art form. Brigman’s most famous images were taken between 1900 and 1920.”
Anne Brigman, who was from California, may have been an amateur, but she was a pioneer of the feminist movement in America.
The show in Reno will have 250 original prints. It opens on September 29, 2018 and closes on January 27.
A book is also being published—the first of Brigman’s photographs:
So if any of you are visiting the crap tables in Reno, stop by the NMA for a bit of culture.
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (We like to re-post this piece about every 1-2 years. Last post was July, 2019.)
Photographer’s note: If you go to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, near Tanglewood, there are lots of old B and B’s. Our friends Dick and his wife Luisa used to stay at Peirson’s Place, an old house, sort of ramshackle, with a large barn in the back where the kids could play and even sleep.
Maragaret would make breakfast each morning — nothing fancy like some places where they serve Eggs Benedict. Dick is an internist, now retired, who also is a pianist. His wife Luisa is an artist, so they’re the sort of people you run into at Pierson’s Place.
Eileen and I went there a few times. During the day you could visit farmers’ markets or historic attractions or towns in the area such as Lenox and Stockbridge. You could also wander the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival where the peaks of the Berkshires give off vapors in the morning. You can listen to a rehearsal in the afternoon and then picnic on the great lawn, under the stars, while enjoying the magnificence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
One morning I got up and meandered around the property at Peirson’s Place. There’s something about those cool mornings in the mountains as the new sun ripples across everything that’s still wet with dew and crisscrossed with leftover shadows.
I looked at the old house and the barn. There were flowers all around, and you could touch them, but not pick them. That’s what Margaret did before everyone came down for breakfast.
As I walked about, I came upon an old garage where I was startled by the eye of a creature peering out at me. It seemed alive even after I moved closer and identified it. The big red eye belonged to an old English sports car that was just itching to roar out of there onto the country roads.
SOUNDTRACK. “Someday Soon” by Judy Collins.
2018 Addendum: Eileen came upon a 1992 interview about Peirson’s Place. Margaret Mace Kingman (1912-1998) was being interviewed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology archives. She was a descendant of the Peirson family which owned the property .
The interview was about her life and education, but this is what she said about the family’s Richmond, Mass. home:
“My childhood was right here on the property because I was born in the same room, in the same bed my mother was born in, in the same room my grandfather was born in. The property had been in the hands of my family since the land was bought from the Indians in 1761.”
Margaret became a college professor, and she added, “Sometimes I take students up around on the trails; we have quite a number of trails because we have, along with the property I gave to my son, more than 400 acres here. And you can see the trees still, some of the crab apple trees to which he had grafted other types of apples. They’re still growing although everything’s grown up now into forest. It used to be much more open than it is today.”
