The Wolf, The Lamb and Harmony in Black and White Through Classic Lenses

 

 

A Renaissance-man friend, who harmoniously navigates between medicine and the arts, sent a picture of a water colour nude painting his elementary school art teacher had given him as a present. He commented “I love the richness and warmth of washes of colors”.

Although I started with water colour, most of my painting is in oil and acrylic. The attraction of water colour remains that of the unpredictable for me. The way colours could run, mix, and escape what the painter intended to achieve. When using oil, especially acrylic paint, the artist remains in full control.

But what makes a water colour work most attractive to me is the harmony that the unpredictables achieve.

So, this morning I was thinking about the science and poetry of harmony.

Of course, as a photographer, I cannot think about harmony without recalling Newton’s seminal work Optiks where in the 1660s, he carried out experiments of sun rays’ reflections and refractions through prisms. This is how we know about rainbows as he identified the ROYGBIV colours (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet). He stated:

“…if the Sun’s Light consisted of but one sort of Rays, there would be but one Colour in the whole World”

But a rainbow, or harmony in colours, is never exclusively a scientific observation. Indeed, Goethe, as a philosopher, suggested that observed colour was not simply a scientific measurement, but a subjective experience perceived differently by each viewer. He stated:

“Colour are light’s suffering and joy”

Interestingly, the discussion of colour preceded both Newton and Goethe, as Aristotle tackled the theory of colour by bringing in religious interpretation. He proposed that colour came from heaven and that all colour came from darkness and lightness or black and white. In some way, Aristotle addresses colour as if a reflection and refraction of the human condition, or perhaps vice versa.

(A good discussion of the above history can be found on this Smithsonian library page “The Science of Colour” https://library.si.edu/exhibition/color-in-a-new-light/science)

 So, with the scientific, philosophical and religious background to the theory of colour and the concept of harmony, my mind migrated to the Hebrew and King James Bibles. I grew up with the imagery attributed to Isaiah 11:6 where the image of peace, calm and harmony is the lion lying down with the lamb.

Well, a little research let me to realize that neither the Hebrew Bible (The Tanakh) nor the King James Bible mention the lion lying down with the lamb. Indeed The Hebrew Bible says:

And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together

And the same lines in Isaiah 11:6 in the King James Bible (1611) read

The wolfe also shall dwell with the lambe, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calfe and the yong lion, and the fatling together

 

… All this brought me back to black and white photography! In the past 55 years I have, a street photographer captured fleeting moments from around the world on miles of film that probably would cover part of the world at list once. I looked for a couple of shots that may represent harmony in the context of this discussion.

The photo on top is from Santa Fe, New Mexico I took with a 1960s Nikon F fitted with a same era Nikkor 105 mm lens. A man was metaphorically describing harmony through his dog, cat and a white mouse. When I saw the scene, the mouse was on the back of the cat. By the time I clicked, had moved on the neck of the cat expressing the hope that a dog, a cat and a mouse can co-exist without fear. In harmony.

 

Then I thought of a photo I took in a 1880s forsaken Arizona cemetery. The grounds were unkept, overgrown weeds and cactus covering the few gravestones half sunk in the ground under the weight of time. There was a wooden cross, lonesome and without any markings but somehow represented a calm to my moment.

Unkept grounds and unwept cross.

I had a 1955 Soviet/Ukrainian Zorkii camera, a Leica clone I have used for decades. The lens is a 1956 Jupiter-8 marked in Cyrillic, ЮПИТЕР-8, a postwar Soviet copy of the prewar Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/2 for the Contax.

Here is the camera and lens:

 

I like this lens for portraiture as wide open it gives the characteristic Sonnar swirls to the background of the subject in focus.

This time, my subject was the lonesome cross with no markings. And the 65 year old lens gave swirls and light flare that I was not anticipating, as if the running colours in water colour painting.

 

And the circle was completed.

 

July 28, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021

The 4th of July 2021 in Prescott, Arizona

It has been very hot in the Southwest but nothing could stop the gathering of thousands on the city Square. I wanted to capture a few moments of this post -2020 pandemic year 4th of July celebration, but given the heat decided to take my dog for an early walk before the large crowds gather.

This year, my goal was to take photos of the environment representing the celebration, rather than pursue street photography of those present.

So, I took my 1970 Nikon F with same year's 135mm Nikkor-Q Auto lens for a cumulative age of 100 years in equipment between camera and lens!

First, as we were walking downtown, a wild cottontail rabbit ran by reminding me that we were indeed in the desert and that it was already 80 F degrees just after sunrise.

The photo at the top of this page captures the identity of the city -- historically a frontier town of the Territories, where cowboys lived life with seemingly infinite land and big skies. But today, I wanted to capture the 4th of July, so a poster of the Constitution helped me frame the photo with "We the People".

Next, to continue with the theme of identity, I wanted my Nikon F to "see" statues around the square in the early light. Here is part of a Sheriff's statue looking at the boots of a fallen colleague. The writing reads:

                                                            "Lest We Forget"

Finally, the statue of  two soldiers topping the memorial for the local soldiers who gave their lives in Vietnam. Opening the lens wide, I wanted to blur the background but still show the chairs already in place for the day's parade.

By now many of the vendors were opening their tents showcasing sculpture, painting, metal work and food. I found this composition of tonal range and gray shades harmony. A perfect setting for testing my expired B&W 100 film!

We had already walked more than two miles and my dog was ready to walk the last mile and get home where he would eat his ice cubes and lay two feet away from a floor fan. 

So, we passed by an antique store that has been on our daily walk path for now more than five years. But the early light was soft to capture both foreground shades and the eclectic nature of this store. By now I had captured cowboys, Vietnam soldiers, a Sheriff's statue, a woman getting her vendor tent ready, and now a Civil War wagon!

Perfect symbolism for the 4th of July.

But symbolism was not yet to end. Behind a metal fence, someone had piled stones perhaps driven by an artistic impulse. But from my angle and the early morning shades, that edifice, in contre-jour, looked either like a cowboy from the back or three hats piled atop of each other.

Now I was ready to see what would come out of my trusty 50 year old Nikon F that has traveled the globe more than once with me and NEVER stopped performing! In fact it is my only camera, out of a few dozen, that has never been repaired or adjusted after running miles and miles of film through.

Here is my most beloved time capsule of mechanical perfection.

July 3, 2021

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2021