The Winter of 2015
...aka "Beauty and the Beast"
First, the Beauty
During the Winter of 2015, eastern Massachusetts and Boston area was innundated with massive snowstorms and their mind-altering consequences in both the cities and towns, and along the coast. For the most part, the inner land areas were, for the most part, plow-tested and managed to weather these storms with relatively minor consequences. As a matter of fact, the massive amounts of snow dropped, blanketed us on numerous ocassions and allowed artists to respond in our own personal way. Sculptors took advantage of snow piles by sculpting them into snowmen and more elaborate hip figures. Painters used colored dyes to color the snow to look like outdoors drip painting installations. Photographers were out in full force, learning to shoot pictures in new ways derived from the experience earned during the multiple storms.
I was one of those photographers and my 1000+ daytime 360-degree snow photos of various locations throughout Boston gave me the courage and impetous to make an ambitious attempt to photograph the Boston Public Garden at night, in the middle of the final snowstorm "Thor", with my trusty Nikon D5300 boldly, hand-held. So many images were shot inside windows looking out, by those other timid Boston photogaphers. Or if they went outside it was for a few simple single shots quickly, or after the snow stopped falling. The results of my fearlessness is the "Winter Swan Song" 360-degree photo shown above and images below.
(Actually, my fearlessness was miniscule next to the fearlessness of the journalistic and art photographers that brave truely life-threatening and inhospitable regions of the earth, like Antartica, or the Himalayas to photograph landscapes where there are no people nor safe havens.)
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a winter moon over the Brookline Waterworks and partially frozen Reservoir was quite a sight
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Some people had a very different recollection of those winter storms. Inconvenience was as much a reality as the Beauty in Brighton Center during Neptune, but in the cities we were ready for it with shovels, plows and heavy equipment.
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The not-so-beautiful harse reality became apparent during the daytime in Allston/Brighton...
yet it had an upside in Roger's Park, probably the best sledding in Boston...
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...unlike the downside in the Gunrock section of Hull MA
which I'm calling "The Beast"
In addition to the many snow storm photos, I photographed a majority of the beaches along the MA coast, from Salisbury Beach to Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head Beach) in Martha's Vineyard for the purpose of exploring the aftermath of winter storm damage. I found many examples of beach erosion and property damages.
For the sake of this visual poem portraying the "beauty and the beast" sides, I've decided to include only the images of raised homes in the Gunrock section of Hull Ma as evidence of the toll that coastal dwellers have paid and are continuing to pay. For many of these homeowners, it seems to be more about the loss of home, rather than property.
(Many of these beach house photos remind me of the "old house" photo work of Walker Evans and William Christenberry, except that the houses are on stilts. I was fortunate to meet Mr. Christenberry once at his opening in the Jackson Fine Art gallery in Atlanta. He was as gracious in person as his photos are gracious and reverent with their subject matter.)
what to do; lift, leave or perish...?
WHY? Is it the view?
I don't think so. It's home, with all of the memories of past times, happy times, sad times, times of birth and death. Weddings and wakes, holidays and celebrations, young and old get-togethers. How can we abandon them all? I understand this now. My mother recently sold her home, our home of 50 years elsewhere, to move into a condo.
Many of these folks choose to lift and stay home, fearlessly, for now.
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