Taken today

Untitled, Embarcadero BART Station, San Francisco, October 2009.

Portrait from open train door

Portraits from Open Train Doors, San Francisco, August 2009.

Taken today

Portraits from Open Train Doors, San Francisco, August 2009.

Taken today

BART, Orinda, California, August 2009.

At the end of the day

Group Center, San Francisco, April 2008.



I'm an end-of-the-day photographer. On my way home I take pictures of people on their way home. Five o'clock light is a harsh and blinding spotlight that makes huddled pedestrians look like bas relief. Backlit, the same light portrays them as the urban warriors they truly are, the shadows as long as the day that is about to end. An hour later, the light softens to cast a golden glow on everything -- magic hour it is called -- magic to the photographer and magic to everyone else because it conjures the promise of rest.

But before rest comes the commute; I photograph that too. Light pierces the descent underground and transforms a man's head into a ghostly apparition. The same head is multiplied three times in reflections and shadow, a hydra retreating to its cave.

The train ride home brings close encounters in closed quarters. If the morning commute is lively with chatter and the rustle of newspapers, the late afternoon commute is marked by pensiveness and hunched shoulders. For those who are seated, it is a time to recharge. For those who stand body-to-body on the aisle, the commute is long and the temper is short; let no man be a jackass and let this train keep running or else. Taking pictures inside the train is a stealth operation (I will not be that jackass). I am careful even though everyone is too exhausted to care. Most of the time I don't even bother to take out my Leica. I just want to get home, say hello to my wife in the garden, make coffee, have my second cigarette of the day, and read The Huffington Post online.

Taken Today

Portraits from Open Train Doors, San Francisco, June 2009.

THX-1138, high key, and Harry Callahan

THX-1138, San Francisco BART, April 2007.

This high key picture of a passing train reminded me of THX-1138. Audiophiles will recognize THX (Tomilinson Holman's eXperiment) from the roaring locomotive credits found in some DVDs, the trademark of Lucasfilm's high fidelity quality assurance technology used for movie soundtracks. But for cinephiles, THX can only mean one thing: the 1971 film THX-1138, George Lucas' Orwellian nightmare of totalitarianism set in the 25th century.

THX-1138 is George Lucas' first feature film, which he made after apprenticing with Francis Ford Coppola, six years before the rampaging phenomenon called Star Wars. It was shot in color, but many of the scenes have the feel of black & white in high key. Characters, male and female, wear white, their heads are shaven clean, and they are shot against empty white spaces whose stark incandescence blinds the eyes; they appear imprisoned in eternity.

The high key images of THX-1138 recall the 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer's masterpiece of minimalism. The movie has been spectacularly restored on DVD by Criterion and features an alternate score, "Voices of Light," which was inspired by the film. The movie is a must see for the performance of Maria Falconetti, who plays Joan of Arc, and its unforgettable high key images.

High key photographs, like the portrait I shot on the right, are remarkable for their exaggerated brightness and shadowless contrasts, achieved through exposure, lighting or post-processing. The white-on-white quality of high key images gives them the delicacy of brush paintings; at their most pronounced, the brightness consumes the forms, leaving nothing but line.

Some of my favorite high key images were made by Chicago photographer Harry Callahan, whose nudes and portraits of his wife, Eleanor, are oftentimes so washed out by light that they become abstractions of the female form. Callahan's pictures have been described as "quiet," like the laconic photographer himself, the kind you would look at while listening to Mompou or Satie. It's the high key; white is the color of tranquility.

High key images from THX-1138

A shaft of late afternoon light

Untitled, Oakland, California, March 2008.

Collages

Cafe de la Presse, San Francisco, May 2007.

A photographer is confronted with a complex web of visual juxtapositions that realign themselves with each step the photographer takes. Take one step and something hidden comes into view; take another and an object in front now presses up against one in the distance. Take one step and the description of deep space is clarified; take another and it is obscured.
-- Stephen Shore

To this, add a reflecting surface, and the "web of visual juxtapositions" becomes even more complex. It can be anything: a window pane, a windshield, a granite wall. At the right angle of light, even a plastic book jacket could make Francis Bacon's image of Woodrow Wilson layer itself like magic over a child caught up in books.

Reflections can make visual collages that are the stuff of dreams. An airplane hovers over a bus that runs on a checkerboard street. Salt-and-pepper shakers are candle offerings borne by a woman's shadow. Door knobs turn a businessman into a cyborg. The Manhattan skyline materializes in a San Francisco street. A car crashes through a louvered window, but neither pedestrian nor saints care.

Creating order out of the mad jumble of things apparent and reflected is a puzzle whose solution oftentimes yields delightful surprises.

Portraits from open train doors

From series Portraits from Open Train Doors, April 2008.

This series was taken in San Francisco's underground commuter train system. There are a few seconds, just after the commuters have settled into their places inside the train, when the doors remain open.

In a fraction of one of those seconds, I take these portraits. The people in these pictures are at rest; they are in between one moment -- the train about to depart -- and the next -- the train departing. Sometimes they are not aware of my camera, but usually they see it. They do not know how to react to what they are seeing because the camera is unexpected; it's not suppose to be there. The look on their faces is one of disbelief and incredulity. And just before they realize and understand what has just happened, the doors close and the train speeds away.