Johnathan Miller 1934-2019

I met Jonathan Miller (1) once and photographed him once. I make the distinction because photographing somebody does not always constitute an introduction to them. As a photographer you aim quite an offensive piece of equipment at people, ask them to move in this or that direction that they may not want to do, and then quite abruptly leave them when you have what you want. This is, of course, not always the case. You may be offered a drink or a cup of tea; you may even be offered dinner and to spend the night.

None of these things happened when I photographed Mr Miller. I waited for him on the set from which he was directing a BBC production, sat him down at a table, asked him to move a little this way and that, peered into my Hassleblad, pressed the shutter release and that was that.

Then I actually did meet him although this even was a stolen meeting.
I saw him at a club―not a night club―just a kind of place you heard about and went to see what it was like. It was not crowded and he was just wandering about alone with a drink in his hand. I had listened to him on Desert Island Discs (2) that afternoon. He had been describing how he got to know and love Beethoven’s late quartets ― listening to them on his car radio driving along the Los Angeles freeways. I was much taken by this and there the man was, the same day as I heard him describe this event, standing within a yard of me. I thought to hell with accosting famous people who you do not know, I went straight up to him and told him what a pleasure it had been to hear his unusual story. He said he was delighted that somebody had enjoyed it.

Footnote
(1) Jonathan Miller, 1934-2019, medical doctor, theater, film and opera director.  

(2) Desert Island Disc, "a (BBC Radio) programme in which a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you, assuming of course, that you had a gramophone and an inexhaustible supply of needles."

The programme was created by Roy Plomley in 1946. He also presented it until 1985. It is still broadcast every week.

Between autumn and winter

Nature is resting — gathering strength to make a nuisance of itself. Everything now is grey — soon it will be white and then it will be brown and then black. Cold will have taken hold of us and we shall waste our lives looking forward to spring instead of thinking “This is life; to hell with you, nature.”

Alexis Czapinski

The college champion tennis player Alexis Czapinski was made an All-American doubles player in 2018 and 2019 and All American singles player in 2019. She graduated from Washburn University in May 2019, ending the season ranked third in the nation in division II singles and first in the nation in division II doubles. She is now an assistant coach at the US Military Academy, West Point.

As well as assisting the coaching of the West Point women's team, Alexis has a strong following of civilian players at West Point where she holds clinics and private lessons. This is where I met her.

With firmness, tact, and wit Alexis takes apart your game and puts it back together with the clearest of instructions. As Alexis is only 23 you do not hesitate to use your new found shots to  place the ball to make her run. It is galling, though, that when you angle a shot for a certain winner, she moves across the court at an impossible speed and reaches it ― and it is she who makes the winner.

We also see her here with her dog Bowser whom she rescued in Kansas and brought
north with her.

Will's mother came to my recent Pop-up at 44 Main Street, Cold Spring, looked around at the prints displayed on the walls and asked if I would photograph her son. Her son, she explained, was an archer.

He told me that he had got good enough now to shoot from horseback. (Plans for a video of that.) He does not go after animals. He likes Korean bows but makes his own arrows. One of his bows belonged to his grandfather but he can't use it as his grandfather was left-handed.

This is Beryl, one of the two assistants to arborist Ian Kingsley. Ian is the brilliant young son of legendary Lew Kingsley who has looked after trees in the Hudson Valley area for sixty years. 

After a year with Ian, Beryl throws and fixes ropes and climbs trees to lop branches.  She is a rock climber in her spare time.
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Alessa Kreger, artist and designer

                       Alessa Kreger, artist and designer, Beacon, NY 2019

                    

At first I was not interested in photographing Alessa because I am not drawn to smiling Instagram pictures which is what Caroline showed me when she told me she had met somebody with a very interesting face. "I promise that in repose she does not look like this." she said, so I agreed to do it and a date was set.

Only a glance, as Alessa opened the front door for me and welcomed me into her sitting room, was needed to prove that once again Caroline was right. As Alessa and I stood facing each other she showed me with her unsmiling but warm expressions how very little I would have to do beyond finding some good light.

Alessa has an unusual combination of shyness, politeness and resoluteness. The resoltness was apparent to me by her unstated determination that this photograph was going to work. She did what I asked and joined in the conversations that I initiated. All along I could tell that she was putting herself in my hands, which, she rightly thought, gave us the best chance of getting the picture I wanted.

Alessa's latest graphic book is Breakout. https://www.instagram.com/alessakreger/?hl=en

Jenn Blatty, photographer, writer and documentarian covers the war in Ukraine

                      

 
    Jenn Blatty, on a recent visit to West Point, where she was a tennis and boxing champion.

Jenn Blatty served six years as an officer in the Unite States Army. She was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. She had for many years been drawn to capturing life with disposable cameras, pen and notebook so she took up photography and writing as a career after completing her service to the military. In early 2018 she began a project that took her back to the front line, this time with a camera and recorder. She went to the Donbas region of Ukraine where she found members, past and present, of the volunteer army fighting the Russians. 

"When we finished our tour of duty in another land we were sent home to address the physical and mental trauma of our experience. But Ukraine’s soldiers and veterans face an inescapable reality, fighting a war on their own land, making a transition to the “peace-life” nearly impossible with the uncertainty of another invasion and no end to the war in sight." 

"What makes you continue going back to Ukraine," I asked. 

"War-fighters around the world share a commonality that transcends the boundaries of nation and conflict, and I’m dedicated not only to archive the faces and stories of these fighters, but also to tell the story about the ongoing war in the Donbas, about those who continue to fight it, and about Ukraine's status as a country fighting for its independence, in the middle of Europe, in the 21st century."

And then she added: "Here is another reason for my returning at frequent intervals—the love of my life is one of the volunteer fighters. We speak neither of each other's language but rely on Google Translate to communicate." 

An exhibition of Jenn's work will be displayed at the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City in January 2020, in addition to other locations throughout the United States. 

See Jenn's (J.T.) work on www.jtblatty.com 

Waiting for a table at Ocean House, Croton-on-Hudson

                  Waiting for a table at Ocean House, Croton-on-Hudson.

Yesterday was my 87th birthday and Betsy took us to dinner here last night. Caroline parked the car in a nearby street and by mistake locked the steering. I tried to free it but failed. We told Paula, the co-owner, about it and she said, "Wait a minute, I'll tell Brian, he knows about these things." Brian is her husband and the chef.  It was an extremely busy night and I was not sure what he was going to be able to do to help us, but dropping everything in the kitchen, he asked Caroline for the key and where the car was. Caroline followed him out, and through the window, in roughly the time it takes to select a fish and put it on the grill, we saw them striding back waving and smiling.

Later in the evening the lights went out and a waitress with a single candle in a sorbet made her way to our table together with Paula and the other waitresses. They sang Happy Birthday; the rest of the house joined in. I then got up and asked the guests if I cold tell them what had happened to the car and how Brian, the chef, was not only a wonderful cook. Lots of clapping and people asking how old I was. I was much moved.

While all this was going I noticed the couple at the bar. I did not have my camera with me but these days there is no shortage of cameras to be had at the stretching of an arm. This is the first photograph I have posted using an iphone. I shall be taking all my life going pictures on one in the future.

       

This is Romain, whose uncle recently gave him several suits that he'd had made in the 1960s. The one that Romain is wearing in this picture is a Pierre Cardin made in Paris.

However hot it was, his uncle probably never wore any of his suits without a shirt, but Romain has his own style. The miniature on the chain around his neck is a portrait of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. 

I drove across the Bear Mountain Bridge worrying that Summer will have forgotten I was coming to take her photograph and my wife Caroline would once again be right—always confirm appointments that are made well in advance. I was brought up to make and keep appointments, come what may, but that was in the days before people were busy.

Summer Pierre is the cartoonist, illustrator, writer, and teacher who lives across the river from us and who also runs book clubs at Split Rock Books in Cold Spring.

After hearing the announcement from the Google map navigator that "your destination is on your left," I walked through an iron gate and before I had reached the front door it opened and Summer stood there with a welcoming smile. She introduced me to her husband, a tall, broad shouldered man who teaches philosophy up the road at West Point Military Academy, but who is not in the army.

Summer took me up stairs to her studio at the back of the house. She sat down in her chair and we chatted about 
San Francisco where she is from. She had a calm way about her. I asked her about the drawing on the wall behind her.

"The drawing is based on an old found image of a boy and his guitar from the 1940's that was entitled "Little King." I have no idea who this boy was, or where he performed, but evidently was a musician with the stage name Little King. I am very drawn to the vernacular and in particular, vintage images of unknown musicians."

"They have a beauty and a spirit that seems palpable. Music is very important to me and I like imagining the songs that these musicians played. Little King probably played a handful of upbeat country tunes like Hank Williams or maybe even Bob Willis. You can see it in his face--he's ready to give the folks a good time."

Amor Towles

My wife Caroline heard Amor talk about A Gentleman in Moscow at a book signing; she told me he would make a good subject for a photograph. My father was Russian and he served in the Imperial Army and then in the White Army which made a possible meeting with Amor even more of a lure to me.

The approach to his country house is down a mile long drive lined with trees and mass plantings of pachysandra and ferns that rival the mass plantings of pachysandra, periwinkle and bluebells at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

I hardly gave him a moment to say a word of welcome before I burst forth with my Russian stories, which, I thought later, was rather rude of me. But I have so few chances to talk about the last days of Imperial Russia that they must be grabbed, and Amor's politeness allowed me to press on uninterrupted.

I was also aware that telling my stories about Russia might interfere with the photography. But I plunged in. First about meeting the violinist Viktoria Mullova in Moscow in 1981, then the story of my being tracked down by a student at Sacramento University, who was totally unknown to me. He told me he was doing his theses on my godfather Grand Duke Dmitri. He told me that the Grand Duke's diaries are now at Yale being translated, and that there are several mentions of my father in them.

The prospect of finding anything about my father's life in Russia was exciting because he died when I was four. My mother seldom talked about him and she died when I was 15, an age before I had found the necessary resolve to press her about these things.  

After we had finished photographing by the lake he offered us a cup of Lapsang souchong. We sat in his kitchen and I made sure we talked about anything except Russia.

Louis, 2010-2019

Our beloved dog Louis died at home in Garrison on June 4, 2019 after a short illness. He spent his last days with Caroline watching the fish in lake Celeste and at the waterfall on Indian Brook Road, the two places he liked best since he was a puppy. He gave us nine years of untold love and fun.
 

Girl in a gray hoodie

Two women in their early forties in Newburgh NY got together after being married to men and having children. This girl is one of the women's daughters. I know nothing more about her which is something I have never minded about photographs I take. Knowing details of the subject's life does not change the quality of the photograph. One's appetite for gossip may be satisfied but that is another thing.    

John Richardson, raconteur

John Richardson, friend and biographer of Picasso, died recently at the age of 95. I took this photograph of him at his house in New Milford, Connecticut in 2008. As we drove up, he was there to greet us, dressed in an over large white undershirt. He showed us the house and library and I found several places I wanted to photograph him. "I'd better go in and change." he said.

After we finished with the photography he produced excellent Argentinian chardonnay and tinned guacamole, also very good. We sat in his lovely garden enjoying one of his many and great gifts, that of a raconteur.

Ian Kingsley and his crew arrived precisely at the appointed hour one frosty morning to cut down a Norway spruce which, as legend has it, was planted 50 or so years ago as a six foot Christmas tree which grew to a 75 foot giant whose roots destroyed the clay drainage pipes of the house.

First they fixed ropes that would guide the tree in the direction they wanted it to fall. I was nervous to ask if I could take some pictures as distracting a man half way up a 75 foot tree could lead to a serious accident, I thought.

When they were all safely on the ground and Ian, on the right in the photograph, had his saw out and was beginning his cut. I was standing on the drive, 180° from the intended direction of the fall.

"Am I all right standing here?" I asked

"Something very serious will have gone wrong if you're not."

He continued with his cut, gave the tree a little shove and down it crashed, exactly where they planned it.

  

 Happy New Year to all. A Japanese anemone with rue, lady's mantle, Artemisia and bronze fennel.

Betsy and Marshall took us to dinner at the Riverview in Cold Spring, a place that has been unfailingly good for the almost 30 years we have known it. Betsy's son Aden and his friend Jordan were also there. I was immediately struck by their looks and a few days later photographed them. They took seriously my interest in them as a subject. They were patient, phone-less and tireless.