A rare gift

Karen McCormack discovered that animals liked to talk to her when one morning she left the house and a hawk was sitting in the drive. Karen approached the hawk and saw that she had a carcass in her talons. The hawk was dragging it slowly away from Karen but she reached forward and tugged it from her. The hawk released the carcass as though she were giving her food to Karen. "I have just shown you something about the way we live," the hawk whispered, and flew away.

Karen began her intuitive life when she did Tarot readings, but soon gave it up because her clients became a nuisance by ringing her the day after their reading and complained that nothing had changed.

Lone croquet player

The London Column, an online pictorial report from the life of the city, are publishing this week some of my photographs taken between 1964 and 1980. Here is one of a lone croquet player at the Hurlingham Club.

 

Blue, check and pink

They arrived in a '90s Corolla, drawing up at the kerb beside us on Liberty Street in Newburgh. The girl with bronze hair sat in the passenger seat with her feet on the dashboard. She smiled. She said she had a son. "Where is he?" "With his father." A third person appeared from the back seat. We wandered around the street looking for somewhere to take the picture.

The young man, a fashion stylist who lived in East New York, Brooklyn, pointed across the street to a background he liked. I wanted the church doors where they would be lit by the sun reflecting off the buildings opposite. The young man said the particular church was not his religion but he did not mind if we used the doors.

They liked our dog Louis. Caroline took a picture of Louis and me with the three friends.

Felicity and Anna

As we were chatting about my temporary studio—the potting shed at the Garrison Institute that was probably once a carriage house, I looked towards the place where I wanted my subjects to stand. A toad sat there. We stared at him for half a minute and he then lazily hopped on to the bricks and disappeared under one. He did not reappear so we got on with the photography.

Massage therapy

We were looking for an unused or disused industrial building in Newburgh NY in which to display my photographs of the city next summer, to coincide with the publication of the book. We passed this young man having his shoulders massaged.

Man of purpose

Indeed. 15 or so years ago he started Grey Printing in the sleepy old town of Cold Spring, NY, full of musty antique shops. Grey Zeien, then still running an advertising agency in New York City, moved in the latest printing, copying and scanning equipment, and employed Ruth Eisenhower, who is still there. Over the years Ruth decorated the place with four by six color snapshots that she took of everybody who came into the shop. They are strung overhead and stuck to every wall—thousands of them. Ruth adds to the collection each week.

Grey sold his agency a year before the tumble and devotes his time to advising people on their perfect binding, cards, signs and banners. and to his art, recently displayed in neighboring Beacon, and permanently on view at his online gallery, which you have to wipe you brow in relief at seeing a website so simple and beautiful in design.

Leader of the pack

I was photographing a friend sitting outside a gallery in Beacon, NY where his work is on display when Caroline noticed Megan. She was locked in a kiss with a boy but they eventually released each other and I was able to ask if I could photograph them. Her boy friend did not want to but Megan and her sister and friend agreed to it.

Our new friend

We became friends sitting round a table for 8 at the annual farmers' market dinner in Garrison. The table was nearest the bar and furthest from the band.  2 weeks later he and his wife and their 2-year-old arrived at the studio punctually at eleven. 

Same girl, different chicken

Same girl eighteen months older, different chicken in new location. Daylight from windows down the entire side of an old carriage house: my studio until my fingers freeze to the camera.

The shot I missed was of her father carrying the chicken in a cage covered with a scarlet cloth across a wide lawn in the rain.

Assistant

This photograph was taken in 1986. It is a Polaroid of my assistant at the time. A year later we were married. It was taken in my studio on Lafayette Street, NYC and was the first photograph I took of her. Caroline loves to take pictures herself now and last week I assisted her—mostly carrying the tripod and camera bag.

Young chef

I sat in my studio of the day (a 40ft potting shed lit by a bank of windows down one entire side), waiting for Laura to finish preparing cucumbers in the kitchen where she works at the Garrison Institute. She walked in and stood in front of me. "Where do you want me?"

"There, by that pile of bricks. Stand there, just the way you are standing now."

George Carlin

Our 20 year-old son Nicholas left for Heavenly, Lake Tahoe, California 2 days before the storm. He said he was now ready to live alone, away from home, because he had listened to Mr. Carlin's monologues. These, he said, had equipped him with the wisdom to enable him to live a prosperous and fulfilling life. We left on the best of terms because I told Nicholas how much I had enjoyed my hour with Mr. Carlin in 1985. I have now begun to listen to the broadcasts on YouTube myself, and although I recently had my 79th birthday, I may still be able to benefit from some of Mr Carlin's perception.

Waiting for winter

At the waterfall towards the end of summer before darkness and chill take over, when companionship, fires, candlelight and books will keep us charged.

Romanian artists

I went to photograph a Romanian artist in Newburgh, NY but found two—both sculptors and brothers.    

Constantin, on the right, said, "I knew it was time to leave Romania when my 6 year-old daughter came home from school one day and reported that her teacher had told her that   the President was her father and the President's wife was her mother." That was thirty years ago.

By plane from Romania, Constantin landed in Florida. "I breathed the air and took the next plane out. It happened to be going to Whitehorse in Canada, on the borders of Alaska. I spent three or four happy days in an igloo. I wanted to stay but my wife did not."


Constantin makes a parachute jump once a month. "Just for the thrill of it. My wife doesn't like me to do it."

 

American soldier

Constantin Radu: "My studio is full of all sorts of crazy things, but I don't like modern. Two railway tracks like this." He raised his arms and crossed them in front of his body and shook his head.

Grey and gold

Humid day in Newburgh.

Sandy Saunders

Telephone call last week from Sandy to say that I must go and see the cow parsley in his top field. As beautiful as it was, as soon as I saw it I wanted to include a person. Sandy, the guardian and farmer of the land immediately came to mind. Here he is at 7.15 in the evening, just returned from bringing in the last of the hay and mercifully keeping still for one-half a second.

"This field will make good silage."

Longish hair and hay

We returned to the farm after photographing in the cow parsley to find Matthew, one of Sandy's helpers, standing by the barn. Sandy had warned him that I was on the hunt for more farm subjects and asked him to wait. I looked at the sky. We had 10 minutes, that's enough time. I dug the legs of my tripod into the mixture of hay and manure outside one of the stable doors and screwed on the camera.

Glass polisher

One evening at our favourite (and almost only) restaurant, we noticed a new waitress. Her duties included polishing glasses which she did with the best glass polisher, a good linen napkin. Her actions were swift and thorough; her concentration unwavering.
"Do you ever break one?" (The glasses are particularly fine at this place.)
"Sometimes," she answered shyly. "Then it's usually a Champagne glass, the tall, thin ones." We returned at 4.30 a few weeks later and I photographed her during preparations for dinner.

Girl on a pink bench

"Smile and ask her." I said to Caroline. I sat in the car exhausted from driving to Pennsylvania and back the day before, then playing tennis, followed by a disturbed night. Our dog Louis tried to scare away coyotes by barking at them with his head stuck through the cat flap.

As I sat in the car I thought how unlikely it was for the girl in pajama bottoms, who had disappeared into the laundrette in Beacon, to say no to being asked by Caroline and Louis if she would have her picture taken. Louis, now an invaluable member of the team, trotted towards the launderette guided by Caroline. It was as good as done.