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Fire escape

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Columbia River Gorge

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Multnomah falls

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Black cowboy by Ron Tarver

The harlem studio museum is located in the heart in harlem on 125th street. This museum was founded in 1968 and is dovoted to collect and exhibit the art of African American artists. Recently it organized a temporary exhibit called “black cowboy”. It included several artists and several media such as video, paintings and photography. I really enjoyed the photography of Ron Tarver that captured African American cowboys that were and still are omitted in the classic popular imagery of the cowboy culture. In addition these cowboys operate in urban environement populated with street art, buildings and playgrounds something that seems contrary to the classic picture that we have in our minds of lonesome cowboys riding in the middle of the desertic wild wild west.

 https://www.studiomuseum.org/exhibition/black-cowboy

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Reflexions on a fishing trip

Sometimes in June with two friends we went on a camping trip to the Adirondacks. It was a trip that was supposed to be oriented around fishing, with one of my friend that is a very serious fisherman. After 6h of drive from NYC we joined a peaceful camping site boarding the majestic St Regis river. We arrived at the sunset. The colors were beautiful and the only sound around us was the one of the river flow. We did not have much food because we wanted to rely on our fishing capacities. So we prepared our gear and started wandering around the river trying to follow our friend’s advice to find the best spots to lure the fish. It is a bit complicated as a beginner to trow your line in the perfect spot where the trouts are waiting, behind big rocks protected from the strong currents, the pray/lure to pass and set their final attack. The non-experts including one of my friend and me only got one fish each in two hours that were too tiny and had to be released, while our expert, who was in a place that looks probably like heaven to him, was on a roll and got at least ten trouts of a descent size that he kept among the 30 that he caught. Some were rainbow and some were brown and all of them finished on an improvised barbecue. After the feast we established a plan for the next day and spend the night in our tents with the sound of the river as a lullaby. The next day we decided to take a canoe trip in the St regis canoe area. We took an over night route that is called the seven carries. This route travels from Little Clear Pond to Lower St. Regis Lake. It passes through St. Regis Pond, Green Pond, Little Long Pond, and Bear Pond and involves 7 trip out of the water caring your canoe and your gear to the next pond. So we decided to travel light with very little food, once again relying on our capacity to catch fish. We took some advice from the local guy who told us that the best way to catch fish is at dusk and putting your lure very deep, since it is hot outside and the strain brook trout likes cooler and deeper water. We started our trip with a little bath and then moved on. The area is gorgeous with beautiful pine trees all around the ponds and almost no human presence. We passed the first pond and carried on a short distance our canoe to the next one that was more protected from the wind and where the water was so flat and clear. We heard about some cliffs there from which we could do some diving. We tried to find this area and failed, but still enjoyed our bathing time. After joining the third pond which is the “little long one” we decided to set camp. We found a magic spot only for us in the forrest just by the pond. The sun was setting and we decided to go on our task to hunt for food. We went on our canoe and set our lines deep, but nothing was happening, not a single bite. At that time I lost a bit of my patience for the fishing and decided to take some pictures. The setting was mesmerizing with tree lines reflecting on the pond. It created this interesting symmetry that I tried to capture. At certain moments these reflexions were perfect and clear at other places with the movement of water they looked more like impressionist painting. I had an amazing time but our belly after a long exhausting day were starting to complain from deep inside and the strategy of the old guy was not paying off. At one point our fishing expert saw some movement that looked like fish trying to catch some insects at the surface of the water. Immediately he knew what to do. So he changed the lures on our poles to a spinner and threw them at this exact spots and stayed relatively close to the surface. Boom !!! The impact was impressive and very strong. We got something big and powerful. We were extremely excited that we almost flipped. He brought the fish to the canoe after a long fight and it was foot long Strain Brook trout. Dinner was there but we were greedy and all of us wanted to feel such experience. We stayed a bit longer and my other friend caught another one of the same size but he was persuaded that it was bigger. I did not have the skills or the luck and did not make it on my own. With the help of my expert I finally managed to drag a third one. We were set and decided to do our traditional barbecue. We cooked our fish with no seasoning since we decided to travel so light that we did not even take the salt. Nevertheless we carried our beers to celebrate our achievements. We barely finished everything and just at that point realized that we are in the middle of the forrest with nobody around and that the Adirondacks are familiar to black bears. We spread around some much fish smell and even us we were smelling like fish that we freaked out that we may attract some furry intruder into our camp ground. So a bit panicked we pulled into the trees the remaining food and took our knives and joined our tents a bit tensed. I was sharing the tent with a friend but our fishing specialist was alone in his own and tried to negotiate the biggest knife with my other friend in case there will be some danger. It did not happen since it seems that there is saying “never land your own knife”. It took us some time to fall a sleep which we ultimately did. We woke up on a beautiful sunny day the next morning with no traces of any intruder of any sorts. Reassured we took a shower by taking a bath in the pond and continued our journey. We canoed a lot that day and finished on a last but longest carry of 1.5 miles. This walk exhausted us and we decided to forget about fish for the day and treated our selves with a massive burger and ice cream sandwich in Lake Placid. After dinner we decided to spend our last night in a camp near the Aussable river. This river is flowing in a nice canyon populated with gigantic rocks. Our fisherman continued his passion of fishing while we decided to go for a walk and follow the stream of the river. We took some showers at impressive water falls and let the current carry us further down. At dusk we set a camp fire and spend the last night of our trip enjoying the calm and the sky full of stars. The next day our fisherman woke up with the birds for a last hit and we decided to chill before the trip back. We hit the road to NYC with a very peaceful state and refiled batteries till the next trip that I am still waiting with impatience...

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El Barrio, 

El Barrio or East Harlem or Spanish Harlem or finally the more hype SpaHa is a neighborhood of New York city located east of 5th Avenue in the upper Manhattan from 96th street all the way to 140th street. It used to be an Italian neighborhood in the early 20th century and home of some famous Italian-Americans such as the previous mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the actor Al Pacino. After the first world war Spanish speaking immigrants started to move in. This changed the neighborhood drastically, which is nowadays composed mostly of Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Cubans descents. The migration of the Caribbean population brought salsa music, bodegas, street markets as well as street arts. The street art in forms of gigantic murals are omnipresent, and it seems that this part of the city is still one of the richest in such art. The pieces are very specific to the area and mostly represent a tribute to the local way of life and culture. The “Spirit of East Harlem” painting by Hans Prussing achieved in 1973, located on Lexington Avenue and 104th street cover an entire building and represent local inhabitants playing dominoes, kids playing basket ball, mamas wandering with their kids and the older generations sitting and observing the human flow around them. It captures beautifully and accurately the spirit of East Harlem and sometimes while in the the neighborhood I feel I am living what this painting seized 43 years ago. There are as well paintings of figures of latin music such as the Cuban “Reina de Salsa” Celia Cruz and the local "El Rey de los Timbales" Tito Puente who made everybody move on the famous sound of “oye como va” as we can see it on murals that depict the motion of traditionally dressed dancers. In addition, one can also find numerous murals commemorating people from the hood that passed away. It is not uncommon to see painted obituaries that were commissioned by the families of the lost ones. The hood went through some difficult times in the late 1970s where unemployment and poverty hit bringing crime and drugs problems. To remind people to stay united and focus on education murals were erected with motos glorifying this idea. In the recent years newer project of murals started to emerge.  They are contemporary, beautiful and fill impressive spaces but do not really seem to represent the local spirit. It is part of the gentrification process that East Harlem is facing since it was recently described as the "New York’s Next Hot Neighborhood" by the New york Times. Nevertheless, the old spirit of East Harlem will remain in these murals and paintings which are protected and often restored by local communities. 

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Kauai sunset sky

One last post on the trip to Hawaii. Kauai is the oldest and most northern island of the archipelago. It is a very tiny island, but once again the landscape is very diverse. You can hike the green and rugged Napali coast with cliffs overlooking the ocean, you can explore the gigantic Waimea canyon and you can as well chill on beautiful beaches spread all over the coast. We tried to combine all these activities and our beach time was mostly spend on the north coast near the Hanalei Bay. The ocean there was rough and after fighting with the waves/barrels that will just eject you back on the beach, we will recover by waiting for the sunset. I couldn’t spend a day without “sunsetting” there. It is a perfect spot, since clouds coming from Mount Waiʻaleʻale, the most rainiest point on the island and almost in the world, slide down the mountain and come in the contact of the sun light, The results is just incredible, with the sky above you acquiring a full palette of colors. It becomes an evolving painting going from brighter to dimmer colors over time. It reminded me the colors and light captured by the William Turner on his paintings that he made after travelling through the British islands.  

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Lava works

On a Big island in Hawaii also called the island of Hawaii there are multiple wonders. One can go on top of volcanos at vertiginous hights (5000m) and explore their alpine environment, further down you’ll meet green pasture filled with cowboys, rain forests with picturesque water falls start to appear closer to the coast, and finally you end at the beautiful and rough pacific ocean white, black or green sand beaches. While you wander around this diverse environment very suddenly a switch of such nature occurs and the land become virgin and covered by black lava bedrock or locally called “Pahoehoe”. It is quite impressive to see a massive trail of black lava rock that killed everything on its way and changed this luxuriant environment into something as strange as it was coming from the outer space. You can go on those fields sometimes even drive over to join secluded beaches. While walking on this rocky desert your eyes are fixed on the ground especially on the shapes left by previous lava flows. These rocks, even though they stand still, seem in permanent mouvement. We saw fields of different periods from hundreds of years ago, where you see glimpses of life coming back and some very fresh ones.  Old lava fields were at occasions covered with petroglyphs, which are carving left by the local population centuries ago, representing usually significant events that they went through. There were some with simple holes that harbored the ombilical cord or “Piko” of the newborns. A tradition says if the umbilical cord remained over night and was found in the morning the child was assured a long life. While in Hawaii we were also very lucky to experience real lava in fusion. The Kilauea volcano was very active, and spiting tons of lava in the ocean and making this island even bigger. We were able to walk on very fresh lava fields that was dangerously warming up your feet through your shoes. It was quite spectacular to be in this boiling environment, surrounded by sulfuric fumes emanating from the flowing lava and witnessing such natural events that contributed to the creation of the entire archipelago of Hawaii. 

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Up in the air

I was traveling from NYC to Hawaii recently. During the 11 hours flight there are at least 6 hours that you spend over the entire US of A. Before joining the monotonous blue of the Pacific Ocean you see diverse landscapes under you composed of valleys with sinuous rivers, lakes with tribal shapes, schools of clouds, lonely clouds, patchworks of agricultural fields and human made geometric forms in the middle of nowhere where it seem that there is no life. It is hypnotizing to take this step up and stare at this ever-changing environment.

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The Bronx ride

Bronx is just few steps away but I rarely visit this neighborhood. I have been in some landmarks of the Bronx such as the Botanical Garden or Orchard beach but I never wandered around. I took my bike the other day and rode for at least 2 hours and 30km in this hood. It was the 12th of June which serendipitously coincided with the Puerto Rican parade of New York. The streets were filled with speakers blasting latin music and people were dressed in Puertorican blue, white and red colors. I rode all the way from Harlem to Hunts point. From there I got a glimpse on the infamous Rikers Island, watched some planes land at Laguardia airport and contemplated massive bridges connecting the Bronx to the Queens. I then decided to follow the Bronx River with no specific plans. It lead me to the park called the Concrete Plant park. This site was previously occupied by a concrete factory that went bankrupt in the late 1980s. It was then taken over by the parks department that cleaned the area and restored the concrete plant structures decorating this park as modern statues. I continued my ride, passed a ruined train station (Westchester Avenue station) that is hanging suspended in the air totally abandoned. It seems there are plans to save this station from demolition too and make another interesting park at the edge of the Bronx river. After joining the Crotona Park I decided to cross back the Bronx and head home and passed through very diverse areas either filled with massive projects and some murals depicting local life or with individual old school houses. I crossed the bridge on 155th to get back to Harlem and stopped at the basket ball court on Frederick Douglass avenue, that always offers some great basket balling. I stayed there some time admiring young teenagers mastering the sport and making a show with their amazing dunks. The Bronx was great but it is huge and definitely calls for other rides.

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Bonaventure Cemetery

We had recently a trip to the south, in Savannah, Georgia. It was a short getaway to get some warm weather and a break from New York city. Savannah is a peaceful and beautiful place, populated with thousands of live oak trees filled with spanish moss (which is not a moss apparently but a plant that mostly absorb its nutrient from the air and the rainfall) hanging from them and giving this typical gothic imagery of the south of the USA. The city has a lot of charm emanating not only from these atypical trees but as well from British colonial houses and 24 squares distributed all over the old district. We visited all of them and each offers a nice piece of Savannah history. These squares all have comfortable benches and you just want to sit there, read a book, let the day go through, or discuss with locals as Forrest Gump did. There is as well an old cemetery called Bonaventure located on a scenic bluff of the Wilmington River. It is a luxuriant cemetery, where statues of all major religious figures stand alongside with the local vegetations. Early in the morning there is no crazy organized tours looking for ghosts but just birds that are singing. We spotted some cardinal, a purple finch and a couple of warblers. It was just as a the name of the cemetery says a good adventure. 

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Enlightened

James Turrell is an American artist that I first encountered several years ago while visiting the MOMA PS1 in the Queens, NY. I entered in a room that was filled with benches leaning against all the walls and in the roof there was a perfect rectangular hole opening on the sky. I sat down and observed the sky and its ever-changing shapes of clouds on this beautiful sunny day. On my way out of the room I learned that it was a James Turrell piece that was called “skyspace”. From then I started following anything from him. I was very pleased when he took over the Guggenheim museum for its piece called “Aten Reign”. This enormous site specific performance used the rotunda of the museum as enclosed space filled with shifting artificial and natural light over a 60 minutes cycle. For the observer there was a sort of tatami on the floor where you can lay down and observe this hypnotizing light peacefully transitioning to every color of the visible spectrum. It was a very unique experience that plays with your visual senses. Lately the Pace gallery is exhibiting four pieces of the artist in Chelsea. As usual seeing Turrell work was a delight. In this small exhibition he is using light projection on specific locations that form geometrical shapes. Such shapes appear to have a mass and three dimensions while they are only created with light projection. You remain mesmerized in front of his pieces and your visual senses are challenged. 

http://www.pacegallery.com/news/2740/pace-opens-james-turrell

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Flying home, Harlem Heroes and Heroines

All along the NYC subway you will be exposed to many mosaics on the walls. They usually relate to the neighborhood where you are getting on or off the train. In Harlem they are particularly abundant and very colorful. This one called Flying home, based on a Lionel Hampton song, was done Faith Ringgold in the late 90s. It depicts african american performers, painters, sports figures and political leaders. They are brought to life flying in these mosaics to recall the cultural zenith of Harlem. Ringgold says, "I wanted to share those memories, to give the community - and others just passing through - a glimpse of all the wonderful people who were part of Harlem. I wanted them to realize what Harlem has produced and inspired."

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La dune du Pilat

It Is the highest sand dune in Europe. It culminates around 110 meters above the sea level and is constantly moving inland toward the forrest. It is quite impressive and the hike up to the top is very steep and exhausting, if you are not cheating and taking the stairs. We even saw some people body boarding down the dune dangerously fast toward the trees. On the top you have on one side the view on the deep blue of the Atlantic Ocean and on the other side on the luxuriant green forrest. It is peculiar place and has this feeling of an oasis. It is very long (2.7Km) and fairly wide (500m) and most of the people don’t go down to the ocean after experiencing the initial hike uphill that costs a lot of energy. It leaves the path to the ocean very virgin. We had a lot of fun running down and leaving our traces on the immaculate sand. Closer to the ocean some vegetation was flowering adding some more colors to this beautiful landscape. We stopped at the beach for sometime and observed the birds that were diving in the water and having a feast. 

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Downtown When living in New York this is a place where you rarely go. There is not so much happening around there that I am aware of. During the week this area is packed with workers filling these huge towers and on weekends it is fairly deserted except some tourists hanging at the balls of the bull of wall street which is supposed to bring them prosperity. It is great place to wander around on sunny weekends. Old and more recent skyscrapers share the neighborhood very densly cutting the sunlight in fantastic beams filling the area with amazing reflexions and bright builting tops. After walking in tiny street it is great to take step back and get another perspective of this neighborhood by getting on the staten island ferry which offer amazing global view of this distric.

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Winter by Ryan McGinley

Ryan McGinley is a young New York based photographer. The auto-publication of the photo book called “kids are all right” made him known to the public. This book shows his New York friends in their daily life. They are always in motion, during day time they run, bike, skateboard and at night time they graph, party, take drugs, have sex. It is a beautiful book of a young generation enjoying and carelessly living fast. This book came into the hands of the curator of the Whitney Museum who organized his first solo exhibition at the age of 25. Ryan McGinley continued his work through series of road trips and exposed us to his daily life with his friends in great American landscapes. He is from now on far from waiting for the perfect photos to happen but made them happen and organize his shoots very meticulously. These perfectly staged pictures are a lot more esthetic but somehow do no harm the youthfulness of his models and the beauty of his work. He made several series of photos some even in his studio with a lot of nude bodies interacting with various animals sometimes in a funny way sometimes a bit more provocative. The latest series called fall and winter were simultaneously exhibited in LA and NYC team gallery respectively. I have the opportunity to visit winter in NYC and was once again nicely surprised by the power and the beauty of his pictures. They were captured upstate in New York and this time the landscape seem to take a more central place than his models. These impressive photos might have involved some suffering of his models but certainly were worth it. 

http://www.ryanmcginley.com/

http://www.teamgal.com/artists/ryan_mc_ginley

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Windows on vacation

After the stained-glass ones, another post on windows from my latest vacation. You may think it is an obsession, but I am not really into window fetishism. It’s just that after such a long time spent in New York City I forgot how much these windows, their shades and flowers ornate urban areas of European cities. Some are German, others are French and there are even Balkan representatives. They are surrounded by concrete, rocks or vibrant colors. They stir our curiosity and make us wonder who lives on the other side. Sometimes you can guess by the clothes hanging and drying in the summer sun. When they are open you feel welcomed and comfortable, and when closed you unconsciously respect the calm for the siesta that might be happening. It was such a pleasure wandering around tiny European streets hearing from time to time bits and pieces of conversation coming out of those windows.