I ran into my good friend George Forss in the parking lot of the Post Office, coming to check my Post Office Box. Donna Wynbrandt the artist was driving George around, as his broken leg is in a boot cast. As often happens with George, his injuries seem to have almost miraculously healed up, and it doesn’t like he will need surgery. It’s sometimes tempting to roll my eyes at George’s theories about life force and aliens, but the more I get to know him, the more attention I pay to his theories of life. George was talking to a friend in the parking lot when I pulled up and his friend was explaining that he never goes to a dentist, he has no teeth and has pulled out every single one of them with pliers from the hardware store.
What did you do for the pain, I asked? Chewing tobacco, he said. George said he doesn’t go to the dentist either, and has removed at least 13 of his own teeth, he doesn’t recall exactly how. George and I are getting together Wednesday for my second photo lesson, the first one changed a lot about my photography. George and I have simliar ideas about lessons, we have similiar attention spans. George show me how to shoot on Aperture Priority and adjust my ISO and light settings. Always keep the meter needle just to the right of center, he said, and that has been working for me. I shoot on TV when there is a light issue, AP when there is a depth-of-field issue, on automatic only when time is of the essence.
Wednesday, we are working on emotions and photography. George says I am an emotional photographer, I see something that touches my emotions, and I take a photo of it. He is more mechanical, he studies the settings, composition and light. There is something to that, I call my photography emotional realism, all of my photos are emotional to me. George is one of the most famous photographers in the world, and I am fortunate to know him and have him as a friend.
On his new blog, George writes about his 800 page study of alien life, “Enos,” I can never succintly sum up George’s philosophy, but he describes his poetry in his own words. “I have 45 poems in my book that are quite terse, to say the least. Everything I do has a religious bent to it mixed with the fun of being open to some kind of intelligent spooks… an alien authority (alien to us)
(some sort of living entities in the universe) that I have been communicating with for many years.”
Whoever George has been communicating with has brought him love, genius and recognition. He is considered to be one of the premiere urban landscape photographers in the world, even as digital photography has pushed him to the margins. You can see his wonderful work at Brooklyn’s Park Slope Gallery website, where it is for sale. After 911, George left New York City to open the Ginifor Gallery in Cambridge, N.Y., where I was shocked to find him living a couple of years ago. The general public is not aware of his wonderful works, but every good photographer knows his name. George is my great and good friend, a soul mate to me. I am happy to report he will be taking portraits of people at the next two Bedlam Farm Open Houses in 2014.
George is a bit worried about me, I told him I was taking insulin injections, and he sent Maria and E-mail talking about how faith can heal many things. Maria said I didn’t have the kind of faith he did, I was always looking for it, but have never quite found it. George believes there is a life force governing the universe, that it is both joyous and healing and that is how he lives his life. He and Donne live a creative life, they are creative soulmates, always working on their art and images.
I have seen him heal himself time and time again, most recently when he collapsed with congestive heart failure, and has fully recovered. He is vague about it, but I don’t think he’s taking too many of the pills he got from the doctors. I have always sought George’s faith, not yet found it, I will keep looking.
George showed me a dent in his car where he had once hit a deer. He told me he went to Maine and encountered the Deer Father, the leader of all of the deers, and the Deer Father told him no more deers would ever commit suicide by running into his car. And since then, none have. George has some powerful friends he’s in touch with, they look out for him.