Day: March 20, 2014

George Forss’s genius hovers around him like a cloud, I was in his darkroom this afternoon and I saw that David Douglas Duncan’s book: “George Forss: New York, New York: Masterworks Of A Street Peddler” was on a table and open to the centerpiece photograph, a stunning shot of sailboats on the East River sailing by the United Nations complex.

This was the sort of George Forss photograph Ansel Adams might have had in mind when he said George’s photos gave us images of “extraordinary vitality. He sees with an incisive eye and haunting spirit. I have seen no photographs of recent years as strong and as perceptive.”

As a photographer, I look at a photo like this and I can’t imagine how George could have taken it. It is so wise, deep and majestic, it is a perfect photograph. It captures an image, but so much more than that, it captures everything New York City wanted to be, perhaps used to be.  I asked him today how he got that shot, he said he was on Roosevelt idea, he was using a camera he found in someone’s trash and some optics he built himself, that was as far as he could go in explaining it. George can never explain to me how he took these shots, because he took in a photographic universe so radically different from mine.  I can’t imagine a lens as wide as this, getting this depth of field and contrast with any equipment I have or know about. George says he never met a camera he didn’t like, and I see that is true.

Watching George I see the time and patience – unknown to people like me in the digital age – it took to capture this photo, to study the light, to wait for the right moment, to work for hours in the darkroom and then more on the finished print. He waited for a day or so out on Roosevelt Island for this shot, spent an hour or two setting it up. My photographs are taken in second, not hours or days.

I am so grateful for George, he fills me with the excitement and promise of life every time I talk with him.

I want to thank all of the good people out there who contributed to George Forss’s Kickstarter Project The Way We Were. George has raised more than $13,000 on Kickstarter, and more from a private donor. There are still nine days to go to fund his project, but George is not checking his money, he’s off and running on his book. Today, we reviewed the book contract from his publisher, who will design and publish George’s book, a collection of mostly unseen and brilliant photographs of the New York landscape before 911.

George has been reborn. He was always active, always creative, always busy, but there is a new gleam in his eye and a focus to his work. He has a new lease on life, a chance to publish some of his great photographs. Every morning, at 8 a.m. he is in his dark room with  his chemicals and tubes and tanks, refining his photos, working to do them and re-do them, to make them perfect. He calls me at 8:30, excited, passionate to tell me he has made a breakthrough with this print and that print, using this technique or that. I never understand George’s techniques, they are beyond me. George’s darkroom is a dark feast of smells and sounds and beeping lights, only he knows what is connected to what.

But I understand the excitement in his voice. “It is like being born again,” he said, “this is the best time of my life.” He hasn’t even mentioned the aliens for a few days. George saves clippings about the New York Carriage Horses for me, he is e-mailing my posts to his friends in New York, tormenting them (many do not believe the horses should remain in the city.) Every afternoon I stop by to see the work he has done, it is usually hanging above the sink in the downstairs bathroom, an annex to his dark room.

This George’s work, his life’s passion, his destiny. He will create a great book, his own book and it will do well, I know it. He will be selling copies of his book at the second Bedlam Farm Open House on Columbus Day weekend, and I will be selling copies of Saving Simon: How A Rescue Donkey Taught Me The Meaning Of Compassion. Battenkill Books is coming to the farm to set up a table for both of us, we will do a joint talk and signing together.

I love watching George’s courageous and unflagging determination, he has had many reasons to give up on his life, he never has, he never will. His ambition for the end of his life is to be taken away by an alien spaceship and whizzed off to another place in the universe. “I’ll be the one chasing after the ship and yelling take me, take me!,” he often tells me.

I told him that would be a great Kickstarter project in itself. “Oh,” he said.

Water can, Jack’s Outback, Main Street, Cambridge, New York.

Zelda is the most interesting sheep I have encountered, she is smart, strong, protective and vigilant. I wish her good luck with her impending lambing. I can see her stomach lowering, changing shape every day, her udders are not yet extended, but I think she is just a few days away.

I remember when Zelda first came to Bedlam Farm, she jumped a big fence to be with the old sheep that were summering with us, we could not separate her from them. At the new farm, she led two spectacular breakouts through the new fences and up the highway in heavy traffic. She has knocked me down a half dozen times, Red twice that many, but motherhood seems to agree with, when the vet came to check her last week, she only knocked me down once, she and Red have come to an understanding.

She will be a great mother I think, her instincts are so powerful. I am thinking of her, wishing her luck. I’m thinking twins.

I’m happy to report that Saving Simon: How A Rescued Donkey Taught Me The Meaning Of Compassion, my 26th book, just went up on Amazon and is now available for pre-ordering. This is the story of Simon, how he came to me in horrible condition and near death, how he recovered, and the enormous impact he had on my life. Simon in many ways began a process of opening me up that led to accepting Red into my life, accepting Rocky the blind pony, and moving to our new home. Simon was to challenge my notions of compassion in many different ways, helping me understand my own struggles, and also how difficult true compassion is and how meaningful.

Compassion is an easy thing to admire and talk about, but a rare thing to see and practice in our world.

There will be several ways to get this book. You can order it online from  Amazon, the first seller to put it up for sale.

If you wish it signed and personalized, you can order it online through Battenkill Books or on the telephone from them (518 677-2515)

You can order it from your local independent bookstore.

You can buy it at the second Bedlam Farm Open House on Columbus Day Weekend.

I’ll be doing another online book and we’ll be talking about Simon, giving away books and photos, doing podcasts and topics on Facebook. I am happy to tell the story of Simon, it is rich a beautiful tale for me.