George went into a small room in the gallery and started to shoot a painting, and I saw the two mirrors on either side of the small room and stepped into it, catching each of our reflections as we each took a picture, wonderful to step inside of a photograph with this genius and friend, it was surreal and exciting.
George and me and Maria and Donna Wynbrandt went to the Hyde Museum in Glens Falls, New York to see an exhibit of some of the photos by the famed photographer Ansel Adams, who loved George’s work and praised it enthusiastically. Adams is the photographer George most admires, and to whom his own work is most often compared.
Adams wrote of George’s photography: “George Forss gives us images of extraordinary vitality. He sees with an incisive eye and haunting spirit. I have seen no photographs in recent years as strong and as perceptive.” Like Adams, George has a brilliant master of the lost art of darkroom development and the technical aspects of photography – settings and exposure; digital photography has supplanted both. George always looks for magic, romance and emotion in his photography, I have always admired Adams work wonderful, but felt it a bit cold, sometimes even drab. I never feel that about George’s pictures.
Photographs were strictly forbidden in the Adams show and George and I both asked several times if we could take photos there and we were told firmly we could not. But the guards looked at our cameras and bags and I think they didn’t believe us, they shadowed us all afternoon like Secret Service agents, just daring us to pull out the camera. At one point, I opened my camera bag to get the camera ready when we left that gallery, and the two circled me, they were about to pounce. I did sneak off an Iphone shot, but not of Adams photographs. When we got to the rest of the exhibit we did take photos, and George and I were like two little kids chasing after the light and trying things, taking photos of one another taking photos of one another. I love taking photos with George, I learn so much just by watching him, we are blood brothers in so many ways.
George has been teaching me the spiritual side of photography, he calls it “Orenda,” a supernatural force believed by the Iroquois Indians to be present, in varying degrees, in all objects or or persons, it is believed to be the spiritual force by which human accomplishment is attained or accounted for. I like it, it made a deep impression on me, I think George would like me to slow down my photography a bit, think more about the photos I am taking. I love the idea of Orenda, I am thinking about it.
It was fascinating to watch George look at Adam’s photography and talk about the printing and lighting techniques he used, he understood them in a way I can hardly grasp and will never really need to know. More photos to come of this very special afternoon. More on Orenda later. After the gallery, we went out to lunch, then came to the farm where George and I took more photos. The kind of day that makes Maria and I appreciate our lives very much.
Minnie has found one spot by the back porch, she likes to sit out there in the sun and complain and squawk. It is tough to see her struggle to climb up on things, it is simply not true in her case that their lives are unaffected. I think as the warmer weather approaches she will find her spots and places. She likes this one, she can sit and talk to me.
If you hang around with the horse drivers for a bit, you will soon hear some visitor or office worker or tourist come over with an Irish brogue and ask them what county they come from, “where are your people from?” Invariably, somebody knows somebody’s cousin or brother or father, and they talk of the old country and what’s happening there and the insanity of the carriage horse battle, about which every single person in Ireland seems to have heard, and they shake their heads in utter disbelief at the idea that pulling a carriage is abuse for a working horse.
They say when Liam Neeson walks in the park, he stops to talk to the Irish drivers, many of them are from his county in Northern Ireland, they say they all talk about their mothers and aunts and how they are doing over there. I have no personal experience of this kind of thing, the Jews I know don’t walk up to strangers and talk about their mothers and it is not done in the country, but I think being Irish isn’t something you ever leave behind. I met some Russian and Ukranian drivers and some Mexican drivers, but the Irish thing is quite strong in the carriage trade, you hear it in the talk and you see it in their faces.
Stephen Malone looks like he belongs in 19th century London, but his accent makes it clear he came from Queens. Unlike some of the drivers, he does not waste too much time yakking between rides, he brushes Tyson and gives him his oats and polishes the harness. I was taking photos of the other drivers and saw him bent to the ground with a small brush painstakingly polishing Tyson’s big hooves. Is that a seal or something to protect the hooves?, I asked.
No, he said, smiling, “it’s just polish so that his hooves will look good.” That is not surprising from a man who has worn a tuxedo to work for the past 17 years. I don’t care to dwell on the abuse thing because it’s so ludicrous even the animal rights groups pushing to ban Tyson and other horses are mostly dropping it, although the accusation remains prominent on all of their literature and on all of their websites. Still, it’s interesting to note – many people come to my blog every day for the first time – that large animals that are hungry, exhausted, mistreated or abused do not sit calmly while big men lean over and paint their hooves.
I get e-mail every day from people – pet owners, mostly – who say they never thought of it that way, and those are the messages I value. Photos do not lie, they do not always tell the whole truth, but they tell their own stories, and animals have no guile. If they have been mistreated, there are all kinds of ways they have of letting you know. Tyson has no complaints.
