ART OF THE LANDSCAPE

PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES & ESSAYS

Still Point

In early 2020, I came upon a remote, mostly obscured alcove late one January afternoon near the north shore of Schweitzer marsh. Low lying water studded with sedge, marsh reeds and mirrored reflections created this surreal scene of points, circles, spheres, angular reeds, even a half-submerged lily pad, all seemingly in some form of geometric alignment.

Friends and customers have queried the origin of the name “Still Point”, both as the title for this image as well as the name of our gallery. I’m finally providing an explanation and some comments, especially as they relate to the value of the photographic process as a way to better understand our choice of name. “Still Point” derives, at least in the context of how my wife, Kate, and I think about it, from T.S. Eliot who chose those words to illustrate a concept for his poem, “Burnt Norton”, the first from his collection of “Four Quartets” and the one in which he explores the metaphysics of time … past, future and present.

We named our gallery “Still Point” in eponymous tribute to Eliot’s poem and his beautifully metaphoric lines. The visual elements in the photograph resonate strongly with his timeless use of the term. Relevant lines from the poem are provided below.

“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”

Over the years, a frequent goal has been to observe and capture landscape images that illustrate the dimensions of “stillness” that Eliot explores. As a photographer, it has been important to recognize the paradox of the landscape as evolving and transforming while remaining motionless - sharing physical and metaphysical realities of time and space. Photography provides not only a means to observe this contradiction but through images to amplify sentience in the stillness of our temporal world."

Still” and “stillness,” are problematic insomuch as they evoke silence and serenity, they also imply a sense of stasis, a state existing outside the world of movement and change. It is less about stillness in the context of motion than stillness in the context of time– stillness as continuity, as a point of reference. This is the stillness that centers life, that allows us to order our relationships to a turbulent world.
Returning continually to the same places each year and each season, I’ve had the good fortune to experience almost every weather condition and imaginable light in northeast Ohio, as well as the region’s infinite range of sights and sounds, even its variety of earthly fragrances. Over many years looking through a camera’s viewfinder one develops an intimacy with the environment such that the world is “stilled”. During these moments, moving from one world into another (or perhaps simply deeper into the first), all is suspended – sound, motion, even time. Scenery never ceases to change, as change remains constant.

Ultimately the viewer will make his or her own judgement as to the relevance and merit of a photograph or any work of art. In some respect, I am ambivalent about providing too much context fearing it will color perceptions, undermining individual experience and the associative memories that have the potential to reward each of us differently.

“At the still point of the turning world … there the dance is.” T.S. Eliot

Year: 2020
Location: Aurora, Ohio
Edition Number: 10
Dimensions: 16" x 23"
Price: $625

"In Praise of a Rising Sun"

Shortly after 4:30 a.m. I arrived at Schweitzer marsh to bear witness to another sunrise. At the time I calculated I’d seen 200 or more sunrises and perhaps only a score of sunsets over the 70 years that I’d visited the marsh. Each was remarkable for its singular beauty, and each has added immeasurably to my reverence for nature.

By contrast, a setting sun has an aesthetic brilliance as well, but for all its dramatic color at the end of day our star has gone mostly unnoticed and underappreciated as it transited the sky; a quotidian fixture languishing above until its abrupt conclusion, sliding silently away, its fire and birdsong disappearing with it into night. For me, a sunset represents resignation, even death, an epilogue to the long day … to life - possessing a secular predictability, a sameness, almost an afterthought in contrast to the numinosity of the rising sun heralding the mystery of life.

Looking east across the marsh, this indelible morning began in the dark of night as I made my way along the west bank through buttonbush, rush and reed to its northern corner. The path, if not particularly worn, was well known to me as I’ve travelled it frequently, often in a soporific state I confess. As I positioned myself and the camera, I had yet to see the reflection of water no more than a few feet in front of me. Shortly after 5:00 a.m. its surface or possibly its illusion appeared, however, it was not until hearing the “check, check, check” call of a red winged blackbird that I knew with certainty twilight had begun. The real magic begins as trees and brush slowly become visible. After another 30 minutes passed the first of the Canada geese joined in with the red winged blackbirds and spring peepers and the marsh came alive beneath the momentarily colorless, opaque sky.

Beyond and above the shrill dissonance, came the terrifying, sublime croak of a Great Blue Heron proclaiming itself as the sun pierced the horizon. In that moment, the entire marsh fell silent, engulfed with flashing, effulgent, red and orange light, a fire sweeping the landscape. Those who have witnessed such moments can never be unchanged. Terror and wonder and reverence at once.

So, I leave you with one of my favorite images. After the sun rose that morning and the chorus of birds and peepers fell silent, a lone redwing blackbird perched atop a long dead pin oak, announced his own existence and joy for the new day.

CODA:
In many ways this is my elegy to Schweitzer Marsh, especially for those of you who have followed and assisted in preserving this small, remote wilderness. The Wheeling & Lake Erie railroad effectively drained the wetland late in 2022 and cannot be persuaded by law or through conservation to reverse their actions.

Autumn and spring migrations have ceased; the blackbirds have moved on and only a small rivulet runs tortuously over fields of dead sedge. As John Keats lamented in his famous ballad, “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” just over 200 years ago, “The sedge has withered … and no birds sing.”

Year: 2009
Location:
Edition Number: 50; 10
Dimensions: 13” x 19.5”; 16” x 24”
Price: $625

"Canto XXXI"

Canto XXXI

Descending inexorably, with scant compassion, an Arctic front and accompanying blizzard seized northeast Ohio the 25th of January, 2026. Along its merciless track, a quarter mile east of the intersection of Fairmount and River Road, a dance was playing out behind horizontal waves of blowing snow, obscuring and revealing at once the heavily forested eastern escarpment that climbs almost 600 feet above the banks of the Chagrin River. This precipitous, inaccessible slope has remained void of human intrusion for at least 200 years, since the founding of the rural village of Chagrin Falls. Now, only a few narrow animal trails transit the steep incline.
During winter the forest floor is made visible and prey to the attention of intrepid observers. The other three seasons, it remains a cloistered, unbroken canopy of oak, maple, sycamore, beech, cherry and ash. Redbud, paw-paw and flowering dogwood, are the principal denizens of its understory, making a brief appearance each spring. Beyond the deciduous forest, conifer spires stipple the slope with spruce, white pine, hemlock and cedar.

I confess, the verdant beauty of spring and summer and the brilliant, multicolored patchwork of autumn have less hold on me than the spare monochromatic landscape that appears by early December. I return often to Andrew Wyeth’s observation reminding me of winter’s mystery.

“I prefer winter and fall when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it; the whole story doesn’t show.”

The image pictured here was fortuitous, revealing itself only briefly when the snow subsided for a moment, a gift from the landscape as I took it, perhaps acknowledging my reverence for the mysteries of the forest. This stalwart American sycamore, encircled by a cluster of ancient black oaks, all likely have stood since the early 19th century. The wind-driven snow this day had the ironic effect of revealing form, black oaks revolving counterclockwise, limbs like human arms, gesticulating and sinister, outstretched in some pagan rite. Later It struck me as reminiscent of a 12th century Sufi dance, whirling dervishes as Rumi created them, spinning counterclockwise around a Celebi, uniting earth with heaven in prayer. Or similarly, to the more recent Eastern European, Hasidic dance, its followers constellating in a circle around a Sheba or Rabbi, praying for unity. I have since, however, regarded the scene as beatific, akin to one of Gustav Dore’s famous illustrations, “Canto XXXI, the Paradiso,” poetry composed by Dante in the early 14th Century, famously illustrated 500 years later.

There are so many ways to see and interpret this scene that I leave that to the viewer to draw a conclusion.

Year: 2025
Location: Chagrin Escarpment, Hunting Valley
Edition Number: 10
Dimensions: 16"x24"
Price: $560

Frederick Werner Farm, Leelanau County, Michigan

On a spring morning in 2025, Kate and I had a rare day of perfect weather hiking the Frederick Werner property perched along the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan in the small rural community of Port Oneida. Mr. Werner, the second settler of the area, an immigrant from Hanover, Germany, arrived in Leelanau County in 1855.

As sublimely beautiful as the landscape is, these were subsistence farms that required residents to augment their income through logging, black smithing, construction and the trade of goods and services.

Pyramid Point, a 350′ bluff overlooking Lake Michigan is less than a mile north, its coastline forming the western border of the Werner farm, itself situated on a bluff 200′ above the lake. The barn was completed over the first couple of years followed by apple orchards and a grove of black locust trees planted along with the few crops like potatoes that would grow in sandy, nutrient deprived, glacial soil.

Most striking was the rolling sweep of the land, dunes once heavily forested, now carpeted in foxtail grass. West winds rising off the lake, over the bluffs, carrying with them the susurrating rhythm of water lapping the shore, continuing on in mirrored ripples across the grass meadows in early spring hues of lime and forest green, dissolving in and out of one another with each gust of wind.

Accompanying the beauty of the land, one also senses the privation of the past, a feeling of mystery and melancholy that drifts over the property.

Beauty here resides as much in the evocation of emotions as the landscape’s aesthetic. It was this feeling of yearning for a past that will never return (elements of saudade) that prompted me to take this photograph as Kate returned from a hike crossing the grassy meadow.

The composition, rendered in both color and black and white, seems to capture the character of the place in the way neither might independently.

Year: 2025
Location: Leelanau County, Michigan
Edition Number: 10
Dimensions: 16" x 24"
Price: $560