timeless

About 4:30, taking a break from scanning, I grabbed the papers off the front sidewalk and skimmed them. Two days to look at, because yesterday had been such a busy day.

In yesterdays paper was a notice of a screening, a documentary on Edward Weston and Charis Wilson. It gave a time, 6:30 today, but not a place. Fortunately, the correction was in today's paper, the Morris Graves Museum in Eureka. I was there by 6:15.

Edward Weston died five months after I was born, but he was one of my early photographic influences. I'd known of his work very early, because my father often spoke of him. The real influence happened in the late 70s though, when I read the two-volume set of Weston's Daybooks. They were so direct, authentic, down to earth. They inspired a renewed interest in photography, one that very possibly contributed to the documentary work I began doing on the Chicago punk scene just about that time. There are references to the Daybooks in my journals from that period. I also first learned of Charis from reading the daybooks.

I'm not sure when I saw my first Weston prints. The first extensive exhibit was, I believe, one I saw in New York in the mid-1980s, but I probably saw a few scattered examples much earlier than that. I've rarely passed up an opportunity since then, and have studied those prints many times, enjoyed the subtle tonality, the beauty.

The Daybooks of course deal largely with the earlier days, the transition from pictorialism to modernism, the formal compositions. I always preferred Edward's later work, from the 1930s on. Not very many years ago I found a copy of the "California and the West" book, the one with the 1937 to 1939 Guggenheim Grant images, the one with the forward written by Charis. I've paged through that book so many times since then, and it sits in front of me now. It's so much more subtle than the earlier work, less idealized. This work includes death and decay, an acknowledgement of mortality. It's not easy work to look at, it takes many views to fully appreciate. And it gave momentum to my concepts already underway, my nudes in the human-modified world of disturbance and decay. It was the kiss of death for the already mortally wounded myth of pristine nature, at least as seen through my eyes.

So I owe Edward and Charis a bit of an intellectual debt. They're only one influence among many, and perhaps not the most important one, but they're still an influence. Both of them.

I arrived at the screening in time to grab a seat. The room rapidly filled, the final count was 238, more than four times what had been expected. The crowd was mostly older, refined, well dressed, with a scattering of younger artists.

The director introduced the film, then let it roll. The core was a series of interviews with Charis, 90 at the time of filming (now 94 and living in Santa Cruz). She's still sharp, and some things were easy for her to talk about, even fun; other were more difficult. The re-enactments of the shoots and various other events, with actors, were surprisingly believable. The authenticity... any experienced nude model, any experienced photographer of the nude, will smile, will recognize certain rites of passage, certain experiences.

The film really clarifies the importance of the model-photographer connection, really demonstrates that it's not just technique, not just a pretty body. The personality, the emotion, the energy, is so evident in these images. The creative collaboration requires two. The changes over time, these too become evident. The photographs mirror the relationship.

Charis as rebel also brought a few smiles to my face, given how many rebels I work with. The images of her unshaven, natural, at a time when postal regulations forced most models to shave because mailing an image which showed pubic hair was illegal... and the shift over time from in-your-face rebellion to just being who she was, authentic, with Edward's encouragement and as she matured. Then, the increasing distance as she came into her own, as Edward apparently struggled with that level of independence.

I didn't know until tonight that Charis lived in Eureka from 1945, after she left Edward, until at least through the 1950s.

I recognized the muse. I saw an earlier version of so much of what I've come to experience myself. In some ways, these two personify so many of the traits I've come to know among the many models and photographers I've met and worked with. It's no wonder that I keep crossing this path.