Return, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt
Inside Outside, 2001, photo by Fred Hatt
Today is the Vernal Equinox, the time when day and night are of equal length, and in the Northern Hemisphere the official beginning of Spring. Transitional times tend to arouse the symbolic impulse in a person of pagan tendencies like me. These are Nature’s magical moments. I live in a very dense city, where Nature expresses herself despite all our human efforts to neutralize and ignore her.
I often carry a camera with me, photographing my urban environment, its patterns and textures, light and shadows, structure and disorder. I’ve never shown these city snapshots as art, but they have been for me an important exercise in sharpening perception. I’m fascinated with the act of framing what I see, and with seeing how different films and cameras and lenses render images and how that compares to the image in my own eyes or mind. I really believe seeing is a faculty that needs to be practiced and exercised constantly.
Taking pictures also challenges my creativity. Anyone can get striking images by going to an exotic locale or a special event – but isn’t it a bit depressing to be at some obvious photo opportunity and see throngs of lens-jockeys? A much greater assignment to give yourself is to see the photographic potential in the mundane environment you move through every day. That’s why I carry a camera when I’m going out to run errands or go to work or visit friends. Activating the image-hunter’s eye can enchant the most quotidian journey.
All the images I’ve chosen for this post were taken within a day or two of the March Equinox, in various years. I wasn’t trying to express anything particular about the season, but looking at them in a seasonal context may evoke something.
Totem 1, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt
Totem 2, 2004, photo by Fred Hatt
In the urban environment, Nature expresses not just in the unavoidable elemental phenomena of weather and growing things, but in a kind of dynamic chaos that results from the density of forces and beings struggling to make their mark.
I’m often attracted to patterns that are twisted, tangled, and layered.
Tangle 1, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt
Tangle 2, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt
Tangle 3, 2005, photo by Fred Hatt
I’m also fascinated by reflections. The city is full of water and glass and metal and other shiny things. Sometimes multiple reflections nest patterns within patterns in a dazzling way.
Rereflection 1, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt
Rereflection 2, 2007, photo by Fred Hatt
The buiding above, with its rigid rectangles broken by distorted reflections of the other rigid rectangles across the way, becomes a thoroughly psychedelic labyrinth when seen in the wind-stirred reflecting pool in the plaza at its base.
Hail spring and the rise of bursting freshness, color and light! And keep checking back here – more drawing and painting are coming over the weekend!
