Graeme Mitchell Photography

Portrait: My Brothers Part 2

family, portrait work | January 2nd, 2010

I took a portrait of each of my brothers while visiting home this winter. This trip was a supposed conclusion – 2 years later – to what I first mentioned in this post. I found out though, that nothing is ever actually concluded. The expanse behind what we realize is infinite. Think of it as a movie stage facade on a clear cold morning with an unknowable and unending landscape falling behind it to a dark horizon line, to where your imagination ends. And I’d wonder at anyone who does not stop in awe of this notion, of this incredibleness of existence.

photo: Ian Mitchell, Portland OR., 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Scott Mitchell, Portland OR., 2009. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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Portrait: from a trip to see my Grandma

family, portrait work | December 2nd, 2008

photo: Alberta, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Edith Mitchell in her room, Calgary, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: My Grandma’s Chair, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Alberta, 2008. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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Portrait, my parents (and a poem)

family, literature/reading, portrait work | October 13th, 2008

They were dubbed by my siblings and I as “The Dukes” (Mother) and “The King” (Father). When and why the names were adopted I can’t remember anymore, but it seems fitting. Fitting here b/c they are the two most difficult subjects for me to photograph (hitherto). It is not b/c of tortured baggage – I would not pretend anything that compelling – but it is b/c with ones parents there is something fundamental and unaffected, and something also myriad and unutterable. They’re our kings and queens, our cardinal gateway. Naturally one’s ideas or proclivities are not bowed to by one’s king or queen. Generally it’s the other way around. I’m sure you can understand what I’m getting at, how a Duke and a King aren’t easy subjects.

photo: Maureen Mitchell, Canby, OR., Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.

I was taking these immediately after looking through some photo albums with my mom, snaps from child-hood of us in gondolas, of us petting odd animals, of us dressed up. Upon realizing my early childhood is at best scattered, illusive fragments as far as my memory goes, I commented to my mom, it’s amazing how little we remember, you know, how forgetting it so natural… She offered in response (with not a trace of irony), that’s a good thing.

Dark, Dukes, for God’s sake, dark.

photo: David Mitchell, Canby, OR., Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.

Also, a poem the author, Haven Kimmel had sent me:

OCEANS

     I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing.
                  And nothing  happens!
Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves. . . .

--Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and we are standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Juan Ramon Jimenez
tr. Robert Bly

Which for some reason I think makes sense perfectly here.

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Larry Towell

family, inspiration, other artists | July 9th, 2008

Larry Towell’s name was familiar to me b/c I knew he was with Magnum (here), but I’d not paid attention to his work until recently when I saw this series he shot years ago of his family in rural Ontario. In many ways this work remind me of Sally Mann, in location, in a certain affection, and in an idealic pastorial vision, but Towell’s work is less heavy handed visually. To it’s credit it’s simpler, and I say to it’s credit since the more subtle visual effect requires exceptional content – in general. But Towell’s work didn’t just strike me as being photographically excellent; more importantly, it reminded me of childhood and my own fond memories. Wonderful stuff.

(For more, there’s a multimedia essay on Magnum’s site, here.)

photo: Isaac’s First Swim, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada, 1996. ©Larry Towell/Magnum

photo: Baseball, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada, 1998. ©Larry Towell/Magnum

photo: Naomi in Hollow Tree with Cat, Ontario, Canada, 1990. ©Larry Towell/Magnum

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Grandpa, once more

family, literature/reading, portrait work | July 8th, 2008

I guess I could say getting old is a sad process that betrays much of human nature, that family brings both the most joys and the most pains in life, that people rarely change and if so only on their own terms, that you can learn something from everyone around you…and so on. But instead, I’ll turn to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (someone once said, and I paraphrase, that everything a man needs to know in life is in this book, a bit of a hyperbole probably, but I’m not sure it’s so far from the truth: reading it is like taking counsel from a prophet), so sitting next to my Grandpa, reading this novel, and thinking of the things you think of when in such a situation, a certain important passage from effected me (and I’m not religious in this sense, but just as much can be taken from this passage w/ a secular interpretation).

Much on earth is concealed from us, but in the place of it we have been granted a secret, a mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossibly on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, and it lives and grows on through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened and destroyed in you, that which has grown up in you dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. So I think.

-from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Anyway, enough of that.

photo: my Grandpa, Lloyd Gauley, at the Sportsman Club, June 08. ©Graeme Mitchell.

I thought of just sharing the above picture, but here are two more.

photo: my Grandma and Grandpa in their chairs, June 08. ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: my Grandma and Grandpa not in their chairs, June 08. ©Graeme Mitchell.

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Umatilla, OR.

family, literature/reading, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | June 5th, 2008

If you drive fast straight east from Portland for approximately 3 hours you’ll pass within about 9 miles of this place. It’s the kind of place that conjures absolutely nothing in the imagination. It’s a desert of sorts.

“Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucination of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death. -DE SELBY”

Epigraph from The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

photo: Umatilla, OR. © Graeme Mitchell 2008

photo: A Road to a Prison, Umatilla, OR. © Graeme Mitchell 2008

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Hit Reset

family, friends, news, still & 'scape work | May 18th, 2008

I had a lot of momentum this spring, more momentum than I knew what to do with; then I had to vanish for two weeks to the W. Coast and was, unintentionally, able to reset. I worked on a great commercial job, left my phone alone, saw a lot of the people that are important to me, and most of all I’ve had fun like I was a kid again: careless and reckless and alight…

I want to say congratulations to Tracy and Benjamin on their new marriage. And I want to tell my little brothers that in the last year they’ve both grown to become men I respect and look up to.

photo: a one of a kind c-print done exclusively for Benjamin and Tracy, 24×24.” © Graeme Mitchell, 2003

photo: Diggles’ wedding, clockwise from left, me, Diggles, Julian (in sunglasses), Garett, and, up front, Jeff. © Paparazri Tonight.

photo: my brother Ian and I at TRCI, Umatilla, OR. May 08.

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Bolivia Photographs

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | February 11th, 2008

These many photographs are from a trip I took recently to the Alto Plano of Bolivia to visit my sister, Erin, who lives there.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

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Merry Xmas!

family, news | December 21st, 2007

Guinness, my brother and his girlfriend’s French Bulldog, says Merry Christmas.

photo: Guinness the Frenchie relaxing fireside.

Not into dogs, then here’s the man it’s all about,

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2007

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Brother(s)

family, portrait work | December 18th, 2007

There has never been any reluctance in sharing personal thoughts here; the pathos, the bathos, neither go unnoticed by me…ever. And, yes, I’m aware of perception, acutely, but, well, an old arbiter once spoke to me at a very appropriate time saying, this ain’t no dress rehearsal, and being in agreement with that, why fake coy?

Still, with that even, this particular post is, how should I say…more in earnest than usual.

I approach it wary. Very wary.

It’s about my youngest kid brother, Ian, and his misfortune, his tripping on that unseen and ubiquitous crack in the sidewalk and finding on the other side a rabbit hole to tumble down, to be consumed by… To shambles. To disarray. Know that my heart clamors. My mind grits. B/c even Alice was guilty of curiosity. She sought. She was asking for it. Ian didn’t ask for anything. Ian really just had some terrible awful horrible luck. Moreover, and unfortunately, unlike Alice, Ian isn’t dreaming…

We are all excruciatingly awake.

Wary, very wary.

photo: Ian Mitchell, Dec 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

The reason this is hard for me to talk about is b/c I simply don’t know what to say. There aren’t words for it. Or if there are words they are many; they are a book; they are a treatise; they are probably not mine; no; probably they’re words of poets… And I hate speaking when it’s gratuitous. I hate speaking when I know what I say will not be enough…not nearly enough.

It occurred to me just now that expression is the string of a belief cut into a hundred pieces and then spun into an endless knot of folly.

Or what I might say right now could be laconic and without compassion, perfectly pragmatic and utterly unfair. This is useful, but then what happens and what is said doesn’t matter at all… And things like this should matter. They should be made to matter.

So I’m left stuttering, and people I worry for are left ragged. Like all, they muster what can be mustered, what must be mustered… Still, it breaks my heart on a number of levels, and breaks it thoroughly.

My lips purse. My body purses. My heart purses… I shudder and shrink.

A thousand pieces spun into an endless knot of folly.

Sure, it’s going to work out in the long run. Scott, my other kid brother, reminds me of this, and when necessary, I remind him. Not much is said, never has been, never will be, b/c not much needs to be said. We understand one another. We grimace. We force laughter.

But I think we both have a distinct notion that nothing is laughing back.

photo: Scott Mitchell, Dec 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

So now all I can think to do is to hug my brother, Ian, pat him on the back, and take his portrait before his entire life is turned upside down and before he takes a deep breath to climb his way back out of that rabbit whole.

I envision Sisyphus.

I envision a void, perfect and very very simple. A child can’t see it, or sees past it – I don’t know – but older eyes, squinting, pleading, speak of it, scream into it…what remains is just whispers, infinite pieces spun into an infinite knot of folly…

After all, it is that which is ineffable.

This is all old news. The same stories are yellowing memories and mythologies predating our histories. Ian doesn’t know it, but he is a parable. If he learns this, he will be indestructible. In his shades fading, his outline will grow bolder. Bolder and bolder. He could, I believe, glow… I hope that he molds suffering, and that it doesn’t mold him.

But then these worries and hopes are all feeble, academic garnish, abstract fillings. Because I imagine a fixedness that is inscrutable, a trajectory that is singular…I said that he may be a boulder that we all risk breaking ourselves upon.

So portraits. Ha! All this shit and I bring to the table some platitudes and portraits…and here no less… Hope springs eternal for whatever the antonym of absurdity may be… But I’m growing more skeptical…and I fret as millions have fretted before, pacing those same vast halls, the halls cognition has kept sparse since antiquity.

Even so, I mean to rue nothing. Or am so inclined. And hope the same for my brother, my brothers.

These are portraits of my younger brothers and I.

Keep your chins up little brothers, because this will all roll off someday like a fog off a mirror, and know for now that you’re there whether the mirror reflects you or not.

photo: a picture of me taken by my brothers, Dec 2007. ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007

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A Road Trip, Part 3.

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | July 30th, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A Road Trip, Part 2.

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | July 30th, 2007

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A Road Trip, Part 1.

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | July 30th, 2007

My brother, his girlfriend, and I recently drove from Washington Heights NYC to Canby, OR. (thus my absence here) on an impromptu trip home to settle some destitute and surreal family matters. Bittersweet, so to speak, as the trips ultimate reason became a faint yet ubiquitous backdrop to the otherwise wonderful time we had. There’s much I’d like to share about the trip, from becoming friends with my brother again to getting intoxicated in every state we passed through, but I feel like this is neither the time nor the place.

Less talk more pictures, right?

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A death; a note on love; and my families portraits.

family, portrait work | May 13th, 2007

My Grandpa, Jack, died. It was my father’s father. Here I want to share – and, please, excuse this father – my father’s rebuttal given at the service:

Eulogy I gave at Grandpa’s funeral:I did not inherit my father’s propensity for public speaking.

Eulogies enumerate the positive. In Jack’s case humor, tenacity, good memory,
and the wise choice to marry a talented, supportive wife. Edith. Mitchell traits.

I have been asked to give the rebuttal to the eulogy. What might Jack say in
response, if he could.

He might start with: I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
(Shakespeare, Julius Caesar 3,2).

Ate too much. Drank too much. Smoked too much. Worked too hard.
Obstinate. Stubborn. Didn’t listen. Didn’t talk too much – why bother when you
are right? All Mitchell traits.

Well, with apologies to Bob Marley (not the singer) and Charles Dickens

If you are virtuous and in need you may be visited by three specters
The ghost of Jack o’Lantern Mitchell past,
the ghost of Jack o’Mitchell Lantern present
and the ghost of Jack Mitchell future.

To reflect upon my past, your past and your future.
Learn what you will, and act as you must (should).

For all others I may simply come back to haunt you permanently.
~
God has Jack traits. Quiet. Doesn’t say much and you don’t know if he is
listening

And as we all know Jack seemed to have God like qualities
Now he has matriculated to the next form. one wonders what he and the All
knowing teacher will discuss. And who will listen to whom…

When I read this pride and love swelled my stomach and poured warmth into my chest and throat. When I read it I thought of the saying that you aren’t grown up until your parents pass. When I read it I thought of joking with my father, asking if I could steal it…if he’d mind if I used it at his…but then I wondered if he’s more sensitive than I understand.

I talked with my sister on the phone, her in her house that’s in a town so alone on the map that it is defined by what is not there (“we don’t even have a Starbucks,” she says), and I said, I don’t know if Dad believes in God, or heaven, or…isn’t that something I should know by now? She replied that she’d asked him once and he’d said __…then she added, that was many years ago…b/c minds certainly change in regards such as these don’t they? I was nonetheless impressed she’d the nerve to have asked him. I’m still working it up. Probably it troubles me b/c I don’t know what I’m more scared of, agreeing with or disagreeing with the answer.

I remember specifically the point in my life when I realized my father was human; until that point he’d been an abstraction, an a priori knowledge, a figure that w/o question defined me, a father; then my knowledge named reality and it’s propensities finally enveloped him too, and he became not a father, but my father: fallible, vulnerable, and questionable. It was my first epiphany. It was the point when I began to really love both my parents…a point of origin, if you will, since it seems like the love a child has for their parents is an ongoing journey. No?

I digressed. B/c I’ve nothing to add to death. And I am skeptical of anyone who claims to. But before death, in life, that thing we call love seems like one of the sure good things going, so I thought it worth mentioning. And family is what this comes down to, whoever you call family in life, those definite to you. Here is my family, portraits taken on the side of my parents house, taken the last time for awhile we’d all be together…