Chris Bickford

This time of year, just heading into and coming out of the winter solstice, always seems to bring a lot of mystery and surprise. There is a hush about, like time is slowing down just a little bit, as the pendulum reaches its zenith, before the acceleration into spring. A quiet joy in knowing that the darkest days have come and gone, and that there is still plenty of winter ahead to relax, reflect, and make plans. And here on the Banks, if we are lucky, we get blessed with some spells of soft winter weather, where the ocean relaxes and shines, the air is light and balmy, and the clouds do their little dances that make life here in the winter a secret joy for those who bother to look up and notice.

The goings-on of the holiday season can bring about all sorts of emotional swings, as it seems always to be a time of both intense socializing and intense reflection. Warmth and joy sit side by side with loneliness and despair, hope and satisfaction with regret and longing. But the ocean and sky are on their own schedule, and sometimes all it takes is a little checking out from the human world and a little checking in with the world of wind and weather to put things into perspective.

It’s been a difficult year for me in my personal life, but in my photographic life it has been a very good year. Seeds of projects that will occupy me for years to come have been sown this year, and I’ve made quite a few small breakthroughs in my seeing. I have a much better sense of where I’m heading than I did this time last year, and I feel that my house of images is much better furnished; it’s a very colorful and inspiring place to be these days. I’m hoping that in the coming year I can invite more people to come inside and enjoy it for themselves.

So much for my half-assed attempts to get closer to the water in my Outer Banks work.   Friday morning I got up early, seeing that the forecast was for light west winds and partly cloudy skies, and headed down to Cottage Row in Nags Head.   The sunset was lackluster but around 8:00 or so, after I’d already headed back up the beach, the sky started doing its thing.   I went down to the beach in Kitty Hawk, and, wanting to get a little closer to the shorebreak, I put on my chest waders, which I had bought a couple of months ago for just such a purpose.   Amazing what just a couple of feet into the water will do.   I got so excited with what I was seeing through the lens that I wasn’t really paying attention to the disorienting difference between the appearance of proximity of the waves through my wide-angle lens, and the actual proximity of the waves.   The shot above was the last picture I fired off before the wave knocked me ass over tit into the shorebreak, my right arm flailing to keep the camera above water.   The camera was relatively unscathed, but I was soaked…I crawled from the surf, my waders filled to the chest with icy cold seawater.   It was rather comical.  Too bad there was no one else there to witness it, or take a photo…

My jeans are still drying on the porch, my cellphone stopped working for about a day, and my old leather jacket looks even older now.  But it got me fired up.  This afternoon I went online and ordered a water housing for my camera, which I’ve been talking about getting for years.   Enough of this namby-pamby crap, pussyfooting around with the shorebreak.  As soon as it comes I’m putting on my full suit, gloves, booties, and hood, and I’m going to start taking those photos I always feel like I should be taking when I’m out surfing and the light is purely transcendant.

“The city after a busy day. The city on rainy afternoons. The city when you take a day off, or get up at the wrong hour, or get off at the wrong stop and let yourself wander down unfamiliar streets…

“The wilting city at noon. The city of buses that become beaming vaporetti on foggy mornings. The after-hours city at 2 a.m. when a cabbie stops, and a hasty jitter of underdressed girls tap the cobbled street with oversize heels and are instantly rushed into a club…The city on crisp, winter-clear mornings. The old city of splashing fire-hydrants–do children still play in the water when time stops and the heat rises and all you long for is a brief rain shower to break the spell? The city holding its breath, gauging the clouds. The city when it finally does rain. The city of long shadows. The city of bridges speckling the night.”

–Andre Aciman, from the introductory text of Jean-Michel Berts’ “The Light of New York”

I hated New York for a long time. “Hate” is probably too strong a word; I was over it; I wasn’t interested; I was turned off by the commerce, the narcissism, the stress, the slavery to fashion and “success”, the egotism, the lack of peace, the absence of living things (aside from people, pets, and rats), the overwhelming preponderance of advertising and media, media, media…

But lately I’ve begun to see the city in a different way. I’ve learned to fantasize about the city, to dream the city. I’ve learned to look at the city in little pieces…a red brick building against a blue sky; a blue-painted facade fringed with autumn leaves…figures hurrying through subway steam; a pigeon resting on a wrought-iron fence, waiting for fresh discarded pizza crusts…a couple kissing under an umbrella in the snow…tattooed hipsters hanging out on the front stoop of their building like Mick and Keith in “Waiting on a Friend”…

I’ve been talking about moving to the city–at least part-time–to “further my career”, but not until my last visit did this go from being something I felt I ought to do to something I want to do. Part of it had to do with reconnecting with some old friends, part of it had to do with spending a lot of time in the East Village. A lot of it had to do with taking the subway as little as possible. And then of course, mostly it had to do with wandering aimlessly, with a camera, not necessarily even looking for photos, or caring if I got any good ones. The magic of a great city is that if you let yourself go, you will stumble upon things you would never have otherwise seen. Or, as Doisneau writes, about another city, “No matter where you look, there’s always something brewing. You only have to wait, you have to watch for a long time before the curtain deigns to rise. So I wait, and every time the same high-flown formula trots into my mind: Paris is a theatre in which you pay for your seat with wasted time. And I’m still waiting.”

In New York, wasted time is harder to come by (and thus a much more valuable luxury), the seats are less comfortable and more expensive…but the show is always on, 24 hours a day.   In all kinds of weather.   It’s on.  No need to wait.

SantaCon can be a bizarre experience for the uninitiated.  My friend Wick thinks it’s a strange cult, and won’t go near all those boozing, toking Santas.    I stumbled upon the annual event by accident, walking up Avenue A after an aimless stroll through Chinatown; first I saw two guys dressed up as Santa Claus walking in the direction of Tompkins Square Park…then I saw three other Santas round the corner headed towards the park. And then five more. As I neared the park, I saw a sea of red velvet bubbling around the Avenue A entrance…with smatterings of green and white from girls dressed as sexy elves. Literally hundreds of partying Santas, brown-bagging liquor and toking on doobies–ah, the sacrelige!

I was transfixed, and spent an hour or so milling amongst them taking photos.  Had I known about the event, I would have dressed for the occasion, I swear!   The revelers were nice enough to me, but without Santa gear I was basically a voyeur, a tourist, or worse, someone from the press…

It took me a couple of weeks to figure out what it was all about.  Googling random phrases on Santa Claus brought up nothing.  Eventually my friend Cary Conover (his blog here) informed me about SantaCon, and sent me some pix of himself covering the event for the NY Times a few years back.   These folks apparently had been partying since 10 AM in their Christmas duds, and were joined by an international cast of revelers in cities around the world.   Crazy kids.  I wonder what the REAL Santa thinks of all these shenanigans…

Last week I was in New York for a photography conference, and had the opportunity to shoot a little bit more for my “In the Night” series. Fortunately or unfortunately, a lot of hanging out with some old friends kept me from being very single-minded about it, but I did spend one fruitful night in various dance clubs, particularly Element and the Annex. I wanted some energetic photos to contrast with the still, lonely vibe of most of the stuff I’ve done up to now on the subject. I think the next step may be to figure out a way to capture the “landscape” of the night on the LES…maybe I’ll spend a few nights out in the rain with a tripod trying to channel Alfred Stieglitz…I’m thinking of going up again around New Year’s, which should be interesting.

Anyway, some photos…