Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, Photography, Video, Cinemagraphs, New York City
What a wonderful, wild experience it is to walk inside a painting and to see the world through the eyes of an artist. An early morning train from Paris, a walk through a quiet French town, and then you arrive into the pallet of Monet‘s mind.
“My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature.”- Claude Monet
“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” -Claude Monet
On a rainy Saturday in Provence, I awoke to the distant rumbling of thunder sparing with the town’s bell tolls marking the hour to awake. It was market day in my village, I had no choice but to brave the rain and I’m glad I did for it led me to these melon toned roses that set my day on a new path and brought to life the natural curiosities all around me…
Perhaps the most meaningful personal shoot of the year comes every December. We sit down and talk about what the year meant and how to capture that in a photograph. How to express where we were at that time. I shoot the annual Ann Street Studio holiday card photograph in the same format each year, on a 4×5 film camera with black and white Ilford film.
This year’s image crossed continents twice from start to finish. It begins in France, taken in the afternoon light of Provence with flowers I bought at my little town’s Saturday farmer’s market. After I framed the flowers just so, I used two magazines to manipulate and block the natural light of part of the background and on some of the arrangement while the shutter stayed opened for 30seconds. I shot somewhere around 15 plates with variations on lighting and exposures then packed them up and brought the sheets of film back to New York with me to be hand processed at LTI.
As always, I took the processed film and contact sheets to my favorite darkroom lab in Boston which I pilgrimage to every winter and spent two days hand printing the set of 200 on Ilford warm tone fiber base paper.
I brought the final 200 back to France with me and spent days by the window light addressing each one, some with added personal notes, to be mailed out all over the world. It is a long process but one that brings me great joy in a digital age. To give someone a physical object you made with your heart, soul and abilities is like having a small piece of me in your home. The sense of pride I feel when people send me photos of the image framed in their home makes me feel grateful that I am a photographer. However, for the most part I don’t know what people do with them. I like to imagine someone using one as a bookmark to later discover again years from now. I like to fantasize a child or grandchild will come across one decades from now in an old box and feel a connection to me or at least to who I once was. They don’t have to know me personally but I hope they know my work.
For all the horror that winter brings in Manhattan, she certainly makes up for it in June. The city is happy, the energy is good, and behind every turn awaits an explosions of flowers, artists, farmers market harvests, and the sparkling sunlight. The Hudson glitters like a canary diamond and, for once, even the garbage trucks seem to hum quietly to themselves while lovers quarrels are called to a truce in place of strolls through the park in all the quiet pleasures of life.
I went to the farmers market, I walked Riverside Park, I explored Gotham Market and learned that rice crispy treat ice cream is a thing and it’s amazing. I started watching the 2nd season of Chef’s Table (one of my all time favorite food shows) and enjoyed my new Diptyque candle that smells of home cooked Madeleines. This I photographed {above} with my Monica Rich Kosann locket and a memento from one of the sweetest moments of the weekend — when I stumbled upon a poet writing poems for donation which he bases on any theme you told him. I asked him to make me a poem on Provence and this is what he wrote…
The image need not be imagine
it’s beautiful as it is
The people need not be questioned
they’ve an honest way to live
Give to the land and in return
the land gives back to you
It’s funny how we go so far
to learn the truth
-Lynn Gentry
“Provence”
Riverside Park
June 11th, 2016
A few years back I met Bess Wyrick. She was doing a floral instillation in Gramercy Park’s Rose Bar — a giant hanging skeleton made from white flowers. I had always thought about flowers in the sense of arrangements but never really in the form of a live sculpture. There is something I really love about the idea of creating art that can only last and be appreciated for a short amount of time before its organic nature recycles back into the earth. An amazing example of that is in the whimsical work of Patrick Dougherty which blows me away.
Whenever Bess is in New York we try to collaborate. Most recently I asked Caroline to come by the studio and pose for me, something we have been doing together for years now. Bess, being the sculptor she is, created this spring garden nymph moment around Caroline’s delicate body which, to me, is reminiscent of the fleeting weeks when we get to dance under the pink shade of the cherry blooms before nature moves on to the green gardens of summer.
This May I’m going to be heading out to L.A. to spend a weekend retreat at Rose Story Farm (remember how we had roses shipped from them for this beautiful shoot?!) with Bess doing a workshop on flower arranging and creative expression. It’s going to be a lovely group of women, so think about joining us if you out in L.A.! More info on the workshop can be found here.
Happy Spring!
This weekend I was gathering up all of the dying flowers in their arrangements around the studio to throw away and be replaced with new, young, fresh varieties I would pick up on my errands about town. As I pulled these out of the vase I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful they were in their delicate paper thin skin, and how sculptural the leaves had become. To me, they took on the form of dancers, if dancers were caught in a gust of wind and then frozen in time at that perfect expressive moment…
more natural beauty…
Butterfly & the Bell Jar || Winter Flowers || Simplicity || Forever Roses
Young love is a complicated thing, especially for the darling Miss Penelope. Though everyone knows she is promised to Dirk Janson – a match to align two of the most affluent families on the East Coast, a dream couple to spend their lives on the glossy pages of society magazines – she dreams of another: a quiet man with mystery, with a different upbringing than her own. She hears his song in the garden as he warms up for that evening’s dazzling lawn party and asks herself – should she go to him, the one who makes her heart happy or can she keep these feelings a secret for all of time? After all – Dirk Janson is the most eligible bachelor of them all.
Miss Penelope knows the power of beauty…and of mysteries. To whom does her happy heart truly belong? Well…that’s one of the best kept #ChopardSecrets of all…
At her vanity Miss Penelope wears Chopard’s Happy Diamond Collection // Vintage feather dress
In the garden Miss Penelope wears Chopard’s Happy Diamond Collection // Lela Rose Gown // Louboutin flats
Miss Penelope played by Dahlia // Shot on location at Old Westbury Gardens by Ann Street Studio // Styled by Kelly Framel // Props by Zio & Sons // Makeup by Ashlee Glazer // Hair by Justin Woods // Manicurist Katie Hughes for Butter London // All watches and high jewelry provided by Chopard
I‘m often asked in interviews the difference between film vs. digital, if film is dead, and how I choose which medium I want to shoot with. Film photography will always be a part of my life. It was how I was raised to take pictures; it is my roots in photography. It feels different to take a photograph on film than on digital even though so much of what they accomplish is the same.
When I shoot on film I am looking for a depth to the final image…quite simply, I find film images to have a soul. Maybe that has something to do with how you take the picture. We go through thousands of digital photographs weekly which feels like the next image diminishes the value of the one before. With film, even when I feel like I’m shooting a lot, it is only in the hundreds and when I push that shutter release each time, that shot is thought-out, composed, and one where I waited for that perfect moment. My friend Adam who had a show this past fall at the Sasha Wolf Gallery said if he ever had to teach a class in digital he’d make his students shoot on camera cards that only hold 36 frames to train them to think about each shot.
However, digital has this beautiful clarity, this “reach out and touch it” ability that I find so beautiful. The velvety texture of flower petal, the saturation of color in a blushing rose. Digital puts you there, in the moment, feeling the light, and seeing even what the human eye can’t. The speed with which we can capture, document and share with digital photography is so astonishing. Recently I tweeted, “Every two minutes, we take more pictures than the whole of humanity in the 1800s.” I alway say, photography is a right, not a privilege, and thanks to digital that has never been more true.
On a day where I just don’t want to sit at a computer editing or writing emails, or I need a break to get in the zone creatively, I find my favorite thing to do is photograph flowers. Flowers represent so much about life to me: the beauty, the aging, the individuality and sexuality. I wanted to illustrate the difference between film and digital, so on my last flower study I took (as close as possible!) the same photograph on a digital Leica M with macro lens and then again on a 4×5 Toyo View Camera on Ilford Delta 100 ISO black and white film. I used natural light and did a variety of shots using different F-stops for a varying depth of field.
You tell me what you prefer: Film or Digital?
Simple natural light setup in our studio, white textured cardboard background. Above, using the shutter cable release to avoid my hand shaking on the shutter release, which causes motion blur. Most of the 4×5 exposures were between 30 secs and one minute. Below, focusing view on the 4×5 ground glass.
The outcome.
at f/45
Recently I had the pleasure of taking a little crash course in flower arranging with Belle Fleur at the Flower School of New York over sips of Veuve Clicquot Rosé champagne. I’m always photographing flowers here at the studio as a personal project and quite honestly, it’s one of my favorite photographic subjects. I am always in awe of the beauty of a rose, the fold of a tulip, the color of a ranunculus or the smell of a hyacinth. The abstract lines and organic textures become something else though the lens of a camera, allowing each flower to have its own personality, life, expression, and age not unlike the way we are as humans. Since we have beautiful flowers around so often it was really nice to pick up a few tips and tricks on making your own arrangements at home! Read below to find out what I learned…
On arranging: Arrange in your hand. Start with the biggest flower as your “anchor” and build around that. You can cut your flower arrangement to the correct height for your vase by putting the vase at the edge of the counter and holding the arrangement next to it for the desired height and cut. To keep the flowers in the arrangement you created tie a clear rubber band around the stems to hold in place.
On cutting flowers: You do not have to cut under water when you buy quality flowers, but you should put them in water seconds after cutting as a “scab” immediately begins to form over the freshly cut end. Every few days, re-snip the ends of the arrangement to get fresh water into the flower and have it last longer. Cut the ends at an angle so water travels UP!
We are all flowers in the garden of the world, but she –
she is an orchid, pure and white and lovely,
a small blossom on willowy stem.
she blooms, and I am lost
in her delicate lines.
She breathes life into me –
I was adrift in winter;
she gives me the promise of spring.
Youthful yet wise,
elegant and profound,
I dream of the day I may see her again.
For what other flower can there be?
What other love?
None but my orchid.
above and below: Zuhair Murad gown, Chopard bracelet
God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise…
– Henry Miller
“It is a very beautiful day. The woman looks around and thinks: ‘There cannot ever have been a spring more beautiful than this. I did not know until now that clouds could be like this. I did not know that the sky is the sea and that clouds are the souls of happy ships, sunk long ago. I did not know that the wind could be tender, like hands as they caress – what did I know – until now?”
― Unica Zürn
San Francisco, California
