Doc's Paradox

Desert mountains at dusk, darkness falls. Two cowboys set up camp, while their horses are tied up in the background. Doc is the classic archetype; grisled, mustachioed , old, hard, growling.Virgil is something else; young, and while dressed like a cowboy - not very cowboy looking.

Virgil: Where in the hell are we? 

Doc: The mountains, Virgil. Should be in Tombstone tomorrow afternoon. 

Something to eat? There's some salt beef and beans right there next to the fire.

Oh, come on now. Beans make me fart. 

Well, just stay away from me. 

Do you have a feeling that maybe we're being followed? That horse there, they sure act like nervous.

Well, I suppose they smell a change in the weather. Oh, now come on now. Don't put any more wood on the fire. I'm burning up.

Oh, we might get a frost before morning.

My bones is cold tonight. You alright? 

Hmm. You know, Virgil, we've been together now a while. Can't exactly say how long. Ain't anybody I'd rather do this work with. You're as good as anybody I seen, except maybe the Sheldon boys…and me. Now the reason you ain't as good as the Sheldons or me ain't got nothing to do with steady, or fast or fortuitous. The reason the above name folks are better than you is because you got feelings. 

Well, hell, Doc. Everybody's got feelings.

Feelings get you killed. You've got feelings about Ally, don't you? 

I cared about Ally in town, and I'll care about her when I get her back. But right now, there's something running, and we're trying to catch it. Like trying to catch one of those pictures you take.

Yeah. Like that. Well, I ain't seen someone like you do. Going after a sunset or a waterfall like you're roping a steer that's gonna get away. My mother was an artist.

No shit.

Yep. She painted portraits of children. God famous, in fact. Those baby goods made those drawings.

On the package?

Yep. That's her. She would make a little motion picture of a child and then project it into a hat box next to her easel. Stop the movie on any frame she felt was best for a natural expression. Children don't like to hold a pose you can imagine.

(grunts)

Well, what are you gonna do with your hard earned money old timer when we get back and cash in? 

Oh, you know, I'm along in years, Virgil. 

Come on, Doc. 

Well, I can still hold up my end when it comes to a hard day's work, but I'm not the man I once was. Next year, next month, next week, by thunder won't be the man I am today. I think I'll settle down in a quiet place, get a little business hardware, maybe with a portrait studio, maybe a grocery store, spend the better part of my time reading comics and adventure stories. One thing's for sure, I won't go prospecting again. How about yourself? What plans do you got?

Oh, I figure on buying some land and growing fruit. Peaches, maybe. Be nice to be by the water, though. 

I just keep moving, though. Never wait for something to happen. 

You, uhh- 

I don't know if you know this about me, but I have discovered what it is to truly live and function on a different plane. 

Uhhh, well, sure, doc. Sure. I think –

One must be at peace with oneself and in harmony with nature.

Well—

— over the last 10 years. 

Doc?

Over the last 10 years. 

Well, doc, you–

Over the last 10 years–

What are we talking about here, doc?

And over the last 10 years, I have consummated my skill with the ever powerful camera. I have opened visual frontiers, and on these prospecting trips of ours and many others, explored lesser known dimensions of the vast

Ohhhh.

Of the vast and varied expanses that make our natural world.

And on this journey, I felt the way to produce extraordinary pictures and images was to pursue seeing artistically to some and become aware of light, sensitive to light, color, composition, texture, movement. What in the fuck are you doing there? I'm trying to talk to you.

Well, hell, doc. I didn't know any of that. Sorry. Just doing some tidying up. I know how you can get about camp-

Look. Just get to that in the morning, Virgil. I need you to concentrate here. No greater reward exists for me than to produce a photograph expressing my thoughts and my emotions and to have that statement felt and understood by someone else. Almost every day of my life is identifying, pursuing, or completing aims. Failure is second nature.

Well, I'm scared of failure.

I think we both know that. And sometimes it's good to just sit and be grateful for the simple things in life.

Not trying anything new is far more shameful than being a miserable fuck, a miserable failure. To do that is to live a life of mediocrity.

Sure.

A flower photographer's hell is a place of tremendous beauty, where every species in the world stays in bloom in continuously perfect light, and where a gentle breeze blows eternally, making sharp photographs impossible. Here, the breeze was light, but sufficient nevertheless to move the tall fireweed in the foreground.

You can be one crazy son of a bitch, doc. You ever been to the ocean, Virgil?

No. I never seen it.

Well, Virgil, let me tell you. I ain't either, but I spent one summer ranching near a big lake, and I put up a small notice saying something like, young photographer wishes to come aboard to take compositional pictures of sailing and rigging. Photographing boats and sailing is very much a speciality, Virgil. As the moon enchants, the tide, the water beckons men and women, myself included.

Well, not me, I suppose.

(reciting)

‘Here's the sea in all her moods. Here's a hint of her magnificence. Wharves from whose weathered back centuries of men have leaped to the sea life, musty ships with cargos of memories, seagulls and foamy spray, and palm trees bent double by the wind.’ These are the things I wish to see to photograph.

Doc, isn't this all a bit grandiose? You're a working man.

A what?

You're a working man. A working man.

Indeed, a man who works toward understanding light, color, composition, textures, movement.

Well, hell, doc. I didn't know it meant so much to you. Isn't this approach of yours, isn't this nature stuff, I don't know, a bit hackneyed, kinda I mean, sentimental. There's other approaches maybe, I think, that just shooting these things hell, I don't know. That device is a complicated thing. In general, I don't like photographs of forest because they so often just seem contrived or something.

Textures, movement, indeed, it is Virgil. F stop! Shutter speed! Many considerations.

Well, Doc, come on now. I ..I don't hate it. I guess I just meant more in the way of history and such, of meaning. Well, meaning, eh, I mean, as some kind of invention, some kind of apparatus. Have you seen some of these artists who just sort of take a picture and jumble it up? One summer when I was a kid, I worked as a picker in a peach harvest in the San Joaquin Valley. Boy, it sure was something. Hundreds of people, old and young. I met this one guy in the bunkhouse. He made these little sculptures. He showed me all sorts of books he carried from place to place, stories, photo prints. Within five miles around, you could walk from a valley to a peak to a view of the ocean dramatically revealing itself. We touched sand, rock, mud. We rolled around. We ran our hands along succulents. We felt salt in the air.

The Sierra was all gold. It smelled like sunshine. God, I miss it. This is the energy, Virgil. This is the energy.

Yeah. Well, I always heard there were 3 kinds of suns in California, sunshine, sunflowers, and sons of bitches.

Ha…Well, at least we're known for something.

That fire, it's so warm. Anyway, at night in the valley, after a day's work, we used to build big bonfires bigger than this together, sit around, sing to guitar music. Till morning sometimes. We'd go to sleep, wake up, and sing, and go to sleep again. Everybody had a wonderful time. Ever since then, I've had a hankering to be a fruit grower. It must be grand watching your own trees put on leaves, come in to blossom and bear, watching the fruit get big and ripe on the boughs, ready for picking. Anyway, that fellow with the books just reminded me he learned all about art.

Well, photographing flowers ain't art, Virgil.

Well, Doc, don't sell yourself short now. This is some of the stuff he taught me about, and I think just don't sell yourself short there. Maybe sure and maybe not flowers.

Cow tracks in the sand, skunk tracks on the sand, crow tracks on the sand, centipede tracks on the sand, mouse tracks on the sand, small rodent tracks on the sand. Horned lark tracks on the sand, crawlings of a beetle on the sand, muskrat tracks on the sand, trail of burrowing sand beetle, tracks of small mammal on the sand, tracks of crow at sand spider hole, forms of creatures left by waves on sandy beach, tracks of man and beetle on the sand, waves on sandy beach, tracks of man and beetle on the sand, mmm, tracks of dog and beetle on the sand, tracks of sand spider around its hole, frog on shore in Indiana Dunes.

Well-

Black swallowtail butterfly. Monarch butterfly on mallow. Larva of monarch butterfly. Chrysalis of monarch butterfly. Potato beetle feeding on potato plants. Oh, robber flower. Oval winged Katie— did screech owl at hollow apple tree. Screaming eagle photographers have to attend to the fleeting moment…em.. Excuse me. I get a little caught up. Emotional if you want. Just get kinda lost talking about this stuff. Photographers have to attend to the fleeting moment, and they're always rushing to set up their tripods and focus their lenses before the moment passes.

How about letting the moment come to you for a change?

Well, Virgil, I that's, an interesting idea. (snorts) I don't follow you, Virgil. As often when I am deeply involved in making an image, I pause to experience the situation simply and directly.

I'm saying you create a context. Give it your own meaning. 

For my pictures? 

Sure, Doc. For your pictures.

Well what in the fuck does that mean? You think that somehow is gonna make them better? When I'm alone, Virgil in and with nature in, what I call high regions of bliss, I simply lose myself. I breathe with the elements and meditate, if you will, on composing a photograph. This question about the nature of creativity is not easy to answer. Creativity is difficult to define. Are you familiar with Zen meditation?

Sure Doc.

Well, this seems quite an experience, but also somewhat self important. I mean, something about this disposition of the great man that you seem to parrot- the nature stuff—I just don't know. I like nature as much as the next one, but what about trying to show the conditions these workers in these towns are subjected to? What about something like that?

Huh? Me communing with nature is self important. How do you reckon? Is creativity not associated with thoughts and actions? In modern art and photography, creativity is aligned with originality.

I don't know if I agree with that, but I Doc. I just don't know. Can't quite put my finger on it, but there are things in the world that are more worth your time, I figure, than a flower buzzing with bees.

Like what?

I don't know, doc. Like people like us. Did you ever stop to think who we're working for? What kind of deeds were expected to pull off for these people that exploit us, exploit the earth and all its little bees and bugs and flowers?

(reciting again)

‘For all of those who love the nature as I do, special dawns and twilights, glimpses into the worlds of wild creatures, the slant of light among trees, the glint of sunshine on water. Natural beauties in a 1,000 forms haunt the memory. The sharpness of these mental pictures usually diminishes. Their images become less clear. Imperceptibly, they fade away.’

Good lord, doc-

- They fade away. When in some fortunate split second of time, well, a camera catches on film, the mood, the action, the the life, and the beauty of some outstanding moment. It contributes a kind of permanence of its own to a memory. At a glance and after the passage of years, it has the power to evoke the atmosphere, the emotions, the sense of wonder that characterized that instant of the past. The urge to capture and store away these crystallized memories is a passion that adds a particular delight and satisfaction to the life of the photographer of the out of doors.

Almost as a way to savor your former enjoyment. Don't you find this all a bit nostalgic, doc? Even sentimental?

In their simplest, most matter of fact form, they are merely catalog pictures of objects or creatures. I like to think I'm not sentimental. I'm making a catalog. The best in nature photography, however, records both the object and its setting. Arresting. Yes. Arresting.

It seems you cannot imagine any other form. Is there no alternative?

It is the only way.

Does it ever stop to occur to you that we are under threat of this propagandist form that you so rapturously endorse? This version of art making that you put forth as your wellness, you also have been taught to love through means outside of your own? Photography deals and services, I might argue, Doc.

It is the only way. I'm not merely speaking of the photographic Virgil. I'm speaking of man's quest for truth. I'm speaking of our connection to this land as man, as animals.

Well, you're also speaking of a medium that maybe could do so much more, could be used for positive change. You ever tried manipulating one of your photographs? Stalin did that, made people just disappear with crazy tricks. Defectors he didn't like, Trotsky. I don't know. There were more.

Who? Manipulate? What on earth do you mean? I manipulate these images in the darkroom, of course, but, I want my subject matter to be part of a genuine experience. I recognize that some of my photographs may seem unreal to people who have not experienced the many nuances of mountain light, but all are natural events, those high moments of mountain experience.

In general, I don't like photographs of forests because they so often seem to be contrived. The photographer's eye can give wonderfully random arrangements of tree, an appearance of openness and order that just isn't there.

At the heart of all photography is an urge to express our deepest personal feelings, to reveal our inner hidden selves, to unlock the artist.

Good god, doc. Do you ever quit with this stuff?

Southwinds jostle them. Bumblebees come, hover, hesitate, drink, and are gone. What's that?

Emily Dickinson, don't matter.

Who's that?

Don't matter. Don't you ever just feel like there ain't no place for human freedom the way you think there is?

What you mean?

It's just some automated program.

What you mean?

I don't know, Doc. Like a system? A system you think is freedom, but, really, it's something else? Much like this work, Life America Revere's and fancies herself as free as a bird, but seems in reality an indentured servitude of some kind or another.

Oh, lord- don't go down this road. One thing I'm saying, maybe every nature photograph has been taken, and you're just doing what the device is making you do, not the other way around. And ain't no stakes in the matter. Ain't nothing but sentiment. Sentimental servitude.

Why would you say such depressing shit, Virgil? Good Christ. It's the truth. It is what it is. It's my truth.

I'm talking about something else. Sure. You sure fancy yourself some kind of hero of vision? The truth, it certainly ain't. We seek to make our own statements of individuality. It's a ruse. It's a syndrome those in power import on us to make people like you think you're free. The camera is, I suppose, a structurally complex scientific instrument. Functionally, though, simple. Its rules are easy, but it's difficult to play its game well. Well, I suppose I could hold your fancy camera there in my hands and make a wonderful photograph with almost no idea what goes on scientifically. Wouldn't you say so, doc?

Well, maybe that's what you think.

You seem to be a bit of a paradox, Doc. Did you ever think that maybe your photographs aren't really the transcendent experience, not the knowledge or value of being a human being, the thing that you seem to think they are, but they're merely a a data bank, a camera memory, an automatic function now of the camera.

Paradox! I do not know why you would say such a thing.

I figured that'd be obvious now, Doc. Come on. Well, I'm not trying to discount your experience per se.

Yeah. Please, Virgil, continue to enlighten me. Please shed light on my experience, and what my experience means.

I'm not trying to discount your experience.

You ain't-

Well, no, Doc. Well, doc, just you just seem to speak about things so personally from one side, but then, like, you're making a catalog of impersonal, dispassionate project.

Well, Virgil, if you take all the beauty and greatness in the world for granted and can no longer find your way to a state of emotional wonder, it is difficult to produce good work.

Well, Doc, I'd-

Positive feelings can be created in photographs without appearing sentimental.

I do believe there is something in… the sublime, perhaps. Something in the Sublime that gets away from your nostalgia problem.

The Sublime. What is that?

Don't matter. There is no one thing called photography. There's no faithful representation. Such drudgery. Perhaps there's a higher task, Doc, a higher sort of calling in something with more meaning, greater stakes than a beautiful wallpaper. Abstraction does, in fact, interest me. Language limits me, Doc, but doesn't it limit us all?

I know you must revel in some kind of ability to communicate some higher ideas from your words. What about painting, Doc? Seems even higher of idea.

It is not. I contest this. It is not. Painters get help from us, but I say we get no help from painters. People think that painters get the most satisfactions, but it is simply untrue. We turn mundane details into autonomous compositions. We transform true colors into brilliant colors.

Who on earth is this we you speak of?

WE!! Goddamn it!

What the fuck is at stake, doc? I hate to break the news to you, but you're a journeyman. You ranch. You dig for gold. You wander the country like a good for nothing. You leave a trail of photographs. Ain't nothing at stake here except your pride. Tell you what. For a sip of that whiskey of yours there, I’ll teach you a few lessons.

Ha! You will, will ya.

Get ready, here’s lesson number one….