Goldsworthy and Book (Newsletter #6)
Dear Friends,
Goldsworthy's The Spire
In October British artist Andy Goldsworthy was here to erect The Spire in the Presidio. The sculpture is composed of 37 felled Monterey Cypress trees. It sits just inside Arquello Gate in a gap between the aging trees it’s made of and a newly planted forest that will replace them.
I was fortunate enough to photograph both the felling of the trees (an image of which you can see on pg. 71 here) and their construction into The Spire. Over a couple of days, I photographed the spire, the crew, the cranes, Andy, all of which was fun but I wanted something quiet, something luminous.
I wanted to get a shot of it at night with the full moon shining on the spire. When I got to the site just before sunrise one morning, the moon was setting brilliantly behind the standing forest. That was the image I wanted. I made a trip back the following day when the moon was perfectly aligned and the result is the photograph above.
The Presidio Book
My book is finally available. I am so excited. Four years in the making and it is now on the shelves. I am very proud of it - it is a beautiful heavy coffee table photography book. The book's companion website is at presidiobook.com where you can preview a full digital version.
Copies are available for purchase directly from presidiobook.com or you can also pick one up at local bookstores including Books Inc, Green Apple Books, The Golden Gate National Park Stores and photo-eye (online and in Santa Fe, MN).
An excerpt from the introduction by Presidio Historian, Randolph Delehanty, Ph.D.
“Ms.Vargas came to live in the Presidio three years ago during this momentary pause in its long life. She started exploring the complex old post looking carefully and lovingly at its gentle sleep and slow but steady revival as a national park with a new civilian community living and working here. She has an eye for what it essential about the Presidio: the very American ordinariness of its military architecture and the strange “wildness” of its man-made forests. Many of her images put the two together in a new way, as a filigree of evocative shadows cast on the “screens” of plain white walls. They almost seem like photographs of photographs with the building walls the film on which the fugitive shadows are cast. Photography - literally writing with light - here becomes writing with shadows with the unseen light source behind us.”
In October British artist Andy Goldsworthy was here to erect The Spire in the Presidio. The sculpture is composed of 37 felled Monterey Cypress trees. It sits just inside Arquello Gate in a gap between the aging trees it’s made of and a newly planted forest that will replace them.
I was fortunate enough to photograph both the felling of the trees (an image of which you can see on pg. 71 here) and their construction into The Spire. Over a couple of days, I photographed the spire, the crew, the cranes, Andy, all of which was fun but I wanted something quiet, something luminous.
I wanted to get a shot of it at night with the full moon shining on the spire. When I got to the site just before sunrise one morning, the moon was setting brilliantly behind the standing forest. That was the image I wanted. I made a trip back the following day when the moon was perfectly aligned and the result is the photograph above.
The Presidio Book
My book is finally available. I am so excited. Four years in the making and it is now on the shelves. I am very proud of it - it is a beautiful heavy coffee table photography book. The book's companion website is at presidiobook.com where you can preview a full digital version.
Copies are available for purchase directly from presidiobook.com or you can also pick one up at local bookstores including Books Inc, Green Apple Books, The Golden Gate National Park Stores and photo-eye (online and in Santa Fe, MN).
The Presidio, Portraits of a Changing Landscape,
2008
Photographs by Charity Vargas
Hardcover, linen bound photography book with 58 black & white illustrations, 12x9½", $50.00
Hardcover, linen bound photography book with 58 black & white illustrations, 12x9½", $50.00
An excerpt from the introduction by Presidio Historian, Randolph Delehanty, Ph.D.
“Ms.Vargas came to live in the Presidio three years ago during this momentary pause in its long life. She started exploring the complex old post looking carefully and lovingly at its gentle sleep and slow but steady revival as a national park with a new civilian community living and working here. She has an eye for what it essential about the Presidio: the very American ordinariness of its military architecture and the strange “wildness” of its man-made forests. Many of her images put the two together in a new way, as a filigree of evocative shadows cast on the “screens” of plain white walls. They almost seem like photographs of photographs with the building walls the film on which the fugitive shadows are cast. Photography - literally writing with light - here becomes writing with shadows with the unseen light source behind us.”
