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).
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
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.”
