I have published my images in various print and electronic formats during the past 10 years, telling stories by time and place. I’ll work toward publishing them in this area of my site in somewhat consistent and easily accessible formats. In the meantime, here in plain text form, are a few of the stories and images I’ve uploaded: Christmas 1964 in France; a New Millennium in Kalamazoo; the 2001 Farmers Market season in Kalamazoo; the 2001 patriotic Christmas in Kalamazoo; 1968 and 2002 at Cranbrook academy of Art. They are examples of my work in recording unique life experiences at specific intersections of time and place.

As I describe in a process booklet, I’ve been drawing, photographing, and writing (in analog media) about my experiences throughout my life. The images on this page will include early and recent explorations of digital time and place storytelling.

Christmas 1964
Olivet, France

I decided that Christmas 1964 would be the subject of my first image for several reasons.  Both the time and place were special, and the memories were still vivid.  As I was setting up my film scanner on Christmas Day in 1998 to begin working on Images of Time and Place, it seemed appropriate to scan a slide I took on Christmas Day years earlier as a part of my first image. This is what I wrote about being in Olivet, France, on December 25^th 1964: 

I had been stationed in France for almost two weeks before Christmas.  I was still overwhelmed by the excitement of those weeks.  But as Christmas neared, I was also overwhelmed by a feeling of being very alone, very far away from home and family for the first time in my life during the Christmas holidays.

Karen and I became engaged on Christmas Eve a year earlier and we had been married for just six months.  By Christmas our daily letters to each other were crossing, sharing our experiences, feelings, and longings to be together again.

Having spent all of my winters in snow, the dreary French winter with little evidence of Christmas was very disappointing.  Driving back to the BOQ from church on Christmas morning the blue haze of the Loiret River mirrored my loneliness.

I noticed two men fishing under the Loiret bridge in Olivet and stopped to take a couple of photos.  The dim glow of their campfire was as faint as the Christmas lights in Orleans.

The scenic temperament of the Loiret River changed with the weather.  Quite often it was blue and foggy.  I took several photos along the Loiret on my first roll of film in France, and included descriptions of the scenes with the slides I sent home to Karen.

A New Millennium
Kalamazoo, Michigan

I have always been fond of this engraving, perhaps because it is the only one of my great-grandfather’s engravings for which I have the original engraved wood.  I made this scan from one of his original proofs. The New Millennium seemed like an especially good time to enjoy and appreciate this engraving. The morning sky over Kalamazoo is simply one of the many I enjoyed at home at the dawn of this New Millennium. This is what I wrote about January 1^st 2001 (and before you ask, yes, the beginning of the traditional millennium):

My great-grandfather, Rudolph Edward Emil Kunze, was born in Germany in 1854 and immigrated to the United States with his family two years later.  His career as a wood engraver spanned the turn of the last century.  He made this engraving in 1874, presumably for his personal and/or business use.

The birth of a New Year or a New Millennium seems to be a time for reflection. This time of life, for me, also seems to be a time for reflection.  Someone about my age recently remarked that the decades are going by like the years used to go by. 

The cityscape in the engraving appears to be Chicago, my great-grandfather’s boyhood home and my boyhood home.  Looking east, the clouds over the city are highlighted by the birth of the New Year.

And looking east at the beginning of a New Millennium, a sunrise pierces the sky over Kalamazoo and highlights clouds that drifted here from Chicago.

Chicago is still close in time and place, yet it seems almost a lifetime ago.  This Chicago skyline evokes memories of family and friends, near and far, over the years.

And during this season of anticipation, expectation, and rebirth, the sunrise over Kalamazoo draws me toward the boundless and blessed opportunities in this New Millennium.

Market Season 2001
Farmers Market, Kalamazoo, Michigan

With my first digital camera in hand, I began digitally documenting life as I was living it in 2001. The Farmers Market in Kalamazoo happened to be my first subject. I documented Saturday morning shopping throughout the 2001 market season in a booklet that I published in 2002. This is what I wrote about the 2001 market season:

Time and place shape life experiences.

Images of Time and Place are recordings of unique life experiences at specific intersections of time and place.

The Farmers Market was a wonderful place to be during the 2001 market season!

Home grown local colors, flavors, and scents attract shoppers to our Farmers Market from May through November each year. The Farmers Market in Kalamazoo, like the Greek agora and many other markets around the world, is a popular gathering place, where socializing can be as important as shopping.

I recorded images spontaneously through most of last year’s market season. For the most part, I photographed in stands where we shopped. Early morning was best for both lighting and produce selection. These images and the recollections of my experiences simply evolved over the months.

 

Christmas Season 2001
Downtown, Kalamazoo, Michigan

I also digitally documented the month of September 2001. I recorded many images of American flags on a trip to New York just days after 911, and in Kalamazoo in the months that followed. By Christmas, American flags were still ubiquitous. This is the image I made for our Christmas card that year, and this is what I wrote inside the card:

Merry Christmas and God Bless America

And this is what I wrote on the back of the card:

Red, White, Blue, and Green
 

 

1968 Fall Semester Design Critiques
Cranbrook Academy of Art,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

By the end of 2002 I had taken almost as many pictures in my first two years of digital photography as I had taken my whole life with film. While I was digitally documenting life as I was living it those years, I continued scanning film images and telling stories by time and place. Analog blended with digital as I visited places I’d been years before.

In September 2002 I returned to Cranbrook Academy of Art for a reunion, celebration, and dedication. In preparation for my return visit and wondering who I might see, I began looking through some of my old black and white contact sheets from 1967-1969. This is what I wrote:

On the eve of returning to Cranbrook Academy of Art for my first-ever alumni reunion, I proofed some of my old black and white negatives, looking for faces to place with names. Good places to look for faces, especially with interesting expressions, were our design critiques.

It was a kind of magical time at Cranbrook Academy of Art during the late 1960s. The time, the place, and the people shaped my life in many ways.

The people were a community of working and learning artists, craftspeople, and designers. The design department admitted 10 graduate students to the two-year program each fall and graduated about that number each spring. There were 20 drawing boards and small workspaces in a Spartan studio on Academy Way. Three design disciplines were offered – environmental, product, and graphic.

The first thing we learned when we arrived at Cranbrook in the fall of 1967 was that we were all astonished that we had been admitted. None of us felt worthy!

We had few classes per se at Cranbrook. We worked four days a week in our major studio and one day a week in our minor studio. We wrote our own problem statements, developed solutions, and were intensely serious about our design work. We learned from one another and from the world around us. Midterm and final critiques were milestone moments of truth for all of us. We worked hard and had fun together along the way.

I received my Master of Fine Arts Degree in Graphic Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in June 1969.

September 20^th and 21^st 2002 Reunion
Cranbrook Academy of Art,
Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

On September 20^th 2002 I returned to Cranbrook Academy of Art for an alumni reunion, for a celebration of the Academy’s seventieth anniversary, and for the dedication of the just completed New Studios Building.

The weekend was just as magical as my student days at Cranbrook more than 30 years earlier. While the weekend was framed in nostalgia and memories, the dedication of the New Studios Building was a manifestation of new opportunities at Cranbrook. A juxtaposition of  past, present, and future for the Academy and for me. A sensory and emotional overload for me.

Two of us from the 1969 class of ten design graduates returned. We spent much of the weekend together, walking in familiar places, talking and remembering. The years dissolved away. We took photos of each other in what was then our design studio (now sculpture, as it was when Carl Milles worked there). And we talked about our current work just as intensely as we talked about our work then.

Saturday

Saturday morning began with a welcome program, group photo, and picnic lunch under the tent next to the Triton Pools. A guided bus tour highlighted expansions at Kingswood and the Institute of Science, and the new Natatorium and Woodward Avenue entrance.

The old library was just as I remembered it. I wondered if my thesis was still around. To my delight, all attending alumni theses had been brought out to the counter. As I paged through my thesis in those quiet moments it seemed as if I had done the work only yesterday.

I wandered down Academy Way, changed only by nature over the years, past the familiar landmarks – the studios and dorms, the Saarinen and Milles Houses, and signature sculpture.

Back to the streaming colors of the present, I walked past the ceremonial ribbons waiting to be cut to dedicate the New Studios Building, signed the large poster, and listened to the remarks of some of those who helped make the new studios a reality during the past 25 years. Then we were all invited to participate in the ribbon cutting (scissors provided).

Afternoon blended into evening and the generations melded as we celebrated new opportunities at Cranbrook – conversations, receptions, open studios, and sparklers for the Academy’s big seventieth birthday party under the tent.

Sunday

Sunday morning the cut ribbons were still coloring the breeze in front of the New Studios building. We rendezvoused under the alumni tent one last time for brunch and walked and talked and took photos for hours. Conversations seemed to shift, now, toward the present and future as we wandered through studios and talked with students.

We visited the renovated 2D and 3D design studios, now located in what used to be dorm space. The 120 student mailboxes were still there from our days at Cranbrook – I wonder where the additional 30 mailboxes are for the current enrollment of 150 students.

All too soon, it was time to say good-bye. As the caterers packed up and the tent emptied, I strolled around the Triton Pools and Orpheus Fountain, and through the museum peristyle as I had done so many times years ago.

But now there is a new building beyond the peristyle. I admired the New Studios Building as I walked through the fiber, ceramics, and metals departments. There weren’t many weaving looms or potter’s wheels – but there certainly were new opportunities for generations of students to come.

The weekend weather was worthy of a Hollywood production. The torrential rains Friday during my drive over accompanied my apprehension (and as was pointed out during the dedication ceremony, settled the dust on the New Studios Building). The glorious day of sunshine Saturday lifted my spirits and seemed to symbolize the dawn of a new chapter in the Academy’s history. And the overcast Sunday somehow underscored the melancholy I felt leaving Cranbrook once again.

As I drove by some of the new features of the Cranbrook landscape leaving the Academy, I thought about how I was awed not only by the exquisite integration of nature, old structures, and new structures, but also by the sensitive integration of their color palettes.

The time was so short. The experience was so large. On the way home I thought, once again, about how the time (then and now), the place, and the people continue to have a profound impact on my life.

It was a very special weekend!

I started editing photos and writing this the day after I returned from the Cranbrook reunion and three days after I wrote about Cranbrook design crits during the fall semester of 1968 – a time compression and decompression odyssey that juxtaposed places, people, and events spanning more than 30 years. My memories are just as vivid as I look at these photos today. The text above is excerpted from booklets and a DVD that I made in 2002. The galleries are a quick small sample. I’ll remix these stories for my site one of these days. In the meantime, as I looked through these photos again, I thought about how my professional career has been a mix of science and art, mostly art, and selected a few more images that seemed to be especially meaningful reflections on past and present, opportunities and accomplishments, and time and place.