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Three Amish got on at Port Henry

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The train ride from Montreal nearly due south to Albany and on to New York could be comfortably described as scenic. It begins with the crossing of the majestic Saint Lawrence. I missed a photo of the crisp clean lines of the lock attached to the far bank which framed some complex industrial buildings and a massive Ferris wheel. But soon the scenery settled into farmland, mostly cornfields, with buildings nestled into them as though they’d grown there.

It’s just 50 kilometres to the border and this was how we had chosen to enter the United States. Some media reports suggested that there might be a fuss. I thought that was fairly unlikely, being as we are two elderly Australians without obvious terrorist tendencies. But I didn’t want there to be a fuss. I had made some modest adjustments to my socials. I had confirmed our ESTAs long before, had made copies blah blah blah. [ESTA = Electronic System for Travel Authorization, required to enter the US.] I had filled in and paid our I-94s in Lisbon, BUT the damn app wouldn’t let me make a copy which for a time drove me crazy. [I-94 = an electronic arrival record showing your visa status and permitted stay period. Cost: AUD 42.62] You know … these things … can’t be too careful. In addition, airports, the international version anyway, are never much fun. I thought entry via train might be lower key. Anything to ease the journey.

A brief digression: the day before in Montreal we had both received notifications on our phones that there was a shooter loose in Côtes de Neige a couple of streets over from where we were. This situation ended with two dead, so … you know. Things happen.

The train stopped at a major installation at what my phone says is Rouse’s Point. And it is in the U. S. of A.

I counted 12 men and women as they got off, 12 very heavily-armed men and women. But that’s just America. So, 12 very heavily-armed men and women got on and began their border control. It wasn’t a big train and there weren’t many people on it. It nonetheless took them 75 minutes to complete whatever it was that they were completing.

In our case not much.

They asked for our passports. Hard to argue with that. Asked where we’d come from and where we were going. The woman actually; the guy was mostly just there for colour. Why were we travelling? And then, were we married? And then, didn’t we get homesick travelling? Which brought in the big guy who told us he lived just over the hill in Champlain and that he’d hardly been anywhere else in his life and that suited him just fine.

No interest in our ESTAs, no checking our I-94s, just amiable and pleasant Americans. It had taken about three minutes.

Another 50 kilometres, we’re now travelling through mixed forest, and the line swerves across to the shores of the waterway we’re near. It’s the top of the Hudson Valley. At this point Lake Champlain seems like a vast expanse and, at this point, it is — about 15 kilometres across.

The waterway narrows but the track stays on the shoulder of the western shoreline, sometimes up on rocky outcrops — palisades they might call them here — and at other points, more often, gliding over bridges through swamp land.

At times the river, the Hudson in which the island of Manhattan is eventually embedded, got so narrow that it became a channel carved through rush and swamp grass. But that was before we came to Port Henry.

There weren’t many in our carriage: two young adults travelling for work, a family of four whose children were buried in books, another young woman, another family whose father spent at least some of his time on the train rolling joints. But it was quiet. There was the clack of the line and the regular warning noise the engine made whenever we came to a road crossing, fairly constantly as it seemed. We fell to trying to find suitable terms for it. It was certainly not a toot or a whistle or a siren or a blast. I decided a moan, a muscular bovine moan. Moowaooowooo. Distant. Cinematic. Lovely.

And then at Port Henry three more passengers got on. At first, and this is not to my credit, I thought it was a sort of joke. In France I would have been confident that it was un spectacle and they would do something and then ask for money.

Their hats were made for comedy. They were in such good order, cream straw cylinders on cream straw discs, symmetrical and probably not much fun to wear. And they were in uniform. Royal blue work shirts done up to the neck, pants and waist coats of a darker shade of blue, heavy black work shoes. Identically clad, the three of them, two adults and a 14 or 15 year-old. The adults had under-the-chin beards which I’ve never really understood. They took their hats off, each chose a window seat, and the two older ones started shouting to each other with the younger one joining in from time to time. I thought it sounded a bit like German, often long ‘yaaar’s. I consulted my phone. I was probably listening to Pennsylvania Dutch, with ‘Dutch’ being a corruption of ‘Deutsch’. Amish.

For a start they climbed up on their seats and gestured loudly at what we were passing, possibly identifying landmarks and land ownership. Someone suggested that this might have been their first time on a train as Amish usually do not travel this way.

Look, if a shout is a 7 they were probably on 5.3 to 5.6; but it was loud. And it went on. Not for 15 or so minutes but for several hours. It was a long trip. One would think of something and shout it over the seat to another person sitting a metre away. Then that person would shout back. Then they would shout together for some time. A lull. A shout, a shout back. Their obliviousness to anyone else on the train would suggest that it was an act, some cunning traducement, and then they’d be normal and say, ‘Ha! Like that? We sure tricked you!’ But no. No. They shared what I decided was a nasal braying drawl which, after some time, was like having a screw driven into your head.

And, here I am moving onto thinner ice, I became conscious of the way they smelt. As soon as you start talking about ‘smell’ there’s trouble. It becomes a pejorative and really it shouldn’t. But I can’t do anything about that. I have a keen sense of smell which usually provides me with a lot of pleasure, but these chaps smelt like chewed chewing gum. Stale spearmint? And that’s not necessarily an unpleasant smell. No disparagement intended. But they did. And somehow it added to the bother. Oh, and they ate crateloads of chips very loudly! Speaking all the while. They REAALLY gave me the shits.

Why didn’t I ask them if they’d mind being a bit quieter? I would usually. Was it because they were Amish? Maybe I felt I didn’t know how because of their difference. At the time it seemed to go beyond those apparently trivial markers to become an obligatory principle of de-association.

Our own Pauline Hansen had been in the news saying unpleasant things about people — genres of people, races of people, religions of people — she doesn’t like. Am I like her? I was at that point. Would I like to have those three forcibly deported? Then, yes. Would I act to have them forcibly deported? Possibly. Do I want them to live in a ghetto which is broadly inaccessible? (As they may. I don’t know.) That might be one solution.

How do people with quite radical differences of view and of cultural practice live together? At that moment I didn’t care. I just wanted them out of the carriage. I may have even hated them.

* * * * * * *

So, here I am entering America and already, a couple of hours in, absorbing some of the characteristics that the media, ours and theirs, feed on and spit out as normal.

Were we arriving in a country riven by cultural wars, where both sorts of extreme positions are sublimely stupid, and even the more moderate ones seem unnecessarily aggressive? Where the administration seems to be wanting to stamp out empathy and tolerance, and where the operative version of the Bible seems more focused on incarcerating your neighbour than loving them? Where anger is a marketable commodity, the more furious the more lucrative?

That was the eye I was looking with.

This may disappoint you, but most of the Americans we encountered were scrupulously polite or, better, cheerily warmly polite. They wanted to invite you into their world, if a superficial version of it. (Superficial’s okay; you’re only buying milk.) They were quite insistent about engaging with you and eagerly responsive if you showed interest. ‘You’re so very welcome’, would easily be the phrase we heard most commonly. Easily.

Even if it’s an idea and practice which can readily be challenged, the country lives off philanthropy. In the welter and complexity of philanthropic projects in America there are clearly generous and companionate instincts present. And, just as it happens, in each case the people we spent more time with were mentoring kids who were having a hard time in close and warm relationships. These things seemed commonplace but they’re often left off the scales when weighing Trump’s infamies. (And infamies they are, except, and let’s be clear here, someone has to do something about illegal immigration.)

It’s a big country.

* * * * * * *

You want to know what happened don’t you? In fact you want a look at the photos I took of them.

With 45 minutes to go they went off to the dining car. We got off at Albany. They didn’t.

* * * * * * *

Our accommodation in Albany was next to the Emmanuel Church and clusters of customers for the Food Pantry were often, in clouds of ganja smoke, just over the road. This sign wasn’t madly unusual, but it had an addendum which did offer something different. The church had recently taken ICE and the government to court to protect someone (named, but not described) and they had won. This person was no longer in custody. The church had done that not via the customary tools of rhetoric or a sermon, but by action, which in this case had succeeded.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Forces always come in pairs: One force is the action, and the other is the reaction.

* * * * * * *

Our very friendly hostess and the dominant figure at the cafe where we breakfasted in Albany was Venezuelan. The shocking earthquakes which had occurred the day before we arrived had had an impact on her family. She was glad Trump had kidnapped Maduro because she thought that meant the local rescue effort might be more efficient and successful. Her own citizenship status was uncertain.

* * * * * * *

At the Phillips Collection in Washington, housed in a mansion near Dupont Circle where this, at left, was the music room, it was thought appropriate to post this sign at the entry.

One way — in this stockpile of Rothkos, Braques, Van Goghs, Kandinskys, Pisarros and so on — might have been to take the work below and feature it. Well, that’s what they’d done anyway, and we liked and admired it. Friendly. Charming. Unusual media. Ethiopian. Bit out of the way. Great. Loved seeing it there.

‘Yediro Suk’ by Elias Sime, born Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 1968. Paint, ink, acrylic yarn embroidery.

But I don’t think that’s the answer to the question and its embedded assumptions. Privilege may offer more chances to encounter some forms of art or to be exposed to ideas about art, but it mightn’t have much to do at all with taste.

* * * * * * *

The Chase Bank, Washington, 600m from the White House. Which clearly has not been able to stamp out expressions of DEI. Or is it just clever marketing? Maybe chasing the pink dollar? Maybe firmly suggesting that you don’t say things like ‘chasing the pink dollar’?

* * * * * * *

A hoarding on a fence surrounding major new works in Forest Park, St Louis. I can’t see who is doing the yoga down below but there are no Caucasians on the terrace.

* * * * * * *

Food. Can food be political too? Well prima facie, no. It’s absence, yes. Bobby Kennedy would say, most certainly. What you choose to eat will help to define who you are.

MAGA-ites and Red Meat? Yes. Barbecued red meat, two-inch steaks. Rare. The smashed avo brigade? You know who I’m talking about. They’re drinking oat milk lattes. Felafal and hummus? Don’t get me started. Didn’t we just obliterate their nuclear stockpile?

The American supermarket may have something to say about cultural identity and conflict.

In Nashville we found the ‘Turnip Truck Natural Market, the city’s locally owned full-service natural and organic grocer, open daily from 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM.’ We were looking for some breakfast, fruit still in the first fresh bloom of youth and cereal that was less than 85% sugar. Confoundingly even in the Turnip Truck we could find no natural yoghurt to accompany same. All the options were heavily interfered with.

I did find Love Crunch Dark Chocolate and Red Berries Premium Organic Granola, and as something you’d want to eat first thing in the morning was inclined to treat this less than seriously.

However in the process of aimless phone wandering I discovered this:

‘Dark chocolate and red berries provide a powerful boost of antioxidants, flavonoids, and fiber. When eaten together, this combination supports heart health, lowers inflammation, improves blood flow, and feeds healthy gut bacteria to protect metabolic health.’

That’s what AI says anyway. What would The Science say? What would Anthony Fauci say? (No not the bit about Barbra Streisand, or Joan Baez either for that matter …)

We didn’t purchase.

I was even less confident about these.

Nashville

But they did sell fruit and vegs.

[A passing note: The really good Nashville breakfasts we found and most certainly the best coffee by many miles outside of Washington was at an ‘Australian’ cafe, Two Hands presumably a play on the Heath Ledger/ Bryan Brown film, which served ‘mindful meals’.]

* * * * * * *

There is a fundamental, inescapable and probably insoluble paradox at the heart of American cultural history which still instructs and shapes contemporary life: America as a beacon of freedom in thought, word and deed; and, a country founded on Western cultural norms which, when all said and done, shake down into a Judeo-Christian white republic. To some degree, this is the difference as an idea between 1619 when the first arrival of slaves from Africa in Virginia was recorded and 1776 when 56 ‘American’ men signed the Declaration of Independence.

It is desperately untidy, and is likely to remain so, because just what can you do about history?

* * * * * * *

As you would expect, the Missouri History Museum was celebrating the 250th. On entry, you will encounter a large statue of Thomas Jefferson, a permanent fixture. Prominently at his side when we were there is a display which is framed by the following text:

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in the summer of 1776. In it, he made a stirring claim for the equality of men and the existence of inalienable rights. In the decades that followed, he sought to expand white American’s rights and opportunities while at the same time profiting from the enslavement of Black men, women and children at his Virginia plantation, Monticello. During his life, Jefferson enslaved more than 600 people. He also had six children with an enslaved woman, Sally Hemings — a relationship which began when Jefferson was in his 40s and Hemings was a teenager.

Apparently he didn’t think much of Native Americans either. In the same display it is noted that the only reference to them in the Declaration is to ‘merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions’.

This is followed by a quote from Frederick Douglass, a hero of the African-American civil rights movement.

‘A government founded on justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for its existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the Governments in the world, and to the narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.’ (1869)

* * * * * * *

In an article about America’s complex response to the 250th celebrations, and prompted by his experience at Philadelphia’s Museum, David Smith wrote in the Guardian (10/7/26):

‘The exhibition [at Philadelphia’s museum] is proof that, while the White House stages its partisan spectacles, the nation’s cultural institutions are engaging in a quiet, methodical resistance, wielding primary sources and complex story-telling against the the onslaught of the great man theory of history.’

* * * * * * *

The Douglass quote is, in turn, next to a display about the Louisiana Purchase. [In 1803, the nascent US paid France $15 million for 827,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi, thereby doubling the size of the country.] The display asks:

‘Should the Louisiana Purchase be celebrated?

Should the United States have had the right to buy this land from France when most of it was already inhabited and controlled by Native Americans?’

Vexed and challenging questions to which the Heritage Foundation and Steven Miller (at right) would have answers. But here are the questions nonetheless, in public and in big stylish print, as the focus of the celebration of America’s founding moment, seeming to suggest that the correct answers might be ‘No’, and ‘No’, leaving contemporary Americans in a somewhat invidious situation.

What do you do if you say ‘No’ and ‘No’? What could the consequences and appropriate course of action possibly be?

* * * * * * *

In 1904, Saint Louis actually did celebrate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase by holding a thoroughly memorable world fair. It was a giant enterprise covering a good deal of what is now Forest Park and was designed to show off the world’s latest in industry and technology. More than 50 countries provided exhibits. It was also designed to show off the greatest: America and its progress. Forty-three of the then 45 states had exhibitions. (You may wish to compare this with Trump’s WORLD’S GREATEST fair for the 250th.)

As  President William McKinley said in his address to open the Fair:

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress. They record the world’s advancement. They stimulate the energy, enterprise, and intellect of the people; and quicken human genius. They go into the home. They broaden and brighten the daily life of the people. They open mighty storehouses of information to the student.

The Fair ran for seven months and attendance was recorded at just under 20 million. 450,000 were there on its biggest day. Its 1,500 buildings were connected by 120 km of roads and walkways. The Palace of Agriculture alone, fitted out in Greco-Roman style, covered 20 acres. (It was the Big One.)

At right is a portion of the Palace of the Arts. It was a no nonsense affair architecturally anyway.

Wireless telephones, electric streetcars and X-ray machines were among the featured marvels. Helen Keller gave a lecture. George Ferris opened and ran his first Wheel. T.S. Eliot, a native of St Louis, wrote a paper on anthropology after his visit. Max Weber arrived hoping to gain some additional insights into capitalism. The Anglo-Boer War Concession re-enacted major battles from the Second Boer War twice a day. Several generals and 600 veteran soldiers from both sides of the war participated. After 2–3 hours the show would conclude with the Boer General, Christiaan de Wet, escaping by diving from a height of 35 feet (11 m) into a pool of water.

But the celebration of imperialism and conquest was a dominant theme. Today we might call it abject, unalloyed racism.

A number of groups of what we might call First Peoples (2600 individuals counted collectively) were pressed into service. They were arranged in clusters along ‘The Pike’, the road running through the main entertainment area, in a continuum graded from ‘Savage’ to ‘Civilised’.

[It might be noted that some of the participants in this ‘Human Zoo’ made a living this way. A ‘Canadian’ Inuit, for example, was born at the Chicago World’s Fair and lived in this way for decades while she and her family maintained a home on Coney Island.]

Various events were held to demonstrate the superiority of the white races. These sometimes took the form of the ‘experiments’ which in this febrile environment were very popular.

One of these was the ‘Anthropology Days’. The administrators paid indigenous peoples (already employed as exhibits in the ‘human zoo’ at the Fair) to compete in European-style sporting events like discus throwing and high jump, and collected data on their athletic performance in order to investigate the scale of white physical superiority.

“We have for years been led to believe,” said the official report, “that the average savage was fleet of foot, strong of limb, accurate with the bow and arrow and expert in throwing the stone, and that some, particularly the Patagonians, were noted for their great size and strength, and owing to the peculiar life that many had been called upon to lead they have been termed natural athletes.” The competitions were scheduled so that scientific observers could be present and, continued the report, the results “disprove these tales.”

The organizers ran hundred-yard heats for six groups, “Africans, Moros (from the Philippines), Patagonians, and the Ainu (Japanese), Cocopa (Mexican) and Sioux Indian tribes. The best time, by an “Americanized Indian,” was one “that almost any winner of a schoolboy event could eclipse at will.” The best shot put “was a ridiculously poor performance,” and other events were equally disappointing. The report did acknowledge that some of the competitors weren’t that interested. “With the pigmies, however, it is only fair to state that they entered into the spirit of this competition for fun and only became interested in the pole climbing and their mud fight.”

Correct. Racism, pure as the driven white snow. But only in a country which already had profoundly racist foundations.

* * * * * * *

The relevance of the following story might not be immediately obvious. But maybe it is. It might tell you something important about the times. It wasn’t all X-rays and wireless telephones. You decide. Regardless, it’s a glorious story.

The burghers of Saint Louis strong-armed those of Chicago to allow the shift of the 1904 Olympic Games to the Fair, where they would become the first to be held in the United States. It was a mess as bits of the Games ran over five months and got very mixed up with the ‘Anthropogical’ events. Athletes from only 12 other countries participated; 523 of the 630 involved were American, many running for their club or state.

The marathon is famous.

The slowest ever at an Olympics by forty minutes (!), it was run in exceptionally hot weather through ‘normal’ life conditions so that runners were dodging pedestrians and traffic. One was hit by a trolley car, another chased by wild dogs and bitten. There was only one place on the course 12 miles from the start where athletes could officially get fresh water. James Sullivan, the chief organizer of the games, wanted to minimize fluid intake to test the limits and effects of purposeful dehydration, a common area of research at the time. 🤔😵‍💫🫣 The roads were so dusty (3-4 inches deep) that dust coated William Garcia’s aesophagus and stomach lining so completely it caused serious hemorrhaging. He was found unconscious by the side of the road and nearly died. 32 started, 14 finished.

Félix Carvajal of Cuba (in the centre of the photo above. Hicks is at the left, number 20), who travelled to St. Louis using money raised by staging various exhibitions in Havana, stopped in New Orleans and lost all of his money in a crap game. So he hitchhiked. He showed up on the starting line wearing heavy shoes, long trousers (which another competitor trimmed for him), and a long-sleeved shirt, and eventually finished fourth. He had taken a nap on the way and also eaten two peaches that he had stolen from a picnic and some rotten apples that he had been given. Two Zulu tribesmen who were part of the Boer War exhibition at the fair competed for fun. They came 9th and 12th.

First across the line was Fred Lorz. He was actually on the presentation dais with President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice anointing him with the laurel wreath when it was revealed that he’d become very thirsty during the race and left the course looking for a drink. He had then hailed a car and hitched a ride for 14 miles before getting out after the car broke down and running the last few.

The subsequently adjudged winner was T. J. Hicks from Massachusetts. When he asked his support team for water initially they just wiped his mouth out with a damp towel which had been soaked in distilled water. But then they gave him egg whites and in turn brandy and a tablet containing strychnine. He was also given a bath in warm water at the side of the track. When he was carried over the line by his handlers, feet in the air making slight running-like motions, he was hallucinating and asking if there was still 20 miles to go.

You’re laughing. I’m laughing. Every time I read it I laugh. In a context where these seemingly remarkable happenings are simply conventional behaviour, what do we think about casual or even institutional racism? How much really can we expect of human beings? Awkwardly, they’re just like us.

But we can be cruel, and we can be just stupid.

* * * * * * *

‘From 2014 to 2024, roughly 862,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, more than twice as many as the previous decade. Several studies have shown that addicts who shoot up at official injection sites are far less likely to die of overdoses than those who use drugs in, say, alleyways and parks. Over the past decade, however, overdose-death rates climbed sharply in nearly every city where the strongest harm-reduction policies were in place. …

[Newly appointed City President Sara] Nelson also asked pointed questions about what had become the received wisdom in Seattle, such as why the county government paid millions of dollars to supply kits to addicts with tinfoil, pipes, and instructions on how to smoke fentanyl. What harm was reduced, Nelson asked at a 2023 council hearing, by helping addicts get high? Amber Tejada, an employee of a health nonprofit that had partnered with the city, raised her hand to answer. “I know it can be a little controversial, but one of the key tenets of harm reduction that I see is that we want to be able to facilitate and champion the autonomy of people who use drugs.”’ (Michael Powell, ‘The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs’, The Atlantic 10/7/26.)

* * * * * * *

A contented, congenial, relaxed and very multi-cultural crowd, a few smoking dope happily but otherwise not appearing to take drugs, at a free concert (‘Kansas’: are you old enough to remember?) in Albany. The guy sitting in front of me has a T-shirt expressing an aspiration. If you can’t read it it says ‘Explore Goodness’.

Fair enough.

* * * * * * *

Meanwhile, on climate change …

Do you want to get off at Albany too?

Lisbon

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Outdoor view of a restaurant with umbrellas in front, featuring a woman standing near a sign that reads 'Brunch All Day'. The building behind has an ornate architectural design and is bathed in sunlight.

It’s the rolled trouser leg I think, and the gesture to support whatever it is she’s saying on the phone. There’s that. Makes the photo. But the weather. The hill. The stacked buildings. The odd roofed area which you wouldn’t find in Madrid for example. There’s a figure there. Collectively, could be Lisbon.

It was. We had come to see our friends Geoff and Vera and good dog Moti, worth a blog in herself. Like quite a few of the folk in Arroios, the area where we stayed, an immigrant from India and contented with her lot. Which was and remains a pretty comfortable Lot. We followed two of Moti’s favourite routes round town and they were instructive in themselves. Not necessarily the most touristed of tracks.

We did go downtown. Look for the yellow flag in the photo on the left. That’s leading the party of 35. And the chap in the black T-shirt is at one end of Rua Augusta, one end of tourist-ville. Lisbon has become incredibly popular with tourists, one reason being that is notably cheap. A perfectly fine haircut from one the aforesaid local Indians (with relatives in Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia) was €5.

We were shopping. A scarf had disappeared and some T-shirts had been left behind. We didn’t go to the castle (above right), and we didn’t use the Elevador de Santa Justa at left. Like a good many other things that might have detained us in Lisbon (the Gulbenkian, one of the great galleries of the world; the National Tile Museum — yes, really; six other museums with varying degrees of attraction; the Belem Tower; etc.) it was temporarily closed.

But we were standing outside an H&M that seemed to have most things required. In the photo below we were just as near a shop which had an extraordinary selection of hand-woven scarves and other things you might hand-weave. Great to look at; not quite so much to buy. Somewhat out of our range.

A busy street scene featuring a red tram, pedestrians, and cyclists near a horse statue in the city center. Buildings with colorful facades and a clear blue sky in the background.

To enhance one of our days Geoff and Vera took us on a tour out of town south to the Atlantic Coast and the Castelo de Sesimbra.

From its battlements one way, and then the other.

The castle also had a modest chapel with a fine display of azulejos, the distinctive tiles — often blue and white and sometimes incredibly detailed and realistic — of, among other places, the Iberian Peninsula, reflective of its Moorish influences.

Interior of a historical chapel with blue and white tile work, featuring wooden chairs arranged in rows and decorative statues, with a woman standing in the center.

The contents of the canopy of one alcove did puzzle me. I wondered if we were to celebrate the leg or perhaps its successful amputation. There would be a story. The other similar spaces were full of incidents in the life of Mary. After all, it is the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Castelo, the Church of our Lady of the Castle, but I don’t know any relevant stories about a leg and its accompanying walking stick.

We also visited a nearby beach …

A hillside with a house at the top, surrounded by lush greenery and rocky terrain, overlooking a rocky beach area.
A pathway winding through a forest of tall eucalyptus trees under a clear blue sky.
A small, charming white and blue house situated at the base of a rocky cliff surrounded by greenery and pebbles.

Note the stand of trees in the centre picture. We walked a kilometre or so down to the beach from the car through stands of eucalyptus.

Any shortfall in tourist attractions to visit was made up by the pleasures of the area near Geoff and Vera’s unit where we were staying, Arroios on the Rua Morais Soares. It was the real world where people lived and did what people do.

We bought excellent material for breakfast in the local Pingo Doce, a supermarket chain. We weren’t far from the Grill n Chill or the Tandoori Fusion. There was a pastelaria almost next door (The ‘Star of Paris’) selling all manner of pastries and baked goods but also first rate Portuguese tarts which in the past I have dismissed. But not this time. Chai Wala Indian Traditional Sweets was on another corner, sort of an outgrowth of Pali Baba Frutaria e talho (‘Fruit shop and butchery’) itself shoulder-to-shoulder with the Oculista Do Chile, Lda, The Chilean Optician. I thought I’d smashed the screen of my phone but one very helpful set of young techies (from four or five options) diagnosed the issue and removed and replaced its protective layer. A chemist, kids clothes, a very busy beautician, several convenience stores, a dollar shop, a dentist, several bars, the Barbearia Dom Juan where I had my hair cut. It was ACTIVATED. There is something deeply sustaining about being in a locale like this. You get a good look at things you otherwise wouldn’t see.

When I took this photo we were eating outside at the Tasca do Mercado (the ‘Market Tavern’). Very fine food. Our unit was one block down either of these streets.

A busy city intersection with various vehicles, including scooters and cars, surrounded by colorful buildings under a clear blue sky.

Not a Portuguese tart.

A close-up of donuts topped with a creamy white frosting, golden meringue swirls, and brown crumb topping, displayed on a tray.

The elegance of rubbish. Lisbon on the left, and on the right we’ve moved an hour’s flight away to Madrid.

Venice

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Venice. No people. None visible. None. Zero.

Maurie my treasured barber of profound Italian descent who I think has never been to Italy, is going next week to Rome, Florence, Venice and Lake Como. Mid-August. Could be hell. But his elder daughter’s boyfriend wants to propose marriage at the Colosseum. Can’t say fairer than that can you? Could be anything. We checked the location of their accommodation in Venice: 100m from the Rialto on a line running directly south to the Piazza San Marco. And this is squarely in the middle of the train tracks. The heart of San Marco. Could be murder. And I’ll hear. I’ll be told. (‘Daaaavey … why diddun you tell me? We cooden even get out the front door. Too many people. And when we did the food was shit. Starbucks! I go half way round thu world to go to Starbucks! Cost me a FORTUNE.’)

[An addition 2/8 provided by Helen Beresford, one of her husband Jan Senbergs’ wonderful paintings, and yes, it’s all there: Venice. Marvellous! Thank you Helen.]

Alan loves a map. This is for you Al. We were staying just above the ‘e’ in Cannaregio. The dotted line is the route of the hordes. Maurie is staying just below the second arrowhead.

About 30 million tourists come to Venice each year. Since I moaned albeit quite cheerfully about the number of tourists there in 2010 that number has multiplied 2.5 times. The resident population has declined from 178,000 in 1950 to just under 50,000 in 2023. There are reasons for this and they are all fairly grim, a consequence of anticipating and feeding the desires of the itinerant hordes in the service of profit. And we were there distributing our own version of largesse and making our own contributions to its decline.

So, what’s our story then? The end of the walk was not very far due north from Venice on a major train route. We were flying from Venice to Lisbon. There’s that. Stick with it. But also Venice is violently addictive. It seems that there are things there you simply must see. And the vibe. All those canals. So I confess, only a bit repentant: we’re part of the gang. Suited up.

There is something preposterous about Venice, something that makes you chuckle if not laugh out loud. A city built on piles from the Croatian forests rammed into 120 islets in a shallow lagoon. A city whose main thoroughfare is lined with palaces but which has an appalling problem managing waste. A city whose cultural foundations are deeply serious overrun by haymakers and partying boaties with blasting boom boxes. A city whose identity is built on religion but whose daily life could scarcely be more secular. When I wrote about it in 2010 I called it Disneyland on Water. Maybe that’s why we go. Of course it is.

My list wouldn’t have been everybody’s but in a day we seemed to fit that and most of the rest in as well. Didn’t cross the Rialto. But look:

We’re just about to get into that gondola and go across to the other side 50 metres away for some ostentatiously large sum of money. [I’ve just checked and I need to qualify that. Two euros each which Michael had in his pocket possibly for just such an occasion.] But what are you going to do? Swim? No. Join in. Be part of the flood of humanity who for some opaque reason wants to ride in a gondola.

And the other side included:

Yes we’re at the Piazza and San Marco. Saw the Doge’s Palace. Did it all. Sat down for a drink, and this time I am correct because it is written down in front of me: media alla spina, smallish glass of draft beer, €23, or if you like AUD 37.88 per favore. A cup of coffee €15 (AUD 24.70). We didn’t choose to participate in that way here or anywhere else. An hour or two later we were eating a delicious meal in Cannaregio which was only plausibly expensive having had a very pleasant and substantial beer at a bar on the northern littoral for €8 a pop. (Looks like not that many people. Far fewer than August of course — this is in mid-June — but people were sheltering out of the sun. It was VERY hot.)

I had proposed a plan.

Stay somewhere nice a bit out of the way that’s not too far from the transport you want to use, in and out. Cannaregio? Great. Very comfortable accommodation, two bedrooms, huge kitchen off to the right — we could have a cup of tea!— AND a laundry! Hoorah.

Michael threatened to read all the books during the two nights we were there. A very impressive selection: classical and canonical supplemented by a few racey choices of the airport newstand genre.

The second element of the plan was to go against the traffic and get on the ‘wrong’ side of the Grand Canal into San Croce and Dorsodouro as soon as possible. There are still as many canals and bridges as you could wish for, elegant buildings, long views and excellent ‘normal’ places for food and drink. In 2010 as we did this, I thought, ‘Suddenly, perhaps obviously, as we strolled we found ourselves in a different city, one where people seemed to live.’

It wasn’t quite the same in 2026, but it wasn’t too far off it. We were sitting having our morning coffee and breakfast watching this happen. Quiet, mild and his camera is further away than arm’s length from the subject.

We were on our way to fulfil the third part of the plan, visits to the Accademia and Peggy Guggenheim’s Gallery. I had timed tickets for the latter and the former was on our way.

The Accademia has a great collection of medieval and renaissance art, primarily northern Italian with a focus on the rich vein that is Venetian. (Venice, of course, has been an imperial capital: boats, shipping, trade, a navy, 139 churches, 88 still operating, patronage, plenty of opportunity for religious art.) It is a good place to see stuff by Veronese (featuring strongly this time), Tintoretto, Titian, Canaletto (landscapes of the city), Bellini and Tiepolo (up there on the roof and in high corners looking down at you) among many others. And it has a reputation for being lightly populated. It is on the wrong side of the Canal I guess.

Some group photos:

There are a couple not looking at you … but not many.

and a large hatfull of religious mysteries not all of which are necessarily biblical. There’s this one for example.

Early Tintoretto (1555-ish?) Saint Mark saves the slave from torture or The Miracle of The Slave. ‘The miraculous apparition of The Evangelist swoops into the scene causing the instruments of torture to break, nullifying the punishment that the Provencal Lord (seated top right) wants to inflict on his slave, guilty of having travelled to Venice to venerate the remains of Saint Mark.’

There’s an issue here. Saint Mark coming to save someone who has just been to see the remains of Saint Mark? Arid nitpicking.

However, despite the weapon-grade radiance emanating from his head, Saint Mark may not be in time. The slave has already got a stick in his eye and another one looking like it’s on its way down, an axe similarly poised. The handle of the sledgehammer might be broken but what has it already been up to? Plus the hangers-on seem more interested in arranging themselves in a tableau than effective intervention. From Tintoretto’s tabloid period. But he knew his audience. This is one of a set of four big ones focused on Saint Mark, Venice’s patron saint.

This is another of the four.

I do not know what the ghostly figures fleeing off left are up to. (It’s likely that the painting is unfinished.) But this is his Saint Mark’s Body Brought to Venice, The Abduction of the Body of Saint Mark or Translation of the Body of Saint Mark, referring to the transfer of Saint Mark’s relics from Alexandria to Venice. And here is an explanatory expansion:

Saint Mark spent most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt. His body was brought to Venice eight centuries after his death in AD 68. Venice’s ruling class wanted St. Mark as the patron saint for their economic status, so they arranged to smuggle his body from Egypt. While stealing the body, the thieves Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello hid the body under pork and vegetables. Once they arrived in Venice on January 31, 828, Mark’s body was kept in Doge Giustiniano’s palace. When the doge died, his widow was ordered to build the Basilica di San Marco to house Mark. Fear that Saint Mark’s body would be stolen again continued after the death of the Doge. According to a French monk, Mark’s body was safely stored in “one of the great pillars”. However, when the chapel of Basilica di San Marco was rebuilt in 1063, Saint Mark’s body could not be found. Thirty years after this, it was said that Saint Mark’s body re-appeared, with his arm appearing from an old pillar. After re-appearing, Saint Mark’s body was finally put in a sculptured coffin below the high altar in the chapel.

‘The thieves Buono da Malamocco and Rustico da Torcello hid the body under pork and vegetables.’ The arm … my gracious. That would have been a moment. And the camel? What of the camel? Another panel in life’s rich tapestry I guess. Venetian history. Love all this. So much to be known isn’t there? And some of it at least is there waiting for you in the Accademia.

I have written at some length about Peggy Guggenheim and her Venetian gallery elsewhere. A most absorbing figure. Out there. Full frontal. And her daughter who had the misfortune to be named Pegeen, and whose artwork while pushed hard never toppled over into credibility. And that’s what I thought on this visit: the mountain, mighty mountains and vast expanses, of work on which really good art is built. The collection was slightly musty, and perhaps more about Peggy and her many mates than art per se.

This Miro is the work of a young man. If you knew his later work you could see some of the foundations here.

A Mondrian below. I can’t remember whether it was a window or a painting. It’s whichever you think it’s not. [It’s a painting.] And lovely, but he went on from here.

And I don’t know who did this or its name. (It’s got ‘Le genie de l’espace’ written on it. The space genius? The genius of space? Andre? Yolande? An interpretation please.) But it was striking. I contributed the reflection.

That night I looked at my phone and we had walked 12.8 kilometres not a step of which I regretted.

There’s this.

And there’s also this.

Magic. Some of that will have rubbed off on Maurie and his family. I have no doubt of that. None. It’s Venice.

FLEW OUT. Went to Lisbon. Stick with it.

The Chestnut Way

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It’s the Chestnut Way, the Keschtweg or the Sentiero del Castagna in this very multi-cultural part of the world, north-eastern Italy, not so far from the Austrian border.

And it is either in or, more accurately, very close to I Dolomiti, The Dolomites. The most renowned peaks in the Dolomites, the Cimi are visible in the background of the first photo above and a constant presence during the walk. But they are on the other side, the eastern side, of the valley carved out by the Isarco or Eisack river. And on the other side of the formidable autostrada which lines the base of that valley.

It was only on the train from Innsbruck that I realised we were going through the Brenner Pass, since Roman times one of the main entry points from the north through the Alps to Italy. The nose-to-tail traffic, trucks especially, on the autostrada suggested that it still is. The Southern Tyrol as the area is known was granted to Italy (from Austria) after the First World War. In 1940 the Pass itself was the site of the signing of the Pact of Steel by Hitler and Mussolini. When Italy surrendered in 1943 the Nazis shifted the nominal border of the Reich well south of Bolzano. This helps to explain its cultural complexity. I found the shift from ‘Central Europe’ to ‘Italy’ over 50 kilometres quite pronounced and most certainly part of the fun.

At left, Michael doing his best to look South Tyrolean.

And it has been a route of pilgrimage for centuries. I have mentioned elsewhere that the walk nominally starts at an abbey north of Bressanone/ Brixen, the Abbazia di Novacella, and finishes at the cathedral in Bolzano. Shrines ranging from the obvious to the opaque are legion along the way.

Churches provide some of its most distinctive sights, but the walk gets its name from the stands of chestnut trees you encounter. It’s an amazingly fertile area full of vineyards on impossible slopes along with a huge range of fruit trees.

Bressanone/ Brixen has its own tourist allure. It is the oldest city in the area and its old quarter almost defines picturesque. A floral Lamb of God in the Square in front of the Rathaus (Town Hall) on the left. The marching chaps? No idea, just mightily impressive. They demobbed into the cathedral swords sheathed.

Rather than tangoing with the sharp grey peaks — and there is a very enticing walk along their base which people I know have done — we were on the old folk’s side of the valley. We were walking, more or less, along the lip of the western side of the valley which still had plenty of ups and downs as well as consistently glorious views. Like this: ‘This track is rated moderate and is suitable for regular walkers with most days offering 4-8h of walking and sections with steep ascents. The routes cover a variety of terrain including grass, roads and stone paths as well as dirt roads and forest tracks.’ That’s about it.

It’s not so far. On the autostrada it’s 50 kms; we walked just over 80. (Melbourne to Geelong. Glad to get Geelong in somewhere.) The only interest this very faint map provides is that little oval off to the east. The final day was a circumambulation of an alpine plateau, Siusi. We got there via a 50-minute bus ride and a cable car.

I was a bit apprehensive because I had pulled a muscle in my thigh a few weeks previously and it was still coming and going. But nothing ventured …

Apart from one very wet day which I spent mostly in bed reading and resting, the weather was sunny and often very warm.

********

We look all right here in Bressanone’s Square just outside one of its two cathedrals, almost next to each other as it happens.

We look all right because we haven’t done anything yet. It’s Sunday morning and we are waiting for the bakery to open so we can buy some lunch. Waiting waiting waiting. So I decided to poke my head inside the cathedral. It was a serious affair.

A version has been on the site since the 980s. It was re-built after burning to the ground in the 1170s and then again to a firmly baroque and grand style over 10 years from 1748. It is the seat of the Diocese of Brixen. (The Catholics here go with the German.) It looked like a new portico was going up when we were there.

We waited at the bus stop, hoping, because there was quite a long way to go — we walked about 20 kms that day, climbing up onto the ridge — and it was getting later than it should have been. A taxi stopped exactly at the bus stop to let a passenger out. Providence: an opportunity like that is not to be missed.

The abbey itself was equally serious, and Providence again sent a signal.

We were heading back to the departure point when round the corner came this.

Being of religious heritage I would have stayed longer, especially to listen to the choir, but my companions choofed me along. Fifteen minutes later we were climbing out of the valley albeit in what seemed like the wrong direction. Below is the abbey which owns at least some of the vineyards which surround it.

We turned south at Varna, not much more than the small cluster of houses which recurred, and it was near here that Myrna found the suspicious issue in the woodpile: a waymark of some importance.

The coat of arms with its splendidly assertive figures was on the front wall of a house we passed. Scheuchenstuel Lucerna seems to be just a Proper name. (1417-1940! That’s a long time.)

Soon, after five or so kilometres, we could see Bressanone/ Brixen from above. The two cathedrals stand out. The big yellow building to their left is a school.

It was unquestionably rural walking with the occasional religious experience.

One of the pleasures of the walk was the feast of smells. The pine forests for a start, and the drifts of floral not fragrance necessarily, although many of them were lovely, but just interesting smells. There was the cow shit and the vegetal aromas from composting silage, and an unusual sort of lanoline smell which recurred. Lots of wood smells: cut, fallen, wet, drying, rotting, fungal, and very occasionally dried or smoked meats. I enjoyed them all.

Our first clear view of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, or the Drei Zinnen (in the background here). They are as dramatic in the flesh as they look here. The highest peak, Cime Grande (‘Big Peak’, 🤔) is 2999m above sea level. (You’d think they’d build a cairn or some modest construction to break through the 3000 barrier wouldn’t you. Or perhaps the 2999 is so distinctive you’d want to just leave it at that.)

We were at Velturno, our destination, when they looked like this, and I was tired and sore. We’d had a big climb and walked a bit further than we meant to. This storm arrived 30 minutes after we did and it was a powerhouse. I slept very soundly and woke feeling considerably better. Breakfast was excellent and we started early. The morning turned out to be a relatively easy stroll down into Chiusa/ Klausen.

Looks easy — and attractive— doesn’t it.

That’s Chiusa down there …

and that church and abbey on the protuberance (the Monastry of Sabiona) kept dodging around our sightlines.

As suggested pictorially we found some good coffee and food.

But then, of course, we had to get up again.

We took an option to cheat slightly, ie to avoid the 75 degree slope and instead take, as it turned out, the 65 degree slope. ‘BIG climbs and not much respite’, my diary says. We did find the chap jumping off the roof.

Above is Barbiano, where once again we walked past our destination, a character-full pub with character-full staff which didn’t seem likely as we tottered past (that’s me; the others were striding personfully as usual) on what passes for a main road just here.

Barbiano is famous for its leaning church tower, now stabilised we are assured.

I found the cemetery which adjoined it just as interesting if not more so.

Drawing back a little, we look up the valley of an unidentified watercourse which joins the Isarco/ Eisack 1200m below us at Waldbruck. It’s hard to see but the valley on the other side is dotted with habitation, including a ‘town’ on the edge of the upper green flat bit on the right. What do they do in these places? What’s life like? In the latter case how do you even get there? There would be answers, and they mightn’t even be surprising.

My journal reminds me that I was a bit sick that night. I hadn’t eaten much, it had been hot and a very big climb. I thought I might have had mild heat stroke. The symptoms were about right. But, maybe a virus. Possibly just worn out. Whatever, I wasn’t sure about continuing the next day. There was always the option of going with our luggage which was collected and moved on every day, part of the deal with the company we went with. (I had completely forgotten all this. We protect ourselves from our infirmities don’t we.)

My journal also says, next day: ‘Felt a bit better, a lot better really, first thing, and it was a pretty easy start on a flat road for the first five. We found a good Despar (supermarket) and a bakery, and the first five were pretty easy. And I’ve just written that twice which indicates how well I am.’

We got going. (This is just as well. This was a great day of walking.) The first five were pretty easy. Or have I mentioned that?

The same glorious views.

I was planning to get from Bolzano to Venice by driving on backroads. This incident helped to change my mind. The roads were as narrow as they look. The truck had NO chance of getting to where it was pointed. The line of traffic above was probably about 200m long. These issues were more general. We had a 20-minute bus ride at the end of this day, full size bus, and that too was an experience.

We found the chap with his finger to his lips where I’m standing to take the big photo. An oddity. According to the plaque, this is John Nepomuck, Vicar General to the Archbishop of Prague. In 1393 (! Life has a long tail here.) he defied King Wenceslaus IV when the King suspected his wife of adultery and demanded that Nepomuk break the seal of confession. When Nepomuck refused, he was thrown from the Charles Bridge and drowned in the Vltava. As a result (is that what we say? In consequence? As it happened …?) in 1729 he was canonized. He is considered the patron saint of bridges and the guardian of the seal of confession. (How about the word Beichgeheimnisses, ‘confession’. Don’t you love German?) This would be an excellent place to toss someone off a bridge if you wanted to get rid of them, but one among many others on this walk. This doesn’t look anything like the Vlatva 700kms and a world away, but it’s a pilgrimage, so the licence for inclusion may be expansive.

The top of the cliff on the other side is our immediate destination on our way to a lookout which was surmounted by the chapel pictured below. How people get there I do not know. Ah yes, it’s a pilgrimage. I’d forgotten.

It was another hot day. I was very glad to find this spring, a saving grace for a time. The red-and-white waymark, and a heavily pollarded ancient chestnut to which Myrna took a fancy.

AND, I’d forgotten this too. There was a shortcut after about 12 kilometres which would take us up to Lengstein and a stop for a bus that would take us to our final destination. That way we would avoid a very nasty 3 kilometre climb, and we’d had a big day.

We found the access turnoff point okay, or at least I think we did. I knew where we were and where we were headed, but perhaps in the broad sense.

We began with a climb that was almost as bad as the other track promised. Nonetheless the right corners appeared. It looked a bit like a plausible track and we got into an open paddock that inspired confidence but provided a series of options. (Ah laugh.) I chose one and we ploughed along it for about a kilometre before coming to an unassailable fence. I knew where we were don’t you worry. Precisely. But where we were suggested a 90-degree right turn up through — the journal says, jungle. It wasn’t jungle. Hyperbole. But it was very steep and there weren’t any tracks and it was you might say heavily forested. We could have gone back but that would have rather defeated the idea of the short cut. Myrna decided she would forge on ahead to find a way leaving the men to dither. Anyway, despite a certain degree of frazzlement, it turned out. Adventure!! We got to the bus stop. The bus arrived, even though the driver wasn’t going to drive any further for 40 minutes. Timetabled requirements. He enjoyed several smokes while we drank in the alpine air.

I’m sure I was forgiven. Eventually.

On arrival, the dominant feature of the viewing terrace for tourists at Collalbo. (‘Klobenstein’ doesn’t do such a lovely place justice.) And a mere gesture at our excellent hotel.

The clouds were gathering.

We’d known about the advent of this day, the fourth day, and its weather for a fortnight, becoming ever more certain as it came closer. And it didn’t disappoint. It pissed down. All day. Graphic, strong, unrelenting.

Myrna and Michael, separately, got their umbrellas and wet weather gear out and went wandering. I didn’t. I stayed in bed, cancelled our hire car, bought train tickets, attended to correspondence. (John G.: That’s where the surgical pictures arrived. Marge: the news that you’d arrived in an Emergency Department in foreign climes.) I also dozed and slept. We were in the best hotel of this collection. The food was amazing. We had a very comfortable room from which I am taking these pictures. The day was intended as a there-and-back which didn’t sound like it couldn’t be missed, so two consecutive nights in the same place. How lucky is all of that! And I felt the pain in my leg like a permanent cramp diminishing. Party time. Very watchable athletics were on the telly. In a tourist shop Michael found a plausible power connector the absence of which had been annoying him since he left his behind in Innsbruck. Any problems melted away. AND I developed a cunning alternative way to get to Bolzano.

Well … cunning. Not really. The fifth day as described was the 900m descent into Bolzano. Lots of zig-zags and steep bits. I thought we could do a version of the fourth day which we had passed up. This would allow us to arrive at Oberbozen/ Soprabolzano, whatever, but above all above, and in fact well above, the town below we wanted to get to. I discovered that it had a cable car that would take us almost to the door of our next hotel. Fabulous. So we would do our 12 or 13, and then glide downhill. And that’s how it worked out.

It had snowed during the night and there was still an overlay on the higher peaks.

This route took us past the very modest Lake Caminata, a feature of the walk 🤔, and its associated church and accommodation. I liked the church. St Ozempic was its patron.

But it was a different sort of day: more populated? more farmy? Not sure. The rain had had a significant impact on the underfoot and the river in the valley when we glimpsed it was in full spate. But these are among the things we saw.

Sydney ‘16,368 km’ for anyone interested. And we walked through an alpaca farm. Shearing in progress.

And then after a most satisfactory lunch at Upper Bolzano, down down down. A long way down down down.

Still with us? Last day: a bus trip, a cable car ride, and then a 13km loop around the Alpe di Siusi.

What’s an alp then? A craggy mountain n’est-ce pas, often grey, snowy? That’s what I thought. However, ‘An alp refers to a high mountain pasture, typically near or above the tree line, where cows and other livestock are taken to be grazed during the summer months and where huts and hay barns can be found, sometimes constituting tiny hamlets. Therefore, the term “the Alps”, as a reference to the mountains, is a misnomer.’ A further addition to my stock of knowledge. And, at 6000 hectares mostly over 2000m, the Alpe di Siusi is the largest alp in Europe.

Spitzbuhl, an iconic and consistent presence, is in the background.

Off the carefully made tracks, the ground was startlingly spongey. Really about the texture of a sponge. There were stacks of composting dung mixed with cropping hither and thither and you would wonder how this soil could be made more fertile. The surface is dense with plants and at this time a profusion of flowers. So many types with the yellows (daisies?) dominant. But look at this exquisite thing.

I was feeling in very good form this day, but one of Michael’s feet was inflamed and swollen — and obviously painful. We decided that we would do half the loop and meet him after he had got himself across the middle on a narrow but surfaced road a bit less than half the distance.

There were quite a few people on Siusi this day, all ages and quite a few means of transport, electric bikes being popular. (Love these photos.)

And even a bit of commerce. Five euros a pop if you’re interested.

This photo was taken by one of an American family who had been shadowing us on the walk, same tour, same hotels, same dining rooms, but also same shortcuts and same day indoors during the rain. A 50 year-old who worked at the State Department in Washington who never looked like he really wanted to be trekking, his wife who worked at the Federal Bureau of Financial Regulation, spoke fluent Italian, was always very carefully dressed and made up, and evidently the driving force behind the walk. Two kids, a quiet and fit boy of maybe 19, and an all-American girl of maybe 16?17?

We talked to them more here than we had the whole trip. We had made a mistake: they were both friendly and interesting. The girl made the memorable comment, re July 4 in the Mall: ‘Trump is awful, but he has great fireworks.’

Myrna is taking her 30th flower pic. The result is at right.

At left above is the hotel where we found Michael enjoying a beer.

The way home.

Last glimpse.

That was it. Fabulous. Loaded ourselves on the train …

And after a while, not so long, we were somewhere quite else.

😵‍💫 Travel 😵‍💫

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FOR GRAHAM

This series of blogs will provide an account of our recent travels. They were pretty good. But no episode is without blemish. The worst are probably where illness or injury are involved, but travel is not staying home. It is not knowing where you can get a particular set of groceries or where the fruit is likely to be at its best. A bad bed, an airless room, a shocking meal … Each time it might be an adventure, or a failure, or a disappointment, or a disaster. That’s the gamble.

So I collected these bits and pieces out of my journal as an offset to all the other wonderful things I will otherwise describe and illustrate. And I did take some photos of moments that seemed to say travel.

••••••••••••••••••

Do travellers lose their humanity I wonder?

As we went through customs [in Zurich] I was moved to think how infantilised travel makes you. Unmoored. A good word. Tired, disoriented, that twilight consciousness business, ripe for any sort of picking, and in no need of any further duties. Somehow fellow travellers become aliens too. And all those well-rested officials who’ll be off to their own bed. Do they care? I don’t think so.

There is that constant wrestle with uncertainty. The Uncertain Aged: that’s not a new category at all.

Waiting. So much waiting. And those damn zig-zag lines.

[Montreal airport: THE worst.]

Night sweats as you wake too early and try to get back to sleep meanwhile managing swimming visions, snatches of music, memories, projections.

You need to deal with things that are in the moment and get control of that. Except that it is always necessary to be looking at least a bit ahead. You might get into bad trouble if you don’t. But everything is so immediate because your wits must be about you. It is another sort of exercise, and it’s why you so often just have to let go and laugh your way through.

Travellers are different somehow. Wearing the uniform — their travel cazh and all the accoutrements. And the horseshoe ballon round the neck. And all those people who don’t realise they’re wearing a pack. And those enormous carry on bags, and people who rush down the aisle to get off first and save about 15 seconds. And the ones who stand immobile in door ways. And the ones who walk along staring at their phones and expect you to get out of the way. Hate that.

That unreserved seat, that one you’re looking for. Where is it? Who’s watching your mission and what for, entertainment? You can be reduced to just food and sleep, if you can get both or either that is.

[In Innsbruck] it was Corpus Christi Day and everything was shut! Everything. Corpus Christi Day! What the hell is that?! (It turned out that wasn’t true and we had an excellent meal at a very friendly Italian restaurant.)

In a bank of four seats we have seats 2 and 3 for a 13 hour flight, and the flight is full. How can that be possible? The Worst Seats Ever, for which we’ve paid a fortune!

The bakery didn’t open till 9.30. Sunday. What the hell!

Ah filling in a form in an unknown foreign language which requires your credit card details to enable you to get get on or off a means of transport when you’re in a queue with dozens of people behind you. NOT PLEASANT. [The ferry from Venice to the airport. Worked out okay. Hmm … it is possible that I didn’t pay. Too late now.]

I wonder if I have misjudged this itinerary, or perhaps have become more certain I have. Too much packed in … hard work this travel business.

The test really is was it possible? And the answer must be yes, without qualification. Because it has happened. We’re doing it. And better than surviving. So much that is a thrill-a-minute, and we can always conk out. There is a new level of acceptability for conking out. Yeah. Let’s conk out.

••••••••••••••••••

But then …

Spectacles

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We’ve been away.

How was the trip? Good. Great. Anything terrible happen? No. Myrna had some emergency dental care but it worked out okay. Highlight? That’s a perfectly sensible question but impossible to answer. Here for example is one of mine.

Interior of a modern restaurant featuring wooden tables and benches, with several patrons seated, and multiple televisions displaying sports.
A person wearing a tank top and shorts stands in front of a food pickup counter, waiting to collect their order. Staff members can be seen in the background preparing food.
A modern restaurant interior featuring a counter with a menu displaying BBQ items. Customers are lined up to order, and some are engaged in conversation. Colorful artwork adorns the walls.

The ShakeShack in North Euclid Avenue, St Louis, 10.45pm July 2. We wanted something sweet to eat. Drink actually. North Euclid Avenue was nearby, pretty downtown. There was some light doof doof music, but it was quiet-ish and people were minding their own business. The baseball is on the telly. The commentary goes: ‘That is amazing.’ ‘Ball to go into the dirt.’ ‘Yeah. I know.’ A flare-up was rumbling gently behind the counter. Some orders had been mixed up. The room had a certain flavour which was exactly as it should have been. Tasty. Rich. And something we are unlikely to replicate. I wasn’t there. I was watching. Immersed.

What sort of an answer is that? I had several dozen experiences like that. All I can say is that this series of blogs is one answer to the question.

We went to a lot of places and did a lot of things. We slept in Singapore, Zurich, Innsbruck, five places in the Dolomites in northern Italy, Venice, Lisbon, Madrid, Montreal, Albany, the Hudson Valley, Washington, St Louis, Nashville, Memphis, Hot Springs, Nacogdoches, Galveston and Houston.

This blog, however, is an attempt to pick off some things which caught our attention that mightn’t need a larger context.

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A colorful, textured sculpture resembling a seat, made from layered fabric strips, displayed against a pink background.

We found the finalists of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize in Singapore’s National Gallery, a load of treats. The winner is above. Jongjin Park’s ‘Strata of Illusion’. About 80cms across, it consists of swatches of paper soaked in porcelain, glazed and then fired. Extraordinary. I had other favourites. Below is Norwegian Gjertrud Hals ‘Scala’ made out of knitted linen and resin.

Not everyone was interested.

And in Singapore there is always the orchid garden.

A close-up of vibrant purple orchids blooming amidst lush green foliage.
Three large, colorful wire sculptures with a conical shape, featuring gradients of orange, red, and black, set on a white display surface.

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A modern architectural building featuring a colorful facade with large windows and a distinctive polygonal roof, surrounded by green grass and trees.

In Zurich’s southern suburbs nestled in the between the brawny strongholds (its neighbour below) which border the Zurichsee is Le Corbusier’s Pavillon. The ‘detached’ roof covers a deck reached via the very generous staircase contained in the grey blockwork. Now a museum commemorating the architect’s work, it still contains many elements of a domestic house. It would be very exposed to live in — no shutters, blinds or curtains — but it is such a deft creation.

A large, historic mansion with a combination of stone and wood architecture, featuring intricate details and a manicured garden, with a person standing near the entrance gate.

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A large, lifelike skeleton of a bird displayed in a museum, showcasing its detailed structure, surrounded by exhibits and signage.

And Zurich again. An exhibit in the Natural History Museum giving new meaning to the idea ‘Big Bird’. And yes, genuine fossils.

I should also note that not far from here we encountered and opened Albert Einstein’s locker (F40) at the University of Zurich. I have a video of Myrna doing so and examining its contents but I couldn’t load it. Pictured is one of a long queue of people who were interested in doing so as well. And that’s it: a few photos, some books, a hand written letter. I think, really, you had to imagine yourself in the presence of greatness. Just as interesting was the monster careers festival going on below, and the very Swiss smells coming from the canteen.

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A gallery displaying a variety of wooden sculptures, including religious figures and historical characters, arranged on green platforms under bright lighting.

Zurich did us proud. Strolling through the Kunsthaus’s collection on permanent loan from Emil Bührle and … suddenly, suddenly, there’s this mass assemblage of medieval religious imagery surrounding one of Degas’s Little Dancers. Normally each of these might have 15 or 20 square metres to themselves, but this is a packed house with millions of dollars worth of art just staring at you: so intimate, so at hand, so attainable, so overpowering. Almost a church congregation with most of the congregants named Mary. Very daring curating.

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A hiker ascends a snow-covered mountain trail, with rocky slopes and overcast skies above.

The final ascent of the Lhotse Face. Nah not really. The hike up to the top of Nordkette overlooking Innsbruck. 2256m, (and, for Michael, 7401 feet). On this day it rained hard in the morning, it snowed lightly when we reached the top and it was sunny and clear when we got back to town.

This is what Innsbruck and environs looked like from the top.

Aerial view of a town nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains, with lush greenery and patches of clouds in the sky.

And in the other direction.

A panoramic view of rugged snow-capped mountain peaks under a cloudy sky.

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A group of four men in traditional attire carrying a large, decorated canopy with a statue of a seated figure underneath, surrounded by greenery and a textured wall.

Our walk, the Chestnut Way, has been a pilgrimage beginning at the Abbey of Novacella just out of Bressanone/ Brixen (where both Italian and German were spoken, but far more German than Italian) and finishing at the cathedral of Bolzano/ Bozen (where there was a dramatic switch to Italian in both language and culture). We began on a Sunday morning and footled around with buses that never came before getting a taxi to the convent. We had a look around and then suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a major religious event. This icon and its purveyors led a substantial procession with all sorts of other bits and pieces not to mention a choir which sang sweetly and with fervour.

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At Varna and Vilandro on the walk. You wouldn’t necessarily see this if you stayed home.

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A close-up view of a textured cobblestone pavement featuring curved patterns and various shades of stones.

Road paving cobbles. Anyone who has been to Europe will have seen them. But I love them. A particularly nice patch outside our hotel at Collalbo/ Klobenstein.

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A person struggling to carry an oversized backpack filled with various items, including running shoes and clothing, while seated in a train.

For travellers everywhere: the Young Man with the Enormous Pack with Stuff Hanging Off It navigating past your head getting off the train at Venice.

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A picturesque canal in a city at sunset, featuring calm water reflecting the orange and yellow hues of the sky, with gondolas lined along the edges and historic buildings on either side.

Where else could it possibly be? A boat had just gone past, but also note the plane below the sun, and the green reflection in the water. Sometimes photos just do their own work for you.

But also …

A woman stands in an art gallery in front of a large historical mural depicting a gathering, alongside a display of five abstract sculptural pieces on a black platform.

Veronese’s version of the Last Supper at Venice’s Accademia. Huge. Wonderful. Foregrounded by Marina Abramovic’s stone slippers which of course everyone wants to try on, but you’re not allowed. ☹️

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A man in a straw hat sitting on grass in front of an ornate building with large glass windows and a domed roof on a sunny day.

Lisbon’s own Crystal Palace, the Pavilhão de Exposições (Exhibition Pavilion) up in the hills on its outskirts. Built in 1884, it’s on one of Moti’s major routes and is one of Geoff’s favourite places in his current home town.

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A white marble bust draped in a veil and resting on an ornate pedestal, featuring intricate carvings and figures, displayed in an art gallery next to a painting of a young man in a military uniform.

Isabel II, veiled. Camillo Torreggiani, 1855. The Prado in Madrid. ‘The queen’s face is veiled, a device recalling the veiled images of Faith, Virtue and Religion.’ Of course. But in marble! Marble! And completely convincing. The pedestal is also his work.

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The Montreal Barbie Expo. More than 1000 Barbies duded up in a wide variety of ways. All countries of the world represented, including Australia Barbie and Sydney Opera House Barbie. Below, that’s the late Queen between the (‘Turn back Time’) Cher and (‘Pirates of the Caribbean’) Johnny Depp Barbies and just behind the Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins Barbie. Unmissable. A delight.

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A large mural of an elderly man in a hat on a building, with a city street and vintage architecture in the foreground, featuring shops and trees.

Home town hero. Montreal’s groovy section. It’s a Lego tree on the corner. Ate well at a Lebanese place called Omnivore just behind me.

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A staircase leading up with walls adorned with various dark-themed artworks, including sketches of skeletal figures and eerie masks, alongside a decorative statue and a whimsical doll at the base.

The staircase up to our very comfortable and well out-fitted AirBnB in Albany (NY State). The home of an artist.

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A busy outdoor festival scene with a tent offering fried dough and deep-fried Oreos, surrounded by people enjoying the event, some seated on the grass.

Food vans at a free outdoor concert in Albany. A version of Kansas playing if you’re old enough to remember, and you might well not be.

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Close-up view of rusty, corroded metal surface with peeling paint, revealing a textured orange and brown surface and a glimpse of water below.

One of the two main steel members of the bridge over the Stuyvesant Falls just out of Kinderhook NY. Exquisite isn’t it, but you mightn’t want to drive your car over it, continuing my interest and concern about the bridges of the US of A.

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A person walking towards a modern, architecturally striking wooden chapel surrounded by trees and greenery.

The Anthony Chapel in the Garvan Woodland Gardens just out of Hot Springs Arkansas. The walls and roof are clad in glass. It’s just there about 15 miles out of town. Mainly used for weddings I believe.

Interior of a modern wooden chapel with a high, angular ceiling and large windows, surrounded by trees, featuring a person walking down the aisle.

And this happens in America for this reason.

There were five other plaques with perhaps 200 names on them. Carefully graded, this one was top wozza as at least some people in NZ say.

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You’re unlikely to go to Hope Arkansas so this is for you. Bill Clinton was born and spent his childhood with his grandparents in Hot Springs after his father left and while his mother re-trained as a nurse. But how useful is it to be able to say The Man from Hope! He spent his teenage years here and there wouldn’t have been much doing I can tell you. BUT it does have this little footpath paint job framing one of the endless crepe myrtles, endless, so many crepe myrtles, so many different colours, endless, that we saw.

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A kaleidoscopic view featuring multiple mirrored reflections of a woman's face against a blue sky backdrop.

If you’ve taught Year 11 Psychology or been brought up on the ‘Children’s Book of Wonders’ Houston’s Museum of Illusions will not have much for you. In fact when so much else is on offer — and for free, the Menil collection is five minutes drive away — I’d recommend against. Fairly firmly. But we went. You wanted spectacles? Spectacle.

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Coastal view showing a sandy beach, ocean waves, and cloudy gray sky, with power lines and a road in the distance.

An amazing drive along the Bolivar Peninsular, 40 kilometres Gilchrist to Port Bolivar, with Galveston Bay on one side and the Caribbean, visible here, on the other. It might be 200m wide at some points and then suddenly you come across the houses on stilts, 16 feet to the floor by edict. The first one we saw had no visible means of access. Everything below the floor had washed away. Like the ‘sea wall’ here. And that was a phenomenal storm. I have never experienced rain like the rain in Texas.

A raised yellow house supported by stilts, surrounded by palm trees, with a blue ocean in the background and a clear sky.

This is actually a photo of a photo from the Houston Contemporary Art Gallery, but that’s what we saw.

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A display case containing a pair of vintage white and orange astronaut gloves, showcasing intricate stitching and details, with a reflective background.

Two bits of an astronaut’s suit, sleeve and knee. They were in the Houston Craft Museum and they were there because they didn’t pop out of a box; they were hand made. They were next to some wire circuitry that had been hand woven (poor photo of amazing objects at right) and the cowboy boots with kangaroo skin uppers below were nearby.

A pair of intricately designed western cowboy boots featuring green cactus embroidery on a black background, with a tan pair of boots displayed beside them.

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Colorful Victorian-style house with yellow siding and red shutters, featuring a large porch and decorative cornices, set against a cloudy sky.

Glorious Galveston, cnr Ball and 17th, and thoroughly deserved winner of Yard of the Month award. This was a gorgeous house among several hundred others. There will be a separate blog about Galveston. Although the ‘sea waves crashing’ have some significance, it’s not just all about them.

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And finally in this wunderkammer something I thought might be appropriate.

An art gallery featuring a large, textured sculpture in the foreground and a colorful abstract wall installation in the background. Two visitors are walking through the space.

Look again.

A mosaic-style image composed of numerous smaller images, creating a textured pattern with vibrant colors and diverse subjects.

Okay. Once more.

A collage of diverse faces and scenes, featuring individuals from various backgrounds engaged in different activities such as socializing, working, and outdoor adventures.

Jason Salavon, American, born 1970

Little Infinity. 2020

Site specific wall paper. Museum commission funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund, 2020.141

Using software he designed, Jason Salavon, has pulled nearly a quarter million images from the ImageNet dataset, a picture collection used by researchers and corporations to train artificial intelligence systems. By sampling each of the datasets 20,000 categories and arranging those images from darkest to lightest in each category, Salavon suggests the flood of imagery that inundates our daily lives.

[Museum, of Fine Arts , Houston]

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There’ll be a lot more because there was a lot more.

You can move on here to a walk in the Dolomites if that is your wish.

Ron Mueck at the AGNSW

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Just to get you in the mood. Sydney? Of course. Can’t you see the cruise ship? The concourse of the Opera House with The Toaster at our backs. Look again. His trick is that he’s suspended in the air. Doesn’t do much else, but isn’t that enough? So wonderfully Sydney.

But Ron Mueck at the Gallery. That’s our focus.

We’ve been following him for quite a while. I saw ‘Pregnant Woman’ in Canberra in 2003, so that’s a while. He was born in Melbourne in 1958 and spent some of the first 40 years of his life as a model-maker. A highlight: creating, building and voicing the character of Ludo for Jim Henson’s film Labyrinth. And then when he was about 40 he started making — at least some — big ones.

‘Boy’, his first major work, still sits in the foyer of Denmark’s National Art Museum in Copenhagen. (See also ‘Crouching Boy’ below.)

Some years ago we took the girls to see ‘Mass’ (inter alia) at the NGV.

‘… a somber study of mortality, and an extension of mueck’s hyperrealistic sculptural practice, ‘mass’ draws from the biological structure of the skull, regarded by him as extraordinary facets of humanity. the installation brings to mind the massed remains in the catacombs of paris, an imposing wall of human heads that resonates with a simultaneous and strange sense of impermanence and eternality. in ‘mass’, mueck celebrates the form that links all humanity, and pays homage to a symbol that has stood within the art of essentially all cultures and religion. surrounded by skulls covering nearly every surface of the walls, visitors are reminded of the transience of life.’

Mmmm yes. Straight to the heart of things. Quantisentialment. Love that art talk. (But is there a prohibition on the use of capitals? I can’t keep up.)

Anyway he’s pretty good, and always worth a look. Here’s ‘Pregnant Woman’.

There can be no argument about his craftmanship. None. It is simply extraordinary. His observation is meticulous. (Look at the way the shorts ride out on the boy below not to mention the remarkable care with which all the clothing has been scaled and created.) But his work has always had further layers of significance. You are meant to look harder, to discover new information and to think again.

The most direct example in this exhibition was ‘Young Couple’: nondescript except for their startling reality coupled with just a tiny sliver of cartoon.

But you move around the back of the work, and you see this.

And you look again more closely at their expressions … the anxious fixity of her stare, and — now you know — something off about the set of his mouth.

Ah, yes, that’s what’s going on. Creepy. A lot of people find Mueck’s work creepy. And I think we would have to say at least some of it is. Quite deliberately. I think the task he has set his audience in these works is to find just what that creepiness is about. To somehow nail what we’re finding unsettling. That’s the point. The ooo ahh moment which requires a cerebral qualification, a bit of brain work.

You mightn’t always be able to nail it — ‘Man in Blankets’ is about 800mm x 500mm, a little one —

but this might help:

‘Mueck affectionately cocoons his figure in blankets (so far so good), offering the protection of a whorled nest that draws us down to the tiny man with distress (or annoyance) etched on his forehead. Or does the bright light of the gallery, and our presence, simply irritate him and interrupt his sleep? (No. Hugely unlikely.) The swaddled Lilliputian (phhoooof, pushing it a bit here) is preposterously part man, part infant (a ‘bearded baby’). (‘bearded baby’, with scare quote marks 🤔) As such, though we see a man, we care about him tenderly — if we are so inclined (If not?) — as we would a child.’

That’ll do. This genre of writing presents enormous challenges and tremendous potential for failure. And, irregardless, irregardless I say, you can look for yourself. It’s weird as.

He’s called this young woman ‘Ghost’.

And yes it could be the young girl from the couple above. (For that matter it could be a younger version of the ‘Pregnant Woman’. The female faces in this collection do tend to repeat albeit in interesting ways.) And at this moment she is keeping that gent at bay. Just how perfect is the choice of the bathers. Vulnerable. Withdrawn. At the same time exposed.

‘The Spooning Couple’. This is one view.

Shift the angle slightly and the atmosphere changes quite dramatically.

While their bodies are corresponding, their minds are elsewhere. It is a slight touch but so consequential.

She (‘Woman with Sticks’) is having a much better time. The notes suggest she is undertaking this labour like Penelope weaving and unpicking her cloth endlessly as she awaits Ulysses’ return. Maybe. Maybe not. In fact, not. More the satisfaction of getting hold of a really BIG bunch. That’s enough.

Off in its own cavity was this: ‘Dark Place’. While it was 3-dimensional (and much bigger than it appears in the photo), it doesn’t look like it here, and I’m not sure it did in situ. It might be that you need his work fully exposed to appreciate it properly, and that no lighting, for this purpose, is as good as day or otherwise full light.

No such problem with ‘Crouching Boy in Mirror’.

About life size, just checking himself out. How’s he looking? Pretty good, and very much as he did last time he checked. He doesn’t know his shorts are riding out showing his undies and he doesn’t really care.

‘chicken/man’, a portrait we are told of a neighbour and friend with one of the chooks he owns. The undercurrents here might be a bit surreal but they are also cheery. Two buddies communing: that’s how I read it. One of his most popular works. I like it a lot. It’s about my life stage where we chat to non-verbal creatures and objects.

‘Big Man’. So powerfully focused. An enigma. Is he perhaps digesting, with difficulty, some intense slight or hurt? It’s such a masculine expression. Is he visualising some sort of revenge? Could he perhaps be mulling over something he wishes he hadn’t done, trying to become absorbed into this corner, invisible, an aspiration that this very substantial assemblage of flesh won’t allow. I say gripping.

Recently Mueck’s work has taken a more obviously dark turn. This was represented here by ‘Havoc’ (the dogs) and ‘This Little Piggy’.

These works take years to complete. I think he might have wanted to loosen up a bit. The modelling isn’t nearly as detailed as in his older work even if the structures are more dynamic. I don’t know how I feel about that, but the dominant adjective might be ‘obvious’.

Less clearly manifest is the last piece in the exhibition, ‘Couple under an umbrella’, from a decade or so ago.

I liked this a lot. There is an accustomed fondness in their posture while at the same time they have expressions with the ambiguous vacancy of older people. (Oi! Are you with us? Oh yeah … just drifting off a bit. What was it you were saying again?) And they’re at the home of somnolent reflection, the beach. Sort of. Really they are quite emphatically in an art gallery. And they’re not leaving. They are so definitively motionless.

Christopher Allan, ‘The Australian’s’ distinguished art critic, always worth reading, uses seven-eights of a long piece to reflect on the evolution of the figure in sculpture on his way to concluding: ‘As hyper-naturalistic models, …[Ron Mueck’s pieces, which he is reviewing] are without peer. But as sculptures, they have little interest or really even presence.’

He chooses a long and scholarly route to get to this point, but his signposts are these.

• ‘Art, as a form of aesthetic understanding, arises from reimagining and remaking the world in an alien medium. The beauty of art is inseparable from the distinctive character and even resistance of the materials employed: it is hard to carve wood or marble, and the finished work will have the combined and complex character both of the subject and of the wood from which it is carved, uniquely embodying the intelligence and skill with which the act of understanding has been achieved. The trouble with Mueck’s material is that is entirely malleable, offers no resistance and is devoid of character.’

That’s an unusual idea arriving from a mysterious place. It suggests that art works should be judged, among other things to be fair, by the materials they are made from. Paintings, for example, might be valued by whether they are constructed out of oil paints, acrylics, water colours or, more testing, collage. Given the astonishing amount of effort that goes into his work, I think Mueck would argue at some length about whether his wide-ranging materials ‘offer no resistance’. And, in the unlikely event that we were challenged to do so, I think we would have no trouble in recognising his material as ‘alien’. I’m sure that art does arise ‘from reimagining and remaking the world in an alien medium’, but that’s not saying much apart from ‘art is something made’. We know that.

(And a bit of an ‘Australian’ give-away: ‘When you are making things as literally naturalistic, both in superficial appearance and in attitude, as his young couple in shorts and thongs, there is no room to play with the masses and volumes of the body, or to think about expressive action and gesture beyond the most anecdotal and banal level. The fact that the figures are dressed in ugly mass-produced clothing makes it even harder to do anything interesting with the figure.’)

• To his second point: ‘The very essence of the classical style, in fact, lies in the delicate balance between artifice, ideal proportions and the naturalism of real bodies. And generally speaking, later masters of sculpture, from Donatello to Rodin, have sought a similar balance, even if they have found it at different points. In sculpture as in painting, we recognise a work as both a product of human artifice – an object of bronze or a pattern of brushstrokes – and simultaneously as the evocation of something in the world. We never forget, nor do we want to forget, that we are looking at a statue or a picture.’

I don’t think anyone looking at Mueck’s work would be tricked into thinking that they weren’t ‘statues’ or, for that matter, were ‘real’.

Christopher could have just said, YUCK, as do some friends of mine whose opinions I value.

I do think Mueck’s works have interest, both individually and collectively, because of the layering of meaning I’ve referred to, the something else that is almost always there. Like Allan, I think his more recent work — the dogs and the pig wrestle — are not as interesting as his earlier pieces. They are a little like the ground announcer at a tight football game telling the crowd to ‘make some noise’, an unnecessary plunge into obvious-ville.

And there it is. You can make models and there’s not much going on. You see dogs and go Wooooo, genuinely applauding Mueck’s skill and the computer that helped make them. But that’s it. I’m with Christopher there.

Or you can make sculptures, like the spooning couple or the ‘Big Man’, which make you want to look again to grapple with their fine-grained subtleties, and I have no difficulty finding triggers for that in most of the works in this exhibition.

There. And I’ve got paid nothing for saying so. Until next time …

GREAT: But what about these?

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You know these three photos. Of course you do. Exceedingly well known. They are on Mr. AI’s list of the greatest of all time. But there are questions.

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Raising the flag on Iwo Jima 1945: Joe Rosenthal

The first one, ‘Raising the flag’, has appeared on stamps, on a war bond, is memorialised in bronze as the national monument to the US Marines in Arlington, Virginia. Etc. Etc. It won a Pulitzer Prize. The remaining flag raisers (two died in later fighting) were sent on tour through the length and breadth of their country although one who never wanted to go in the first place was sent home for drinking excessively. John Bradley identified as the man taking the lead in the front of the planting didn’t like talking about it much either, the main reason possibly being that he wasn’t there.

A group of soldiers raising the American flag on a hill during a military operation, with one soldier holding a rifle and others assisting in the flag raising.

Here’s a pic of the flag actually being raised after the hill was captured.

Bit low key eh. The flag has been attached to a bit of metal pipe they found on the top on the hill. You could get a statue out of it but it would have its limitations.

Joe Rosenthal was there of course and tells a terrific story about it, a terrific American story really. But he wasn’t there. Not then. He came later in the day when they did it again with a much bigger flag. He may have posed the raisers.

Okay. So what? Does that matter? Well, too late really to be asking questions like that. What does ‘real’ mean anyway? The statue is up! And it’s a beauty.

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The Falling Soldier 1936: Robert Capa

And ‘Falling Soldier’. Spanish Civil War during the Battle of Cerro Muriano. ‘A soldier [identified as Federico Garcia] at the very moment of his death. He is shown collapsing backward after being fatally shot in the head, with his rifle slipping out of his right hand.’

Like a lot of these photos it had a huge impact on publication (in Life magazine of course, on the cover). This is war. This is the good guys, or a good guy, being shot. Kafflooiie. Horror.

Capa has said: ‘I was there in the trench with about twenty milicianos [militiamen] … I just kind of put my camera above my head and even didn’t look and clicked the picture, when they moved over the trench. And that was all. … [T]hat camera which I hold above my head just caught a man at the moment when he was shot. That was probably the best picture I ever took.’

Hmmm … except it appears that the photo was taken at Espejo, a location about 50kms from where that battle was fought. Federico Garcia really did die at Cerro Muriano, but behind a tree. During this war photographers were granted no access to areas of live fighting. Many years later a suitcase full of Capa’s negatives was found none of which were of this photo but with scores of others apparently rehearsing the scene.

Does it matter? Does Cindy Sherman really look like this?

A side-by-side comparison of two artistic portraits: on the left, a classical depiction of a mother holding a child, while on the right, a surreal interpretation of a woman with blonde hair and an unusual pose.
Untitled #223 and #225. 1990: Cindy Sherman

We know that Cindy is faking it. Whatever it might be she’s up to, it’s something else. In terms of our appreciation of the photos there is a different set of criteria operating. With ‘Raising the flag’ it probably doesn’t matter because Rosenthal has made such an excellent job of the tableau, and anyway it’s too late. The platoon has bolted. But ‘Falling soldier’ … is it such a great photo if it’s just a bloke falling over? It would seem to gain most all its strength from its authenticity and context. Without that …

Next question please.

Who took this photo?

A group of frightened children running away on a road, with soldiers in the background and smoke in the sky, capturing a moment of chaos and fear.
Napalm Girl 1972: Nick Út

Well it says ‘Nick Út’ doesn’t it? There. In the caption. You can find many many instances of him identified as its author. Near universal. He won a Pulitzer Prize for it — sometimes described as the most important image of Viet Nam’s ‘televised war’, World Press Photo’s Photo of the Year in 1973. What’s the question?

A historical black and white image showing a group of individuals on a rural road. One person in the foreground is holding a camera and facing the viewer, while another person next to him is operating a film camera. In the background, a soldier is walking away, and a sign is partially visible.

Well, one of these guys did and none of them are Nick Út.

Út was there, but only near there. ‘Based on images taken by and of Út that day, he would have had to sprint about 560ft forward, snap the famous photo, then run back 250ft, then turn around to be seen walking toward NBC News cameramen – “an extremely implausible scenario”.’ 

To find out what actually happened you can watch ‘The Stringer’ on Netflix or read The Guardian‘s take here. But it appears that Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, another photographer who was working as a driver that day, took the photo and sold it to Associated Press for $20 and a print. Carl Robinson, Associated Press’s photo editor on duty in Saigon that day alleges that Horst Faas, ‘the bureau’s legendarily domineering photo chief’, ordered him to change the image’s credit from the stringer to Út, the only AP staff photographer on site that day.

Interesting to know, but does that matter? Does the authorship impinge on the impact, on the ‘greatness’ of the photo?

I don’t really care — not really — who took it (although Mr. Nguyễn might), but I do think it suggests something about how photos become ‘great’. Generally you need your team working for you, a big, capable mainstream team (like AP). You need something to carve a path through the 18 million others. You need the cultural apparatus bent in your favour and, reviewing lists of ‘great photos’, it helps enormously if you’re American or American-sponsored.

We might have to begin again from the idea that great photos are also popular and well known. The egg of publicity may well, must, give birth to the chicken of perceived quality.

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An elderly man in a blue shirt shakes hands with a man in a suit, with a crowd in the background under a clear blue sky.

‘When I got back from Wattie Creek [the Dept of Aboriginal Affairs] got me to convert [the photo of Whitlam and Lingiari] to a black and white image’, Mr Mervyn Bishop notes. It wasn’t used anywhere until six months after the event, three months after the Whitlam government had been sacked. Even then it was tucked away inside the Aboriginal News, hardly a dominant mainstream publication. It was 10 years later that Kev Carmody, haunted by his memories of Merv’s pic, wrote ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ with Paul Kelly. It didn’t chart especially well. It did better in a version by The Get Up Mob in 2008.

It was when the song was performed in front of Merv’s photo projected on two giant screens at Gough’s memorial in Sydney Town Hall that the song and more particularly the photograph cemented their place in public life and esteem. In 2014. Thirty-nine years after it was taken.

Ladies and Gentlemen, … Mistaah Mervyn Bishop

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An older man holds a camera with a flash while gesturing with his other hand, standing in front of a stone wall.

He’ll laugh. Technically a pretty disgusting photo, but pink eye and all it’s caught something. Swervyn Mervyn, the Bishop of Dubbo. Magician. Showman. All Star. Champion.

And now there’s a book about him.

• • • • • • • • •

Wikipedia’s item ‘List of photographs considered the most important’ has several hundred entries.

They range: the first recorded photograph (View from the Window at Le Gras); Isambard Brunel standing in front of his mighty chains; American landscapes; the first X-ray photo; the negative which indicates that The Shroud of Turin actually contains a photo of Christ; the first digital photo; the first photo uploaded to social media. Earthquakes, cataclysms of many sorts, portraits, sports events (Mohammed Ali standing over a prostrate Sonny Liston), moments in the tectonics of history, oddities and the conditions of humankind, including suffragette Emily Davison being trampled to death by King George’s horse, Anmer.

Among these hundreds, Australia has one contribution. And it is this.

An elderly man in a light blue shirt and trousers extends his hand, while a suited man with gray hair gestures with a clenched fist. They are in a gathering with other people and a clear blue sky in the background.

Merv had been manning the Dept of Aboriginal Affairs’ stand at Brisbane’s Ekka (Agricultural show) when he got a call because something big might be taking place at Wattie Creek. In Mt Isa while the plane was refuelling he happened on Keith Barlow, another photographer mate working at the time for the Australian Women’s Weekly. Barlow and his journalist colleague Kay Keavney became intrigued by this adventure of Merv’s and decided to tag along. Merv would have been hazy about what was happening as well as a bit excited. Eyelids batting up and down, huge grin that might turn into a grimace, sucking his teeth: what’s he doing? you’d think. What’s he up to? It’s not every day you go to Wattie Creek, not for any reason — it’s a bit out of the way, in the desert, about 550 kms south of Darwin — but, you know, could be promising. Could be anything. At least I’ll see what the bugger’s up to.

Whitlam’s government had negotiated the return of a portion of Gurindji land in the form of a pastoral lease — not a big deal in the scheme of things, but the beginning of something much more consequential. 16 August 1975 was nominated as the ceremonial handover. The speeches were made under a shelter constructed from tree boughs and canvas. It’s there in the background.

Gough said, inter alia: ‘I want to give you back formally, in Aboriginal and Australian law, ownership of this land of your fathers. And I put into your hand this piece of the earth itself as a sign that we restore them to you and your children forever’, and strained some of that very red desert sand from his hand into Vincent Lingiari’s.

This is a sliver of Vincent’s reply, translated from the Gurindji, and worth recording not least for its remarkable generosity of spirit. ‘We want to live in a better way together, Aboriginal and White men, let us not fight over anything. Let’s be mates.‘

This was all happening under the shade of the lean-to, hopeless for a photo. All shade, no definition … you wouldn’t even see the sand. ‘Mervyn said he looked at Barlow and they both grimaced.’ Merv to Whitlam — nothing should stand in the way of a good pic — ‘Mr Whitlam would you mind if we do this picture again outside in the sunshine?’ That’s Merv. When it comes to business, all business. He lowers his voice, and his chin, when he gets to this point in the story, and does his Whitlam. ‘Certainly Mervyn.’ Barlow held the other photographers off taking his turn only after Merv had finished. ‘I crouched low to include a good portion of sky. … I imagined using it on the cover of a magazine. I wanted to leave room for a masthead, National Geographic or Life or whatever.’

I’ve heard this story many times but I’m thieving here from The Book, and its author Tim Dobbyn notes that there were at least four other photographers there that day. They got the pic too, or versions of it; but, Tim says, they didn’t get the sky. Have another look. How important is that sky. And the dominance of the two figures in what would have been a helter-skelter scene with all sorts of things going on. The little cone of sand is in Vincent’s hand. Merv did get the picture. History was made.

But not for more than a decade, and it nearly didn’t happen. Read the book (pp. 104-105) and discover the role that Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody played in its re-discovery and how from little things big things can grow.

• • • • • • • • •

That’s not his best pic. There are others. The book says more than 50,000.

This is one of his favourites.

Two young boys rowing a boat together on a calm river, smiling and enjoying their time outdoors.

Cousins, Ralph and Jim. Brewarrina. 1966. Two lads skiving off from school rowing down the Barwon near Gundawera Station. The joy of life. (Where’s the photographer? Yes of course, in the boat too. You forgot that didn’t you.)

• • • • • • • • •

On an appallingly hot day I flew to Sydney from the Sunshine Coast to attend the book’s launch. I did feel I needed to be there. Because of the heat and the excitement of seeing friends I hadn’t seen for a long time it was a slightly out-of-body experience. I’m not sure the book shop staff managing the occasion did it justice: too sweaty, too rushed, too keen to get home, insufficiently respectful to what I think is a great work.

Another one in Canberra followed, then Melbourne. By Melbourne the 80 year-old maestro was a bit puffed and in his absence I was invited to add just a little colour and movement to the event. What follows is something like I said.

• • • • • • • • •

I am David McRae and I have a bit part in this book. Merv and I spent eight months on a project wandering around Australia together and became fast friends.

We are surrounded here [the Avenue Bookstore in Elsternwick] by thousands of books, perhaps tens of thousands. I want to give you three reasons why this particular book is unique among them. Not a bit unique, or possibly unique or unique on Thursdays. ‘Unique’ as per the Oxford Standard Dictionary definition. One of a kind. Out on its own. Exceptional.

The first reason is that it contains 74 photographs. 18 of them are of Merv. He’d like that. He’s always been a handsome boy with a wicked glint in his eye. 8 others provide complementary context and illustrate just how assiduous Tim has been in the preparation of the book.

And 48 of them have been taken by Mervyn George Bishop. I note here incidentally that only one is of Gough Whitlam and Vince Lingiari.

Merv is not a good photographer; he is a great photographer. Technically he is hugely proficient. But his great photos, and there is one on the book’s cover, are as good as anyone’s. And I do mean anyone’s. Very seriously, he is properly in a list with Annie Leibovitz, Steve McCurry, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, et al. It is a lovely irony that his photo of Cecil Beaton is included in the book.

Why are they so good? Partly because he takes so many. He’s got a lot to pick from. You and I breathe: Merv takes photos. And has done since he was 12. His camera is an extension of his arm. Curating his archive would be, and has been, the work of the world.

But he’s also got what we have to call an ‘eye’. Famously he asked Gough and Vince to repeat the sand pouring moving them outdoors so the picture could be at its absolute best. He composes his pics as naturally as his son dances and his daughter smiles. It’s just there. Innate.

And tellingly, he has had access to places and contexts that very few other people have. It is possible that Merv has been to more of Australia than anyone else ever. I’m thinking here of the requirements of his work for the Dept of Aboriginal Affairs, an unsurpassed record of Black Australia at a particular point in time (which he would say was an opportunity not sufficiently exploited). And then the later work for various purposes of which the Burnt Bridge photos in the book are indelible examples.

48 Mervyn Bishops. A tiny slice of his output, … but what a slice.

[You can if you wish CLICK HERE to take you to a discussion generated by thinking about what makes a photo great.]

The second reason. This is a book about a great artist by someone who is not only also a very fine artist but a lifetime close friend of the great artist. This never happens. You can be a friend, or you can be a biographer, but simply from circumstance never both. It just doesn’t happen. Biographers can be sympathetic or insightful but they are never friends. (The only other possible case I can think of is Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen, another fine book as it happens, in which the friend ends up as a psychotic killer. This is not the case here.)

Read the first chapter, which is something of a masterpiece: two friends on a knockabout adventure wandering round the western plains of New South Wales. Merv’s making his jokes and cackling at his own great humour. But nonetheless he makes sure they visit Fred Hollows’ grave in Bourke. There’ll be a day’s itinerary but Merv will decide that he wants to go and see something that he might or might not remember and ends up doing an ironic little shake-a-leg dance clanging two rail spikes together before heading off to a Bowlo for the night’s tucker and a beer, saying gday to everyone but probably knowing half of the assembled throng, them or their ‘lations.

Only a friend could get Merv so right, and, far more pertinently, only a very good friend would have permission to get Merv so right. Because Merv is a big dag. And of course, the book leaps into life as a result. So honestly correct, so fair dinkum. We are reminded that this great photographer is also a human being, an incredibly interesting and likable human being, who has nonetheless ridden some rough roads.

But such a capable pair this writer and this photographer.

The book is meticulously researched. Some would say perhaps over-researched. Via its preparation I discovered that something I had always believed to be true — the product of our work together had won an international prize — was fiction. Almost certainly over-researched in some regards.

But it is also written with the ease and precision that only a lifetime in journalism can generate. It is such an easy read. So detailed, so smooth. As a fellow writer I can also say, and such a shitload of work.

That’s two reasons. They may have been obvious. There is a third that might be less so.

It is a book about Black Australia that you never read.

Not Alexis Wright, not Tyson Yunkaporta, not Melissa Lucashenko. And certainly not Bruce Pascoe. No dizzying cosmology, no complex moiety patterns, no tjukurrpa — something different, can I say again — unique. This is a book embedded in a Black Australia that doesn’t have a literature.

The last census told us that just under one million Australians identify as Indigenous. Quite a lot. What do we know about that million?

Here are a few things. Some are eminent and well known. Some, maybe five percent, are wealthy and live very much like other wealthy Australians.

About 15 percent live in remote Australia, about half of those living in very remote communities. This is the location of The Gap that never closes and, while they live there, this is likely to remain the case.

But that leaves 80 percent. And that’s where this book is located.

The 80 percent. They live in Australian towns and cities. If you follow the Newell Highway from Echuca through to Brisbane, you’ll pass somewhere near the homes of a couple of hundred thousand blackfellas. Throw in Rocky, Bundaberg, Townsville, Cairns and Perth and there’ll be a lot more.

These are people with jobs, families who send their kids to school in uniforms, who shop at the supermarket, who have footy teams they barrack for, who enjoy a barbecue, and pavlova and French cakes, who might be ambitious or relaxed, whose lives go up and down a bit like everyone else’s.

But there is more. There’s always more. And when you read the book you will understand that there is more.

Some things perhaps you might expect, but there are others that will almost definitely surprise you. You might jump a bit at the challenge to some of the stereotypes of your settled thinking, and be reminded of the complexity of the elements from which our lives are constructed. You might also think about the warp and weft of culture, in plural form, the magic of its assembly and the extraordinary variety of its products.

Case in point: Mervyn Bishop. Living in Oatley, almost but not quite in ‘The Shire’, home of Scott Morrison and his ilk. Happy family. Suburban, maybe a bit Uptown, a bit Flash Blak. Asked in his job interview for the DAA if he knew any Aboriginal people.

On the other hand, First Aboriginal This First Aboriginal That. Blah blah blah. Somehow it is never not a question.

And that’s the third thing that makes this book unique. It’s not called Black, White and Colour for nothing.

[You can if you wish CLICK HERE to take you to some further thoughts about cultural construction.]

I think in accord with his wishes, I would say that Merv’s not a great Aboriginal photographer. He’s just a great photographer. And what’s he like? Like no one so much as Mervyn George Bishop, and what an interesting person!

And great work Tim to have rendered all this with such care, thought and skill.

I’ve missed Christmas, but BUY THE BOOK. [That’s a live link. You can go straight there.] Tell others about it.

What makes a great photograph

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Now phones have cameras in them — and what a good idea that was — I’ll say 18 million great photos are taken everyday. Yeah. Let me check … yes. Correct. Eighteen million. We don’t see them all; and we don’t all take them either.

But then there are the truly towering ones. What makes them so truly good, so truly towering?

What does AI say? ‘There is no single “greatest” photo, as the assessment is subjective and depends on criteria such as emotional impact, historical significance, or technical innovation. Several photographs are widely considered the most famous or influential images of all time. Different sources and experts highlight various photos as significant for their powerful imagery and lasting impact on the world.’ And a number of these are listed including: Earthrise by William Anders, Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal, The Terror of War (‘Napalm Girl‘) by Nick Út, (Click here to see them with discussion.) Afghan Girl by Steve McCurry, and Tank Man by Geoff Widener. (See below.)

But after stewing about it — prompted by Tim Dobbyn’s book about my friend Merv Bishop and reviewing some of Merv’s pics as well as other people’s — I think that you probably can define certain photographs as ‘great’.

So here are five ideas why some photographs might be greater than others. They are illustrated with what might now seem to be somewhat old-fashioned examples, ones from an earlier life when my father in a gesture of prodigious and completely uncharacteristic prodigality subscribed to Life. But I think they stand up.

The quality of the reproductions here is inferior. I apologise. And of course several of these features might be found in the same photo.

• • • • • • • • • •

They may be particularly eventful or dramatic.

A woman in a headscarf carries a child on her back, both looking into the distance. They are on a sidewalk with trees and buildings in the background. Other people and parked cars are also visible.
Life and death dash, 1971: Mervyn Bishop

This photo has a special place in Merv’s heart. It won the News Photo of the Year in 1971 and helped to establish his profile as a photographer of note. Everything is right about it. The expression on the nun’s face sets the tenor, but you have the kids’ distress, the turning girl and even down to where the nun’s (very shiny) shoes have toed the line. Merv likes to say, correctly, that the kid in the nun’s arms is now an ear, nose and throat specialist.

A person hanging from the side of a tall building with vertical stripes.
Falling Man, 2001: Richard Drew

World Trade Centre, 11th of September, 2001. It is estimated that around 200 people jumped or fell to their deaths during this tragedy. There are difficult protocols about photos like this, and there was a big fuss when it was published (consequently increasing its renown). In this frozen (but seemingly so relaxed) and highly artificial moment it has a mesmerising quality.

A polar bear standing on a piece of floating ice among a sea of icebergs and water, under a cloudy sky.
Climate change, 2018: Sergio Pitamitz

We assume the bear must reach the ever-so-distant land for safety. That might be true or it might not. But it is almost impossible not to assume so. The intimation/ metaphor becomes reality. For me, heart wrenching.

A soldier aims a gun at a bound man on a street, with a second soldier visible in the background. The scene appears tense and somber, reflecting a moment of conflict.
Saigon Execution, 1968: Eddie Adams

Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the national police chief of South Vietnam, executes the Viet Cong fighter, Nguyen Van Lem. Another of these photos like ‘Napalm Girl’ which swayed American public opinion towards the conclusion of the Viet Nam war. Nguyen 1 obviously a war criminal. Nguyen 2 obviously harshly dealt with. In fact, Nguyen 1 appears to have been a very highly thought of war commander renowned for his fair dealing. Nguyen 2 was the leader of a Viet Cong Unit which had killed 47 people earlier that morning.

Does adding information like that bring anything to the experience of looking at a photo? Does it change our fundamental reaction to the image? Should it? Is it meaning or just something like visual impact that we are responding to? (There is no such thing as ‘just’ visual impact of course. Everything we see is processed by neural networks that have processed so much else. But you know what I mean; maybe immediate rather than reflective responses.)

That question matters particularly with photography because unlike other art forms we are supposed to be looking at reality, something that really happened, something that can be confirmed by a photographic image. (There is some additional discussion of this question RIGHT HERE.)

They may be particularly romantic or erotic.

A black and white photograph capturing a couple kissing passionately in a busy street. In the background, people walk by, showcasing a historic building.
Le baiser de l’Hotel de Ville, 1950: Robert Doisneau

V-J Day in Times Square, 1945: Alfred Eisenstadt

Which one? I have chosen Doisneau’s because although the men in both pics are so terribly masterful, the French chap has a bit more style — the scarf, the gesture of the left hand, the waist tuck of the double-breasted suit. The sailor appears to be on his way to eating the woman — to him unknown — to celebrate the war’s end. But in both cases we understand that there is a passion which we can only celebrate.

A black and white photograph of a topless woman standing in front of two shirtless men surrounded by foliage.
Vale St, 1975: Carol Jerrems

An Australian photographer, and an Australian photograph (and can I suggest so much of its time as well as place (St Kilda)). Fearless despite her naked torso. Fearless. There is a flash, no more, of menace in the chaps behind her, (they’re Sharpies!), but she is in charge. Her breasts are those of a young woman; her eyes so much older. All challenge. Not so much romance, but the right degree of complexity to be erotic.

A black and white photo of a man and woman dancing closely together, with the woman wearing a short, shiny dress and the man in a light suit. In the background, there are chairs and a palm tree, and a seated figure can be seen.
Nuit de Noel, 1962 (in Mali): Malick Sidibé

Probably not a photo you’ve seen before. It is here partly because it is African but also because of the truth of whatever it is between the couple, and the delicious modesty of its expression. Something which is so desirable and human. Unalloyed. Nothing as loud as joyous, and it mightn’t endure. But at this moment … transcendent.

A shirtless man smoking a cigarette in a dimly lit room, with a woman lying on a bed in the foreground, looking contemplative.
Nan and Brian in bed, 1983: Nan Goldin

And maybe its antithesis. That point in a relationship. What’s going through his head? Does he want to be out with the boys? Is she going to have her heart broken? We can’t see the guy’s face but we know the state of play. A stage, an essential part of romance. We know this. We can relate.

They may record something spectacular or unusual.

An intimate black and white photograph of a couple lying on a neutral surface, sharing a tender moment. The scene captures a close embrace, highlighting their connection and affection.
Yoko Ono; John Lennon, 1980: Fran Lebowitz

Neither romance nor eroticism in this photo, but it is very hard to say that it’s not of interest. Some growth — naked growth, naked MALE growth — has attached itself to an impassive human object with glorious hair. It doesn’t hurt that the two subjects are quite well known. Whoever decided, it was a striking idea.

An iconic black and white photo of eleven construction workers sitting on a steel beam high above a city skyline, enjoying lunch and gazing at the view.
Lunch atop a skyscraper, 1932: Charles Ebbets

Yeah. Seen it. A million times. One bloke is lighting another’s cigarette off the one he’s smoking. Those white things are their lunch boxes. Is this what they do every day or just when a photographer is round? Who cares? 860 feet above the ground and they’re having their lunch, Central Park a misty blur below and behind them.

There might be stuff on Tick Tock that prompts as much or more vertigo. But this is the original, and I defy you to run your eyes along their shoes without just a little intake of breath. Plus they’re at work. This is what they do for a living. Plus plus you don’t get faces like that on Tick Tock.

A black and white artistic photograph of a woman's bare back, adorned with stylized f-holes, resembling elements of stringed instruments, and wearing an ornate headpiece.
Le Violon d’Ingres, 1924: Man Ray

We’re moving into hazardous territory here, but I’m convinced. An unadorned set up: a model, palpable, soft, no hard edges, like one of Ingres’ baigneuses, painted with f-holes. And because it’s Man Ray, it will be just for the fun of it. There’s no special meaning to be made here. Don’t make up a story about models and lovers, search for antecedents, or muse about the possibility of ‘le violin d’Ingres‘ meaning ‘hobbyist’. It’s Dada. It’s impact, not meaning — BANG. LAUGH. It’S An ODdITy, and you haven’t seen it before. Just enjoy it. (And this is a screenshot of the most expensive original print of a photo ever sold: $US12.4m, Christie’s New York, 14 May 2022. Someone must appreciate the joke.)

A woman in a red floral dress stands in front of a wooden shed, holding a small object, while another woman in a light dress leans against the door. Two children and a man in a hat are visible in the background, with a vibrant landscape consisting of yellow fields and mountains.
Something More #1,1989: Tracey Moffatt

The transition is complete. It is a set-up. Comprehensively. Unashamedly. Tracey, innocent in her cheong sam, leaving a collection of challenging detail to perhaps make her way in the world.

So, can you call it a photo? Well … it is a photo, even if photography here, as is true far more widely, has become a hybrid art. Two considerations. It’s Australian, and Tracey was a friend and colleague of Merv’s at Sydney’s Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative as well as being the curator of his first significant show InDreams. Unusual? Sure. Spectacular? Unquestionably.

A woman in 1930s attire holds a shotgun while pointing it at a man dressed in a suit, who appears surprised. They are standing outdoors near an old car, with trees in the background.
Bonnie and Clyde, 1930: W. D. Jones

Extraordinary. It really is Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. Mucking round with a pump action shotgun. (W. D. Jones was a member of the gang, at the time 16 years old.) They had a camera, liked to take photos and did so. In fact they kept a record, however incomplete, of their exploits. It was a modern thing to do. The photo is sort of sweet — Clyde’s goofy expression and, despite the tension in his fingers, his you-would-have-to-say relaxed stance. But there it is. Bonnie and Clyde. Maybe you should expect that; I didn’t. I’m saying, strikingly unusual.

There might be something particular about their aesthetic or the way they have been composed.

Black and white landscape featuring a village with adobe structures, set against a backdrop of mountains and a partially clouded sky, with a full moon visible.
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941: Ansel Adams

You might note the very limited number of photos in this collection without people as their focus, and yet landscape photography is a capacious field with many distinguished operators. Perhaps not many as good as Ansel Adams. Just how does he get those very sharp whites and velvet blacks? A master in the darkroom obviously, but this photo has interest wherever you look.

In one of those inspired choices which make art, the moon is almost centred with that great black void above. The flow of cloud intersects the picture while contrasting dramatically with the detail of the crosses in the cemetery and the ever-so-crisp lines of the buildings.

I am inclined to reach for adjectives like ‘classical’, but how would that help? Who knows how aesthetics works? ‘I know what I like’, might really have some pull after all. But would everyone agree that it is something special? I think so.

A black and white photograph of a person lying face down on a sandy surface, with their arms crossed under their head.
The Sunbaker, 1937: Max Dupain

Australian, indelibly. You know the experience, you’ve felt the sun after the cold of the surf, you’ve had sand in your togs. It’s cultural. Of course it is. But that’s not all that makes it a great photo. It’s not a person (no legs, no body, not even a face); it’s a shape, and I think it’s the line up the arms and across the back that is so satisfying. This is complementary with the contrast of the dark shape and both grounds, fore and back, and the fact that the shape is the only thing in focus. Everything else (including the horizon line) is fuzz. Courageous choices which paid off big time.

A young girl with striking green eyes and dark hair, wearing a red shawl, looks directly at the camera with a serious expression against a teal background.
Afghan Girl, 1984: Steve McCurry

Pashtun girl really, but that is splitting hairs. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she has eyes which are hyper-alert. Just a girl, but we must believe those eyes have already seen far far more than they should have. And they are rivetting, rivetting enough to make us forget the extraordinary colour match of eye, background, undergarment, and the complimentary framing of the face by the rust-red material which echoes some of the strands of her hair and the innermost parts of her irises. What a photo!

They may be strikingly familiar or have become iconic.

I might be cheating here. Another chicken-egg issue. Are they great photos because they are famous, or are they famous for one of the reasons above? And if so, why have we got a separate proposition here?

Let’s say they have the power to be great through familiarity. We construct them to be great and, when we think about it at all, designate them as such.

A black and white portrait of a man wearing a beret with a star, featuring long hair and a serious expression.
Guerillo Heroica, 1960: Alberto Korda

You might have had a T-shirt or a poster with this on it. If not you might need to explain the reason. Che, the heroic guerilla with international resonance very likely influenced by this photo. Composed, steely and puissant without even trying to be. Fortitude, depth, a leader.

What are we reading to understand this? Good eyebrows of course, and eyes set deeply enough to give us shadows which emphasise the darkness of his eyes and their twinkling pinpricks of light, shadows which also give us the highlight on the right hand side of his face. Film star good looks? Yes, but so much more as well.

A lone figure stands in front of a row of military tanks on a wide street, with a bus in the background.
Tank Man, 1989: Stewart Franklin
A line of military tanks on a wide avenue, with a lone figure standing in front of them.
Tank man, 1989: Geoff Widener

Tienanmen Square, Beijing. Packed with students protesting anti-democratic acts by the government. Cleared at the order of Deng Xiaoping. Scores of tanks, not evident in these photos, poured into the Square smashing through barricades. At this point, one man with two shopping bags stands in front of the first tank of a column and as the tank manoeuvres to go round him shuffles back and forth to continue standing in front of it. The tank stops, the column stops; man versus machine, a civilian versus an army. A big subject for a huge story.

Four photographers got this photo. Franklin’s was the first, Widener’s the most widely used. The others were Terril Jones, and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah. Australian ABC correspondents Max Uechtritz and Peter Cave were the (only) journalists reporting live from the balcony with Willie Phua shooting the accompanying video.

There is a theory that the whole thing was a set-up to make the Chinese government look better. A clean white shirt was not what the protestors were wearing. It took place right in front of the hotel where it was known that foreign journalists were staying. The soldiers respond quite passively to his actions and don’t hurt him. He is not arrested after leaving the scene. His identity remains unknown. Your call. Still a great pic.

A view of Earth rising above the lunar surface, showcasing the blue planet partially illuminated against a black background.
Earthrise, 1968: William Anders

One from a collection taken by astronaut William Anders on the Apollo 8 expedition, the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth’s gravity, orbit the Moon, and return safely. It was generated after a cute little back-and-forth between Anders and Jim Borman, the flight commander who is sometimes credited with taking the photo.

Anders says: ‘Oh my God! Look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth coming up. Wow, that’s pretty.
Borman: Hey, don’t take that, it’s not scheduled. (joking)
Anders: (laughs) You got a color film, Jim? Hand me that roll of color quick, would you.

And this is one of the results (which include the ‘half-Earth’ just breaching the horizon). Claimed to be the most reproduced photo ever, it featured on a commonly-used US stamp. It has also been described as ‘the most influential environmental photograph ever taken’.

It is eventful, dramatic, records something spectacular and unusual, has its own exquisite aesthetic, and might even be considered romantic. Great photo.

• • • • • • • • • •

Two of my favourite great photos.

A woman and child sitting at a table in a rustic, dimly lit interior. The table is covered with a floral tablecloth, and there are flowers in a vase. The room features wooden walls and a small kitchen area with various utensils and storage.
Aboriginal girl pouring tea inside a hut, Burnt Bridge, 1988: Mervyn Bishop

A young child and an adult man playing pool outdoors at a rundown table, surrounded by an unkempt yard with dilapidated structures in the background.
Pool game, Burnt Bridge, 1988: Mervyn Bishop

For their humanity.