Gus Cantelmo 1913 - 2004

October 2013 marks the 100^th anniversary of my Dad's birth.  Gus Cantelmo was born in 1913, the same year the Internal Revenue Service began collecting income tax.  We never let him forget that little tidbit either.  He loved life, music, photography, fixing things, and most of all his family and friends.  There were times that I wondered if there were anyone he didn't know.  Everywhere we went we bumped into someone and a conversation resulted.

Dad introduced me to Photographic Art at a very early age.  As soon as I was old enough to follow directions, I found myself next to him in the darkroom.  My first job was to agitate the trays of chemicals when he placed the exposed paper into solution.  I am now 68 years old and never remember  my Dad being without a camera or darkroom.  I learned to love the aroma of fixer and never thought of  it as an unpleasant smell.  As the years passed and I grew, I assumed more responsibility, and so began the many decades we'd share photography together. 

Dad's technique of choice was Black and White Photography.  He was dedicated to a school of work known as American Pictorialism and admired  Adolf Fassbender (1884-1980) who was one of its leading champions in those days.  I remember Dad working with paper negatives, charcoal, chemical bleaching, and extensive re-touching, to get a soft painterly effect.  The end result was an idealized, optimistic photograph with strong compositional design.  Often he'd choose Ektalure X, one of his favorite papers to print the final version on.  I remember that paper as having a slight canvas textured surface that worked to enhance the effect he was aiming for.  Dad's subject of choice was the sea.  He photographed many other subjects also, however could not resist the call of being next to the Ocean.  He explored the Northeast Coast of the United States extensively, and loved the commercial fishing industry of Massachusetts to be more specific.  Those were the days of wooden Lobster Pots and lots of hand labor.   Vermont was another place he loved very much.  His subjects varied from old churches, farms, Maple Syrup production, and the logging industry, all rendered in the Pictorialist style.   Dad loved all phases of photography.  He had a way of loosing himself in the moment, and whatever was happening right then was all there was.  The same held true in the darkroom.  I can recall Mom calling for him to eat dinner over and over, he'd always answer “I'll be right there”.  He was very generous with his photographic knowledge, always being eager to help anyone with questions.  

When I think of Dad, and I often do, the image that comes to mind instantly is one of him standing on the edge of land, facing the Atlantic Ocean, sunshine lighting his face,  twin lens Rollei flex around his neck, and looking out at the horizon.  I have such a photograph of him and regard it as one of my favorites.  I am very grateful to him for very many things, most of all for teaching me to love life enough to stop and take a good look at things.  He taught me how to see light, detail, and subtleties.  In his last years, I was teaching him  the finer points of digital imaging.  At ninety, he was looking ahead to the future, and still excited about being alive.  Oh, for just one more photographic conversation, just one more field trip, just one more session together, and just one more hug.  Miss you Dad...

Acadia National Park

On February 26, 1919, a parcel of land, an island in fact, just off the coast of Maine was set aside and preserved.  Its name was Lafayette National Park.  The name is derived from the   Marquis de Lafayette, a supporter of the American Revolution.  Today we refer to this Northeast treasure as Acadia National Park.  The land area is almost 48,000 acres. 

I have spent a lot of time hiking, observing, and photographing this marvelous place.  So much time in fact that whenever I am there it feels like home to me.  Acadia’s eastern edge faces the northern Atlantic Ocean.  Winters here are cold and unforgiving.  Quick observation reveals a weathered rocky coastline that twists and turns into cliffs as well as more level terrain. The trees that hug the coast have evolved into survivors, twisted in places and dotted with multi-colored lichen.  A treat for the eyes is just underfoot in the form of tidal pools.  A mini environment filled with barnacles, small shellfish, green algae, and even an occasional crab.  Always there is the aroma of the refreshing sea air and the constant song of gulls as they ride the air currents hunting for the next meal. 

The range of light is quite variable and subject to change from hour to hour.  I can be in the process of making a photograph in dark blue skies and puffy white clouds, and the very next hour in a thick fog.  The abundance of subjects to work with makes it necessary to slow down.  Here is where you practice seeing, and not just looking.  Giving in to the urge to know what is around the next corner can cause you to miss the shot that is right in front of your lens.  An overlooked part of the park is the Schoodic Peninsula.  This wonderful section of the park is just north and east across Frenchman’s Bay.  Fog is frequent there and so are photographic opportunities.  In the off season, the crowds are gone and the photographer finds solitude and quiet.  With the distractions gone Acadia is at its best.  Walking the trails and climbing over weathered rocks is meditative and transformative.  The life you’ve left behind is distant, all that matters is right where you are.  Gulls call to one another, the aroma of the sea and the ever changing light transport you to a peaceful state of mind.

Just outside the park on Mt. Desert Island you can find small little fishing villages.  Lobstermen tend their boats and work on their traps.  You get the feeling that life has not changed much in a long time.  A brief conversation is both enjoyable and enlightening.  The challenge here is to work with this subject matter.  While beautiful, it’s also very well photographed.  If you can put your own unique vision on a composition, make it your own, and with a different twist, then the reward is there.  

Acadia Park always leaves me refreshed and renewed.  There is a timelessness present that quickly washes away the busy life you’ve left behind.  Especially when it’s just you the land and the wind, your mind and imagination are free.  The more you look, the more is revealed to you.  It is almost as if you have been transported back to an earlier time.  Just stand on top of Mt. Cadillac and let the first rays of the Sun to fall on the United States warm your face, just once.

The day began as one of those wonderfully rare perfect days.  The kind of day you just can’t help but notice, especially here in the northeast.  Dark blue sky, accented with pure white puffy clouds.  The kind of clouds that took the shape of barking dogs, trees, people, and many other things from our imagination.  The icing on the cake was near perfect temperatures; boy it was great to be alive.  With breakfast behind me, I set out for a normal workday filled with deadlines. 

The events of September 11, 2001 became a focal point of change for me as well as my country.  It felt as if ice water were poured on our collective souls.  As a lifelong resident here in New Jersey, it is impossible to carry out your normal routine, drive around, do errands, and in short make a living, without seeing the twin towers sometime in your day.  They were seemingly simple in design, but had the property of changing color, hue, and saturation each day depending on the weather, some day’s fog obscured the tops and gave the impression that they went all the way to heaven.  When my son was a young child, we’d watch the construction of the towers from the top of one of our local hills here.  As a photographer, I just had to periodically spend some time and film shooting this amazing architecture.  They could not be ignored, and demanded attention.  The courtyard surrounding the towers attracted a diverse group of people, and sitting there just yards away from the globe sculpture made it feel like you were in the center of civilization.  If it is possible to love architecture, then I loved those towers.  Driving north on the New Jersey Turnpike the towers would come into view at some point or other.  I’d critique’ the lighting, judge the air quality, and clouds got points off for being ordinary some days.  After a while, I got the idea that they belonged to me, being my personal background, my backyard so to speak. 

Each September 11^th is a sad day.  The people who lost family and friends will live with the grief that day brought to us and it will never go away.  All of us will live with the loss of people we knew, and the loss of those wonderful buildings.  I am not a sociologist, but I know what life felt like before the attack, and I know that it’s different now.  The events of that day are not something we talk about in our neighborhood that often.  It’s always there hovering in the back of our minds though.  The attack that day is personal to us.  It was in our backyard, and some of our tribe died because of it. 

Every once in a while, I’ll go through my stock photos and happen across one of the many shots of the towers, or Saint Nickolas Church, that sat dwarfed by the twin giants.    I smile briefly, and then feel the loss.  It still hurts.  It’s kind of a dull quiet hurt that never will go away.  I cannot call it ground zero; to me it will always be the World Trade Center.