Photo Gallery

In The Land of Nod

2012-01-19T14:05:00.000-05:00

In The Land of Nod: A Photographic Exploration, 76 pages, 64 photographs, 2012. Exploring J. Alden Weir's Connecticut farm, the landscape at the center of his artistic legacy.

From the introduction:

"The area around [Weir] farm had been known as 'The Land of Nod' as early as 1757 and the road, one of two which bisect the farm, was already in the public record as Nod Hill Road in 1765. The origin of the name and what it refers to are unknown. But it was in common use; all of the visitors to the farm referred to it as 'The Land of Nod', and several of them included some variant of 'The Land of Nod' in the titles of many paintings, drawings, and etchings made there."

"Weir... had many friends in the art world. Most of them appear to have been guests at the farm at one time or another, many of them regular guests every summer. They included most of the American painters of note in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century — Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, John Twachtman, Henry Pinkham Ryder, Edmund Tarbell, Frederic Remington, Frank Millet. Thus Weir’s farm became a center of American art and its landscape a focus."

An electronic version of the book can be downloaded here (41 MB).

2011-10-31T17:19:00.000-04:00

Autumn at Weir Farm, just before the first snowfall of the season...

Nantucket

2011-09-26T17:44:00.000-04:00

For those of you who don't know, Nantucket Island is 26 miles (42 km) off the southern coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Settled by the Wampanoag Indians many years earlier followed by the English colonists in 1659, Nantucket, a small island (48 square miles (124 sq km)) with a population of a few thousand energetic and enterprising men and women, became the center of America's whaling industry from 1715 to about 1850.

Whaling declined after 1850 due to a shift in the economics of transportation; New Bedford, on the mainland, with access to the railroad, replaced Nantucket as the industry's center. Also at this time, Nantucket seaport became largely inaccessible to deep draft whaling ships as silt began to close the entrance to the harbor. Finally, oil had been discovered in Pennsylvania, providing a cheaper alternative to whale oil for lighting and lubrication. Population declined from about 8,500 in 1850 to about 2,800 in 1920. Permanent population today is about 10,000, sustained almost exclusively by tourism.

Most of the town of Nantucket was destroyed by fire in 1846 and rebuilt immediately thereafter. But because of the declining economy, little development occurred in subsequent years. Consequently, Nantucket retains to this day one of the largest collections of pre-1860 architecture in the United States. The entire island, now the Nantucket Historic District, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. Development and building renovation are very carefully controlled, making Nantucket an unusual location for photography.

Nantucket Island - NASA

All the photographs below were made on Nantucket Island.

Steamboat Wharf

Straight Wharf

'Sconset Beach

Sesachacha Pond

North Mill Street

17 Mill Street

Prospect Hill Cemetery

Long Pond

Old Lyme

2011-09-05T16:44:00.000-04:00

Two views of the pond at Mik Chwalek and Tom Fitzpatrick's home in Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Mead Park

2011-08-21T17:05:00.000-04:00

Mead Park - New Canaan, Connecticut

On The Bank of the Shepaug River

2011-08-20T18:09:00.000-04:00

Shepaug River - Washington Depot, Connecticut

More images from this Connecticut summer...

2011-08-20T17:57:00.000-04:00

Shed at Burlingham Barn - Weir Farm

Main Barn - Weir Farm

After the Rain - Weir Farm

In the Land of Nod

2011-08-06T11:44:00.002-04:00

Spring and Fall in Connecticut are spectacular, with intense, varied colors. Winter and Summer, on the other hand, are largely monochrome. Winter is brown, colored by the trunks of barren trees, and Summer is an unremittant green, the result of dense reforestation of Nineteenth Century fields.

This was not always so. As the painting reproduced below illustrates, rural Connecticut, including Weir Farm, was, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, open, with fields cleared for crops and grazing.


Road to the Land of Nod

Road to the Land of Nod, was painted in 1910 while Childe Hassam, a friend of Weir and fellow Impressionist, was staying at Weir Farm. Weir and his friends often referred to the farm and its surroundings as “The Land of Nod” and today Nod Hill Road, the “road” in the painting, bisects the site.

As the photographs below show, the Land of Nod appears much different today. Summer photography is difficult; finding color in the midst of green is a persistent challenge. But each of these images finds something, even if it is only a patch of dried grass.

Looking Northwest from Burlingham Barn

Trail to Weir Pond

Northwest from Field Below Burlingham Barn

Weir Farm - Main House and Barn

Hill-Stead, Farmington, Connecticut

2011-06-08T16:01:00.001-04:00

Hill-Stead Estate, now a museum, was created by industrialist Alfred A. Pope at the end of the Nineteenth Century as a retirement home and working farm. Located just east of the village of Farmington, Connecticut, the estate comprised 250 acres of farm land and forest. Pope's daughter Theodate, one of the first woman architects in the United States, designed and sited the buildings, and laid out the grounds. As with the Philip Johnson Glass House Site in New Canaan and Weir Farm in Wilton, Hill-Stead presents an example of a natural setting selected, tended, and to some extent sculpted by an artist with unusual sensitivity to nature and a visitor's place within it.

This photograph was chosen particularly for the mosaic of light and shadow in the foreground and middle ground created by clouds scudding across the sun at the moment of exposure. The shadows give additional articulation to elements of the scene.

Hill-Stead, View to the North

Caretaker's House - Weir Farm

2011-05-25T11:19:00.002-04:00

Corn Crib - Weir Farm

2011-05-25T11:18:00.000-04:00

Above Weir Farm

2011-05-24T16:27:00.000-04:00

Spring in New England is especially a time for looking up at the sky through new leaves not quite fully formed.

Weir Farm

2011-05-21T13:09:00.000-04:00

Some additional images of Weir Farm made this past week. For more information on Weir Farm, visit the National Park Service site and the Weir Farm Arts Center site.

A Bit of Miscellaneous Work

2011-05-18T15:38:00.003-04:00

Joel Meyerowitz once told his students that they should ask themselves each day the question: "What have I done today that advances the art of photography?" This is a difficult standard to observe. I try, but every so often I have to relax and just have fun with my grandchildren and my wife. The images here reflect such a relapse into normal home photography.

The images of the younger grandchildren, Carson and Morgan, were made recently at their temporary home (their house on the other side of the mountain is under renovation) in Genesee Colorado. The third image is from Sandy's flower and herb garden next to the kitchen of our house in Connecticut.

Carson - 4½

Morgan - 7

Spring in Sandy's Garden

The First Five

2011-05-17T17:55:00.065-04:00

These images have been directly taken from the previous version of my photo gallery.

Weir Farm - February

Burlingham Barn - Weir Farm

Gloria Feldt

Margaret Catley-Carlson

The Studios at Weir Farm