I'm stuck. I've written and rewritten this post a half dozen times. I just can't get it out the way I want. I know why. There are recent events on my mind, way too personal to share. Yet they keep intruding into the post I want to write. If I do not get it out, I won't be able to move on to the rest of my journey and the problem that almost derailed it just three days in, an issue that remains on day eight, something I have to carefully manage. The only solution is to just get something on paper (an old cliché), not the event that is bothering me, but some reflection of it, some generalization. I ask your indulgence (a very appropriate concept for pilgrimage) if this post lacks the coherence and cogency I usually strive for.
I was inspired by the stark picture of the snow and ice covered Alps included with my last post to photograph this journey in black and white. On prior walks, I have photographed in color and then post processed some of the images to B&W. A few of those are among my favorites. But photographing directly to B&W is different – you have to see in black and white. Though you expose for the blacks, your real interest is in the expansion of those luscious mid-tones, the grays that give B&W photos their compelling aura, that sense of near but not perfect reality, the essence of those pictures that make dwell over them, far longer than you might with a color photo. Cinquanta sfumature di grigio? Fifty shades of gray? Far more.
A B&W photo takes work. A field of white and yellow wildflowers will all go to the white unless you consciously expand the range of grays between them and allow the grass on which they sit to go black. I am not saying that the photos included here are great photos, only that the process of photographing in B&W requires a special discipline that reminds me of the thought processes I engage in while taking these long walks.
As I began my second day's walk, from Echevennoz to Aosta, I thought about the similarities between my journeys and photographing in this way. From the trattoria in which I stayed, a small climb brought me to a relatively flat track that followed an irrigation channel dating from the 12th to 15th centuries. There have been modern improvements of course, metal conduits, PVC pipe, rubber hose, but mostly, over the course of dozens of miles it is a hand dug channel lined by flagstone or just earth, losing only a few meters in elevation over its length, delivering runoff, stream and river waters to fields all through the Val d'Aosta.
Photographing in B&W takes time. You can't just pick up the camera, frame and snap. You have to think about which of those gray tones you want to bring out. You begin to think about pulling the scene apart, which textures you want to emphasize, which you want to push to the background. If you place too much white next to a texture you want your viewer to focus on, their eyes will be pulled away to the lighter sections of the photo. And so it is with much of my thinking during these walks. I am often pulling apart events recent and long past, trying to see the gray tones, recognizing that the images I retain of those events may not be all that there is to them. I begin to see the texture within the picture, the contributing factors, how my own actions may have motivated others and thus created the events I am considering. The picture I come away with is often different than the one I held in my memory. It is an image of the same thing, but it has more to it, more tones, more subtleties. And when one is thinking about the interaction among people, the expansion of the mid-tones can give the entire event new meaning.
I left the course of the irrigation channel and descended towards Aosta. Entering Gignod, Patrick and I came across a lovely anziana who was convalescing in the parish house across from the church. She invited us in for a look at the garden, and a view down the Val d'Aosta. As my walking continued, so did my thoughts. I found myself thinking about forgiveness forgiveness, a concept I frankly have difficulty with. I've been able to push things to the background, not forgotten, but to a place where they no longer cause the pain they once did. Have I forgiven? I've discussed the concept with my friend Marc, a man of strong faith. He, too, has some difficulty. He thinks of it much in the way I do. My good friend Dinesh says I should not worry so much about the past: It is unchangeable. He urges me to focus on the future, that which I can affect. It is advice I would like to be able to follow.
Every once in a while, despite the neat little places I've tucked some remembrances, those understandings that include the mid-tones, the textures I've been able to tease out of the background, another event occurs that bring them back to the surface. I guess I still have a way to go.
Patrick and I continued on to Aosta, a pretty little city, nestled at the foot of the mountains, at the high end of the valley. By the time we arrived, we had lost about seventy percent of the elevation from the point at which we started. Again, I felt the burn in my quads, and this contributed to the problem I will tell you about in the next post. Patrick had a look around town and we met up in the main piazza for a coffee and a gelato. We had a good discussion on issues important only to the two of us and a nice dinner at a craft brewery before dodging raindrops back to the hotel.
While this day had been a day of mid-tones, the next day would be about extremes, the white and the black.
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