Q.V.

4Series 4 #151 - 200

Photographs by Roger Hagan fromthe Photo of the Day series of 2009

In 2009 I began sending a photograph every day to a small list of family and friends, drawing on my file of more than sixty years ofpersonal photography. It was to get another look at the photos, imagining seeing them through others’ eyes, and to achieve theminimal discipline to prepare or create at least one each day.

One recipient thanked me for the “visual haiku.” I like that way of thinking of the captioned photos. (Thank you, Terry.)

They probably work that way best when arriving one per day, rather than collected as here. They are of mixed intent, some aspiringto be photographic art, others being casual observations or personal history. These books are my accumulating catalog, fiftyphotographs per book, in no particular order beyond the occasional cluster. There are no page numbers; to refer to one, use booknumber and title. I reserve the right to sell prints, but I allow most other uses if I am asked.

RogerHagan@earthlink.netwww.RogerHagan.com

Copyright © 2010 Roger Hagan

q.v. abbr [L. quod vide] which see_______________________

If we pay attention, a photograph becomes a challenge. Even if simple, it is rich withinformation. Even if commonplace, it has intention. Though unfamiliar, it may resonate. Ifabstract, it is nonetheless real. The challenge is to see well. I think photography cultivatesthe eye to help us experience life more richly.

In 1997, many years after I began making pictures, I found some words that made me feelgood about my lifelong enthusiasm, and regret the years when I made few. They are fromJohn Szarkowsky’s Looking at Photographs (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1973).

In childhood, each of us was open to dramas of the senses, revealed in terms that were trivial and ephemeral:the lost space between the window screen and the glass, the reflection of the sun from a hand mirror on thedressing table, slowly tracing its elliptical course across the ceiling.

Many of us forget the existence of such experiences when we learn to measure the priorities of practical life,or we find that they are rare or elusive. A few, whom we call artists, maintain an easy intimacy with thesewonders of simple perception.

In this century many of these have been photographers, and the exploration of our fundamental sensoryexperience has been in large part their work. It is photography that has continued to teach us of the pleasureand the adventure of disinterested seeing.

I have generally photographed not for a purpose, but simply because I thought somethingwas worth noticing. As I age, I do not notice as much or as well. These images are things Iam glad I noticed, some long ago.

I must try to keep noticing. You too.

Roger Hagan

Angels’ Flight

Los Angeles 1948

Grove

At Seattle’s Golden Gardens, Puget Sound 2009

Señor Villa-Lobos

A music teacher in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico 1953

He invited us to lunch, showed us his tiny apartment, then walked with us through town. In the parkwe met two teenagers hitch-hiking around the country who asked to come with us. I said no, sincewe had a lot of camera equipment in the car and no back seat for them to sit on. Sr. Villa-Lobos said"Look, I trusted you. Why won't you trust them?" And thus did Isidorio and Omar become ourcompanions for the next two weeks, including the week I was down with dysentery in Guadalajara.They were from a northern state and were escaping a summer of working in the fields. They weregood kids and helped us until they disappeared in Mexico City.

I did not remember how Sr. Villa-Lobos had shamed us into accepting the boys. My travellingcompanion, Fred Chez, reminded me when I sent him the pictures in 2003, fifty years later.

On the Ceboruco lava field south of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico 1953

Omar and Isidorio

Pink pants

Cancun 2004

We saw them later in the Los Angeles Airport, in the same clothes.

Where we like to think we came from

Small town, upstate New York 1985 (Cooperstown)

I am not bitter about America, but something about British critic Cyril Connolly’s world-weary stance suits me, and thisfrom him at his snottiest, age 26 (1929), made me think of this photograph I took in the Eighties even knowing itrepesented only a myth for most urban Americans, for we have many skins and languages:

"Went for a long walk to Lulworth Cove. For an instant, on the lonely crest of the downs, above an old house that slopeddown through a semicircle of beechwoods to the sea, I had a moment of love for my country, just as we may suddenlyprepare to forgive someone who has deceived us before the memory of their infidelities swarms in on us again. As wewalked farther, however, I remembered not so much the beauty of the downs as the awfulness of the people whowrote about them."

Ramparts

Carcassonne, France 1955

Caps and suits

Social class in Edinburgh 1955

Hat in hand

Rothenburg, Germany

In 1955, German society had been judged, but had yet to judge itself. The generation of wartime adults was stillin power. It would be another thirteen years, as the author of "The Reader" makes clear, before the generationof 1968 questioned their parents' values, in Germany, and throughout Europe and America. The atmosphere ofdenial is why I called my exhibit of photographs of Europe in 1955 "Cold Stone.”

The man seems suspended between respect and confusion, standing among the stones of a medieval Germantown spared by the bombers.

Ceremony

Honoring army veterans, Dinklesbuhl, Germany 1955

After the parade

German army veterans day, Dinkelsbuhl 1955

Two generations

Rothenburg, Germany 1955

Minder and minded

Cincinnati 2005

Last light

Arches National Park, Utah 1991

Pinochle again

Harry Shields, my uncle, and his grandson Tim Buffalo 1950

Police station

Vinalhaven, Maine 1960

Canadians with energy

Blaine Washington border crossing 2009

Construction workers at the new National University of Mexico 1953

Conference

In a Mexican bus station

Help for a burdened man Mexico 1959

Faces

Florence 2005

When the little boys wore the short pants

Tuileries toy boat pool, Paris 1955

Bread

Pike Place Sanitary Market, Seattle 1965

Morning calm

6 AM in the back bay at Port Ludlow, Puget Sound 1988

Arizona with photographer

The halo around my head is because (a) I deserve it, or (b) no other shadowscan be seen in the landscape in direct line with the sun. 1991

Prom 1949

High school prom king, queen and escorts Monrovia, California 1949

The chair

My landlord’s living room, Palo Alto 1954

White plastic chair

Cancun, on Gwenn’s veranda 2005

Winter evening walk

Old MTA yard in Cambridge near Harvard 1958

Dew

Grass in Sacramento delta 1975

North Haven Island, Penobscot Bay, Maine 1960

Lobsterman’s shack

Warning

Mariposa County, California 1950

Mas fino

Cafe in Puerto de Santa Maria, Cadiz, with dancer Rosario Ancer. Fino is the dry sherrymade mostly there and in Jerez, aged in American oak barrels. It is the fuel of flamenco --that, and tinto

Pontiac emerging

Los Angeles 1948

Farm machinery leaning against a barn

Skagit Valley, Washington; Olympic range to the west 2005

Care

Mexico City 1959

Greenland

The Cascades, the Olympics, the Selkirks and the Rockies looked like this 15,000 years ago.Our plane was probably 36,000 feet over Greenland. 2005

Moss green

Fallen tree, rainforest, Bainbridge Island, Puget Sound 2007

A critical eye

Sonia Dawkins teaching, Pacific Northwest Ballet School Summer Course 2009

On the bus

Morelos, Mexico 1959

Discovery Bay, Stait of Juan de Fuca, Washington 2009The gull flock watches and listens to determine whether the next flock north is eating better.

Watching north

The columns

Hall of the Columns, Mitla, near the valley of Oaxaca 1953

Capri

The steep side 1955

November yellow

at Monticello, Jefferson's house in Virginia 2008

Goofy and Pluto

Store window, Mexico City 1959The sister watching me is holding her brother up so he can see.

Light hogs

Maple leaves from above, Bainbridge Island, Washington 2007

Estuary

From a plane over the northeast coast of The Sea of Cortez, south-east of Puerto Peñasco,Sonora state, Mexico 2008

La Push Second Beach

The Pacific Ocean from the forest trail at the far western edge of Washington State 1980

Summer visit

My grandfather with the Canadian branch of the family in Oakville, Ontario 1950A widower, he brought Great Aunt Rose with him from Buffalo -- on the kitchen stairs -- and me.

Under the aquaduct

Chiconcuac, Mexico 1959The niño is just beginning the climb to machismo that will separate him from his charming companions.

The sweetest sail

Puget Sound 1980On summer nights, the water is calm. The breeze comes up after sunset, then dies around midnight.