A Trip to the White City: On the Joys of Exhaustion, and Rediscovering Photography

I recently (has it been almost a week?) went to Tel Aviv to try out a new sculpture class. I--who am not a morning person--had to be out of the house by 6:00 A.M. I hadn't slept well the night before, and so walked through the sunrise-kissed, quiet streets in that exhausted airless high where everything looms remorselessly real, and yet strangely disconnected. Like the eyes have a jerky zoom and pan button that isn't quite working.

There is something oddly invigorating about it. Sitting outside the door, waiting for the studio to open, I couldn't stop sketching. The stairway was an abstract composition. The candlesticks a perfect still life of moving lines.

I thought: I need to try this more often. This is an energy I can use to have a small morning painting every day, before the house comes to life with all its distractions.

The floating rush carried me through the sculpture class, one of the best I had all year. I decided to make a Tel Aviv day: walk through the Bauhaus architecture that gave Tel Aviv its moniker, and maybe check out some of the galleries.

But when I stepped outside, the adrenaline dropped , and I was left with the faint nauseas four-hours-of-sleep headache combined with a day that was getting progressively too hot for the clothing I had put on for a rainy Jerusalem morning. When I finally found a gallery that was open, I was too tired to appreciate it properly.

So my conclusion is:

Exhaustion is a useful commodity, but like everything, good only in moderation. Push it too far and you can destroy an entire day. If I want to begin painting before sunrise, I need to leave time and place for a short afternoon nap, or get to sleep before the a.m.s (hard to imagine...)

When I found Rothschild Boulevard completely blocked, I gave up, and wandered into Neve Tzedek and down towards the beach. One good thing about the collapse of my grand plans of exploring artistic Tel Aviv is that I finally took out my camera in an attempt to wake myself up. There was a time when I would not leave the house without my SLR semi-manual camera. But when it broke--and digital replaced the darkroom--I lost my connection to it.

Spending a few hours wandering around with a camera rather than my sketch pad reminded me why I loved it. There is something about the immediate imagery of photography that connects me to the moment. I begin to look at these small details that I usually would miss. The framing isolates compositions within the burley of phenomena. Patterns and echoes come alive. And the ordinary is for a moment blessed by the extraordinary.

There is poem I love by Dylan Thomas that somehow encapsulates for me the possible power of photography to bestow a "radiance" to what is usually, maybe rightfully, missed:

Here are some photos from my afternoon walk:

I love this composition in blues, but as usual find the color quality of photos disappointing. It was one of the main reasons I stopped using the camera: the sense of loss when I saw the photo was too deep.