As September rolls to a close... for two years in a row, Alexis and I (along with her son Justice) walked with the elephants from their last performance at the circus in the Rose Garden at dusk as far as we could to the train that would take them away to the next city. There was something magical about strolling alongside of these animals as they held each other trunk to tail kicking up the dust that surrounded us. When I encountered Bruce Davidson's photographs earlier this year, I knew they had to memorialize this event that was so special to do my last two Septembers in Portland. These images are for that memory that unfortunately seems like so long ago.
Bruce Davidson, Clyde Beatty Circus, 1958
Bruce Davidson, Clyde Beatty Circus, 1958
Bruce Davidson, Clyde Beatty Circus, 1958
Bruce Davidson, Ringling Bros Circus, 1965 [This image above most reminds me of our experience given that we were walking with the elephants under the interstate. No one was riding them though.]
"Several blocks of ice from Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Iceland, were removed from the glacial lake Jökulsarion ... Part of the ice is thought to have been formed around AD 1200.Weighing 6 tons in all, the blocks were transported to a Berlin gallery where they were exhibited in arefrigerated space." Via.
Wilson "Snowflake Bentley: "Fascinated by the snow crystals and their composition this man was the first person to successfully produce a photograph of snow or ice crystals. He did this by magnifying the crystals he gathered at 69 to 3,000 times on glass plates...He attached bellows to the microscope, along with wood splints, turkey feathers and a black board. Through the images he captured he discovered that every ice crystal is unique and grows symmetrically in a 6-sided hexagon around a tiny nucleus." Via.
