ROB COPELAND FACEBOOK FRIEND

new facebook face

 

Facebook has become a part of my life, and it has become a part of the lives of several people I know and people I don't know. I even have facebook friends I don't know. Not many. I'm not one to collect facebook friends like autographs in the high school annual. I prefer just people I know. An awful lot of my facebook friends are people I call friends out in pre-cyber world. I don't have the greatest, longest list of friends there is, but when I look at the list with pictures of my facebook friends, I think they are really neat people individually. I feel rich in the people I know. Again, not numbers, but fullness of caring. It's taken a long time for me to fall into the flow of writing comments that are more than a few words. Sometimes I'll write a paragraph in the comment box. I like about facebook too, that I have become acquainted with some folks I think are cool people, people who think about things, who see fresh perspectives, both visually and conceptually. I've recently become friends with a guy in NYC from Chester, Virginia, outside Richmond, who has been taking b&w photographs of New York with his cell phone. They are gorgeous photographs. Color pictures too. He gets the curved reflection on a bus windshield of buildings across the street, and through the reflection can be seen the driver's open side window framing a section of the same building  without distortion, inside the windshield reflection. I like that he leaves somewhere a clue to help you see that the image is the back window of a car, or the roof of a car, the hood.

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To go straight to the point and not beat around the metaphorical bush, I love everything about Rob's photographs. Every detail. The compositions I see first. Then, looking at the composition, the details take over and pull the eye deeper into the picture. For my eye, this picture above of a Manhattan street satisfies my eye all the way in the distance to the last trace of the buildings. It's perspective he plays with in a lighthearted surrealist way. Surrealism was originally lighthearted. Rob's images have a lightness that makes them float in place. I'm not trying to sound fancy. It's the best I can put into a few words what I feel visually in his photographs. Each one exists on its own. It's like it has its own existence. This is the quality I call art. I've seen so many by now that when I see a movie filmed in contemporary New York, it becomes a story Rob's photographs illustrate. His visual appreciation of Manhattan is there with Woody Allen's. Rob's photographs catch a glimpse of personality in the city. In my own experience, I sometimes like to make close up photos of donkey faces, looking for a portrait that gives a sense of the donkey's personality, same as I do getting a portrait of a person I know. In a lot of the donkey pictures, the eyes somehow express the personality. Jenny's eyes are so alive in photographs I tend to speak to her like her consciousness is there. This is what I mean about Rob's photos glimpsing the personality of New York City, day and night, cars, people, architecture, compositions found in pavement, stairways, subways. His pictures somehow depict a living presence I find unusual. He is making quite a catalogue of strikingly beautiful images of the city, new ones every day, contemporary as it gets.

ai wei wei

 Rob posts the day's new pictures on facebook every day. I love to go through them, image to image, the day's catch. He plays with the art of the reflection, the art of the shadow, the art of the blur. Other photographers, of my limited experience, sometimes will use a reflection in a larger image, but I've never seen anybody make an art form of reflections that makes me "reflect" -- why did it take so long in the evolution of photography as an art form for the obvious to be noticed? These reflections have been there all along, varieties of them, everywhere, and we tend to look through them. When I go to the Mexican restaurant in Sparta, it has glass all across the front, curtained on the inside, I tend to look through the reflection at the decorations they have in the window and notices in Spanish. I miss the panorama reflected image of the parking lot behind me, the houses in the distance and the sky, selfie in landscape. It's there in front of my face like standing in front of a movie screen, and I look through it. I've become aware of reflections since knowing Rob's photographs. In store windows, I see what is inside and the reflection on the glass of the cars going by and stores across the street. Instead of wishing for a way not to see the reflection, now I welcome the reflection equal the display in the window. When I see the reflection too, it makes a kind of Rauschenberg silkscreen of one image over another. I started noticing the reflections I had been seeing through and it was almost like a new dimension, new awareness, seeing the first time what has always been there. It's a Duh moment. The kind where you slap the palm of your hand to your forehead and say, Where have you been all your life?

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Rob and I have never met and may never. We've become friends by way of the comment boxes on facebook. Writing back and forth  we're acquainted such that we could have extended conversation were we to meet. As it is, we have extended conversation by way of facebook over time instead of compacted. I believe we know each other well enough now to speak freely over the phone like with someone we've known for years. I started seeing Rob's posts when I friended a friend of his, also Rob, and Rob Copeland's photographs began to appear daily. My thought was that this is somebody in New York like Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, Gary Winogrand, and probably has a book of photographs in print. I went to amazon.com to see if he had any books. Not there. I took it for granted he had been at New York photography several years, was well known and respected in NY photography world, someone whose vision of the city is particularly his own and at the same time obvious. Until you see it, it's not there, and it was there all along. His photographs have different dimensions about them. He's not satisfied with only one dimension in his images. It turns out Rob Copeland is a guy in NY who has taken photographs for years and years, a lot of really good ones, but few that touched art. Then he bought his cell phone and started taking pictures with it, discovered reflections a little at a time until one day he saw them everywhere. He asked facebook friends to vote on possible names to call his pictures for the blogsite. Much interest in the word reflections. My anti-poetic suggestion was the word reflections is way overused unto meaningless. It was just a vote, no intent to persuade. He chose UPON REFLECTION: A UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE OF NEW YORK CITY. When I saw it I lit up with joy. Just right. The word needed to be there, and he took the Vaseline lens poetic out of it like somebody who has written a good bit of advertising copy. It's clean and straight ahead. It's a headline that tells you in a few words what his pictures are doing. Rob, that was truly a poetically inspired moment, upon reflection. It's beautiful.

 

rob Copeland

 

I don't mean to be an ongoing commercial for Rob's art, but can't help it. I feel awe when I look at Rob's photographs, the same kind of awe when I see images by Joel Meyerowitz. I've said that before and mean it so much I'll probably say it again. Rob's photographs  have a stillness about them, a window onto metropolis in high-speed motion silent as a still life. I like knowing Rob through his art form, his new found art form in a time in his life when he felt like he needed something to connect for him. I don't want to make any wishes for Rob and his art that he would not want to make himself. And I don't know what they would be. I don't wish anything for him. I feel like Rob is in his flow and doesn't need the static of other people's wishes and ideas about what he oughta, except for when he puts out an appeal to his facebook friends to give him some feedback and ideas on a given decision. The best I can do for him is encourage. Feedback is important to artists of all varieties. Feedback does not mean advising, but giving honest thoughts on the matter. Not criticizing, but addressing, talking about. 

http://robcopelandphotography.blogspot.com  This link will take you to Rob's photographic blog quick as thought itself. It's just a click away.

 

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IN PRAISE OF ROB COPELAND'S PHOTOGRAPHY

 

 

 

 

Above is a photo made today of my friend Sheena. My new facebook friend Rob Copeland in NYC has been making some extraordinarily beautiful photographs of reflections in car glass, car hoods and tops that make a curved or distorted reverse image of a building or two or three that are also in the frame. Rob's pictures have a dimension that moves my heart when I see them. Gary Winogrand's images and Joel Meyerowitz's images excite my heart in the same way Rob Copeland's do. I say excite my heart because that's where I feel the sensation when I see a large percentage of his images. Some of them are breath-taking, literally. They cause an inspiration, an in-breath, an inhalation, the sudden intake of air when I feel awe. He puts pictures on facebook every day, a touch that makes my facebook pages all the more fun to look at. Rob has opened a new dimension for me. I see reflections everywhere now. They've always been there and I've always missed them, with some exceptions, the ones that jump in my face. I walk through parking lots looking at the sky and clouds on windshields, trees, signs, wires. In a world of mundane traffic, pavement, brick, cinderblock and glass, the occasional appearance of a reflection on the glass of a car passing in the other lane, the sky and clouds rolling across the glass. It is not exaggeration to say noticing reflections has added a new dimension to my world. I'm not taking a lot of pictures of them. I don't want to seem like I'm copying Rob. I send him a reflection photo I find from time to time calling them "hillbilly reflections," for the fun there is in it.  

 

 

 

 

 

This is Sheena's man, Gail, with his pickup. I was looking for a way to get his reflection in the glass, but couldn't find it for the mirror, which worked good second best. I started sending Rob what I thought comic reflections, like trash on a dashboard reflected inside the windshield on the highway. Then this picture of Sheena happened. I wasn't thinking it a Sheena portrait at the moment. I saw the reflection and thought of Rob, Sheena walked into the V-slot to put something in the back seat. That she happened to be there when I saw the reflection in the glass made it a million times better. I'd not yet made a photo of Sheena that I think of as a nice portrait of her, how she looks as I know her. I think this is my Sheena portrait. She is seen through the hinged-side opening of the open back door, her brother Justin's four-door pickup. Reflected in the glass is the rigging above the back of the pickup for hauling ladders. It is one of my favorite photographs of all I've made. It was a moment in the new dimension Rob has opened for me. Standing in the same place I snapped the Sheena picture, to the right Gail was talking with his brother on the cell phone. I don't have any pictures of Gail. He was standing beside the truck's glass reflections at a moment I was focused on reflections to send to Rob. I'm happy with this one as my Gail portrait. Gail is my definition of a good man, all the way around. Good hunter, good archer, good people. The same can be said for his brother Ronnie. I'm grateful to God for the good care Gail gives Sheena.

 

 

 

 

 

This was the scene on Gail's pickup's back glass. It's a decal of a multi-pointer buck in the middle of the glass. It's another hillbilly reflection I made for Rob's amusement. From cityscape to landscape. The cityscape makes some exquisite reflection photographs. This new dimension I've stepped into has brought in moments of found art that are specific to place, time and point of view. Every time I see a reflection now, it's like a spontaneous piece of art. I'm thinking of reflections I see as, themselves, art. Once noticed, incredibly beautiful art. Since Rob has brought reflections to my visual awareness, I look for them in movies. When I notice a reflection, I also see that the director and the photographer, both, missed a moment of visual opportunity. A moment of just seeing the reflection is a surprise moment of art, and they go as unnoticed as unwanted children. Every time I see a movie, now, I see reflections that could have added a great deal to the visual moment and nobody saw it. Reflections I see in the course of a day give my mundane world of traffic and town some visual surprises. Glass is everywhere in town. I'd never paid attention to the scenes on the windows. I've seen them, but had not appreciated them. Now they are like gems that pop up here and there. They give a bit of zing to my everyday world like anchovies in pizza.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the windshield of Sheena's car parked under a tree. It was the reflection that initially caught my eye. We were on the way to the softball game down the mountain at Austin off of Traphill Road. Justin and Gail were playing. They promised on the way there that they'd scorch the other team, and they did. Justin went in the house, I sat on the tailgate of the truck with camera looking at the clouds and the tops of the trees in relation to each other. I've noticed that the outlines of trees are similar to the outlines of clouds. Both are created by water flow. I was looking for something interesting in the trees in relation to the clouds. Got a couple of pictures that were neither here nor there. Just looking around, seeing what I could see, mostly focused on clouds. It was a beautiful day for clouds. Big floating cotton balls pulled into every kind of configuration. It was a clear day sky with clouds floating across the blue. The trees and clouds were nice, but only for one picture. I sat looking at beautiful fields of goldenrod with late afternoon sun on them. I looked over at Sheena's car under the tree and saw the windshield. I hopped to the ground and made a few pics of the glass. Also got one of the side glass with two contrails in the sky making a white V on blue. By the time you figure out what the white lines are, it's too late. It's a joke that took too long in the telling. By the time you figure it out, it wasn't worth the effort.

 

 

 

 

It was after seeing the glass on Sheena's car that I went back to where the two pickups were parked. The back door was open on Justin's truck, I saw the image of the ladder rack in the glass, stepped up to get a look at it and Sheena appeared. It was a magic moment. It was the tree on the car windshield that set me off. I was thinking a hillbilly reflection for Rob, a tree on the glass. That was the inspiration. I saw it comic, fun, a kind of in-joke. Then the moment happened with Sheena and it felt like I'd been touched by the Divine fingertip. I thanked Rob in spirit for a fantastic moment, my portrait of Sheena. We all packed into the truck with as big a back seat as a big car, Seth, 7, going with us. At the ball game, Seth had his exercise running to find a foul ball that went over the fence on either side. The homeruns that went over the fence into the woods were hopeless to try to find that late in the day. This is Justin in the picture below, the split-second after he dropped the bat to run for first. It was a base hit. That's Gail heading out from first for second. They truly scorched the other team. 21-6. Sheena and I sat on the aluminum bleacher and talked through the course of the game. Every once in awhile, one of us would ask, Who's ahead? I valued having the time with Sheena, just us, talking about whatever. We've known each other all her life. Both Justin and Gail hit home runs over the fence. We kept an eye on Seth who spent the whole time running. He'll make a good soccer player.

 

To check out some of Rob's photographs:

 http://robcopelandphotography.blogspot.com 

 

 just a click away

 

 

 

all photos by tj worthington

 

 

 

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PHOTOGRAPHS OF ROB COPELAND

 

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Above are some of the first pictures I saw of Rob Copeland's on facebook. He was a friend of someone I'd recently facebook friended. He sent some b&w photos to friend that appeared on my facebook page. Next day others. Next day others. As I'm seeing these pictures, I'm seeing somebody with a Gary Winogrand kind of eye, but his own with no references to Winogrand. Very different minds, but an eye that appreciates detail in the New York cityscape. I even see some of Woody Allen's love for visual detail in NYC. Copeland's reflection pictures work with my eye on two dimensions at once, 2-D and 3-D. They have the flatness of a 2-D photograph like the one of the car glass reflecting rows of windows on a flat plane. The car glass in the foreground looks at the same time like it is on the same plane as the building behind it. These images throw my eye back and forth between the two dimensions. That's what I love so much about them along with his eye for b&w. I don't know if he's a noted NY art photographer or not. I'd prefer not for the freshness in the images. And I'd automatically think that I am not the first to notice somebody in NY making stunning New York pictures that to this hillbilly's eye are stunningly new. No matter how little experience I have in viewing contemporary New York photographers, when an image jumps in my face and says SEE ME by its presence that is also not flash, by the power of its presence, I call it art. His images have visual power for me. I feel them.

 

rob Copeland

The one with the vertical white light is reflection on right of image on left. It's like what is the background beyond the white picket fence is the flat, 2-D photograph, and on the right these dots come out of the picture toward the viewer, making it 3-D. I may be way off, but this is what I see. And I don't think I'm exaggerating, because this is the first time I have at least noticed photographs that carry the illusion no matter how many times I look at it. It might be something a thousand photographers in NY are doing and I don't know it, but I've never seen any photographer with this kind of eye. All his pictures don't do that, of course, but enough do that I see it is something he has discovered, evidently recently. He even finds images that are not reflections that suggest reflections. I've looked at his collection of photographs on facebook and saw in the past the occasional reflection, then more and more, and recently just about everything is reflections. I'm thinking he's getting his mind blown by this new discovery. I've seen a lot of pictures of reflections, but Copeland's are the first in my experience, which is limited, that play with dimensions at the same time. Whatever the case where NY photographers is concerned, I don't know. What I know is Copeland's pictures knock my sox off. I also know I'm not the only one to see the art in what he is doing.

rob Copeland

 

 

His photographs bring to mind a couple of films I've seen with dim to vague to vanishing recollection of what they were. I'm not even sure they were the ones. One is Kieslowski's BLIND CHANCE, a film so fine I want to see it again, and Takashi Miike's GRAVEYARD OF HONOR, another I want to see again. Just now ran them to the top of the netflix Q, both will be here Wednesday. It will be a film festival at my house that night, double feature of some of my favorite films. The Miike film is severely violent, but I appreciate it despite that, including that, beyond that. Overkill turns into comedy before long. Somebody blows away a room full of people, no big thang, just like evening news. Whether or not Graveyard of Honor is the one I was remembering with faulty memory doesn't matter. I do remember that when it was over I made a mental note to remember the title, because I wanted to see it again after a lapse of time, not right away. Ready to see it again. I'm excited already about Wednesday. Another of Miike's magnificent kill fests is 13 ASSASSINS. It's kind of on the order of 7 SAMURAI, but it's 13. Beautiful film. Beautifully made in every way a film can be beautiful. But, if you're into chick flicks, do not go there. And there is a Chinese film I'm recalling made I think in Taiwan. I'll go searching and see if it can be found. Soon. 

 

 

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This is one of his pictures I picked up from his facebook collection from the past that I see the same eye that made the reflection pictures. This is a common NYC scene, the kind that wherever you walk, you'll pass a work zone of color compositions. Here, we're seeing the orange rectangles and lines horizontal and vertical, a rectangular patch of green, seen through a grid of vertical and horizontal lines, squares, a fence. My mind knows the grid of squares is the foreground and everything else is the background, while my eye sees the grid on the same plane as the background, like the picture was printed on paper that already had the lines on it. This is what I love about Copeland's pictures, the juxtaposition of the two dimensions. The perceived real and the perceived illusion together, side by side as one image. If I'd found the above scene with a camera I'd have wet my pants on the spot. Feeling my own excitement in his images gives an idea of what he's feeling framing the shots. Going by his notations in facebook with the pictures he posts almost daily, he is rigorous about his pictures. Goes out early in the morning walking with camera, searching for magic moments in reflections.

 

 

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I don't know Copeland except suddenly in these amazing photographs that bring to mind some of the photographers I've enjoyed over the years like Joel Meyerowitz, esp the pictures in his book Cape Light. Gary Winogrand I see, though only in the cityscape and the way of using b&w with high contrast. I get the impression Copeland has not made a book of photographs. I can't find anything at amazon. A lot of his images have the quality of art about them that holds my gaze the thousandth time I see one. I can see a show in a NY gallery of his reflection images. It would be a beautiful exhibit. Extraordinarily beautiful. His images excite me because I know they're everywhere. He has opened a new dimension to my awareness. Walking through parking lots I look at clouds and signs on windshields, hoods, trunklids, chrome. In shop windows I look at the reflection first. My sort of logo picture for this blog is a reflection image. The difference between his and mine is that he is focusing on reflections, where mine was a found reflection, noticed because it jumped in my face with lights all around it that said SEE ME, FEEL ME. Now I'm seeing reflections everywhere when I'm in town. Out here in the mountain is clouds and trees in the glass of the car. Thank you, Rob Copeland, for opening up a whole new world for appreciation in everyday life. I don't have art museums to go to around here, so I look for art where I can find it. I see Rob Copeland keeps his eye alert for found art in his world as urban as my world is rural. I don't know how to tell you to find more unless you can look him up on facebook. I doubt he'd mind you asking to view his photographs.  

 

 

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