Fritz Photography

I spent the day today volunteering photography for a local non-profit here in Esteli, Nicaragua, called Instituto de Formacion Permanente.   Among the many things they do in the city and the region, they have a Saturday day camp for children.  I joined them in the city at 8am, and we took a packed bus just past the outskirts of Esteli, to their camp.  (Remember those schoolbuses you and I rode in the 70′s and 80′s?  Well, they migrate south after retirement in the US, and get in a good 20 or more years of service down here in Latin America.)

At the camp, they have two main focuses.  The first period is broken into two groups of younger and older children.  This morning, they spent the time learning about good communication skills, skills that can help improve their relationships at home now and in the future.  After that, we had snacks of a chicken-spread sandwich and a rice drink.  Next, the kids were broken up into interest groups.  This included cooking (they made papaya marmalade), gardening, dancing, English, and paper crafts.  There was also time for sports and relaxing between things.  Finally, we all received a very hearty meal of rez, rice, beans, tortillas, maduros (fried mature plantains), and rice drink.

While INSFOP’s reach is quite large in the region, they have no website, and we’re hoping these images will help them communicate what they do to their supporters, and show them what a great time the kids have in their care.

Alberto Gutierrez could be called many things: hermit, farmer, eccentric, recluse, sculptor, folk artist, walking piece of history, national treasure.  I don’t know that all of these would be accurate descriptions, but I do know this: he is a talkative, friendly fellow, who loves art, loves poetry, and loves his property in Cerro Jalacate, in the hills of Tisey.

Tisey, Nicaragua, is a Reserva Natural, near Esteli, in the North.  It’s an area encompassing 9,344 hectares of mountains and valleys, trees and rivers, and farms and farming coops.

Our friend and guide, Carlos, took us on a day-long trek through part of the Reserva, beginning with breakfast at a coop where they grow organic vegetables with organic fertilizer made from the waste of the organically fed cows and goats, which produce organic milk, from which they make swiss-style cheese.  From there we made the several-kilometer trek to Alberto’s farm, on the side of one of the hills, where he lives with his siblings on their family farm, where he was born in 1944.  Growing coffee, tropical fruits, and other comestibles, they live off of what they grow, and sell the excess for income.

Alberto is an interesting character, and happy to show people around his property.  When we first arrived, he asked us to sign in to his guestbook, which he produced from a shed where he stores coffee and tools.  He told us he’d had over a thousand people visit over the years, and he had their names and dates and countries of origin there in the pages of his books.

After signing in, he invited us to follow him through the hillside covered with coffee bushes, and trees producing orange, lemons, bananas of four different colors, and tiny pineapples.  He told us of the animals that used to live in the forests, such as monkeys and cats, that no longer were around.  Now, he said, there are just squirrels, which eat the oranges on occasion.

We walked along the paths sculpted from the dirt and rock, carved into stairs with wooden handrails, as he began to point out stones that he’d carved into different shapes along the way.  As we proceeded, the side of the path turned more and more to large rock outcroppings, into which he’d carved animals, churches, faces, maps of Nicaragua.  He pointed out the Twin Towers of New York, the cathedral in Esteli, the boats of Christopher Columbus, the cross of Christ.  In some places he’d carved stairs, and in others, benches to sit and enjoy the view of the valley below.  To some sculptures he’d added color, either by paint, or by the color of the stones themselves, pink and gray and white.

I asked him how he made the carvings, and from a niche he’d carved into the rock he pulled two sharpened pieces of rebar, a knife-like blade, and a stone hammer.  He said he’d been using the same tools (except for the stone, which had to be replaced when it broke) for most of his sculpting life.  He showed us the fresh lines he’d carved into the various murals, in his annual fight against fungus, dirt, and decay.

As we proceeded along the face of the hillside, the stone face became taller, the edge beside us steeper, and the themes larger and more colorful.  When we stopped to sit and talk further, we did so at a creche that Alberto had carved from the rock, painted with blue and white paint, complete with the nativity scene and the star of Bethlethem.  Here we sat and rested, while he quoted us poetry from Latin American poets, songs, and some poems of his own.

As we returned along the hillside, he pointed out a lichen-covered Atlas, whom he’d sculpted holding the mountain itself on his back.  It made me wonder who, after Alberto is gone, will uphold the fragile beauty of his fantastical sculptures, hewn into the very bedrock of his country, riddled by wars and revolutions, ravaged by poverty and greed, governed by tyrants and thieves, threatened with drought and disease.   And yet Alberto and his sculptures seem to me an apt representative of the heart of his country.  For here, hidden in the ancient hills, is a symbol of the hope, beauty, and ingenuity of the Nicaraguan people.

Now, here is a man who appreciates his craft.

I’ve spent a few hours in the Nica Libre cigar factory here in Esteli, getting to know the process of cigar making, and photographing it.  While I don’t care for cigars myself, nonetheless, I find the process to be fascinating and the product to be beautiful.  And the folks here in Esteli, Nicaragua, are really friendly.

Check out these beautiful cigars.  They’re made by only one woman in this factory, who has sufficient skill to create them.  I bought several.  If you’re nice to me, I might give you one.

This is the tobacco as it comes from the plantation, to the fabrica.

This young lady puts those pretty labels on the finished cigars.This is Eli, with whom I talked at length about his art and writing.  Nicaraguans are pretty passionate about poetry, and Eli combines poetry with paintings and drawings.  And he manages the little warehouse at the factory, where the cigars are placed for several weeks to ‘finish’ prior to labeling, packaging, and shipment.

I purchased a number of Nica Libre’s lovely cigars, including some made from organic tobacco by local farmers.  The first two lengthy comments (from folks in the Portland area) get a free cigar when I return!

The other day, while photographing in a Nicaraguan cigar factory, I noticed in the courtyard several cages containing exotic animals.  One contained a cat of some sort, perhaps a lynx or bobcat, pacing his 4-foot square cage.  Another contained several parrots.  And the third contained 2 capucin monkeys.

Monkeys are pretty cute creatures, and strangely familiar.  When they came up to the wire mesh and looked right at me, they were peculiarly sad looking creatures; I felt bad for them.

I pulled up my camera and started to photograph, and the monkey started squawking at me, and bounded away to the other side of the cage.  I put the camera down, and he returned.  Again, I hoisted my camera, and he made a face at me, squawked, and jumped away.  Nonetheless, I kept photographing, and a moment later he bounded toward me and threw something at me, hitting my hand and camera.  I thought it was a piece of food or a nut, and thought nothing of it, and continued to photograph.

My wife, who was standing nearby, called out, “He just threw poop at you!”

“Really?”  I replied.  “I just thought it was a nut or a berry.”

“No,” she said, “capucins throw poop.”  She pointed at the clod on the ground below me, saying, “And there it is.”

Well, there was nothing for it but to continue shooting.  I went around to the far corner and continued to photograph the monkeys.  I tend to like to be as close to my subjects as possible, and wouldn’t you know it, the little guy reached through the cage and swatted my lens!  He did so two more times as I continued to photograph.

I can honestly say I’ve never had anyone express their discomfort with having their picture taken as brazenly as this little guy.  Pooed and pawed in the course of two minutes.  What a day.

I love being a photographer.

On the Road Again

So I’m sitting on an American Airlines flight between Dallas and Miami, on the way to Nicaragua, reading Nexos, their Spanish-language in-flight magazine.  After twenty minutes, my head is already spinning, as I try to recall the meaning of words I haven’t studied in 20 years.  I made my way through a third of an article on Mexican basketball, and am pretty proud of myself.

It’s not like I haven’t been practicing.  Since returning from Thailand two weeks ago, I’ve spent about twenty minutes a day with a Spanish CDROM from my mother in law.  Even last night, fighting hard to stay asleep (why is it so hard to sleep when you know you have to get up at 4:15 am?), I found myself practicing Spanish in my head, then telling myself to shut up and go to sleep.

We’re headed to Nicaragua not just for the 95-degree weather and beans and rice, but more importantly, to immerse ourselves in studying Spanish, writing, and photography.  But the idea of four straight hours a day of Spanish class—one on one with a tutor—has me a little nervous.  First of all, I haven’t been in real school in twenty years (I went back and got a fine arts degree 8 years ago…).  I also haven’t studied Spanish in twenty years, since I took a year in high school and two in college.  And, honestly, at 38, I’m finding that my mental cognition is not quite what it used to be.

Two years ago, Shannon and I spent nine days in Zihuatanejo, Mexico with her family, and a close friend, Melissa.  I’d been in Mexico the previous couple of winters for a week of sunshine, but had a hard time getting out more than an hola here and there.  But in Zihua, the minute we arrived at our lodging, I started talking with the clerk in Spanish, asking if he could give us a quieter room.  For some reason, the Spanish just flowed out of me (in a halting, pathetic sort of way), and I took every opportunity I could to speak ith.  In fact, one day, exchanging money at the bank with my friend Melissa, the teller helping me told me that my accent was much better than Melissa’s.  This managed to piss off Melissa to no end, considering that’s she’s fluent in Spanish, and has lived in Central America for years at a time.  I, on the other hand, walked out of the bank glowing.

Encouragement from bank tellers aside, I’m far from fluent.  And what’s more, my wife eats languages for lunch, and has a brain like a magnet.  Every country we visit, she picks up on far more words than I—even surprising our Slovak hosts once by pulling a complete sentence out of nowhere: Dyacuyem za shetko (Thank you for everything).  She dreams in Latin names for plants.  She aces her nursing school tests using words like hydrochlorothiozide, hydrogen ion gradient, and gastrocnemius. She learned rudimentary Spanish on the job at Waremart selling video rentals to Mexican farm workers.  And now I have to go up against her, head to head in one-on-one Spanish study in Nicaragua.

Maybe a little friendly competition will do me good.

Our first stop is Granada, Nicaragua, a colonial Spanish city on the edge of Lake Nicaragua.  If you can stand the constant 98-degree weather, it is an interesting place to explore, most especially at 6:00 in the morning, when the light is lovely and the basureros are cleaning up after the party animals that will be sleeping for several hours to come.  You will also find, on a Sunday morning, people already in church services, hawkers out with the day’s La Prensa newspaper, and other folks sitting on their stoops, a natural extension of their front rooms.

I’ve been hard at work this past fall to design a new website for my artwork, and I’m pleased to announce it is ready for you to view.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve also created a variety of bodies of new work that haven’t been shown. New work in my Freckles, Cimitiere, and Adolescent Superheroes series are featured, as well as a new set of collodion tintypes. There’s also a set of lovely black and white images from Spain, as well as my other work in photography, encaustics, and printmaking.

Please take some time to browse the new site, located at www.fritzphoto.com/arts.

This month, I’ll have a piece of my artwork in Newspace Center for Photography’s annual juried show, Carnival:

CARNIVAL

February 5th through 28th
Monday-Thursday 10am-8pm
Friday-Sunday 10am-6pm (First Friday’s 6-9pm)

Opening Reception: Friday, February 5th 6-9pm

Newspace Center for Photography is pleased to present our annual themed exhibition. This year’s theme is Carnival. The exhibition brings a diverse array of regional, national, and international photography to Portland and provides exposure for talented emerging and mid-career artists.

From over 300 entries and close to 2,000 individual images, Newspace Executive Director Chris Bennett has selected 45 images for this year’s themed show.

Although I’m out of town traveling in Central America, I hope you’ll stop by and see the show.  There’s some beautiful work in it.

You can also see lots of new work on my new fine art website.