The third thing I am grateful for this week – and every week –  is light. It made the “gratitude list” for two specific reasons beyond the general one that it enables photography, among other things.

Sunlight is somewhat absent in Oregon – we have so many uniformly grey, dark days in the course of the year. When the light is unimpeded by clouds, or the cloud cover thin enough to let it through here or there, it is like a gift. Then again, the light provided by interesting cloud formations has its own beauty.

 

Secondly, the light here in the Pacific Northwest bears much similarity to the light of places in Europe that are close to my heart. The light at the coast is comparable to the light at the Baltic Sea, the light on Sauvie reminds me of Holland, and the light in PDX with the driven clouds or darkish skies are reminiscent of Hamburg, another harbor city located about an hour from the sea.

Norham Caste Sunrise – JMW Turner 1895

Milo at Manzanita Sunrise  2017

I always thought that Turner was magnificent when it came to painting light. In some or another review of a current exhibit  by Ellen Harvey that pays tribute to Turner I found this sentence: Harvey’s eponymous Nostalgia sets the stage for a show in which art serves as a problematic intermediary between past and present.  Given what I just wrote in the paragraph above, you will understand my claim that light serves as an unproblematic – and welcome – intermediary between my own past and present. 

Past, present. I wish a trip to England to see Harvey’s exhibit was in my immediate future, which it of course isn’t. The show looks fascinating, even if you are not familiar with Turner and her homage to him would have to stand on its own.

Here are the details.https://hyperallergic.com/411561/ellen-harvey-nostalgia-danese-corey-2017/

Instead, I will use whatever light there is, silver or golden or blue or crystalline, to continue documenting the natural beauty in our own vicinity; photographs today (other than the Turner from the web) were taken at the coast this spring, the Sandy River delta and near Camas, WA last week.