Phil Stekl
Photographer
Writer
Happenings
Salute to John M. Cartus
Honoring a Life's Work
Imagine winning the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) 8+ title every year of your four-year collegiate rowing career, forfeiting only one or two dual races along the way, and then dedicating your professional life to passing that racing wisdom down to the next generations as a youth rowing coach. Can the contribution to sport--or to anything important--be more distinguished than that?
John Cartus is, in all likelihood, the winningest oarsman in the history of the University of Pennsylvania, if not as well the most formatively influential. Half a century after those storied years, many of us who won with him—because of him—flocked back to the banks of the Schuylkill to pay him tribute.
Our deepest thanks go to teammate Sean Colgan for sparking the idea and donating a 4- to the Penn program in John’s honor; teammate John Chatzky for rallying the troops and funding much of the festivities; and teammate Michael Beck for serving as the perfect Master of Ceremonies.
A truly remarkable event.
Click on an image above to view the downloadable series.
If you attended the event and would like a framed print of any photo, simply email your choice and it will be shipped to you with pleasure and free of charge (pws@philsteklgallery.com). — pWs
Texas Random
Grand-road-trip patina wears off quickly. Especially when you're solo. Podcasts & music help but they never take the wheel. I tried to get my friend Kurt to join me for a chunk of the odyssey but he said “not my thing”. After mile 1000, I knew where he was coming from.
There are many more moments when I wish I could be anywhere else besides the long road I’m stuck on than those when I’m happy about being blessed by serendipity along the way (Ipso facto).
But there’s no question that, after covering thousands of miles alone behind the wheel, across a landscape as diverse as America’s, when she does strike--when you do shoot--you generate a different sort of photo. And that, I suppose, is the reason it must be done.
Click on the cotton field image above to view the series.
Egyptian Smiles
What’s your take on Yin & Yang? Does bad flow from good and, well, vice versa?
For some of us, Christmas 1980 felt like the last chance to find acceptable closure to a profoundly bad year. Months earlier, President Jimmy Carter had announced that American athletes would be forced to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. For those of us who spent years gearing up for Moscow, that edict—cadit quaestio—was a body blow.
Still, the frustration of the country’s Olympians to serve as political pawns was just a side note to the brewing discontent of a nation losing faith in its chief. On top of gutting the dreams of his nation’s elite athletes, Carter was widely viewed as a leader losing control—hamstrung by intractable domestic inflation and humiliated by the botched Iranian hostage rescue mission. By the end of 1980, the President had been rocked squarely onto his heels. By the time he handed the reins over to Ronald Reagan in January 1981, a scant 34% of Americans approved of his performance.
But it turns out that Carter’s handling of those crises wasn’t the full measure of the man. There was another angle to his influence, and another place on Earth where the name “Jimmy Carter” evoked not frustration or derision, but smiles and goodwill. The Egypt–Israel peace treaty, which Carter brokered in 1979, ushered in the promise of peace for millions of conflict-weary people. Egyptians, in particular, were profoundly grateful to end a war of attrition that felt like theirs to lose. To them, Carter was a hero for bringing both sides to the table to secure a lasting peace.
How did a handful of U.S. national team rowers come to appreciate this phenomenon first hand?
After pulling the plug on the Olympics, Carter tried to make amends with America’s top athletes by paving the way for them to compete abroad at U.S. government-funded events before and after the Moscow Games. That opened the door for the U.S. Rowing Team to compete in the Nile River Regatta in Cairo during Christmas week of 1980. It was a magical turn of events: Carter had won the hearts of a people who were at best historically indifferent to Americans, and then fully funded our "diplomatic mission" to their homeland.
Imagine visiting a country whose citizens warmly embrace you simply because of who your leader is. Yes, Jimmy Carter cost many an Olympic moment, but he also engineered something arguably rarer: the chance to feel the genuine, unexpected warmth of a culture usually closed off to the likes of us. THAT is what makes these photos sing.
Would it be possible to capture such images now? Could you photograph an AK-47-toting Egyptian embassy guard today without getting jammed up? It was possible in 1980, in the city of Cairo on Christmas Day, when the response was the hint of a smile and finger wag.
During that December week in Egypt, I saw people living vastly different, difficult lives who nonetheless found the grace to smile for a privileged, blonde Yank imposing on their privacy with a Nikon. Sure, maybe it could happen again, today. But it absolutely did happen, once.
And for that serendipitous Yang, I thank you, Jimmy Carter. —pWs
They say Terlingua is couched at the end of the world. To me, it felt like the beginning of a new one.
Inside that tiny, 110-resident desert outpost, I encountered lefties, righties, and every credible sort wedged between. There were survivalists and artists from all camps, gun-toters and camera-bearers, hard drinkers and teetotalers. I crossed paths with Caucasians, Latinos, North Americans, and Europeans (including Ukrainians)—a respectable sampling of pronouns and the odd Martian.
And funnily enough, everyone got along.
I was offered several methods to cross over into their reality, and the stars did indeed burn with extraordinary beauty one night, but I also heard a few things that made sense to me. Among the more grounded: word has simply gotten around that anyone harboring a modicum of tolerance should at least visit this desert social experiment, and entertain exercising the option to stay forever. Among the least: it’s the spell of the old cemetery occupying much of the town’s heart-- whose tenants can be heard whispering beneath the piercing stars that our time to find a life well-lived is not infinite.
But my card in the hat is the music—deeply influenced by the Mexican ballad, and played in rolling, day-and-night pickup jams by modest yet astoundingly talented musicians enamored with beautifully woven tales of love and loss. It’s not easy to get pissed off at your anti-matter self while listening, together, to one of these ballads performed on the porch of the Terlingua Trading Company under an impossibly brilliant starlit sky.
There is probably a mix of things at work but there is no denying the fundamental influence of one: space. Space to be, space to flee, space between you and “The Man”. Here in Terlingua, everyone is afforded plenty of it. And yet, behold, there is also something like a glue. As one of the 110 here, Davis, a carpenter and mandolin player with urgent eyes, explained to me, “I’ve spent my whole life becoming a person meant for a place like this…where I can be weird ‘me’ and still fit in.”
Terlingua (tər-LING-gwə) - a liquid, roll-off-the-tongue affair with world-altering potential. The next time your political or philosophical adversary is flaring up over something you said or did, resist fanning it and instead gently suggest, “Hey… easy there; Terlingua, my friend”.
Click on one of the images above to view the series.
Finding the Run
You don’t have to be a rower to know something about glide. Not the glide you take, but the one you make.
Downhill skiing is a thrill, but a masterful skate across a frozen lake, or a skim atop another body of water—not in a motorboat, but under your own power with a crawl or breaststroke—is more than thrilling. It is so because you’ve committed, with your own juice, to finding the run.
Millstättersee is one of the longest lakes in Austria, and the deepest. Some would also say it is the most becoming. It is always a treasure to behold, but the water becomes our private sanctuary in the autumn, when the Alpine winds have ceased ruffling her and the powerboaters have retreated.
Inge and I try to do at least one 22k round-trip Millstättersee “lake shot” every fall in our double. The entire stretch is ours—save for the odd cob and pen pair. It is difficult to imagine a better way to move: gliding along on that ethereal surface in sync with someone you like being with, together nurturing meters per stroke.
At the far east end of the lake, our halfway point, we beach the shell and step out for a short break. When the boat is running well, how good it is to get back to it. —pWs
Munich From the Inside
What do you do when you’ve got less than 24 hours to see Munich?
You can’t go too wrong with the cathedrals.
Click on the image above to view the series.
Hold Your Baby Tight
Built in the 13th century, St. Johannkirche sits atop a sheer rock face at the base of Austria’s Mt. Ankogel. In the days when that formidable Spitz helped keep enemies at bay, the church was further shielded by the soldiers of Burg Oberfalkenstein, which towered over the same grounds. While the church survives more or less intact, the castle has long since fallen into ruin.
Given the steep vertical perch of the church, it’s not easy to find a perspective that does it justice. The ideal one is a clean frontal view that fully captures the imposing rock perch.
My partner at the scene took the wind out of my sails by remarking, “You just need a drone.” Inge was suggesting that anyone with an Amazon account could render my on-foot effort senseless. But the breeze returned when I concluded that there was no way I’d risk my four-pound GFX100 and hefty 32-64mm lens on the back of any drone short of military-issue. At least these days, if you want a 100-megapixel image, you’ve just gotta hold your baby tight, with your own two adept hands.
There is a vantage point that checks all the boxes, suspending you directly over the valley blessed by the church. The providing mechanism is a 500-meter-long train trestle spanning the gorge—the perfect spot to wield a camera is right at the 250-meter mark.
The train still runs, and although there is a schedule, Austrian timeliness can be coincidental. But there is a reliable warning signal: the overhead catenary wires that feed electricity to the engine begin to “sing” when a train is about one minute away. So that was the trick—to capture the shot from the middle of the trestle, between songs.
Of course, the ÖBB threw us a curveball and we got caught on the narrow overpass anyway. And that triggered the second time, before the gaze of St. Johannkirche, that I held my baby tight.
Click on the image above to view the series.
Vive la différence
The Volitional Eye
The French have nothing against Uber, but French Uber drivers are not keen on fetching passengers from the distant outskirts of Bordeaux. That is where I found myself one morning without wheels—550 kilometers south of where I needed to be by the end of the day to catch a thirteen-hour NightJet out of Paris back to Linz. By way of a patchwork of transit modes—a private lift to Bordeaux center, an Uber to Bordeaux-St-Jean, a TGV to Paris Montparnasse, and finally the Metro to Gare de l'Est—I arrived at my NightJet launching pad none too worse for wear. Because I had built in a generous buffer to absorb gaps between lifts, I landed at the station several hours before my train’s departure.
What do you do with time to kill in a legacy train station on a bustling Tuesday afternoon?
Given the right setting, half a day can feel like minutes. In a place as grand and kinetic as Gare de l'Est, who needs cinema? Just find the right spot and observe the gamut of human expression: panic and ennui; the countenances of the mindful and oblivious; the movements of the awkward and the poised; and the heart-rending dramatizations of the blessed and the damned.
And that’s barely the half of it. Simply widen the lens to capture all those uncorrelated dramas unfolding within the womb of a structure designed for elegance and precision. That is an Nth level of contrast you won't ever find in your grandpa’s garden.
We're not all cut from the same cloth, thank God, and while variety will test our tolerance, didn't the French get it so right with “Vive la différence?”
But you have to choose to see it.—pWs
A Far-Away Place
Impressions of Moravia
“
Even natural wonders deemed “hard to reach” are blessing somebody’s back yard - maybe even your own.
The host of a podcast I like was interviewing a photographer known for his rendering of “The Palouse” in Washington state. Palouse is an agricultural region famous for its reclining-nude-like topography and fields of kaleidoscopic wonder. As the podcast started to wind down I began scheming a Palouse adventure of my own (albeit a 17,000 km roundtrip commitment), but my fantasy planning was interrupted when the host ventured, in conclusion, “Your work is particularly appealing given that there’s probably nothing like The Palouse anywhere else in the world.” Interruption morphed into diversion when the photographer replied, “Well, actually, there’s a region in southern Czechia called Moravia that is very similar to The Palouse - but it’s VERY hard to reach.”
Moravia is a pleasant three-hour drive from our flat in Linz.
Planning took a new direction and adopted renewed vigor, fueled by delight in the extraordinary good fortune of being only a stone’s-throw from somewhere “hard to reach” and the upped odds of securing my aesthetics advisor for the foray. Inge & I circled a couple of days at the end of May when school vacation and peak Moravian colors at least theoretically overlapped.
We ended up missing peak colors - particularly the rich yellows - by a week or two, but rolling hills and cooperative sun were sufficiently abundant to yield enough material to capture at least a few better-than-average images.
The trip would reward us in other ways as well. In lieu of fields of rich yellows we found a place nearby that served a plum version of Valašsky frgál - a traditional Moravian prune layer cake which was, in its piquant design, akin to strawberry shortcake. The engineer of said delight, the baker of the Kyjov penzion where we overnighted, was himself a treasure, relishing in our “O-lord-this-is-so-good”s and driven to near-ecstasy by the opportunity to practice his English and German in parallel with subtle yet enthusiastic head-swivels.
I suppose the other moral of the tale is that you shut things off early at your peril. Who could have guessed that the word “Moravia” would have been uttered at the tail end of a podcast by a photographer born, bred and forever bound to Washington state?
Visit the "Place" Gallery to view the photo series. Or just click on one of the images above.
Keep moving… pWs
Flow
“
Most of us know about “flow” moments… experiences so all-consuming and good that we are squarely unified with them--moments of unselfconscious connection with a physical movement, an intellectual pursuit, creative endeavor, pure pleasure--or with another human being.
Rowers certainly know about flow: those priceless moments when mind & body find a relationship with boat & water (and partners) which benefit the run of the whole. It is the promise of achieving flow that keeps a number of us engaged with the sport our entire lives.
I am unable to switch-on at will those occasions in which I stop being a spectator of the world but rather intimately connected to it. Be that as it may, despite not knowing exactly how or why these moments unfold, I do know that they often bring out the best in me.
Who wouldn’t mind having more flow tickets. Is it as simple as appreciating our dependence on the people, places and things around us to define what we are?
I’m not sure.
But if true, would that be such a bad thing?
Impressions of Death Valley
“"…we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
Travels with Charley
John Steinbeck
To drive down roads that probed earthy vanishing points seemed sufficient reason to trek out to Death Valley from Connecticut, but it was the surprise awaiting me at the end of one of those gravel lanes that would truly define the whatfor.
His name isn’t Nate but it’s something like that. He was as surprised to see me as I was to stumble upon him, and he did pause in his tracks for a moment before recovering to ask,
“Sir, do you need help?”
After a wobble of my own at the thought of conveying helplessness, I told him who I was and why I was there. He volunteered his name and the fact that the olive-green bus behind him was where he and his folks called home. The expanse of desert engulfing our chance powwow was their "spot".
“Where do you go to school?”, I ventured. "Nate", again, motioned towards the bus.
During my three-day drive west I had time to imagine what was awaiting me in Death Valley, and how I might do it justice with the camera. But never did I imagine that the middle of nowhere--a place where a polite, earnest-beyond-his-years boy would reach out to me, a perfect stranger, with sincere concern--could truly be the middle of somewhere singularly special.
Visit the "Place" Gallery to view the photo series. Or just click on one of the images above. pWs
Don’t blink: 66 seconds capturing three full days of exacting work to cover the north, Danube-facing wall of R.V. Ister Linz with a mural scene designed & applied by artist team Julia Heinisch & Frederic Sontag at VIDEO.SCKRE.
Video by P.W.Stekl
Happenings
Imagine winning the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) 8+ title every year of your four-year collegiate rowing career, forfeiting only one or two dual races along the way, and then dedicating your professional life to passing that racing wisdom down to the next generations as a youth rowing coach. Does the contribution to sport--or to anything important--and the transmission of associated life-relevant lessons, become more distinguished than that?
John Cartus is, in all likelihood, the winningest oarsman in the history of the University of Pennsylvania, if not as well the most formatively influential. Half a century after those storied years, many of us who won with him—because of him—flocked back to the banks of the Schuylkill to pay him tribute.
Our deepest thanks go to teammate Sean Colgan for sparking the idea and donating a 4- to the Penn program in John’s honor; teammate John Chatzky for rallying the troops and funding much of the festivities; and teammate Michael Beck for serving as the perfect Master of Ceremonies.
A truly remarkable event.
Click on an image above to view the downloadable series.
If you attended the event and would like a framed print of any photo, simply email your choice and it will be shipped to you with joy and free of charge (pws@philsteklgallery.com). — pWs
Texas Random
Grand-road-trip patina wears off quickly. Especially when you're solo. Podcasts & music help but they never take the wheel. I tried to get my friend Kurt to join me for a chunk of the odyssey but he said “not my thing”. After mile 1000, I knew where he was coming from.
There are many more moments when I wish I could be anywhere else besides the long road I’m stuck on than those when I’m happy about being blessed by serendipity along the way (Ipso facto).
But there’s no question that, after covering thousands of miles alone behind the wheel, across a landscape as diverse as America’s, when she does strike--when you do shoot--you generate a different sort of photo. And that, I suppose, is the reason it must be done.
Click on the cotton field image above to view the series.
Egyptian Smiles
What’s your take on Yin & Yang? Does bad flow from good and, well, vice versa?
For some of us, Christmas 1980 felt like the last chance to find acceptable closure to a profoundly bad year. Months earlier, President Jimmy Carter had announced that American athletes would be forced to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. For those of us who spent years gearing up for Moscow, that edict—cadit quaestio—was a body blow.
Still, the frustration of the country’s Olympians to serve as political pawns was just a side note to the brewing discontent of a nation losing faith in its chief. On top of gutting the dreams of his nation’s elite athletes, Carter was widely viewed as a leader losing control—hamstrung by intractable domestic inflation and humiliated by the botched Iranian hostage rescue mission. By the end of 1980, the President had been rocked squarely onto his heels. By the time he handed the reins over to Ronald Reagan in January 1981, a scant 34% of Americans approved of his performance.
But it turns out that Carter’s handling of those crises wasn’t the full measure of the man. There was another angle to his influence, and another place on Earth where the name “Jimmy Carter” evoked not frustration or derision, but smiles and goodwill. The Egypt–Israel peace treaty, which Carter brokered in 1979, ushered in the promise of peace for millions of conflict-weary people. Egyptians, in particular, were profoundly grateful to end a war of attrition that felt like theirs to lose. To them, Carter was a hero for bringing both sides to the table to secure a lasting peace.
How did a handful of U.S. national team rowers come to appreciate this phenomenon first hand?
After pulling the plug on the Olympics, Carter tried to make amends with America’s top athletes by paving the way for them to compete abroad at U.S. government-funded events before and after the Moscow Games. That opened the door for the U.S. Rowing Team to compete in the Nile River Regatta in Cairo during Christmas week of 1980. It was a magical turn of events: Carter had won the hearts of a people who were at best historically indifferent to Americans, and then fully funded our "diplomatic mission" to their homeland.
Imagine visiting a country whose citizens warmly embrace you simply because of who your leader is. Yes, Jimmy Carter cost many an Olympic moment, but he also engineered something arguably rarer: the chance to feel the genuine, unexpected warmth of a culture usually closed off to the likes of us. THAT is what makes these photos sing.
Would it be possible to capture such images now? Could you photograph an AK-47-toting Egyptian embassy guard today without getting jammed up? It was possible in 1980, in the city of Cairo on Christmas Day, when the response was the hint of a smile and finger wag.
During that December week in Egypt, I saw people living vastly different, difficult lives who nonetheless found the grace to smile for a privileged, blonde Yank imposing on their privacy with a Nikon. Sure, maybe it could happen again, today. But it absolutely did happen, once.
And for that serendipitous Yang, I thank you, Jimmy Carter. —pWs
They say Terlingua is perched at the end of the world. To me, it felt like the beginning of a new one.
Inside that tiny, 110-resident desert outpost, I encountered lefties, righties, and every credible sort wedged between. There were survivalists and artists from all camps, gun-toters and camera-bearers, hard drinkers and teetotalers. I crossed paths with Caucasians, Latinos, North Americans, and Europeans (including Ukrainians)—a respectable sampling of pronouns and the odd Martian.
And funnily enough, everyone got along.
I was offered several methods to cross over into their reality, and the stars did indeed burn with extraordinary beauty one night, but I also heard a few things that made sense to me. Among the more grounded: word has simply gotten around that anyone harboring a modicum of tolerance should at least visit this desert social experiment, and entertain exercising the option to stay forever. Among the least: it’s the spell of the old cemetery occupying much of the town’s heart-- whose tenants can be heard whispering beneath the piercing stars that our time to find a life well-lived is not infinite.
But my card in the hat is the music—deeply influenced by the Mexican ballad, and played in rolling, day-and-night pickup jams by modest yet astoundingly talented musicians enamored with beautifully woven tales of love and loss. It’s not easy to get pissed off at your anti-matter self while listening, together, to one of these ballads performed on the porch of the Terlingua Trading Company under an impossibly brilliant starlit sky.
There is probably a mix of things at work but there is no denying the fundamental influence of one: space. Space to be, space to flee, space between you and “The Man”. Here in Terlingua, everyone is afforded plenty of it. And yet, behold, there is also something like a glue. As one of the 110 here, Davis, a carpenter and mandolin player with urgent eyes, explained to me, “I’ve spent my whole life becoming a person meant for a place like this…where I can be weird ‘me’ and still fit in.”
Terlingua (tər-LING-gwə) - a liquid, roll-off-the-tongue affair with world-altering potential. The next time your political or philosophical adversary is flaring up over something you said or did, resist fanning it and instead gently suggest, “Hey… easy there; Terlingua, my friend”.
Click on one of the images above to view the series.
Finding the Run
Sept 2022
You don’t have to be a rower to know something about glide. Not the glide you take, but the one you make.
Downhill skiing is a thrill, but a masterful skate across a frozen lake, or a skim atop another body of water—not in a motorboat, but under your own power with a crawl or breaststroke—is more than thrilling. It is so because you’ve committed, with your own juice, to finding the run.
Millstättersee is one of the longest lakes in Austria, and the deepest. Some would also say it is the most becoming. It is always a treasure to behold, but the water becomes our private sanctuary in the autumn, when the Alpine winds have ceased ruffling her and the powerboaters have retreated.
Inge and I try to do at least one 22k round-trip Millstättersee “lake shot” every fall in our double. The entire stretch is ours—save for the odd cob and pen pair. It is difficult to imagine a better way to move: gliding along on that ethereal surface in sync with someone you like being with, together nurturing meters per stroke.
At the far east end of the lake, our halfway point, we beach the shell and step out for a short break. When the boat is running well, how good it is to get back to it. —pWs
Munich From the Inside Out
Sept 2022
What do you do when you’ve got less than 24 hours to see Munich?
You can’t go too wrong with the cathedrals.
Click on the image above to view the series.
Hold Your Baby Tight
Built in the 13th century, St. Johannkirche sits atop a sheer rock face at the base of Austria’s Mt. Ankogel. In the days when that formidable Spitz helped keep enemies at bay, the church was further shielded by the soldiers of Burg Oberfalkenstein, which towered over the same grounds. While the church survives more or less intact, the castle has long since fallen into ruin.
Given the steep vertical perch of the church, it’s not easy to find a perspective that does it justice. The ideal one is a clean frontal view that fully captures the imposing rock perch.
My partner at the scene took the wind out of my sails by remarking, “You just need a drone.” Inge was suggesting that anyone with an Amazon account could render my on-foot effort senseless. But the breeze returned when I concluded that there was no way I’d risk my four-pound GFX100 and hefty 32-64mm lens on the back of any drone short of military-issue. At least these days, if you want a 100-megapixel image, you’ve just gotta hold your baby tight, with your own two adept hands.
There is a vantage point that checks all the boxes, suspending you directly over the valley blessed by the church. The providing mechanism is a 500-meter-long train trestle spanning the gorge—the perfect spot to wield a camera is right at the 250-meter mark.
The train still runs, and although there is a schedule, Austrian timeliness can be coincidental. But there is a reliable warning signal: the overhead catenary wires that feed electricity to the engine begin to “sing” when a train is about one minute away. So that was the trick—to capture the shot from the middle of the trestle, between songs.
Of course, the ÖBB threw us a curveball and we got caught on the narrow overpass anyway. And that triggered the second time, before the gaze of St. Johannkirche, that I held my baby tight.
Click on the image above to view the series.
The Volitional Eye
The French have nothing against Uber, but French Uber drivers are not keen on fetching passengers from the distant outskirts of Bordeaux. That is where I found myself one morning without wheels—550 kilometers south of where I needed to be by the end of the day to catch a thirteen-hour NightJet out of Paris back to Linz. By way of a patchwork of transit modes—a private lift to Bordeaux center, an Uber to Bordeaux-St-Jean, a TGV to Paris Montparnasse, and finally the Metro to Gare de l'Est—I arrived at my NightJet launching pad none too worse for wear. Because I had built in a generous buffer to absorb gaps between lifts, I landed at the station several hours before my train’s departure.
What do you do with time to kill in a legacy train station on a bustling Tuesday afternoon?
Given the right setting, half a day can feel like minutes. In a place as grand and kinetic as Gare de l'Est, who needs cinema? Just find the right spot and observe the gamut of human expression: panic and ennui; the countenances of the mindful and oblivious; the movements of the awkward and the poised; and the heart-rending dramatizations of the blessed and the damned.
And that’s barely the half of it. Simply widen the lens to capture all those uncorrelated dramas unfolding within the womb of a structure designed for elegance and precision. That is an Nth level of contrast you won't ever find in your grandpa’s garden.
We're not all cut from the same cloth, thank God, and while variety will test our tolerance, didn't the French get it so right with “Vive la différence?”
But you have to choose to see it.—pWs
A Far-Away Place
Impressions of Moravia
May, 2022
“
Even natural wonders deemed “hard to reach” are blessing somebody’s back yard - maybe even your own.
The host of a podcast I like was interviewing a photographer known for his rendering of “The Palouse” in Washington state. Palouse is an agricultural region famous for its reclining-nude-like topography and fields of kaleidoscopic wonder. As the podcast started to wind down I began scheming a Palouse adventure of my own (albeit a 17,000 km roundtrip commitment), but my fantasy planning was interrupted when the host ventured, in conclusion, “Your work is particularly appealing given that there’s probably nothing like The Palouse anywhere else in the world.” Interruption morphed into diversion when the photographer replied, “Well, actually, there’s a region in southern Czechia called Moravia that is very similar to The Palouse - but it’s VERY hard to reach.”
Moravia is a pleasant three-hour drive from our flat in Linz.
Planning took a new direction and adopted renewed vigor, fueled by delight in the extraordinary good fortune of being only a stone’s-throw from somewhere “hard to reach” and the upped odds of securing my aesthetics advisor for the foray. Inge & I circled a couple of days at the end of May when school vacation and peak Moravian colors at least theoretically overlapped.
We ended up missing peak colors - particularly the rich yellows - by a week or two, but rolling hills and cooperative sun were sufficiently abundant to yield enough material to capture at least a few better-than-average images.
The trip would reward us in other ways as well. In lieu of fields of rich yellows we found a place nearby that served a plum version of Valašsky frgál - a traditional Moravian prune layer cake which was, in its piquant design, akin to strawberry shortcake. The engineer of said delight, the baker of the Kyjov penzion where we overnighted, was himself a treasure, relishing in our “O-lord-this-is-so-good”s and driven to near-ecstasy by the opportunity to practice his English and German in parallel with subtle yet enthusiastic head-swivels.
I suppose the other moral of the tale is that you shut things off early at your peril. Who could have guessed that the word “Moravia” would have been uttered at the tail end of a podcast by a photographer born, bred and forever bound to Washington state?
Visit the "Place" Gallery to view the photo series. Or just click on one of the images above.
Keep moving… pWs
Flow
“
Most of us know about “flow” moments… experiences so all-consuming and good that we are squarely unified with them--moments of unselfconscious connection with a physical movement, an intellectual pursuit, creative endeavor, pure pleasure--or with another human being.
Rowers certainly know about flow: those priceless moments when mind & body find a relationship with boat & water (and partners) which benefit the run of the whole. It is the promise of achieving flow that keeps a number of us engaged with the sport our entire lives.
I am unable to switch-on at will those occasions in which I stop being a spectator of the world but rather intimately connected to it. Be that as it may, despite not knowing exactly how or why these moments unfold, I do know that they often bring out the best in me.
Who wouldn’t mind having more flow tickets. Is it as simple as appreciating our dependence on the people, places and things around us to define what we are?
I’m not sure.
But if true, would that be such a bad thing?
Impressions of Death Valley
November, 2021
“"…we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
Travels with Charley
John Steinbeck
To drive down roads that probed earthy vanishing points seemed sufficient reason to trek out to Death Valley from Connecticut, but it was the surprise awaiting me at the end of one of those gravel lanes that would truly define the whatfor.
His name isn’t Nate but it’s something like that. He was as surprised to see me as I was to stumble upon him, and he did pause in his tracks for a moment before recovering to ask,
“Sir, do you need help?”
After a wobble of my own at the thought of conveying helplessness, I told him who I was and why I was there. He volunteered his name and the fact that the olive-green bus behind him was where he and his folks called home. The expanse of desert engulfing our chance powwow was their "spot".
“Where do you go to school?”, I ventured. "Nate", again, motioned towards the bus.
During my three-day drive west I had time to imagine what was awaiting me in Death Valley, and how I might do it justice with the camera. But never did I imagine that the middle of nowhere--a place where a polite, earnest-beyond-his-years boy would reach out to me, a perfect stranger, with sincere concern--could truly be the middle of somewhere singularly special.
Visit the "Place" Gallery to view the photo series. Or just click on one of the images above. pWs
Don’t blink: 66 seconds capturing three full days of exacting work to cover the north, Danube-facing wall of R.V. Ister Linz with a mural scene designed & applied by artist team Julia Heinisch & Frederic Sontag at VIDEO.SCKRE.
Video by P.W.Stekl
Happenings
Salute to John M. Cartus
Honoring a Life's Work
Imagine winning the Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) 8+ title every year of your four-year collegiate rowing career, forfeiting only one or two dual races along the way, and then dedicating your professional life to passing that racing wisdom down to the next generations as a youth rowing coach. Can the contribution to sport--or to anything important--be more distinguished than that?
John Cartus is, in all likelihood, the winningest oarsman in the history of the University of Pennsylvania, if not as well the most formatively influential. Half a century after those storied years, many of us who won with him—because of him—flocked back to the banks of the Schuylkill to pay him tribute.
Our deepest thanks go to teammate Sean Colgan for sparking the idea and donating a 4- to the Penn program in John’s honor; teammate John Chatzky for rallying the troops and funding much of the festivities; and teammate Michael Beck for serving as the perfect Master of Ceremonies.
A truly remarkable event.
Click on an image above to view the downloadable series.
If you attended the event and would like a framed print of any photo, simply email your choice and it will be shipped to you with pleasure and free of charge (pws@philsteklgallery.com). — pWs
Texas Random
Grand-road-trip patina wears off quickly. Especially when you're solo. Podcasts & music help but they never take the wheel. I tried to get my friend Kurt to join me for a chunk of the odyssey but he said “not my thing”. After mile 1000, I knew where he was coming from.
There are many more moments when I wish I could be anywhere else besides the long road I’m stuck on than those when I’m happy about being blessed by serendipity along the way (Ipso facto).
But there’s no question that, after covering thousands of miles alone behind the wheel, across a landscape as diverse as America’s, when she does strike--when you do shoot--you generate a different sort of photo. And that, I suppose, is the reason it must be done.
Click on the cotton field image above to view the series.
Egyptian Smiles
What’s your take on Yin & Yang? Does bad flow from good and, well, vice versa?
For some of us, Christmas 1980 felt like the last chance to find acceptable closure to a profoundly bad year. Months earlier, President Jimmy Carter had announced that American athletes would be forced to boycott the Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. For those of us who spent years gearing up for Moscow, that edict—cadit quaestio—was a body blow.
Still, the frustration of the country’s Olympians to serve as political pawns was just a side note to the brewing discontent of a nation losing faith in its chief. On top of gutting the dreams of his nation’s elite athletes, Carter was widely viewed as a leader losing control—hamstrung by intractable domestic inflation and humiliated by the botched Iranian hostage rescue mission. By the end of 1980, the President had been rocked squarely onto his heels. By the time he handed the reins over to Ronald Reagan in January 1981, a scant 34% of Americans approved of his performance.
But it turns out that Carter’s handling of those crises wasn’t the full measure of the man. There was another angle to his influence, and another place on Earth where the name “Jimmy Carter” evoked not frustration or derision, but smiles and goodwill. The Egypt–Israel peace treaty, which Carter brokered in 1979, ushered in the promise of peace for millions of conflict-weary people. Egyptians, in particular, were profoundly grateful to end a war of attrition that felt like theirs to lose. To them, Carter was a hero for bringing both sides to the table to secure a lasting peace.
How did a handful of U.S. national team rowers come to appreciate this phenomenon first hand?
After pulling the plug on the Olympics, Carter tried to make amends with America’s top athletes by paving the way for them to compete abroad at U.S. government-funded events before and after the Moscow Games. That opened the door for the U.S. Rowing Team to compete in the Nile River Regatta in Cairo during Christmas week of 1980. It was a magical turn of events: Carter had won the hearts of a people who were at best historically indifferent to Americans, and then fully funded our "diplomatic mission" to their homeland.
Imagine visiting a country whose citizens warmly embrace you simply because of who your leader is. Yes, Jimmy Carter cost many an Olympic moment, but he also engineered something arguably rarer: the chance to feel the genuine, unexpected warmth of a culture usually closed off to the likes of us. THAT is what makes these photos sing.
Would it be possible to capture such images now? Could you photograph an AK-47-toting Egyptian embassy guard today without getting jammed up? It was possible in 1980, in the city of Cairo on Christmas Day, when the response was the hint of a smile and finger wag.
During that December week in Egypt, I saw people living vastly different, difficult lives who nonetheless found the grace to smile for a privileged, blonde Yank imposing on their privacy with a Nikon. Sure, maybe it could happen again, today. But it absolutely did happen, once.
And for that serendipitous Yang, I thank you, Jimmy Carter. —pWs
They say Terlingua is perched at the end of the world. To me, it felt like the beginning of a new one.
Inside that tiny, 110-resident desert outpost, I encountered lefties, righties, and every credible sort wedged between. There were survivalists and artists from all camps, gun-toters and camera-bearers, hard drinkers and teetotalers. I crossed paths with Caucasians, Latinos, North Americans, and Europeans (including Ukrainians)—a respectable sampling of pronouns and the odd Martian.
And funnily enough, everyone got along.
I was offered several methods to cross over into their reality, and the stars did indeed burn with extraordinary beauty one night, but I also heard a few things that made sense to me. Among the more grounded: word has simply gotten around that anyone harboring a modicum of tolerance should at least visit this desert social experiment, and entertain exercising the option to stay forever. Among the least: it’s the spell of the old cemetery occupying much of the town’s heart-- whose tenants can be heard whispering beneath the piercing stars that our time to find a life well-lived is not infinite.
But my card in the hat is the music—deeply influenced by the Mexican ballad, and played in rolling, day-and-night pickup jams by modest yet astoundingly talented musicians enamored with beautifully woven tales of love and loss. It’s not easy to get pissed off at your anti-matter self while listening, together, to one of these ballads performed on the porch of the Terlingua Trading Company under an impossibly brilliant starlit sky.
There is probably a mix of things at work but there is no denying the fundamental influence of one: space. Space to be, space to flee, space between you and “The Man”. Here in Terlingua, everyone is afforded plenty of it. And yet, behold, there is also something like a glue. As one of the 110 here, Davis, a carpenter and mandolin player with urgent eyes, explained to me, “I’ve spent my whole life becoming a person meant for a place like this…where I can be weird ‘me’ and still fit in.”
Terlingua (tər-LING-gwə) - a liquid, roll-off-the-tongue affair with world-altering potential. The next time your political or philosophical adversary is flaring up over something you said or did, resist fanning it and instead gently suggest, “Hey… easy there; Terlingua, my friend”.
Click on one of the images above to view the series.
Finding the Run
Sept 2022
You don’t have to be a rower to know something about glide. Not the glide you take, but the one you make.
Downhill skiing is a thrill, but a masterful skate across a frozen lake, or a skim atop another body of water—not in a motorboat, but under your own power with a crawl or breaststroke—is more than thrilling. It is so because you’ve committed, with your own juice, to finding the run.
Millstättersee is one of the longest lakes in Austria, and the deepest. Some would also say it is the most becoming. It is always a treasure to behold, but the water becomes our private sanctuary in the autumn, when the Alpine winds have ceased ruffling her and the powerboaters have retreated.
Inge and I try to do at least one 22k round-trip Millstättersee “lake shot” every fall in our double. The entire stretch is ours—save for the odd cob and pen pair. It is difficult to imagine a better way to move: gliding along on that ethereal surface in sync with someone you like being with, together nurturing meters per stroke.
At the far east end of the lake, our halfway point, we beach the shell and step out for a short break. When the boat is running well, how good it is to get back to it. —pWs
Munich From the Inside Out
Sept 2022
What do you do when you’ve got less than 24 hours to see Munich?
You can’t go too wrong with the cathedrals.
Click on the image above to view the series.
Hold Your Baby Tight
Built in the 13th century, St. Johannkirche sits atop a sheer rock face at the base of Austria’s Mt. Ankogel. In the days when that formidable Spitz helped keep enemies at bay, the church was further shielded by the soldiers of Burg Oberfalkenstein, which towered over the same grounds. While the church survives more or less intact, the castle has long since fallen into ruin.
Given the steep vertical perch of the church, it’s not easy to find a perspective that does it justice. The ideal one is a clean frontal view that fully captures the imposing rock perch.
My partner at the scene took the wind out of my sails by remarking, “You just need a drone.” Inge was suggesting that anyone with an Amazon account could render my on-foot effort senseless. But the breeze returned when I concluded that there was no way I’d risk my four-pound GFX100 and hefty 32-64mm lens on the back of any drone short of military-issue. At least these days, if you want a 100-megapixel image, you’ve just gotta hold your baby tight, with your own two adept hands.
There is a vantage point that checks all the boxes, suspending you directly over the valley blessed by the church. The providing mechanism is a 500-meter-long train trestle spanning the gorge—the perfect spot to wield a camera is right at the 250-meter mark.
The train still runs, and although there is a schedule, Austrian timeliness can be coincidental. But there is a reliable warning signal: the overhead catenary wires that feed electricity to the engine begin to “sing” when a train is about one minute away. So that was the trick—to capture the shot from the middle of the trestle, between songs.
Of course, the ÖBB threw us a curveball and we got caught on the narrow overpass anyway. And that triggered the second time, before the gaze of St. Johannkirche, that I held my baby tight.
Click on the image above to view the series.
The Volitional Eye
The French have nothing against Uber, but French Uber drivers are not keen on fetching passengers from the distant outskirts of Bordeaux. That is where I found myself one morning without wheels—550 kilometers south of where I needed to be by the end of the day to catch a thirteen-hour NightJet out of Paris back to Linz. By way of a patchwork of transit modes—a private lift to Bordeaux center, an Uber to Bordeaux-St-Jean, a TGV to Paris Montparnasse, and finally the Metro to Gare de l'Est—I arrived at my NightJet launching pad none too worse for wear. Because I had built in a generous buffer to absorb gaps between lifts, I landed at the station several hours before my train’s departure.
What do you do with time to kill in a legacy train station on a bustling Tuesday afternoon?
Given the right setting, half a day can feel like minutes. In a place as grand and kinetic as Gare de l'Est, who needs cinema? Just find the right spot and observe the gamut of human expression: panic and ennui; the countenances of the mindful and oblivious; the movements of the awkward and the poised; and the heart-rending dramatizations of the blessed and the damned.
And that’s barely the half of it. Simply widen the lens to capture all those uncorrelated dramas unfolding within the womb of a structure designed for elegance and precision. That is an Nth level of contrast you won't ever find in your grandpa’s garden.
We're not all cut from the same cloth, thank God, and while variety will test our tolerance, didn't the French get it so right with “Vive la différence?”
But you have to choose to see it.—pWs
A Far-Away Place
Impressions of Moravia
May, 2022
“
Even natural wonders deemed “hard to reach” are blessing somebody’s back yard - maybe even your own.
The host of a podcast I like was interviewing a photographer known for his rendering of “The Palouse” in Washington state. Palouse is an agricultural region famous for its reclining-nude-like topography and fields of kaleidoscopic wonder. As the podcast started to wind down I began scheming a Palouse adventure of my own (albeit a 17,000 km roundtrip commitment), but my fantasy planning was interrupted when the host ventured, in conclusion, “Your work is particularly appealing given that there’s probably nothing like The Palouse anywhere else in the world.” Interruption morphed into diversion when the photographer replied, “Well, actually, there’s a region in southern Czechia called Moravia that is very similar to The Palouse - but it’s VERY hard to reach.”
Moravia is a pleasant three-hour drive from our flat in Linz.
Planning took a new direction and adopted renewed vigor, fueled by delight in the extraordinary good fortune of being only a stone’s-throw from somewhere “hard to reach” and the upped odds of securing my aesthetics advisor for the foray. Inge & I circled a couple of days at the end of May when school vacation and peak Moravian colors at least theoretically overlapped.
We ended up missing peak colors - particularly the rich yellows - by a week or two, but rolling hills and cooperative sun were sufficiently abundant to yield enough material to capture at least a few better-than-average images.
The trip would reward us in other ways as well. In lieu of fields of rich yellows we found a place nearby that served a plum version of Valašsky frgál - a traditional Moravian prune layer cake which was, in its piquant design, akin to strawberry shortcake. The engineer of said delight, the baker of the Kyjov penzion where we overnighted, was himself a treasure, relishing in our “O-lord-this-is-so-good”s and driven to near-ecstasy by the opportunity to practice his English and German in parallel with subtle yet enthusiastic head-swivels.
I suppose the other moral of the tale is that you shut things off early at your peril. Who could have guessed that the word “Moravia” would have been uttered at the tail end of a podcast by a photographer born, bred and forever bound to Washington state?
Visit the "Place" Gallery to view the photo series. Or just click on one of the images above.
Keep moving… pWs
Flow
“
Most of us know about “flow” moments… experiences so all-consuming and good that we are squarely unified with them--moments of unselfconscious connection with a physical movement, an intellectual pursuit, creative endeavor, pure pleasure--or with another human being.
Rowers certainly know about flow: those priceless moments when mind & body find a relationship with boat & water (and partners) which benefit the run of the whole. It is the promise of achieving flow that keeps a number of us engaged with the sport our entire lives.
I am unable to switch-on at will those occasions in which I stop being a spectator of the world but rather intimately connected to it. Be that as it may, despite not knowing exactly how or why these moments unfold, I do know that they often bring out the best in me.
Who wouldn’t mind having more flow tickets. Is it as simple as appreciating our dependence on the people, places and things around us to define what we are?
I’m not sure.
But if true, would that be such a bad thing?
Impressions of Death Valley
November, 2021
“"…we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
Travels with Charley
John Steinbeck
To drive down roads that probed earthy vanishing points seemed sufficient reason to trek out to Death Valley from Connecticut, but it was the surprise awaiting me at the end of one of those gravel lanes that would truly define the whatfor.
His name isn’t Nate but it’s something like that. He was as surprised to see me as I was to stumble upon him, and he did pause in his tracks for a moment before recovering to ask,
“Sir, do you need help?”
After a wobble of my own at the thought of conveying helplessness, I told him who I was and why I was there. He volunteered his name and the fact that the olive-green bus behind him was where he and his folks called home. The expanse of desert engulfing our chance powwow was their "spot".
“Where do you go to school?”, I ventured. "Nate", again, motioned towards the bus.
During my three-day drive west I had time to imagine what was awaiting me in Death Valley, and how I might do it justice with the camera. But never did I imagine that the middle of nowhere--a place where a polite, earnest-beyond-his-years boy would reach out to me, a perfect stranger, with sincere concern--could truly be the middle of somewhere singularly special.
Visit the "Place" Gallery to view the photo series. Or just click on one of the images above. pWs