Browsing the Internet, I came across a copy of my Water Lilies poster for sale. The poster dates to 1980, and the image was probably my first widely published photo (it was also in American Photographer magazine, and used by Nikon). 

The poster was created using offset lithography, and advertised an exhibition of my work at Arras Gallery in New York City. It was published by Modernart Editions. The original retail price was, as I recollect, $25. I think there were about 2,500 printed (a few are in my flat files to this day). In this case, the seller is asking $150 for a copy that is in “Good/Fair Condition—[with] imperfections from age and handling (i.e. creasing, discoloration).” So I think my poster has basically kept pace with inflation!

Of course, being from 1980, this was an analog image. It began life as a Kodachrome 64 slide, photographed during a backpacking trip to the Wind River Range in Wyoming, probably in 1978. I worked on press directly with the 4-color separation films to enhance the graphic effect of the water lilies against the very dark background. Sure easier to do this kind of thing in Photoshop!

More of my posters from the analog era: Dance of Spring; New York New York (also here); and a few published by Editions Limited from more recent times.

Imagine you are in a hospital bed. The bed is in a room that was meant to be a single, but now has two beds and two occupants. The other occupant is a nice man, but he coughs continuously. Ventilation is poor. The room window faces onto what is essentially an air shaft. At 6AM, the bright, florescent lights go on overhead, and a smiling phlebotomist comes towards you, needle poised, for one more blood draw.

At 6:30AM, a beam of sunlight finds it way down the air shaft and lights up the blinds, and the shadow of the blinds forms on the adjacent wall. This is a photographic composition with patterns, positive space, and negative space—and what else is an iPhone for? 

I pull out my iPhone and make the image. Then the beam of glorious light moves on and is gone, taking the notion of the dream world beyond the hospital with it.

Hospital Blinds © Harold Davis

This pilgrim is home early. After all, a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago who cannot walk is a fairly immobile oxymoron. It was a scramble to get out of rural Galicia and return to the Bay area. By and large, I don’t think much of wheel chair access for solo travelers after this experience. Air France at SFO did okay, but in Europe not so much.

I’m jet lagged and have started a minor medical mystery tour: although so far antibiotics aren’t doing much, I think basically the blisters are infected, and once the pus has been drained my foot will get better fast. I hope so.

They were always waiting © Harold Davis

What’s great is that the garden is here has lovely flowers to photograph, and Phyllis and my son Nicholas helped me with the mechanics of photographing this arrangement. Nicholas made the exposure sequence for me, because I physically couldn’t climb up to get in the right position.

So I guess I am a bad pilgrim. On account of my blisters, I am staying off my feet, as they advised me at the Pilgrim’s service at Queens Hospital in Ponferrada (as told here). This means taking a taxi from place to place, and staying off my feet is relative. The nurse told me I could start being a pilgrim again when it didn’t hurt to put weight on my foot. I think that means a day or two more. The dressing they put on in the hospital is very professional, and better than anything I will come up with on my own.

In the meantime, not walking means missing the point of the pilgrimage. Bad pilgrim Harold, bad, bad!

Astorga Cathedral © Harold Davis

For days after the 33km march in the broiling sun out of Leon I had been nursing a big blister on the bottom pad of my left foot. It was painful to walk, and wasn’t getting any better. After each night, it was a little better, but by the end of a day trekking it was just as bad as it had been the previous day. After a long day on the trail, in Rabanal del Camino in the Cantabrian Mountains, I finally said that enough was enough. 

Camino © Harold Davis

Instead of walking, the next morning I took a taxi into Ponferrada, a reasonably-sized place and my next destination. Luis, the taxi driver, assessed the situation, and suggested I visit the nearby Queen’s hospital, where they have a free clinic for credentialed pilgrims.

This seemed like great advice, and I hobbled over to the emergency room. The pilgrim’s clinic didn’t open for a few hours, so I sat down to wait. Some ‘life experience credits” were earned for observing an emergency room in rural Spain. Mostly, I saw kindness, and babies being helped.

Eventually, I was called in, and the doctor interviewed me. His English was non-existent, and surely my Spanish is worse, but once I took off my boot, he got the picture, had me lie down, and called the nurse.

The nurse yanked the moleskin, told me it wasn’t infected, and gave my blister a proper dressing. There was some pain involved in this process. Then she told me to stay off it until it stopped hurting, probably two or three days. Easier said than done in the circumstances. Once it stopped hurting when I walked, I was good to go.

Camino and Heather © Harold Davis

There’s obviously a disconnect between walking in immense pain and some of the scenes of tranquil beauty along the Camino. I’m not sure what to say about this, except that part of the point of the pilgrimage is to endure privation. In olden times, in one example, notables humbled themselves and climbed to the sanctuary at Rocamdour on their bloody knees. 

How this applies to me I cannot really say, and it is frustrating to be here in Ponferrada a few blocks from a mammoth Templar castle, and not really to be able to explore it (as the nurse told me, if I want this to heal, I must stay off it).

Life is sometimes very strange—with ironies that are unanticipated!

The rooster crows at the break of day,

I have had my cafe au lait,

and I am on my way!

Hip, hip, hooray!

It’s true that I woke just before dawn to the crowing of a rooster, grabbed some coffee and toast, and headed out into the cool of the morning. You never know what you’ll find, and on this day I found (among other things) a twisted reflection of a house in a traffic mirror.

Dr Caligari’s House © Harold Davis

If you don’t recognize the Dr Caligari reference, click here.