Marie Harris

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‘Tis the Season: the sacred & the profane

December 1, 2016 Leave a Comment

tis-the-season-coverFrom the first time we hit the brakes and backed up to be sure we’d seen what we thought we’d seen—a Nativity diorama made entirely of pumpkin-headed figures—we were hooked. Charter photographed the scene and made it into a Christmas card. It was a great hit with family and friends and so began our tradition of documentary photo Christmas cards.

All American Snowman
All American Snowman

That was over thirty years ago. Since then, every Christmas afternoon we get in the truck and drive miles along back roads and into the deserted streets of little towns searching for the next year’s photo, the image we could make into a card that by now our friends have come to expect. What we’ve found has ranged, depending on their contexts, from the peculiar to the pretty, from hilarious to touching to bizarre. We’ve found a plastic-wrapped crèche, a wildly incongruous window display pairing a barbershop with a nativity grouping; one Santa is marooned in an abandoned mall parking lot, another incarnated as an astronaut. We’ve happened on Mary and Joseph sharing a backyard with Dorothy and the Tin Woodman. (Now and then someone accuses us of constructing a scene for effect. Of course we’d never think of doing such a thing! Nor will we ever need to, judging from experience.)

Too Big to Fail
Too Big to Fail

Sometimes the pictures reflect, if inadvertently, the current mood of the country. We spotted what we called “Santa: Too Big to Fail” in 2008, the year of the banking crisis. A storefront display we dubbed “Mrs Santa’s Stimulus Plan” happened to catch our eye the year the Feds created their own version of a stimulus plan.

Once we began looking, it seemed that seasonal images, religious and secular, were everywhere. Our encounters have not been confined to New Hampshire or even New England, nor are they limited to winter. In our travels, we’ve spotted Santa and his paraphernalia on a balcony in Seattle, outside an Asheville brewery, at the edge of California’s high desert and in the middle of a North Dakota prairie in late spring. And we’ve seen Mary, Joseph and the Baby Jesus on a roof in Puerto Rico. It continues to be a wonderful project, surprising and fun.

Gloria
Gloria

And it’s spawned an informal militia of digital-camera-wielding stalwarts who have taken it upon themselves to make sure that no odd Christmas display goes unrecorded. We get regular communications from these friends.

In the words of Paul Valéry: A work of art should always teach us that we have not seen what we’ve been looking at. Aside from marking a season, these informal artworks that punctuate the landscape serve to focus the eye and tweak the mind, inviting us to “see” what we might otherwise overlook. We’ve collected them between covers for your enjoyment.

Want to see more?
Click here to order your copy of ‘Tis the Season here!

Makes a great gift!



‘Tis the Season:

The Sacred & The Profane

By Charter Weeks & Marie Harris

Filed Under: Words in Progress Tagged With: Charter Weeks photographer, Christmas, creches, Santas, seasonal peculiarities

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Words in progress

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A Poet for Your Bookshelf, Classroom, or Library

Welcome! Come on in and browse through my books of poetry, anthologies I’ve edited and in which my poems appear, and some essays and articles on subjects ranging from blue water sailing to New England farm stays to birding. You can also find photos of my collaborations with painters, sculptors, photographers and musicians. Listen to audio clips of a sampling of my voiceover work.

As a poet, I perform and teach at colleges & universities throughout the country, and in residencies in elementary and high schools, libraries, writers’ workshops and retreats, and senior centers. Read More…

Words in Progress

Walking Song

WALKING SONG …reminding herself that she was only an elderly woman who had got up too early in the morning and journeyed too far, that the despair creeping over her was merely her despair, her personal weakness, and that even if she got a sunstroke and went mad the rest of the world would go […]

My Brother is Gone from Us

Basil Harris (pictured with sister Anne, summer 2016) He died today. Farewell, sweet singer.

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