A song from Shakespeare’s As You Like It has followed me all these many years from my high school days. Its verses awaken annually in my mind with the sweet and affecting melancholy of colder weather.
Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
See more of Raphael Shevelev’s winter photos on page two of Habitat in the Galleries section at www.raphaelshevelev.com
My life has not been too painfully troubled by man’s ingratitude, and I’m reconciled to being a winter person, dreading, as I do, the heat, glare and monotonous blue of summer. I love the colors and tones of winter, and their constant transformations. The light becomes more intimate, more especially adjusted as a personal gift to my moods; and I adore the movement, clouds, winds and the suddenness of change. I’m a meteorological dynamist. If you’re looking for company on a beach walk at high tide in the rain, I’m your man.
For several years I’ve been mulling over the sights of winter, wondering how I could make images that are especially meaningful to me. As a coastal city dweller, I like my winter walks to end with hot sustenance in warm places. And so, to make these images, I had to arrive at several crucial decisions. I would make all of the images within either walking distance or a short drive from my home in the East Bay. I would therefore have no access to fields of snow, or bare forests or cute children on toboggans. I would deliberately choose to forgo the pleasures of depicting nuns under umbrellas, weighty cumulus over Yosemite or sailboats bent from the force of storms. Lastly, I would use only a small digital point-and-shoot camera that would comfortably fit in my jacket pocket.
Our California winters are not lengthy. As I write, on a cool fall day, I am filled with anticipation. Here, then, are my memories and expectations of a Bay Area winter.
—Raphael Shevelev
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Raphael Shevelev has always maintained a strong interest in the arts and humanities. At age 50 he realized a lifelong dream, leaving a business career to commit to full-time work in photography and writing. His photography has been shown in many places, including Mills College, the Fresno Art Museum, the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, the Pingyao International Photographic Exhibition in China, the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The last two have his work in their permanent collections.
See more of Raphael Shevelev’s winter photos on page two of Habitat in the Galleries section at www.raphaelshevelev.com
Shevelev’s articles and images have appeared in The Photographic Journal, Contemporary Photography, Connections, Image Magazine, LensWork Magazine, SouthWestArt, Artweek, Photo Life, Indian Photography and Cinematography and elsewhere. He wrote the text for Wynn Bullock: The Enchanted Landscape (Aperture 1999), and his book Liberating the Ghosts: Photographs and Text from the March of the Living (LensWork Publishing 1997) was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association and the New York Public Library. He is currently at work on a new book, Imaginings.
Shevelev was born in South Africa to European refugee parents and educated at the South African College High School. He earned degrees in politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. After teaching for three years at the University of South Africa, Pretoria, a Fulbright grant brought him to graduate studies in international affairs at the Korbel School of International Studies in Denver. He subsequently taught at the University of California’s Santa Barbara and Davis campuses before embarking on a career in business.
Raphael Shevelev and his wife, Dr. Karine Schomer, live in El Cerrito. He can be contacted through his website, www.raphaelshevelev.com.
