bus stop girl

"There is something inherently sad about a bench. Benches at bus stations have taken on the resignation, the long aftermath that frustration and impatience leave in their wake, of all who have sat there, longing to be gone, forced to settle for a wait on the bench when what they wanted was a seat on the bus. Nowhere is the defining quality of the bench - its absolute immovability - felt more powerfully than at a bus or train station."

That's from the Geoff Dyer book - "The Ongoing Moment".

He writes so utterly eloquently about what is only hinted to me right before snapping the shutter sometimes. That feeling he describes, the resignation and frustration, is something I go looking for. Hoping to see a moment like that in front of me somewhere - anywhere. And that I have my camera ready of course. But I couldn't describe it that way.







I took these in 2000 I think. At LaGuardia. These are some of the first images I took that convinced me I wanted to study photography. I'd been flying a lot that summer and airports, the waiting, the anticipation of them, the sadness too of leaving, seeped into my daily life. I went out to LaGuardia purposely to shoot one day. Of course, pre-9/11 that was possible. Anyway, I loved this girl waiting for a bus outside of baggage claim. She had red hair, pulled into a bun. A blue dress and heels. Gold hoop earings. Reading a book and every now and then she'd glance up to see if her bus was coming. I snapped a few from directly behind her.

That combination of feelings is what I aim for all the time - waiting, hoping, anticipation, frustration... And they are often found on benches (now that I think back to some of my images), but I do want to find them without stalking every bench in the city.

the unmade bed

In a previous post, I mentioned Geoff Dyer's book, "The Ongoing Moment." This is the book where he discusses how photographers have carried on unconscious conversations by shooting the same subjects over and over and in so doing, creating several photographic memes.

One subject he discusses is the 'unmade bed'. Many photographers have shot unmade beds. Dyer talks about it being a quintessential representation of absence, of what was here and now is not. It's one of the strongest ways to get that reverberation across.

"The unmade bed's capacity to suggest its absent occupant made it a natural choice for the task Dorothea Lange assigned her students while teaching photography at the California Institute of Fine Arts in 1957-8: to take a photograph of a personal environment with no people in int. News of the assignment found its way to Imogen Cunningham, who arranged some hairpins on her bed - made it, in other words, made it look unmade - and photographed the result. Cunningham sent a contact print to Lange as a gift and homage." from The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer

Here's Cunninham's "Unmade Bed" from 1957


I've taken a lot of unmade bed pictures over the years. Some because I was interested in capture the white of the sheets against the white of the comforter. Some because it was a beautiful morning and I'd just woken up and the light was streaming in and I couldn't help but want to preserve that lovely place where I'd just been. More recently, in the past years as I've been traveling more, I'd take pictures of my hotel bed after I'd been in it and send it back to Anthony. It was a small way of letting him see me. Where I was, where I'd been, what I was doing. I was absent in the picture, but absolutely present too. Here are a couple I could find.



some hotel somewhere


another hotel, I think LA actually

new images

The other night, Anthony was skimming through slides and prints of stuff that I'd shot on our recent trip to Belize. "You're pictures make our trip look so depressing." I laughed because while we were there, I kept thinking I was having a hard time finding anything that I wanted to shoot. It was all too lovely.

These three images though make the "closer scrutiny cut." I like them. I need to live with them for a little while and see if they still hold water.


women waiting on ferry, belize


tired


music share


Meanwhile, here is a shot from lovely Belize that Anthony took. It was a paradise.


belize, view of mata chica

not necessarily sour grapes

Art + Commerce sent out announcements today that the winners of their Peek 2007 competition had been selected. I'd entered but wasn't one of the 11 winners out of the 1200 or so who entered. It's always disappointing to get that email - "hey you're great, keep submitting, but unfortunately..."

I always go check out who won these things. And alot of the time, I just don't understand the criteria behind the selections. Obviously I'm partial to my own work ... but really, I'll study the selected images, consider technical merits, composition, tone, feel, subject matter. And for the most part, I'm just not seeing what the judges are. Not so much that I think - "oh, ok. THAT's why I wasn't in the running."

There's also a certain style that I see over and over again in competitions. I think it partially stems from the technical capabitilites of these super digital cameras - but the images are super sharp, super focused, evenly color-balanced, luminous colors really. A lot of subject matter seems to focus on the banal or the Eggleston-like snapshot - a crumbling brick wall in the city. Desolate night shots. Or a suburban lawn with a house at an odd angle. Moody clouds over a street sign. I don't know. Some lovely stuff, don't get me wrong, just... so much of it seems the same.

Anyway. I'll get back to critiquing my own stuff.