thoughts on shots: November 2007

a space apart

i have two projects that i haven't completed that continually nag at me. they're unfinished mostly due to technicalities. these images below are from one of them - what i have called my 'cell phone project'. it's been at least four years since i started this project. there's no problem actually finding people on phones to shoot. but it's the second half of the project that's given me trouble. my idea was to display just the facial expressions of people on the phone. and sometimes not even the whole face. i wanted to print these very large - a height about 3 or 4 feet. at the same time, i wanted to have snippets of phone conversations played over speakers. for some months i recorded random snippets of phone conversations on the streets of new york city. (i checked - it seems legally shady but it's actually not illegal.) the problem was - the streets of nyc are really loud. so i might get something of the conversation - but i'd also get horns and sirens and all sorts of other conversations passing by. also - the recording equipment i was using recorded in stereo which amplified that affect. and - since these were strangers it was hard to linger close enough to actually get enough of a conversation without that person feeling my presence and moving on.

i know it probably sounds way too voyeuristic. but i've been fascinated with the way people inhabit different spaces when they're on the phone. and when they're on the street next to you, you enter into those conversations, too, if only for a few seconds or minutes or however long the speaker is near you. all of a sudden, as a passerby, you're enmeshed. at the same time, the people on the phone have totally forgotten where they are physically. they exist in a completely intimate and fabricated space, neither here nor there.

(hmmm - i realize that that's not every conversation. i mean calling to say "where are you" or "i'm leaving now" or "pick up some dinner" doesn't actually rise to the level of intimate and fabricated space. but then, those aren't the conversations i'm talking about. the ones i mean are being stuck on a plane listening to some guy break up with his girlfriend. or standing next to someone at a crosswalk listening to them break down about almost being fired. conversations that are laden with emotion. and once... private.)

meditations on impermanence

at the risk of sounding absolutely pretentious, i'm going to discuss wabi-sabi and it's influence on me. a couple of years ago, i was in a portfolio review session. it was a group session - there were other photographers there (most of whom were friends, only a couple i didn't know). we were showing our books and the reviewer was commenting on the editing choices, what the pictures meant together, where and what kinds of markets they would make the best impression...etc. so, it comes around to my turn and i think i was last. so that meant i had to wait through everyone else's review and not to be rude (especially to my friends) but you're ... ah... slightly less interested in what's being said about someone else's work. and you're nervous about what's going to be said about your stuff (or at least i was) so you're just kind of buzzing "let's go, let's go, let's go".

anyway. we finally get to me. the reviewer lays my work out on the table. and now i'm nervous because i'm thinking "there's no time left, she's tired from looking at all the others." and so on. (it reminds me of my old gymnastics competitions - you didn't want to go first or last because the judges wouldn't be ready to score high for first routines and had seen too many mistakes by the last routines.)

i really don't remember a lot of what she said. i do remember that she said i could train my lens on anything - any scene / subject and it would all come out looking the same. that the subject didn't matter - it would always look a little damaged or melancholy. something like that.

then this one guy, someone i didn't know, said my work reminded him of 'wabi-sabi'. i thought he was joking, just making up words. "uhm.... what?" i asked him.

"wabi-sabi. it's based on an ancient japanese tea ceremony." i was now openly staring at him with dislike. he was taking up my time with gibberish.

"i don't know the full meaning, but it's based on the beauty in the impermanent, or the transient. you should look it up. your work definitely has that quality."

that was the best comment of the whole session and it was a throw-away critique at the very end. but it has affected my work more than anything else in that session.

wabi-sabi is an ancient japanese way of thinking that was originally reflected in the tea ceremony. these were performed with a reverence for each gesture and action. appreciating only the tea before them and the company in which it was shared. wabi-sabi means beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. objects or images with a wabi-sabi aesthetic can reflect or engender melancholy and longing.

this book is a fairly good primer. when i read it, i saw photos i had already taken. and a way of thinking and feeling i'd long since known.

here are a just a few of my images that completely remind me of this.

a ferris wheel

an old-time wooden roller coaster on the jersey shore

these two images were shot with film - fugi provia 400 pushed to 1600. then i photographed them again using a digital camera while they were on a screen. i was just messing around. but the quality of each of them suggests something you might have seen in a dream, once, that was a little frightening but entirely exciting. or something you remember from years ago, as a teenager, a memory of a time with more promise than it delivered.

these next three are shots of wildflowers in the new mexico desert. then they were blown up on a computer so that they're pixelated and slightly distorted. then they were photographed again. these have always looked to me as if they were straining towards the sun, wanting nothing more than to burn off the memory of evening's chill.

the good old days

I was just going to let that photo be, but, it would be too cryptic. Now, I did not cause my youngest brother to flop headfirst sideways into that chair in our old house about 20 years ago. But I did enjoy watching it happen. (What possibly makes it is that is Easter - my brother is wearing his blue "short pant suit.") That might sound awful; I wasn't the most "mothering" older sister. My everyday was filled with the minor battles of young boys - I had four brothers at home. My sister and I watched somewhat at a distance, though we of course joined the fray when we could, with almost complete immunity.

Living with that many people, watching all of those different faces, emotions, moods, and almost imperceptible growth patterns, cannot help but to have molded both my observance as a photographer and my voracious interest in human dynamics.

And that picture can still make me laugh.

fuzzy logic

i've been using my new digital point & shoot - somewhat less than faithfully. but still. anyway -i've kept the ISO at 1600. and forced the flash off. mostly because i hate the flash and am always drawn to low-light. the other thing is, i love grainy photos. from film. the softness - sort of a dreamy quality to them. the one thing about digital pictures is that they're always crisp, sharp, an unreal clarity to them. and they all look the same to me. with the soft grain, you could imagine that what you're seeing isn't quite real. is not taking place in this time. that its detail, because it doesn't have the same clarity to it, becomes more universal and less specific.

the other reason i think i'm drawn to fuzzy photos is because i have really bad eyesight. when i wake up in the morning, without contacts or glasses, the world around me is soft, indistinct, filled with color, light and indiscriminate shapes. it's just what i'm used to...

the problem is... with the iso jacked at 1600 with this camera, it's soft, but it's horribly pixelated, rather than gently out of focus. it's not the same. and when you want what you're used to, it's a poor substitute.

so, some photos at digital1600.