thoughts on shots

2010-03-27T00:18:00.005-05:00

I'm watching "Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals"... So unbelievably .... enjoyable. There's probably something wrong with me.

I'm up late, and so happy that I'm not working next week. My son, who is all of 19 months, has spring break. Yes - it's been a tough semester, singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" with Mr. Adam, learning about the letter "G", playing with Oona, Maya, Freida, Zora and Anna. (Girls' names this year are all about ending in "a." Reminds me of grade school when all the girls names ended in "y". Trends are strange.) Phineas and his little friend Nicholas are the only boys in their toddler daycare. I really don't know what effect that has on the kids - where there's 8 girls and 2 boys. One day I picked him up and one of the teachers told me that he had bit one of the little girls that day - out of frustration. When I told Anthony, I had to laugh at his matter of fact reply - "won't be the last time..."

Anyway. Ahhhh - a whole week! a week to go to the tot lot, run (on my own), slide on slides (with Phineas), count airplanes and 'copters, make friends at "toddler tumble time"... or take it easy at home, with the little guy watching yo gabba gabba, his head against my arm. One of the best feelings there is.

The Celtics & the Lakers... that series has worn a well-trodden neural pathway in my brain. Part of my youth is involved in that rivalry. Part of what I think and know about sports heroes & competition is involved in that rivalry. I remember once walking through Beacon Hill with my college boyfriend. He had a Lakers ball cap on. Before we walked out, I remember saying - "uh...are you going to wear that hat?" He thought I objected to him wearing the ballcap itself. But no. I objected to walking through a Boston neighborhood with someone who had a Lakers ballcap on. That's just not smart...

And then, before you knew it - the Magic/Bird era was over. The Chicago Bulls and Jordon ruled... And then, that - of course - became something else too.

Sort of like how winter is now spring.

Prospect Park burst into colors during sunset just a few days ago. I see these trees every day and note their changes - day by day/season by season. And ... a few days ago ... I looked up around 6pm and the colors were blindingly beautiful. My iPhone camera does a nice job, but can't really compare to the actual loveliness. The shadow line - between sun and shade on the trees - is the building line in front of the park. I love that contrast.

Place Matters

2010-03-04T14:22:00.003-05:00

A few days ago I checked out this photostream of photos of New York in the 1930's - 1940's. And they're amazing. As I went through one after the other I realized that I knew this city, and that those pictures - even though they're 60 or 70 years old - show a way of life that is at once familiar and comforting. And it's not because they're ... grainy black & white photos of New York depicting a ubiquitous "New York" that lives in this country's collective imagination through films and stories. It's because I know that building, and this street view - I know what it feels like to laze on a stoop with friends, I see little kids silhouetted against a grand skyline all the time... this view is right outside my office window today. I've hung out in a park, at night on a date, trying to create a fireside intimacy in the most public of places. And Times Square in the rain - even though you're drenched, far from where you want to be and cursing everything in sight - is romantic. (Even lovelier in a massive snow storm... I can still remember a sudden whiteout snowstorm about a decade ago, walking through a near deserted Times Square, its neon colors muted by a few inches of white overlay, wanting only to share that wondrous and lovely experience with someone who was at once so far away and so completely inside my every thought. A beautiful and melancholy Times Square is the perfect backdrop for unrequited love.)

What looking through these photos did for me, was to connect my life, in its everyday mundaneness to a history of shared experiences. I think only older cities can do that for us - show us where our patch fits in the overall quilt. Many places in this country are still forming - what they are today is nothing like what they were 60-70 years ago. I was surprisingly, unexpectedly happy to see the dominant threads of my life evident in the New York of more than a half century ago. All of a sudden, just by living my life, I was carrying on a time-honored tradition.

2010-02-21T21:44:00.003-05:00

I just read this strange and beautiful story that I have to share.

The unexplainable, magical things that happen, sometimes, in life, stagger me and confirm my - too often tenuous - belief in the spiritual world that exists beyond the rational everyday.

The Intimacies of Strangers

2010-02-09T00:17:00.002-05:00

The man who lives beneath us snores. Loudly. And it's not that kind of sporadic, choking snore. He snores with every in-breath - every long, heavy, loud in-breath. The first time I heard it, I jerked my head off my own pillow and thought - "no... that's too ... that can't be..." I thought it must be just one of those odd sounds old buildings make at night. But, despite my unwillingness to believe, night after night it only became more clear. Aside from it being somewhat repulsive to fall asleep listening to the snores of this maybe 60-ish man with a shaggy unkempt beard and sagging belly, it also embarrasses me for him. I cringe every time I encounter him in the lobby because of the horrible mental image that flashes through my head of him sleeping. And it seems like he's always sleeping!

Maybe that's why he and his wife argue so much. Not because he snores, she must be used to that by now, but because she is not close to him. I can't imagine she sleeps in the same room with him - not when there are two other bedrooms she could use. We hear raised voices, hers more than his, on a near nightly basis. From the general intonation of the conversations, she dominates. His voice has a low, sonorous quality that only breaks into her higher-pitched harangue from time to time. The man spends most of the time he's at home being reprimanded about something or other - it's no wonder he sleeps so much and so deeply.

You know, I don't know them and I really should know better than to wonder at what keeps couples together - but I do wonder. If they've ever had kids then maybe that sustained them for about 20 years or so. Though, if they have ever had kids, those kids never come around to visit. I think it's just been them, by themselves, all these years. Maybe it's just the force of time that keeps them together, they've been together this long and endured this much - perhaps it's a badge of honor of some kind. Or maybe it's just inertia pooling around their ankles, weighting them down. Maybe they've just never had any relationship that's been better and at this point, that voice - angry or not, defeated or not - is better than silence.

Hell, maybe they love each other.

Anyway, the contemplation of this, of them, has given me an idea for a new project. I'd love to photograph couples, portraits of couples, to see the body language that comes about naturally. How do these couples come together for a photograph? Do they have an automatic turning inward towards each other? Does one person face in and one face out? Is one person's hand or arm placed in a proprietary way on the other person? a tentative way? I'd love to do a shoot with a large white backdrop, and say - "ok, I'm going to take several shots of you - just act natural," and see how "natural" is translated. Who snores loudly day after day, and who places themselves in the center of the frame... Something in the style of Richard Avedon.

Hopefully someday soon...

Bedtime lullaby

2010-01-26T23:37:00.004-05:00

I was finally clued into "yo gabba gabba" last month and I think I like the show as much as Phineas does. Hearing this song by Mark Kozelek sealed the deal. I love it and the animated dream interlude.

Here's another take on a dreamspace.

daytime, day-dream time

Searching for answers

2010-01-21T22:32:00.006-05:00

Ever since the first of this year, or really since the 4th of this year when I started back to work after being off through the holidays, I have felt unsettled. Going into work that day I felt bluer than I have in a long time.

"oh - this routine again." I remember thinking as I walked from the subway to my office. "another year of this. and it's only january."

And by "this" I meant the broad pattern of my life at this point - the frenzied morning rush to get to daycare and work, the minor panic that I'm not on top of what I need to be at work, the frustration that can occasion client service jobs because essentially you're always doing someone else's bidding. the rush to finish and leave the office to get to daycare before six, before they charge for being late, before - even worse - it's your kid who's the only one left, again. the brisk walk home pushing a heavy stroller over uneven pavements, snow and slush, around people who take up too much space on the sidewalk, in between rush hour traffic blocking the crosswalks. the scramble to figure out what to make for dinner that Phineas will eat and then watching and coaxing while he doesn't eat...

It's not that I don't want to do these things, or that I'm unhappy that this is what I am doing. It's just that all of that leaves no room for personal creativity. Is it just discipline that enables someone to stick to routines? No, I guess not - it's has more to do with responsibility, sacrifice and the desire to do what's best for the people you love. I used to think that people who were more routinized really just lacked imagination and creativity.

Anyway - one way I've developed for dealing with monotony is to be impossibly obsessive over politics. Following the daily debates, reading about political ups and downs, and just tracking the news - literally minute by minute. It really works to sublimate the incredible absorption that comes from creating something. My energy is instead channeled into absorbing the details of health care reform, or political races, or how some idiocy from Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh should be refuted. It's not really a good trade-off... I know.

This evening, between the fallout from the Massachusetts senate election and the Supreme Court decision in favor of corporate funding of political campaigns - I felt a complete and utter despair. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Anthony cannot at all understand why any of that would matter so much to me. And his point is valid - worry about the stuff over which you have some control. But... for me, it's complicated.

To get myself out my misery pit I did something that is instinctual - take a book down from the bookshelf, think about writing or reading or art. I picked two books - and found something in each of them that instantly soothed my passions.

The first was the Tao Te Ching - which I like opening at random to read what it has to say to me. I opened to this stanza:

Act without doing; work without effort.
Think of the small as large and the few as many.
Confront the difficult while it is still easy;
accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.

The Master never reaches for the great;
thus she achieves greatness.
When she runs into a difficulty she stops and gives herself to it.
She doesn't cling to her own comfort;
thus problems are no problem for her.

I also picked up a book by Annie Dillard that I'd read some years ago - For The Time Being. Rifling through, I found this passage -

"Why are we watching the news, reading the news, keeping up with the news? Only to enforce our fancy - probably a necessary lie - that these are crucial times, and we are in on them. Newly revealed, and we are in the know: crazy people, bunches of them. New diseases, shifts in power, floods! Can the news from dynastic Egypt have been any different?... The closer we grow to death, the more closely we follow the news. Year after year, without ever reckoning the hours wasted last week or last year, I read the morning paper... It is life's noise - the noise of the news - that sings 'It's a Small World After All' again and again to lull you and cover the silence while your love boat slips off into the dark."

After reading those, I felt light years better.

Night-time in a strange place

Wyeth's words

2010-01-03T22:32:00.003-05:00

"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape -- the loneliness of it -- the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it -- the whole story doesn't show."
- Andrew Wyeth

Authenticity is the new black

2010-01-01T20:22:00.010-05:00

I read this the other day and it brought up a few half-formed questions I've wondered about before - what is photography today, why the term 'authenticity is so popular, and how people define themselves as artists. Not that I've thought about all of that at once, but separately they are three things I've mentally checked-in on at some time or another.

(original article in The Independent, Talent in 2010)

But this statement is a trifecta of puzzling thoughts! - "Photography is dead in its traditional form," says Tim Hetherington. With the proliferation of digital culture, his view is that authenticity is now more important than style. "Many people can take pictures as good as mine but mine are more authentic because of my experience."

This is the kind of thing where if you're just skimming the article it sounds really good, like ... smart. It comes off as a strong statement, purposeful, made by someone confident in his trajectory. But once you begin really thinking about its individual components it doesn't make any sense!

I don't know if I'm going to make any sense either, but I want to think a few things through...

First - I wonder what he means by photography's "traditional form?" Is he going all the way back to glass plates or just to silver processing? Or is it simply the difference between film and digital? If so, there's this assumption of skill if you're shooting film, whereas with digital you can just click away. But that difference isn't artistry - that's being technically proficient. If traditional form means composing in camera (using film) and digital is automatically associated with computer manipulation - he's ignoring photography's extensive history of manipulation either in camera or in the darkroom.

There was a time when photographers had to beat the gallery/museum doors down to be considered artists in their own right. Add to that, a parallel history of photographers wanting to demarcate the line between their work and that of the unwashed masses. Photography today is both a recognized and valuable artistic medium. And it's interesting to see what the proliferation of digital cameras and imagery add to the art form. Our culture is becoming even more visually aware and documented to an unprecedented degree. Still, not everyone with a digital camera and photoshop is an artist. And although everyone has "experience" that is authentic to themselves, neither does that authenticity distinguish what is art.

Speaking of authenticity... a few years back when I was still freelancing I was hired to do research for a company that makes an artificial sweetner. They wanted to understand how young women in their 20's (a core segment for them) thought about beauty - what beauty was, how it could be attained. A sidebar to this was how their thinking about what "natural" meant tied into notions of beauty. Really interesting project... Anyway, one of the strongest patterns to emerge was the association of beauty with authenticity. If someone was being "true to themselves" then that was beautiful. Which is cool, right? especially for young women to be able to discard unrealistic or impossible standards.

Since that project I've noticed that "being authentic" is a seemingly ubiquitous concept. I see it mostly in the corporate brand world where supposedly "authentic" brands are championed or champion themselves for being "authentic." What is that anyway?

So... this isn't really making sense, as I'd expected. But basically what I keep stumbling over is that this photographer, Tim Hetherington, is setting up a distinction between what is real and what isn't based on his inherently subjective experience. And he's established a value judgement associated with that - saying that his experience makes his pictures more "authentic". Well, yes of course - but so does everyone else's. If he just wants to say "mine are better" he should try a different line of argument.

2009-12-09T22:09:00.002-05:00

The trees outside our windows are bare now. Winter is prepped though who knows if any snow will fall. The temperatures ping-pong between mild and cold. On sunny, warmish days I feel like a narcissus bulb forced into early bloom.

But I do really want to go sledding in the park with Phineas. I can't wait for the city's first big snowfall. The hush of snow smothering traffic, the glitter of snow shining in every street light. The forced slowdown as we dig out, climb over snowdrifts, pass neighbors in the middle of day in the middle of the week going out for hot chocolate.

These photos are from Prospect Park in the last days of brilliant leaves on the trees - a couple of weeks ago.

Phineas loves airplanes... just like his mother...

Sometimes I wonder if it's possible that little bubs develop their sense of humor so early... or if he's picking up cues from us. But he routinely tries a sly move or ham act only to see if I'll smile. Although... he probably learned that from me a long time ago...

Deadline driven

2009-11-24T21:16:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I noticed a deadline for a photo competition that sought narratives documenting the impact of the recession on people, communities, institutions, etc. Recently, I have been spending more time trying to pick up the thread again of what's been happening in the photo world. So, when I saw this competition notice my first thought was - my office is in the epicenter of the storm ... wait... my office is in the epicenter of the storm creating the economic recession!

Almost a year ago, it was impossible to go and get my favorite salad from Flavors without tripping over the cameras set up outside of AIG. The building is right next to ours and as I passed, I always felt a twinge of sympathy for the bedraggled AIG workers as they scurried out, heads down, to get something to eat. After all, the vast majority of these folks had absolutely nothing to do with the scandal, yet they were forced, day after day to do a perp walk for coffee.

Anyway, for a few days last week I documented Wall Street - what it looks like, what it means. This is what I came up with and submitted to the competition.

PROJECT STATEMENT: Ever since that September in 2008, when complete financial collapse seemed unavoidable, contrasts between Wall Street and Main Street have been a favored narrative of pundits. This metaphor works because there exists a collective image of what Wall Street and Main Street look like and value. Main Street has the post office, the favorite coffee shop and bar, potted plants hang next to American flags. It's slower, more friendly and authentic. Wall Street is a monolithic gray edifice of financial power and might. Its skyscrapers block the daylight and its dark-suited inhabitants spin lucrative schemes.

But the actual Wall Street, the one that exists between Broadway and the East River is not like that at all. It's filled with tourists, probably from Main Street, and office workers who smoke in front of their buildings, and go out for lunch at the cart. The vestiges of its mystique are primarily evident in the people milling about the Stock Exchange and Federal Hall taking snapshot after snapshot. Without that collective reinforcement, Wall Street is just a mix of empty stores, unhealthy stressed workers, and lots of rental space on the market.

What the recession has revealed on Wall Street isn't that the Emperor has no clothes. It's that the Emperor is shabby. And tacky. And no one has the guts or desire to tell him otherwise.

Wall Street workers and tourists, outside The Trump Building, a portion of which has been empty for some months, November 16, 2009 about 2:00PM.

The Pink store, a luxury retailer of business shirts, cufflinks and ties on Wall Street, empty on November 16, 2009 about 2:00PM

Tourists pass by executive management of the company Nu Skin celebrating Investor Day outside the New York Stock Exchange on November 16, 2009 about 2:00PM.

Wall Street worker reads over document outside building on November 17, 2009 about 12:30PM

Side by side retail comparison: an empty Tumi store and a busy shoe-shine and repair shop on Wall Street, November 17, 2009 about 12:30PM

Wall Street workers line up for lunch at one of the street's many Middle Eastern lunch carts, November 17, 2009 about 12:30PM

The BMW Manhattan store on Wall Street, empty on November 17, 2009 about 12:30PM

An advertisement on the side of a phone booth by a financial services placement company aimed at financial services workers looking for a new job, on Wall Street, November 17, 2009 about 12:30PM

Wall Street's "Sad Panda" waving for tips outside of One Wall Street, November 17, 2009 about 12:00PM. The Sad Panda is a 62 year old man from Guangzhou, Chen Jialing, living in the United States for many years, who became Sad Panda after being forced to leave his former restaurant job.

Tourists pause for a picture outside the New York Stock Exchange, November 17, 2009 about 12:00PM

Pigeons scramble for crumbs on Wall Street, November 17, 2009 about 12:00PM

Street vendor sells "Wall Street Icons" - primarily money & bulls - November 17, 2009 about 12:00PM

Wall Street worker stands outside building lobby for a smoke, November 17, 2009 about 12:00PM

Northeastern Fall

2009-11-15T22:32:00.002-05:00

I don't think I could ever tire of fall on the east coast.

Prospect Park - the view outside the living room

The November Series

2009-11-04T23:24:00.002-05:00

I think it's probably cliche to say that you fell in love with the Yankees during the playoffs and subsequent World Series of 2001. But I can't help it, I did. I was ambivalent mostly, before then. In fact, I think I was probably pulling for the Mets the year before in the Subway Series - knee-jerk underdogism. But I was still mostly new to New York in 2001 having only lived in the city for a year and a half at that point. I had no long-standing or deep ties.

That changed in the fall of 2001. At that time my personal life was in ruins. I hated my job. No- I resented spending most of my time doing something I couldn't care less about. And every morning I took a ferry from lower Manhattan past the smoking pit of the World Trade Center directly across the river to my office building in Jersey City. Every day was a reminder of what had happened. There was no relief from collapse - whether the public tragedy and shock of 9/11 or the destruction of my own towering fantasies of marriage and love.

But for a few good weeks there were moments of escape watching the Yankees pursue the pennant. I was living in a studio apartment then. I'd go home from work to my little nest - I called it. Make some dinner. And then lie in bed, the comforter pulled in tight, fluffy pillows behind my back and watch baseball. It was a brilliant series - with extra inning games and late inning comebacks. You just kept believing that the Yankees would pull it out. That they would find a way. And they did so many times. The feeling then wasn't really one of "they have to win the Series" - it was more "please just win this game and give us another one to look foward to." And those Boys of October held on well into November.

One of my favorite writers is Roger Angell. He writes in the New Yorker, mostly about baseball. Of the best articles I ever read was "Can You Believe it?" in the November 26, 2001 New Yorker Magazine. He was able to put into perfect pitch the emotions of that Series in such a way that I shook with sobs after reading it one morning, on the ferry on my way to work.

Montauk

2009-10-08T16:17:00.003-05:00

Anthony did his first half ironman last week in Montauk - a lovely beach town at the end of Long Island. It was a big weekend. He'd been training a long time and finally we were there. And the weather was perfect on Sunday - mostly cloudy, a little cool - it had rained like mad on Saturday.

It was kind of strange accompanying him on this journey because we were physically in the same space, but not at all going through the same experiences. His was one of subdued tension, anticipation, methodical planning and then rushes of adrenaline and energy on race day. My experience was one of waiting, watching, and then exploring. Phineas and I would run over to the transition area hoping we were in time for a glimpse and a shout of encouragement and then... we'd explore the town.

Away from the race, Montauk was sleepy and mostly empty. Except for the fishermen - the surfcasters. That was the other big contingent in town. Guys (mostly) in waders and yellow slickers, trucks or SUVs with poles on top or in the front. Lots of goatees. Some hard lined faces. Most of them seemed to be on their own despite the prevalence of guys dressed just like themselves standing next to them doing the same thing. Kind of like the ironman in that way.

Two entirely different orbits that weekend. And Phineas and I dipped into each one just long enough to see what was what.

Me and the little guy - thick as thieves...

Not For Babies

2009-09-22T15:40:00.003-05:00

I should really start a series called "Not For Babies." I would have plenty for an exhibition already. There could be commercial value there too in advertising baby safety devices.

These photos though could also make me look like some of those documentary photojournalists who have always, to me, seemed to possess questionable ethics - do you get the shot or help out the person/subject in the photo who is being harmed. Maybe they've approached it as I have... snap quickly and run to intercept before real damage can be done...

Past Series, Series of the Past

2009-09-03T21:47:00.002-05:00

Going through my archive (I've been looking for all the images I've taken of people ... waiting - more or less - ) I found these two image sets. They both delight me. And yet I've never known what to actually do with them. The first is a series of 3 images I took 4 years ago on my birthday 09/24/2005. I was flying back to new york from ... I'm not sure, but I think the project I was doing had something to do with studying the success of women who sign up to sell products in the home, like tupperware or gourmet chef. random. but interesting... anyway - I was in a little prop plane (oh! maybe I was coming back from Philly which would explain the tiny plane). And I was bored shooting out the window. I'd taken so many images out of plane windows at that point. So I decided to just mess around, and put the setting on sepia. Since I was in an old-timey plane and all. You know, typically I just ignore all the fancy settings like sepia, but like I said I was bored. (Actually... come to think about it, I've discovered many good things in life because I was bored.)

ah... back in new york....

The other 3 series (bmw reference. I only really know that because Anthony works on that advertising account and will - out of the blue - say 3 series, 5 series, 7 series - when he sees various models passing. it's completely involuntary I think. Perhaps a form of work-induced tourettes.) I found was this one I took in the summer of 2005. the images remind me of thinking, remembering. thinking about something that never quite took shape. or dreams unrealized. it's shorthand for longing.

Muscle Memory

2009-08-29T13:34:00.003-05:00

while at the beach with my family a couple of weeks ago, i was able to get away for a bit to go shooting. i love shooting at the shore as the sun goes down. it has been a long time since i just went out on my own with my camera. i didn't really come away with anything i particularly like... but it was good practice.

i think i have a lot a lot a lot of pictures of people standing back, waiting, and looking off into the distance.

that umbrella should have been framed further to the left or right. i think i have another shot with the umbrella in a different position but just liked the lights in this one.

Flower Light

2009-08-17T22:02:00.004-05:00

My son turned a year old this past Friday - August 14. I'm about to say all the usual things - I can't believe this year has gone so quickly but yet it is also difficult to conceive of the time before he was here.

Maybe that's what people meant when they would say after finding out I was pregnant - "your life is about to change completely, it will never be the same." I kept thinking people meant that the actual events and activities of my life would change so as to be almost unrecognizable. And that who I was and what I did and cared about would change completely. And for months and months following Phineas' birth, I would wonder, from time to time, what people meant by that phrase. Because - my life didn't change all that much. I mean - yes, I was waking up at 2 and 4 and 6 to feed my son. And I had to learn how to change diapers and carry extra clothes and wipes and think about all the sharp edges in our apartment. But, that couldn't be what people meant when they mentioned a life-altering event.

I think now that I was being pedantic in my interpretations. My life has changed completely not because I have changed, or the activities in my day-to-day are different. It has changed because what is "normal" now is different from what was "normal" then. It has changed because I can't imagine him not being in my life.

Uhm - ok. That was just really a lot of mommy contemplation all at once. I will say that I have consciously tried to fit Phineas into our life, rather than changing our life around Phineas. Does that sound horrible? I just mean that I never wanted to be the kind of parent who made the child's world the center of the world in general - the center of attention and conversation and life's activities. Does that sound horrible too? I just mean that - all things being "normal," you know, barring illness or extreme needs on the child's part - that there should be a clear delineation between what is the child's life and what is an adult's.

But that's not to say that I don't ever join him in his current world - I do, often, and it's delightful. Take the Flower Light - for instance. He loves lights right now. Points to them all, telling us what's overhead. But this one, in our bedroom, is his favorite. It never fails to bring a smile to his face.

I could make the point that children's insight and observation is critical to creativity - seeing things in a new way... And that's true. I just feel like I've never lost that. The harder task now is to be as strong an adult as I can be for him.

The Flower Light

Phineas also really enjoys the refrigerator light...

The Fruits of Contemplative Wisdom

2009-07-17T21:52:00.002-05:00

It occurred to me that teaching your kids about life has a certain zen wisdom. This evening, I found myself saying to my 11 month-old son - "Not everything is stable. Some things move."

Phineas and I were sitting on the floor of the living room and he was crawling around me, climbing up on me and everything around me. His highchair, with wheels, was in the corner near us. So he crawled over, planted his hands firmly on the base and started trying to stand up from there. Well, of course the chair moved and he suddenly was back on his bum with a little bit of a thud. I watched him to see his reaction... he looked at the chair and then turned his head around to observe me... like, 'what the hell just happened here?' And out popped that little koan like I was some buddhist monk with years of contemplative wisdom piled up - just ready to coin thoughtful phrases... But you know, maybe he got it. He looked like that explanation satisfied him, because he just moved on, looking for something else.

I realize this post isn't about photography. It seems like not much is about photography these days. I am working on my latest project - slowly. But it has such incredible promise from the images I've put together so far. It just feels like time is moving so quickly and there are only so few things I can accomplish in one day. Work - my professional career - takes up a large, very large piece of my day. And a very large piece of my brain too. During the week, I get few hours with my son - so my morning and evening hours are focused on being with him, playing with him, seeing how he's grown, worrying over what I should be doing for him, thinking about his future and trying to plan for it - even if it's just making sure he has clean nails and clothes for the next day. And then after most of the whole day is done, I get some time to spend with my husband. I make dinner and we eat together, have a glass of wine, watch something we've recorded like Countdown or the Tour or some movie that we've been dying to see since it came out in the theaters. And that's it. The day is done.

It's hard to cram creativity into the few empty crevices I have left in my day. It's like I have a packed suitcase, but there's a little pocket here and there where maybe something could fit if I just rolled up it smaller and stuffed it in there.

But that's where I am. Not everything is stable. Some things move.

photography & myth-making - the MOMA show

2009-05-30T08:25:00.003-05:00

(damn - where did the last year go?)

I thought a good first post after nearly a year might be about my - initial - and then - considered - reaction to the MOMA Into the Sunset show on myth-making and the American West. One of the central points of the MOMA show is that photography's development rose alongside the settlement of the west and because of this, photography more so than any other medium shaped this myth of the west, what we hold in our "collective imagination." My initial reaction was "God, I'm so tired of the idealization of the west." Is it rational to be annoyed with a whole region? Eh... probably not, but, initial reactions are typically not thoughtful ones. (I also don't have a very articulate response for why I'm annoyed with the West. It has a little something to do with the rah-rah-ness of those who live in little mountain towns and maybe a lot to do with basic regionalism. I live in New York City - the exact opposite of "the American West" (and yes, another mythologized place).)

My more considered reaction was to see the images, read up on the show's philosophy and take in some reviews (Slate, New York Times, Village Voice, and blog entry by Lane Wallace on Andrew Sullivan's blog) before answering the question of photography's role in western myth-making. Most of what I read used a consistent interpretation of "myth" as a "misrepresentation" of facts. A false story. And so, the question these reviews were answering was... 'did photography help in selling us a bill of goods about the West? did photography abet a false representation of the landscape, its people, and culture?' The Slate article seems to want to plot the timeline from the "rugged realities" of the West to a "fantasy of ruggedness." That at some point, photography went from depicting what was true, to aggrandizing what was there. And, given the more ironic, bleak images in the MOMA show, photography then also burst the bubble it created by also showing the waste and blight of more modern western scenes. But the traditional meaning of a myth is that it is a sacred story, tied in some instances to a religious belief, that tells us of our origins. How the world and mankind came into being. And in the telling we are connected again with the divine. And far from being a false representation, myth was generally believed to be a "true" story of a long distant past. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

Given this meaning, photography has most assuredly spread the myth of the West. Because it is in the sublimity of the mountains and the vastness of the firmament that it is just possible to see the divine. To feel awed and alive to simply be in the presence of such wonders. I remember this feeling when I was living Montana. To feel so... small... in comparison... is to finally see the work of the gods. Not small in the sense of being insignificant, but small in the realization that out there is something bigger than yourself. And yet, this meaning doesn't negate the parallel myth of the West's individualistic spirit, but fosters it. A popular figure in mythology is the trickster - someone who is able to bridge the divide between humans and the gods. The trickster defies conventional rules, goes his own way. From the cowboy to the post-college ski bum we can see the mythology of the trickster at work.

I think in the collective imagination of "The West" there lies the idea of something larger than life, the possibility for rebirth, the ability to test boundaries and triumph. I think the narrower meaning of myth as misrepresentation is the false story of "Into the Sunset." Photography shows us a land that gives us a chance to feel the divine. Have we trashed what was sacred as some of the images show? Undoubtedly. But even those images point more fiercely to a primordial past that gave life to what is. Sometimes without the depiction of scale, without overt juxtapositions, we might overlook the obvious.

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Timothy O'Sullivan

Darius Kinsey

Stephen Shore

Joel Sternfeld

Gary Winogrand

Casing the Promised Land

2008-07-29T13:22:00.004-05:00

So, in another post I talked about feeding off of the energy of a place, how it can set the tone. When I'm shooting in a place that feels right to me, every shot has potential. Or it seems as if images were created just for me and I happened to be there at the right time. Also that it doesn't have to be a physical place, either. Most often I rely on mental places - emotions, moods, memories, music.

Sunday night I saw an interview with Bruce Springsteen on 60 Minutes. (Bruce is playing this week at Meadowlands, so there's quite a bit of Bruce buzz flying around NYC at the moment.) I love Bruce Springsteen. I remember once saying that I wanted my photography to have the affect of feeling like you've been punched in the stomach. That's how so many of his songs hit me. Just this shock of recognition and then this emotional circuitry tying his words to my past and my memories to his melodies. It kind of hurts listening to some of his songs.

And it's not that I have the same stories as he does or that my life's trajectory is embodied in the lyrics of his songs - but that the energy of his music gives off reverberations of nostalgia, loneliness, regret, hope and love. And these are themes that I return to over and over and over. Trying to find a way to talk through them.

From the interview transcript...
""It's not just the singing. It's the writing, isn't it, for you?" Pelley asks.

"Of course. Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions," Springsteen says.

His recurring obsession is the life that he knew as a boy, the harsh relationship with his working class dad who didn't think much of a rock and roll son.

"It was a tough, struggling household. People struggled emotionally. People struggled financially to get through the day," Springsteen remembers. "Small town. Small town world which I continue to return to. It's like when I went to write, though, I put my father's clothes on. You know the immersement in that world through my parents and my own experience as a child and the need to tell a story that maybe was partially his. Or maybe a lot his. I just felt drawn to do it." "

When I was in Montana - now quite a few summers back, I was in a beautiful place. Every day, I could take pictures like these.

But they weren't my story or my obsession. And so shooting landscapes such as these seemed too easy. Not to minimize landscape photography - others can and have told stories and obsessions through landscapes. But they were not stimulating or thought-provoking enough to me.

In one of my photography classes that summer, we had to pick a song and illustrate it. It didn't have to be a literal illustration - it was a demonstration of inspiration - where it comes from, how to use it. I only had a few CDs with me that summer (before the ubiquity of ipod...) but I knew without thinking that I would use Bruce Springsteen's "Thunder Road" and try to capture the teenagers I would see drinking beers and cruising Higgins Street on weekend nights. These kids could have been anywhere - it wasn't about Montana.

Energy, misdirected enthusiasms, seemingly lifetime friendships, desire, a feeling of being trapped, a nagging twinge that perhaps they might never come to see that of which they've dreamed.

Concepts (part 2)

2008-07-15T21:39:00.004-05:00

ok - so the second thing I want to remember is something Wong Kar Wai said in an interview at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City sometime in 2007 - after My Blueberry Nights came out. I finally saw the movie about a week ago and ... it was perfectly awful, unfortunately. And Christopher Doyle wasn't the cinematographer on it either so the visuals weren't as stunning. So... you know, not everything is going to be a masterpiece.

Anyway, one of the special features on the DVD was this interview.

"SCHWARTZ (interviewer): One thing that runs throughout your
films is this idea of the fleeting nature of time, and it
seems to be tied in with the process of how you
work—always the sense that you can only live in
the present, but you can never really capture it.

WONG: No, no. Actually I’m not... I think what I’m
trying to say is about timing. I think this is very
Oriental thinking. There’s a Chinese poem about
how the blossom is the same but the face is
different. It’s always about timing. It’s like things
happen in the right time; or the wrong time, but the
right [people]. But I think this is a very universal
theme for dramas. Right? It is also a theme for
tragedies or comedies. Depends how you put it."

You know, reading this transcript is different than my memory of him saying this - it sounded like there was much more there. I must have been filling in with my own associations. But I enjoyed Wong's clarification in light of his movies - it clicks that he's constantly pointing out the vagaries of timing - its indifference, coincidence or intransigence.

Looking back I wonder about how things happened, how timing has worked or not to my advantage. Is it fate or chance? I don't know. Sometimes I think it's fate, most of the time I believe in chance.

The more important question for this entry though is... how can it be depicted?

Concepts (part 1)

2008-07-15T17:46:00.003-05:00

I need to catalogue a couple of things I've read/seen recently, before they disappear in the absent-minded fog I'm currently living in. Both of these items hold concepts I try to reference or want to reference in nearly every project.

The first bit comes from a New Yorker article from the June 30, 2008 issue. The article (true story), titled "The Itch" is about a woman who has an itch on her scalp that she cannot get rid of. No matter how much scratching - no matter what the doctors tell her - it persists and (understandably) drives her crazy. One morning she woke up and found she had scratched through her skull - just the thought makes me shudder. Nearly every doctor she visits believes it's a psychological issue - that she has obsessive compulsive disorder. One of her doctors believed differently - that it could be one of two things - constantly active nerve fibres or the triggers in her brain had gone haywire and were constantly sending itch signals.

Okay - all that's kind of interesting, but just backstory. Turns out no one believed that it had to do with the brain - they tested various theories regarding the nerve fibres with no lasting results. The woman still has the itch. So now, the article posits that it's actually a brain problem - that there's so much about the brain we don't know, or are just beginning to find out. The thing that triggered my interest - apart from the horrible grossness of scratching through your skull into your brain - was this idea:

" The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor - a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you'd expect that most of the fibres going to the brain's primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty percent do; eighty percent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory. Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety percent memory and less than ten percent sensory nerve signals."

Visual perception is more than 90% memory. What we see has mostly to do with memories of what we've seen. If I feel as if I'm "finding" photographs - it's because I am. I'm in the process of recovering memories.

(The next bit has to with a similar topic but this post is rather long... so I'll break it up.)

Saving old images

2008-07-03T15:10:00.002-05:00

We've been engaged in a massive clean-out-the-apartment operation, beginning last weekend. Right now our apartment is an obstacle course of various things pulled out of closets and boxes and shelves and stacked in piles in the hallway, kitchen and living room. It's hell. And mostly, it's my fault. I keep nearly everything. And while I really do hate clutter, I also become confused about what to do with it. Making a decision to throw something away involves such weighing of the scales. So, usually I just end up stuffing it somewhere out of sight and walking away.

But not this time!

The process is also slowed by the amount of time it takes me to read over old cards and letters, school papers, pictures... I found this old photo ID inside a pouch in an old date book. I'm 20 years old in this picture. And I love how I used to think of myself as "tough" - like that was seriously how I carried myself for a while. It makes me laugh looking at this expression as if I'm saying "yeah - what?"

Although I showed it to Anthony and he told me I looked like I am 14 years old in that pic. So... that makes it even funnier as it takes a little bit of the air out of my "tough" posture.

The first modern sports photograph and the latest

2008-07-01T16:59:00.005-05:00

Scanning the New York Times this morning (online - I hardly ever pick up a hard copy of the Times. Which means that, more often than not, I'm scanning headlines instead of reading articles. Totally changed my habits. When I was very young I used to get the comics section, spread it out on the floor and practically lay on top of the paper reading them. The paper seemed enormous to me then. And also, a time apart - based on my dad's example. He'd sit and read the paper in his chair before breakfast or dinner and he was gone behind it. It seemed like such a nice little wall between him and the racket going on around him. Anyway...), I came across this picture.

Its a shot of Queen Quedith Earth Harrison moments after finishing second in the women's 400-meter hurdles at the Olympic Trials for track and field. Although this photo seems to depict the "agony of defeat" she's actually very happy with her finish. She has just come from behind, deftly avoided a fallen competitor in her lane and qualified - becoming one of the youngest competitors on the US team.

It's a very emotional shot. Something I love about sports photography. It's eminently possible and easy to capture the essence of the thing, the story, the inner thoughts and emotions written right across the face and sewn into the body language. Winning and losing, trying your hardest and succeeding, trying your hardest and coming up short, giving up, seeing hope fade, witnessing the improbable happen, making the unbelievable believable. What we're experiencing or watching has to with some of life's largest lessons - hope, faith, and determination. In real life, it's harder to see these play out. You don't necessarily know what trials and tribulations people go through, how they approach them, how they pick themselves back up and keep going. In sports, all of this can take place during the course of one meet, one tour, one trial, one game.

Morris Berman, a sports photographer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, is considered the genitor of this type of shot. In 1964, he captured the now famous image of Y.A. Tittle - legendary New York Giants quarterback - kneeling, battered and bruised in the end zone, after being hammered by John Baker of the Steelers. The ball was picked off by the Steelers who returned it for a touchdown, giving them the momentum to ultimately claim the win. This image was not chosen by the photography editors at the Post-Gazette to run in the paper accompanying the story on the game. Instead they chose an action shot of Tittle in the midst of being taken down by Baker right after the ball has left his hand. That's what sports stories of the time demanded - the action. Berman's non-published image ending up winning awards and notoriety for the way it depicted Tittle's story, the game's story, beyond just the action. Sports photography has not been the same since.

Time and energy

2008-06-29T16:24:00.002-05:00

I had a minor computer glitch a couple of weeks back that made me go back through my photo archives. (I spilled a bit of coffee into my laptop. Nothing, thankfully, was lost.) Looking through so many images I was reminded of how I’ve thought at different times about being inspired by the “energy” of a place. So many of the images that were taken in New York or Brooklyn are not ones that I particularly like. The energy is off – it doesn’t inspire me.

New York is movement, striving, hustle – a pastiche of ethnicities, histories, and ambitions. It is not a soft place, or a slow one. The mind moves quickly here, even in moments of reflection there’s antenna picking up outside vibrations. The people move quickly here, sparing little time for absorption but constantly attuned and scanning what’s up ahead.

I do a substantial amount of street shooting and many times one image can spark a whole project or series of work. The only time that that has ever happened for me in New York was the Grand Army Plaza series. And even that was an attempt to quiet the environment, to recall the past. It’s not that I don’t find the people on the street here interesting – there’s always something to look at in wonder. But that’s part of the energy – I’m not particularly interested in the freak shows, or in all the ways in which New York has been shot and is now canonized.

Tourists also complicate the energy of a place. They’re not of that place, and their presence is a reference to that energy. They are here, after all, to experience some of that which defines New York – or any place they visit. Tourists might fit in better in other places, I don’t know. But here, they’re obvious; their slower pace makes everything else seem fast, their timidity makes everyone else seem hard, and – well, their clothes are louder somehow. Somehow what they’re wearing makes everything else seem stylish.

Maybe it’s much simpler than I’m making it – New York’s energy is outer-directed. I’ve always been more interested in exploring the place of inner geographies and terrains. And there’s no time for that.