thoughts on shots

Casing the Promised Land

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:22:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:39:00 +0000

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)

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 22:46:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:10:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:59:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:24:00 +0000

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.

Influences: Wong Kar Wai

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:06:00 +0000

I haven't yet seen "My Blueberry Nights" by Wong Kar Wai. I've been dismayed that it's receiving some decidedly mixed and outright negative reviews. Of course, when I see it, I won't much care about plot or story line because the magic of Wong Kar Wai and his director of photography Chris Doyle are in the lush images, the blurred beauty, and ethereal color. He's been an influence and inspiration in everything I've seen of his but especially "In the Mood for Love," "2046," and "Chung King Express." I always hope my images can capture the tension or moodiness, the unspoken emotion, the small gesture rendered epic. Though... he gets an immeasurable assist from his music choices. I particularly love the use of "California Dreamin" in Chungking Express.

I'd have to put the duo of Wong Kar Wai/Chris Doyl in my top five influences. If I was to count them...

Chungking Express

Chungking Express

2046

2046

In the Mood for Love

In the Mood for Love

April Fools

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:03:00 +0000

God I love April. The still chilly wind outlined by a thin but warming sunshine. Longer evenings. Trees blooming in a blush of pale greens and pinks. There seems to be more laughter, people lingering outside, activity - a brittle brightness that feels new - each and every year. April reminds me of falling in love. How fun it is, how restless you can be. How anything seems possible and portentous. I feel that way every April – as if I’d never experienced it just the year before.

Spring, of course, is time for rebirth and renewal and so I suppose it’s not so very unusual that I'm reminded of falling in love. But I don't mean to evoke its universality. It's a very specific feeling for me, a sense memory.



various states of bloom in my neighborhood



prospect park over the weekend




more park




lovely illuminated petals - they always seem like they're glowing


a fullish moon nearly a week ago

Roman fever

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:28:00 +0000

For most of last week, I kept thinking of Henry James' poor Daisy Miller, becoming gravely ill after visiting the Colosseum in Rome. Not that our situations were remotely alike. I did not catch malaria whilst flirting with an Italian gentleman in the chilly evening. I merely came down with a severe head cold and sore throat from tramping around in Rome's pouring rain with my mother and sister. But the romance of the place and that particular story - it's late realizations and regrets - influenced everything I wanted to shoot, to see, to think about. That subject, though, is probably one of my main artistic influences, regardless of where I happen to be.

What I did do while there - was continue the Egress work. (I wonder if that's the right title? I chose it because I wanted to reflect how these reveries or daydreams out of the window are both an act of departing or leaving, but also the means of doing so. So far, it holds up.... Perhaps I should explore what I'm - or the viewer - is leaving - and where the reveries take me. I have to think how that would manifest itself. )

Some of my favorites.

Sometimes I wonder if - through my images - I come across sadly morose. But one of my favorite things in the world is a good laugh. We had a few last week.

Walking Between Rain Drops

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:04:00 +0000

At a gallery workshop at ICP last month, I was told that I should consider continuing my "Egress" series. When I started that project what really interested me was how, when I'm traveling, as a passenger in a car, in a train or plane - to stare out the window gave me time to go somewhere else in my thoughts. It was a block of pure reverie. And so I was neither here nor there - both in my mind as well as literally. I was in-between.

It's a familiar place for me. I think being in-between gives me space to imagine what could be. It stokes my desire for magical happenings. It opens up worlds of possibilities. Which I think is lovely. I dread giving that up. I wonder if that's ultimately, finally what growing up means - you must be here. Or stay there. But not in-between.

Anyway - if I'm to continue this series I'll need to get underneath what it ultimately means.

the pup, pupster, little p... my little puppy

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:08:00 +0000

I've wondered at times if the way people train or deal with their pets is a good or accurate predictor of what they'd be like as parents. If it is then I'm doomed to being one of those parents I see in my neighborhood that annoy the absolute crap out of me. Out at a restaurant, or book store, or some other public space the overwhelming feeling is that many parents don't seem to teach their kids that there are boundaries between good behavior and bad behavior. It appears as if everything their child does is wonderful and amazing and utterly utterly unique. That the world happens to stop and start whenever Jackson or Lila says it does.

So, it's with not a little horror that I watch what my cat has become. I think it's so much fun to watch him tear down the hall and pivot jump from couch to chair to table top. I love to see him perched on top of an open door or the refrigerator. When he puts his little paw out to swat at me, I grab it and wrestle him. I have scars from our "games." He has never known good behavior from bad. He rules the household and knows it. Now he's five years old and a total menace. I know other people have enough of him within five minutes. But I never do, he's just so utterly utterly cute.

So, technically, I guess, what I've written isn't really a reflection on photography so much as a reflection on my .... cat (But there are photos!). Even though this will inevitably mark me as someone who has blogged about cats, I had to mark my affection for my little puppy.

(Oh yeah - I guess I rightly get a hard time for his name pretty frequently - his name is Puppy. When I got him from the animal shelter five years ago this month, he was so inquisitive and playful and followed me to the door when I left. I'd never had a cat before so I didn't know if this was cat-like or not. He reminded me of a little puppy.)

bronx zoo

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:31:00 +0000

I'd forgotten about these fun images. These are from the Bronx Zoo over Thanksgiving day weekend. It was a frigid day in NY and we couldn't figure out why there were hardly any animals outside. Silly humans...

Experiments

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 01:49:00 +0000

6 hours across Pennsylvania in winter, looks like this.

My Hometown

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 19:45:00 +0000

We went to Pittsburgh to celebrate Christmas with my family. I grew up in Pittsburgh, left there to go to college in Boston. Came back for a couple of years after that, then went to North Carolina for grad school and never lived there again. Although I loved growing up in Pittsburgh, when I left for the second time, I couldn't wait to be somewhere else. Now, even though I live in one of the most vibrant and stimulating cities there is, I miss my hometown and scheme ways to move back there again.

The day after Christmas, we went to the History Museum in the Strip District. In the gift shop, I saw a copy of W. Eugene Smith's book, Dream Street - the same one I have on my shelf at home.

Smith was a legendary photojournalist producing his greatest work during World War II in the Pacific and in his photo essays for Life Magazine following the war. By all accounts he was considered difficult to work with because of he refused direction or oversight. He was an uncompromising perfectionist who wanted to follow his own vision. In 1955, after resigning from Life Magazine, Smith was hired to shoot a photo essay on Pittsburgh for a book on the city's bicentennial. He was only commissioned for about hundred photographs with the whole job expected to take about 3 weeks. He left Pittsburgh a year later after shooting some seventeen thousand photographs. He wanted to compile the whole into a multi-layered essay of the city, its "vistas of melancholy" and "equilibriums of paradox." Smith said of Pittsburgh that "in all travels, all experiences, I have seldom felt the contradictions."

"The long squat belching of its industries, the blemish of its slums, and how at times both have given way to the cleanliness of cared for greenery in newly built parks close by newly constructed buildings. From the blighted to even how soft with sensual beauty the city can be - seen from high, looking along the buildings and up the river to the moon which has just become fully stated above the horizon." W. Eugene Smith, from Smith's 1956 application for a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to finish his Pittsburgh Project.

Smith's biographer has said he was looking for truth in a photograph. And he found truth in the faces, vistas, and paradoxes of Pittsburgh. (I wonder if the city has ever mounted an exhibition of Smith's Pittsburgh Project. Perhaps they should for its 250th celebration in 2008.)

I find truth there too. The easy leap is that it lives in the foundations of who I am. I find truth in the hills and the s-curves, the houses perched on those hills and the thick deciduous trees hugging those curves. In the telephone wires overhead. In the rivers that once shipped this country's ore and the steel that hefted its cities. In the people I know and the people I might claim to know just because they're, too, from Pittsburgh.

It's never been a glamorous city. Never a city that struck an inquirer as a place worth being from. Sometimes, though, you might find someone who had visited, and a look of delight would cross their face, "Pittsburgh! what beautiful architecture. I love how you come out of that tunnel and the city just appears in front of you..."

But I love the city's grayness, its cloud-heavy ceiling just clearing the tops of bridges. Its muted colors (because the clouds make everything flat. A photographer would love such a huge soft box in the sky - unlike the high contrast of sunny places.). The colors of Pittsburgh, to me, are greens, browns, and oranges, and deep reds, a bit of yellow. And - of course - black and gold.

I love Pittsburgh's history. The work ethic of immigrants pulling double shifts in steel mills to send their kids to school in places they could never be able to call their own. I know the place, from its workers to its owners, and they're not so far apart.

I guess most of all, now that I no longer live there, the only way I can express my full-throated appreciation of my birthplace is on Steeler Sunday. And I do. And when I do, I'm cheering on the streets of Northside, especially Highridge, Nativity Grade School, Sewickley Academy, grade school and high school football and basketball on the weekends, the Pennsylvania Building on Grant Street, Confluence Technologies, Mellon Office Towers 1, 2 and 3, the William Penn Hotel, McKnight Road, Shadyside and every minute I ever spent in Pittsburgh, wishing I was somewhere else. The tide has turned.

It's a place that claims you, whether you know or not. Whether you like or not. I just happen to really like it.

A few shots from my copy of 'Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh Project'

christmas on wall street

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 13:49:00 +0000

tree on wall street, in front of the new york stock exchange

I love christmas in new york. The energy and lights and the feeling that something magical could happen.

the art of losing

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:42:00 +0000

i read this poem today, courtesy of a lovely post on gawker (weird to put those words in the same sentence). it immediately captivated me as every photo i've taken in recent years has to do with loss. it can be so staggering to lose something or - mostly - someone important to us, that we'll do anything to convince ourselves it doesn't matter. (or maybe that's just some of "us".)

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

a space apart

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 02:43:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:26:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 02:10:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 04:28:00 +0000

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.

pumpkin carving

michael and a pumpkin

an office kitchen at 4PM.

same kitchen - different view

an office hallway - beige and slightly depressed. but that could just be me.

learning all over again

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:42:00 +0000

so i got a new camera for my birthday. it's a lumix from panasonic. really nice slim little thing. feels great in your hands. i love it, but.... i don't know how to use the damn thing. it's not that there are so many settings and options - which there are, but i can't find just a simple manual mode. it's been ages since i've used a digital point and shoot. and it shows... but they're just so much easier for everyday random things, or parties or family things. i'm going to have to practice. it's a totally different thing to shoot from an LCD screen in the back too.

maybe i shouldn't overthink this...

time square, late september 07, near my old office

crossing the street in times square, shooting without aiming

rain heavy sunset over flatbush avenue

razorfish friends at my goodbye drinks

up at some ungodly hour for a race

it's been awhile

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 02:30:00 +0000

recently, i went out to coney island to shoot. the few hours just before i left to go to the subway i was thinking - why go out to coney island? yeah, there's the cyclone, and that ferris wheel, and whole lot of random people on the boardwalk - but all of that is predictable. i just didn't think i'd be able to find the timbre of pictures i like to take.

i was kind of wrong. there was all of that. crazy boardwalk, ride lights flashing, and everyone from the russian babes to the bodega party on the beach. but there were also some interesting moments, quite apart from the flying frenzy, that i could walk up to.

i love this camera, by the way. Contax G2 - it's a 35mm rangefinder. so quiet no one ever knows i'm right there.

beach girl, july 2007

bench guy, july 2007

bored mom, july 2007

hot dog boy, july 2007

dad and daughter, july 2007

coney island, july 2007

cyclone couple, july 2007

cyclone couple 2, july 2007

midway boys, july 2007

cold chill, july 2007

a different wedding photograph

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 15:52:00 +0000

The New York Times had an article today about wedding photographers who get their clients to pose post-wedding in shots that pretty much "trash the dress." Some interesting shots there, some feel like more of the same preciousness, but now brides are in the waterfall instead of next to it.

One photog - John Michael Cooper - the alleged originator of the trend has a couple of cool shots. The first one you see is with the woman submerged in the shallow overgrown part of a pond. It's lovely, but it also feels like you've stumbled upon a dead body. The second of his images leaves no room for doubt. A bride stuffed into a trunk with a shovel next to her. How's that for a wedding momento? "Look how happy were were kids!" Great shot for the photographer's book. Definitely not something for Grandma's mantelpiece.

Socially what's interesting with this trend is that many women no longer want to lovingly preserve this expensive symbolic dress. There's a total break with the notion that this day is continuous to the next generation. On or soon after your wedding day you're ready to play with the notion that not only is the dress not forever, neither is the marriage.

Hallelujah

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 02:47:00 +0000

it was just over six years ago that my friend Nicole and I were rounding a bend in California, on highway 1, she was driving. I'd never listened to Jeff Buckley before. She told me that this one song, Hallelujah, was something that she had listened to every night before going to bed, at one time, for a time.

"No, no, we have to start it over again. Did you hear him sigh?"

I hadn't. We started the CD over. I listened for it. Jeff Buckley, at the beginning of this song, breathes a sigh, that feels more like a way of gathering energy to tell a tale that's hard to recount.

From the moment I heard that sigh, I was in. I loved the song. All I remember is hearing that sigh just as we're getting onto an on-ramp. The rest of the song plays out as I look at the green hills, one bigger than the next, on my right. On my left, an ocean - blue and white and crashing into rocks black and brown and wet.

It was beautiful. I needed to see it.

When I was editing a group of photos tonight, I saw this one, and I heard that song immediately. This image has sky and sea and land. More than what the photo depicts though, whenever I really felt that Jeff Buckley song it had more to do with leaving one existence and trying to inhabit another. But, when I first heard that song, it was like angels singing. I felt like it had captured the beauty and the immediate abandonment of something beautiful. Leaving earth feels that way. Flying feels that way. Saying goodbye in an airport feels that way.

Subway shots

noreply@blogger.com (bridget) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:46:00 +0000

A friend recently asked me if it's legal to take pictures in the NYC subway system. I didn't think so, but I wasn't entirely sure. There was talk of a ban some years back and I didn't really remember the outcome. Anyway - some searching turned up this interesting list of subways which require permits and which don't.

BUT... while that's interesting, I started telling her about Bill Sullivan - the photographer who took photos of people just as they were coming through the turnstiles. Using the turnstile as the frame. The installation photos of these are so compelling. I found his work a little while ago through a link on some other site, but I wanted to post it here.

I love his framing devices of turnstiles and elevators. Also his seeming non-chalance and stealth in getting these. People know he's there, but he's turned away, reading a magazine or looking in a different direction. And must just be releasing the shutter at the right time without anyone the wiser. Now... he must have been using a tripod. I wonder if he had a permit for that in the subway?