The last, waning days of autumn are very soon going to surrender to winter. The chill in the air has now evolved into true, bracing coldness. The time for quiet reflection is now upon me. Thus, I will take some time away from these pages and turn inwards. Silence can speak volumes.
2022: 41 First Impressions
My wandering path away from straight photography has taken me on a surprising journey. Discovering alternative ways to make imagery has felt more personal, more unique, and certainly more tactile. Case in point: I returned to the Rio Grande bosque this week, an environment I’ve photographed numerous times over the past three or four years. This time, instead of taking my camera, I carried a pad of newsprint and some charcoal for sketching. I don’t possess any real drawing skills (hence my predilection for photography) but I ended up doing a series of relief rubbings, or as the French call them: frottage. Placing paper on rough surfaces of tree bark and cut logs and rubbing with charcoal, I was able to make new images in an environment that I thought had shown me everything it was going to reveal. The act of rubbing also engaged me in ways that went beyond just seeing. There are trails made by bark beetles scattered across many fallen trees in the bosque. Their destructive paths etched onto the stripped trunks of now dead trees. They produce wonderful patterns and textures, and they provided me with a new way to visualize my own path. Twisted, organic, wandering, yet expressive.
2022: 5 A Stitch in time
Does it matter what camera I used to create this image? This is a serious question. I’ll leave the tech information a secret right now. Just curious… do any readers know how I made this image? I’d like to hear if you could crack the code. A thorough follow up will occur, based on your thoughts. Feel free to comment.
2021:11 Failure
I spent a good part of the past weekend lost in the bosque on the west side of Albuquerque. No need to get into the gory details, except to say that I now know the feeling of trying to find a needle in the hay. Adding insult to injury, I had brought along my ultra-UN-reliable Kiev 6C; a medium format film camera that the Soviets probably used as weapons while stomping down pro-democracy rallies back in the 80s. That is to say that this camera is a brick. Well, of course my roll of film was botched, the take up spool not really doing its job, the film was not tightly wound and thus, was royally fogged upon opening the back of the camera.
However, in the interest of full disclosure, and to prove to my faithful fanbase that I am fallible, I’m sharing the results here anyway. Because really, these photos actually look pretty good to me. Sure, proper exposure, good framing, and clear imagery in general is what most of us strive for, but there is something appealing about the blast of a light leak, the numbers and dots from the 120 backing paper superimposed onto my photos. It just looks nice to me.
We humans are never perfect. We make mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Over and over and over again. Even when you think you’ve gained enough experience to not make the same stupid mistakes, they always seem to crop up and knock you on your ass. Might as well own up to it.
2021:2 ||||| Barriers Have Two Sides |||||
Reflections on current events.
I never aim to be overtly political with my words and my work shared here. At the same time, it’s impossible to not see external influences on what I create, if a reader or viewer is so inclined to apply that barometer. When social winds shift, when power structures pivot, when nature reminds us of our place, when things look dark, when winter descends…it is bound to be reflected in the things we (and I) produce. Such has been the case, certainly over the past four or five years, even more certainly over the past 12 months or so.
There are walls both real and imagined. There are barriers we put in place to keep others out, or to keep some safely in. There are means of control for the greater good. There are structures in place that do more damage than they benefit. What happens when barriers are breached? What happens when the levee breaks? What happens when the center cannot hold? There exist entanglements, blockades, fences, wires, ignorance, stupidity, close-mindedness, racism, classism, elitism, hatred, judgement, misunderstanding, a lack of empathy, a lack of a moral compass, a lack of thought for others beyond ourselves. This is universal. This is a human issue. This is our struggle. This is our challenge. For you. For me. For all of us. Life is not always fair, not always logical, not always predictable, not always good. We can love each other, we can hate each other, we can tolerate each other, we can ignore each other, we can try to understand each other. We can seek to hide behind barriers real or imagined, without realizing it’s we who are being trapped.
2020:48 (Keep Moving)
The virus is rearing its head here in New Mexico, and case numbers are almost three times what they were a month ago. The state went into a two week lockdown this Monday, severely limiting the opportunity to leave the house. After a particularly trying couple of days, I needed a time outside to breathe. I made my way over to the Nature Center, which was also off limits due to the lockdown. Instead, I made my way into the bosque through the public bike path. There were only a handful of people out, and everyone I saw was in a mask. I brought along my Holga wide pinhole camera, and loaded it with some expired 800 ASA film. The speed allowed me to shoot hand-held…quite unheard of for pinhole photography. But since sharpness is a bourgeois concept anyway, so who cares if the images aren’t tack sharp. It’s a pinhole camera, after all.
Photography has been my respite through this crisis, and for that, I am grateful. How are you coping?
2020: 46 (Metaphors)
Photographic practice can act as a metaphor during these challenging times we find ourselves living in. I thought about this as I undertook my weekly wander through the bosque this Thursday. So much unknown hovering around me, even when the environment is familiar. There is change evident in my surroundings, even if it is not immediately obvious. Time takes its time, sometimes. The desire for quick answers and obvious results is an unreasonable expectation. I walk quietly, wearing a mask, even though there are no other people around. I rely on technology to make my images that has been around for decades. Even though cameras have been upgraded digitally, I still rely on old tools and easy-to-dismiss “toys” that require using my hands, my eyes, my patience. November feels different, especially this year…so much pain and loss and confusion. I walked with my camera on cold mornings back in March and April, when the pandemic first reared its head, and now I’m doing exactly the same thing. My work has become more layered, more dense, more dramatically contrasty, dirtier, more expressive, and ultimately… less restrained, more free. Perhaps in the past one image would suffice in telling a story, now layers upon layers combine to express what is in my mind and in my heart. In the end, my process relies on my ability to see. And it relies on the sun, rising as it does every day, helping me to record what I see, in all its jumbled, chaotic complexity, onto a frame of film. Where it sits, in its latency, to finally emerge in the world.
A Bible in the Bosque
2020: 44 (Hope and Change)
The weather is changing, autumn is in full effect. The colors in the bosque are at their peak. Golden yellow and reds dominate. Three visits this week yielded much comfort, and many photos. I wandered through the thicket on Thursday and came across this Bible, in the middle of the woods, not near any path. I snapped it with my iPhone (sacrilege, I know) while also doing a few shots with my Holga. I decided to revisit the scene on Friday, with some slide film in my Leica (again… sacrilege) that I intended to cross-process. Leaves had fallen on the open book since the day before. Change. Hope. In 2020 we need both.
I also voted yesterday, to complete the theme for the week.
2020: 36 (Nothing Is Predictable)
On the cusp of my birthday, I’m feeling introspective. Being (mostly) socially isolated has only exacerbated my inward pondering, of course, but with the summer heat loosening its grip, it seems like an appropriate time for reflection. I’m giving myself a gift this year… some time off. Taking the Covid restrictions in place, I am giving myself a mind-clearing road trip. Just me, my cameras, music on the stereo, and no destination. No time table. Just time to release, recharge, and reflect.
If we’ve learned anything this year, it is that nothing is predictable. There are always things that are out of your control. Cue the “Serenity Prayer.” I’m usually pretty good at rolling with the punches, even if deep down I relish comfort and convenience. Pertaining to my photography, what could be less comfortable and convenient than shooting some 4 x 5 film with a pinhole camera? Am I a glutton for punishment? Everything about the process is the antithesis of predictability and ease. You never know what you’re getting on the sheet of film, framing is a guessing game, exposure is a moving target, and then there is the joy of loading a developing tank and processing the sheets of film. I have knack for botching at least a sheet or two of film during the entire process.
This week I dragged my wooden box pinhole camera, a tripod, and a dozen film holders down to the bosque to shoot. I returned to the burn scar from a fire of several weeks back. The day was hot and humid, I was not dressed for the occasion, and I managed to not only scrape my leg on a burned tree branch, get bit on my sockless foot by something(?) but I also managed to jam my thumb in the tripod. Bleeding for my art, as a friend later said. The challenges continued when I returned home to develop the film. I inadvertently slid a few sheets of film into the same slot in the tank, causing them to stick together and unevenly develop. I decided to dry the sheets anyway, and scan them, too. And sometimes from the grips of failure comes a small victory.
behold, a successful failure
I’m not 100% sure if the sheet was exposed twice, and the blotches of light and dark are surely the result of the stuck sheets of film. However, I absolutely love the final result. There is no way I could have planned this, nor would I be able to replicate it. So I’ll just leave this here as a reminder that in photography, as in life, nothing is predictable, but the capacity for happy accidents, for surprise, and for moments of unexpected joy still exist.
I’m still waiting for the bite on my foot to stop itching.
2020: 35 (Everything Is Gonna Burn, We'll All Take Turns)
Late summer and everything is on fire, or so it seems. Literally, fire is raging on bone dry land, consuming anything within its path. Metaphorically, of course, emotions are flaming, a virus is engulfing thousands, the planet is getting hotter, as are tempers. There was a small(ish) fire in the bosque last week, quickly contained and extinguished. I was drawn down there to see and smell for myself what the aftermath was like. There is a quiet beauty to the destruction of a fire. There is also a reminder of the cycle of life; birth, death, re-birth. Forests can recover, nature heals itself, if we can stay out of the way..
There was a clearly defined line along which the fire in the bosque raged. Blackened trees and grasses hit a point where the destruction stopped. Flowers were still present, birds and bugs still floated in the air. The thicket of the bosque is dense in the summertime. One can easily get lost in the deep of it; sometimes you need to look to the sky to remember which direction is east or west. The fire, surprisingly, cleared a path to the river that I had never seen before. As I wandered out of the burn zone, I saw the waters of the Rio Grande through a now clearing in the twisted underbrush. Fire can take, but it can give as well.