2022: 30 Pinteresting

Friends and followers of this blog probably know that I have mixed feelings (at best) towards Instagram. I’ve been struggling with the vapid nature of the selfie-centric platform ever since I jumped on board, and have had a strong hate / love relationship with it ever since. My disdain grew stronger once I left Facebook late last year. Maybe having one less social media platform made the ‘gram warts show even more obviously to me.

I have yet to depart from Instagram, and try to reconcile the fact that I still use it, mostly to communicate with my circle of creative friends. I also see it as a way to promote my podcast, for better or for worse. But I really wanted an alternative, something like Tumblr, back in the early 20-teens, when it really felt like a creative platform, before the bots took it over. Another aging hipster I know told me he found an alternative, and I decided to give it a try. Lo and behold… Pinterest.

I had originally dismissed Pinterest as a platform for crafty Moms and fashion / interior design wannabe Millennials. I don’t even know how I formed that bias in my mind, but that’s how I perceived the platform. Instead, I have discovered (albeit very late to the party) that Pinterest is a great way to find visual inspiration, and it satisfies my need to scroll through eye candy on my iPhone. What it does not do is fill me with contempt, with envy, and with feelings of insecurity. I have no skin in the Pinterest game. I don’t use it to go fishing for “likes” or instant validation. Instead, I see a parade of imagery, not just from random creators but from great artists I already know and love. Case in point, my feed is currently heavy in Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmar Polke, Robert Frank and Brice Marden. These names alone keep me inspired, and the tangential images that populate my feed feature visually connected content that has pulled my down numerous rabbit holes of discovery.

Might I suggest that you also give it a try? It might make the eventual Instagram plug pulling much less painful and probably more satisfying.

2021: 25 Hold Still, Keep Going

Emerging from the pandemic lockdown has been an interesting challenge. Finding balance between the slow, quiet (albeit fearful) days of 2020, compared to the now open, now traveling, now meeting and working face to face reality… it’s definitely caused me some consternation. I don’t want to lose what I gained, but I also don’t want to live in a shell, away from the world. Case in point, I flew on an airplane last week to the east coast. I attended a large family gathering. I drank and ate and laughed and cried…with other people. I also spent a day in NYC, riding the subway (!), hanging out in Washington Square Park (!), eating a pastry in my favorite Italian bakery (!), and then jumping on another flight back to New Mexico. A few months ago this would have seemed impossible. Yet, here I am. I realize how privileged I am to write these words, to have experienced everything I have just described. Also, how lucky I am just to be alive, to have survived, not only the past year and a half, but also the decades before. I have turned inwards so much, it was good to step outside and feel the world around me once again. I hope for the same for all of you, whether it’s next week or next year. We are here, now. We may hold still for a moment (or months or years) but ultimately, we keep going.

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2020: 22 (Rejection)

Over the past few months, I’ve spent the majority of my time shooting film. I have described the appeal in other blog posts, but I have come to deeply appreciate the imperfections that film shooting accentuates. My journey through film has included a number of “hacks” that entail running 35mm film through medium format cameras, or shooting with an array of cheap, plastic cameras. Developing black and white film in my kitchen sink has allowed me a closed loop on my image production, and it has liberated me from the constraints of the “perfect” image.

Digital cameras have created so many opportunities for capturing images that in the past would have been impossible (or extremely challenging) to achieve with film. However, with all of the technological advances has come a plethora of similarity. Perfectly exposed, perfectly stopped action, perfect, perfect, perfect. Ultra fast shutter speeds and rapid frame-per-second rates have exacerbated the “spray and pray” approach to digital shooting. With all of this comes boring sameness. Social media has already made each image almost instantly disposable, and a scan through my Instagram feed reinforces the easy dismissal of what might even be an outstanding individual photograph. It all just gets lost in the deluge.

Maybe it’s the acceptance of living in a “new reality” (how I hate that term) that has pushed me further away from conventional thinking, or maybe I’ve watched too many YouTube videos of “influencers’ testing out lenses and cameras, or even different film stocks. It all merges into white noise of sameness, mediocrity, a general lack of originality. I have been embracing the crudeness of film shooting, the limits of sharpness, the beauty of film grain, the roughness of film sprocket holes, blasted out highlights and undetailed shadows. Image quality that reflects the world as it is right now. Turmoil and upheaval and unfairness, and bigotry, and violence, and selfishness… and death. Pain washes over all of us in time, as the maestro Robert Frank once said… fitting that it has crept into my image making. But this is not all doom and gloom thinking and creating, as I find the entire process to be cathartic, and ultimately, life affirming. I realize that I have my own way of seeing the world, and my own way of showing the world. And yes, sometimes that’s a dark vision, but sometimes there is a light in the darkness, and sometimes it just feels good to exorcise some ghosts that rattle in the depths of my mind.

I often quote Henri Cartier-Bresson’s statement that “sharpness is a bourgeois concept.” I am empowered to reject the expectation of clarity, sharpness, cleanliness and perfection. I have published a number of zines under the masthead “Flaunt The Imperfections” and it is in this spirit that my most recent work has evolved. Real life isn’t perfect… why should my art be any different?

2020: 4 (New Mexico in Photographs)

Having grown up on the east coast, one of the most common questions I am asked is how did I end up living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s actually a fairly common query for anyone who is not a native of “‘burque,” or of New Mexico in general. In reality, many folks in the west have migrated here from other places. Many in search of warmer weather, a slower pace, a more affordable existence. All of these reasons could apply to my own experience, but none really get to the root of what appealed to me about New Mexico in the first place.

My first impressions of what New Mexico looked like came via artists. Like many people, I discovered the unique landscape and colors via the work of Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams. And though these initial views didn’t exactly call me to this place, it did shape my impression that New Mexico was nothing like the world I knew in New Jersey.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when I studied photography in college that the uniqueness and idiosyncrasies of New Mexico, and Albuquerque specifically, started to seep into my consciousness. I recall discovering the photos of Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander and Robert Frank. These artists each shot images here that conveys an oddness, a foreboding, a desolation unique to this place. I found these images perplexing. Not only in what they showed, but how they showed it. I have written elsewhere about Winogrand’s photo of an infant at the edge of the world, but there is also Robert Frank’s image of the desolate view of a lonely car on a distant highway, or his photo taken in a clandestine manner in a bar in Gallup. There is Friedlander’s image shot in downtown Albuquerque: a mishmash of poles, street lights, the Doghouse hot dog stand, and the wonderful dog itself. Toto, we’re not in New Jersey anymore.

Photo by Lee Friedlander

The more I learned of Albuquerque, the more enigmatic it became. That dark wizard, Joel Peter-Witkin, creating his jarring work in a South Valley studio. Is this place the freak scene he alludes to? “Who walks these streets after the sun goes down?” I wondered. Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Photo by Joel-Peter Witkin

The images of Thomas Barrow, in his series “Cancellations” also held my attention. Of course, one might wonder why anyone would damage their own negatives in the way he was doing. What did it mean to cancel out a photo you took yourself, but still decided to print and display? But what I found more intriguing were the subjects of the photos themselves. Anyone who has spent even a short amount of time in Albuquerque would start to recognize Barrow’s locations, such as the big arrow at the corner of Carlisle and Indian School. As scan of his book would yield fodder for quite the scavenger hunt for a curious Burqueño.

Photo by Thomas Barrow

There are also the photographs of Danny Lyon. His book “Pictures From The New World” had a profound influence on my perception of the New Mexico landscape, the light and cultural fabric of this place. The NYC born and bred photographer somehow ended up in Bernalillo, New Mexico… a refugee from the pressures of the relentlessness of urban life, I would guess. I would follow that same path in the early 90s, and here I remain.

There are others, as well. Miguel Gandert, Robert D'Alessandro, Douglas Kent Hall and Patrick Nagatani, for example. As a group, all of these photographers did more to introduce me to the complexity and confounding nature of life in the 505 than any visitor’s guide ever could.

2019: 38 (Robert and Bob)

While I was away traveling through Japan, I received news of two deaths that hit me deeper than most. Of course, the photo world was abuzz upon hearing of the death of the great master, Robert Frank. Though he lived to a ripe old age of 94, the news was still sad to hear. Countless statements have already been made regarding Frank’s influence on the medium. My personal feelings are but an addition to the chorus. Frank’s work, particularly The Americans, fundamentally changed the way I viewed photography, and shaped the artist I would become. Raised on an early diet of Ansel Adams, upon seeing Robert Frank’s photos for the first time in college, my mind was completely blown away; he made me reconsider everything a photograph could be. Throughout my life since then, he has been a silent companion anytime I raise a camera to my eyes. Salut, Robert.

The second death hit way closer to home. A dear photographer friend of mine, Bob Ayre, died a few weeks after he was involved in a terrible car crash on a highway in northern New Mexico. I met Bob through the Fresh Eyes Photo Project. We worked together in a local youth correctional facility, teaching photography to incarcerate youths. Bob was such a sweet man, as was apparent when he was around the so called “dangerous” kids. His passion and open heart shone through in every session we taught together. Over the past several years, Bob and I grew closer, and we would occasionally meet up for lunch. We would talk travel and photography. Bob was a knowledgeable photo tour guide in New Mexico, and he honored me by taking me out on the backroads one Saturday a few years back, letting me in on his “secret” locations. He was always telling stories, and he was (not so) quick with a joke. He was a huge supporter of my photography, too, even inviting me to discuss my Portugal project with his local camera club. Bob was leading a photo tour the day he crashed his car… thankfully his guest walked away from the crash with superficial wounds. Unfortunately, Bob’s injuries were too severe for him to overcome. I am glad I was able to see him in the hospital the week after the crash. I could tell he was in pretty rough shape, but he managed to eek out a smile when I talked to him that last time. Rest in peace old man… I’ll miss you.

Worth A Thousand Words: Robert Frank

Up to this point, I’ve been hesitant to write any words about Robert Frank, for a number of reasons. Most of them are rooted in my deep love of his work and the profound influence he has had on my own image making. How do I pay due respect to an artist so important to me? Can I be objective when writing about a particular image of his? Another challenge would be deciding which of his images would I focus my attention on? There are just too many touchstone Robert Frank photographs to choose from. Nonetheless, with a looming exhibit of my own, it made sense to try to write about this week’s image “Covered Car, Long Beach, California.”

So, what do we see in this photograph? It is a car, covered in some kind of white fabric. The car is parked between two thick palm trees. Shadows from the trees are cast upon a plain looking, boxy building, the wall of which look covered in a dark stucco. The light seems like late afternoon to me. The composition is slightly off kilter, just slightly tilting to the right. The fabric that covers the car has an almost striped appearance to it, the result of bands that are stitched together. The contrast is somewhat stark, with the white of the cover offset by the deep shadows on the wall, and the tufts of palm leaves on the trees. All in all, a fairly non-complex photograph at first glance.

What is not seen in the photo? Well, this is an urban environment, but there are no people seen in the shot. And we of course assume there is a car under the tarp, being able to recognize the shape of the chassis, and the distinct poke of an antenna pushing up the covering as well. The next question I ask myself is why did Frank take this photo? It appears in his seminal book “The Americans” which creates a context for a deeper interpretation of the image. Frank explored the subject matter of the automobile extensively throughout the book. When Frank was shooting the photographs that eventually became "The Americans," the automobile was seen as a key component to the post-WW2 westward expansion in the United States, and was a symbol of freedom and mobility for a growing middle-class society. The fact that the car is covered brings what seems to me an elegiac quality; quite a mournful feeling to this image. Coupled with the fact that the lighting indicates late in the day, nearing sunset, I get a distinct feeling that there is an intrinsic sadness to this image. The car becomes a body covered, something to be mourned, hidden, and prepared for some kind of death. Of course, this is my personal projection on to the image, but if an astute viewer were to look at the photo in the context of where it appears in “The Americans” one would make a similar leap.

The image appears in a sequence of the book that begins with a close up, side view of two men in the front seat of a car, “US 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho.” Here we see the car as a means of escape, with Frank a passenger in a very tight front seat with two mean who look as though the are fleeing a crime scene. Next is an image of five elderly people sitting on a roadside bench, titled “St. Petersburg, Florida.” In the background, we see a car speeding by, slightly blurred. Is this a rumination on death, the life that is soon to be leaving these people speeding behind them as they wait for the inevitable? The “covered car” photo is the next image in the sequence. The photo that then immediately follows shows the aftermath of a car accident, with a group of four people standing beside the blanket covered remains of what is surely a dead body. The covered body echoing the covered par in the previous image. To complete this run of images, we see a long view of a lonely highway in New Mexico, stretching off into the far distance, with just a lone car driving towards us, seen very far off in a dark, foreboding environment, under a threatening sky. Seen as a whole, this sequence of images ­­­tells a sad story of life and death intertwined with the presence or influence of the automobile.

Photograph © 1958 by Robert Frank

My own fascination with covered cars stems directly from the image made by Robert Frank. My approach to the subject matter is quite different. For one, I chose to show the cars in color. I have taken a clinical, studied approach to the subject matter, and have assembled well over fifty of such images, to date. I am fascinated when I look at them as a group of photos, when the variety of covers and locations become a foil to the consistency of the subjects. Yet, there is still that initial feeling of sadness that permeates the images I make. These vehicles are covered for reasons I don’t ever really know. Are they classic cars that require protection from the elements? Are the windows busted and leaking, requiring covering to protect the interior? Is the vehicle evidence of some crime? Has an accident occurred? They often look like Christ-like bodies, covered in shrouds. Or perhaps they represent something desirable yet hidden from view, their covering providing a layer of mystery and intrigue.

It is amazing to me that so many of these covered cars reveal themselves to me as I travel my home city, but also in locations that I travel to. They seem to be everywhere once I start looking for them. They serve as a constant reminder of the influence that Robert Frank has had on my work, and send a silent message of kinship and solidarity to me as I pursue my work. As the master has said, “The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” I am constantly listening and looking, too.

Addendum: I recently recorded a podcast about Robert Frank. Give it a listen!

Robert Frank: Look Out For Hope

We live in desperate times. But haven't we always? Are we more aware of the world's problems now because we have this incessant, 24 hour a day internet torrent of bad news washing over us? Or are things really worse now than ever before? Global warming, terrorism, economic disparity, people being dragged out of their cars and beaten by the police, or shot at the slightest provocation for no reason at all, millions of war refugees, political leaders who don't represent the good of all their constituents, people on almost every street corner holding signs begging for some change (monetary or otherwise.) Some days it's just harder to keep going. And to look in the mirror and ask "what am I doing?" to make the world a better place. To help others. To have empathy. To give a shit. To keep my feet firmly on the side of the positive. To stay where I am and keep fighting. To put my art in the world. To not let negativity win. To not let the fuckers get me down. To not let the darkness of the evil doers win. My mind goes to the artists, the writers, the film makers, the poets, the singers, the comedians...those who are the light in the darkness. Like Robert Frank, who has been a creative inspiration for me for well over 30 years, and whose photograph I sat and pondered this morning. "Look Out For Hope." When I first saw that image in college, I didn't know exactly what it meant. Or what Frank's work really meant. I was still in school and thought that Ansel Adams was the pinnacle of photographic expression (oh, youth...) Little did I know that Frank's daughter had died in a plane crash. Or that years later, his son would suffer mental breakdowns and eventually die. Or that we all fucking suffer in our own way. As he said in another photograph "The wind will blow the fire of pain across everyone in time." Death, divorce, physical pain, loneliness, alienation, bankruptcy, homelessness, substance abuse and addiction, random violence. And various other losses both great and small. But what do we do? Give up? Or find a way to fight, every fucking day. To awaken, still breathing and still looking out for hope.