2020: 29 (How Soon Is Now?)

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This year has obviously been a challenge for everyone. Whether you have been directly affected by the coronavirus, or involved in the social upheaval that’s been ongoing, whether you lost your job, or work from home, have been anxious, or bored, or angry, or medicated, or drunk, or wide awake, or walking in your sleep… we’ve all had our expectations and our beliefs challenged. You either keep on moving or you get bogged down by the immense weight of it all.

My moods, my reactions, my motivations, my actions… all have swayed like the pendulum of a clock. Some days are overwhelmingly sad, some are anger inducing, some bring moments of peace and joy. Life is like that I guess. The thing that has helped keep me grounded, as I’ve said here before, is my photography. Sometimes it’s the brief escape with a camera in the middle of the day, mask over my nose and mouth, out fighting the harsh July sun. Sometimes it’s a film scanning session, with a good old slab of vinyl on the turntable, headphones on, swamp cooler on. It brings its own kind of meditative release.

I’ve gone deep back into film photography this year, and the slowing down of the process (from exposure to finished image) has been an appreciated diversion from the shit show outside. I’ve also sat on a particular project that I completed just as the pandemic lockdown took hold. I was waiting for the “right” time to release the project, and any time I was ready to pull the trigger, I found another good reason (or bad excuse) to hold off. Enough of that already. A small number of folks (my subscribers) already know the details of this project. For the general public, the details will be coming very soon. Regardless of the financial, social, health and political challenges we are all facing, there still needs to be place for art in the world. Take it if you need it. Let it be what you need it to be. A diversion. An inspiration. A motivation. An indulgence. A challenge.

I continue to be surprised that this solitary effort of mine has reaped such rewards. Friends and strangers who have supported my work. People who want to hear my perspective on photography and creativity. A review of my website traffic always delights me, especially when I see visitors from countries scattered all over the world. It makes me feel a little less alone, a little less isolated.

Thank you for supporting me, for reading these words, for looking at my work, for investing in my vision, via a purchase or just a kind word. It keeps me motivated. So much more to come.

2020: 28 (4 x 5)

I recently moved the location of my home office, and with the transition comes the customary “stumbling upon things I forgot I still had.” In this particular case, I found a stash of old 4x5 transparencies that I shot in college. I took a large format camera class during my junior year of school, and the class required us to choose a project that we could pursue throughout the semester, while still learning the skills it took to work a behemoth 4x5 view camera.

My project was a series of images of the Pulaski Skyway, a steel structure highway that connects Newark, NJ with the entrance of the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City. The imposing structure can be seen from many vantage points, most of which in 1988 were a rag tag collection of litter strewn riverside docks, shipping warehouses, dead end industrial streets, and a place where you might find a real-life version of a Sopranos body dump occurring. Now imagine me wandering around with a huge, expensive camera that required me to focus underneath a dark cloth, completely vulnerable to a whack on the back of the head. Early morning in 1980s Jersey City, no one would hear me scream.

I am amazed looking at these images 32 years later. I am sure much of that landscape has changed, or maybe some of it looks exactly the same today. But what I find impressive is the 4 x 5 transparencies themselves. Beautiful Kodak Ektachrome! The color still looks fantastic. A quick scan and a tweak in Lightroom and this photo looks as good (or even better) than the day it was exposed. I didn’t put in the effort to remove the abundant dust from the digital file, but it is an amazing testament to the quality of shooting film that this image still exists today.

2020: 25 (Talk About The Passion)

Photography has been a constant companion for many years. It started innocently enough with my first walk into a high school darkroom. Now it is an integral part of my life. It has been a hobby, an amateur pursuit, a release, a means of expression and a crutch through tough times. It has been a fleeting lover, a long-lost friend, a confidant. It has gone away but always comes back. It stays with me and goes places only I seem to go…so I guess I’m never really alone if I have a camera in my hand.

I have thought a lot lately about the professional vs. amateur approach to photography. I have dabbled in shooting commercial work; just enough to scare me a way from it, honestly. I have had my work exhibited and published. I have sold prints, books and zines. So I’m not quite sure what column that puts me in. I most often consider myself a “passionate” photographer. I do it strictly out of my passion for creating. I am constantly thinking of different ways of getting my work out in the world, connecting with other like-minded souls. I listen, read, watch so much photo-related content. It never gets boring. It is often inspiring.

I love the look of photos in print. I love the feel of paper with images printed on them. I love the fresh smell of ink when I receive a zine from a friend. I love leafing through a classic photo book from my library… it’s like spending time with an old friend. I love discovering work by photographers I’ve never heard of, whether they are young, new talent, or an old master, unknown to me until today.

When I think back on the harder moments in my life, and it has always been photography that has helped me cope.

Call it what you will.

I call it passion.

2020: 24 (Casual Transcendentalism)

Sometimes we need isolation, even if it’s from our own isolation. Sometimes we need to be somewhere with “no service” on our iPhones. Sometimes we need to sleep on the ground. Sometimes we need to see a thousand stars in a dark sky. I remind myself from time to time how blessed I am to be living in New Mexico. It certainly has its drawbacks, but the ability to jump in the car and drive four hours into the remote wilderness is a gift that I unfortunately don’t accept often enough.

My sweetie and I headed down to the southwest corner of the state last weekend, for three days in the Gila Wilderness. The area is enormous and mostly undeveloped; a wonderful mix of forest and desert. Having arrived on a Sunday afternoon, we were pleasantly surprised by the lack of other people around us. The campsite we found for the trip was almost completely devoid of other people. The first night, we heard an amazing array of bird calls, owl hoots, squirrel chirps, and most surprisingly, elk howls.

A day trip to the Gila Cliff Dwellings offered another chance to explore crowd-free. This sliver lining of the pandemic has been a gift to introverts like myself. It was at this point of the trip that we noticed the smoke from a nearby forest fire. We were concerned when the wind blew smoke in our direction, but we stayed the course for the final night, and with a late evening wind shift we were treated to another display of stars.

The final day was a chance to hike through the remains of a 2013 forest fire. It was both humbling and intriguing to walk through the remnants of such destruction. However, the forest was already in the obvious throws of rebirth and regeneration. Burnt trunks of dead trees were ringed by thousands of new saplings, flowers and grasses. Colorful butterflies flitted around fallen tree “snags.” It was the perfect metaphor for so many recent problems.

Nature heals itself… if we stay out of its way. We are part of a larger system of life on this small, blue dot. Humans are not the most significant form of life on the planet… I’m realizing more and more this point. Our lives are brief. Much shorter than that of the tall pines that stretch across the Gila. Much shorter than the age of the cliffside dwellings that stand to remind us of those who came before us. The burned hills reminded me…even in the midst of pain and destruction, fire and death…there are signs of life and regeneration. Sometime you just need to step away from the everyday and let enlightenment show itself to you.

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: 21 (Nine Postcards)

This series of photographs is the result of my reaction to the stay at home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic. I found myself experiencing a wide range of reactions to the situation. in order to help ease my mind, I started taking sunrise walks in my neighborhood here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. i would put in my earbuds and listen to a wonderful album i had stumbled upon, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s “Music For Nine Postcards.” The music is very much in the ambient style and dates from 1982. I found that the music had a calming effect on me, and it also helped me to relax my eyes as I surveyed the morning light, the flora just coming to life, the shadows cast and the brightness of the rising sun. The final set of images in the series are the result of these morning walks. I hope you can find the album on the streaming platform of your choice, and I would also suggest searching on youtube, as someone has posted the entire album there as well. I wish you good health and a still mind as we navigate this new reality.

2020: 20 (The Future Is Unpredictable)

I have been going pretty deep into an experimental stage with my photography as of late. Maybe it’s the fucked up reality we are living through, but I have felt a creative liberation of sorts. Whether it’s taping a pinhole lens onto my dSLR, or shooting with plastic cameras, it has helped me find a release from the pendulum swings between boredom and anxiety.

Recently I shot with a Holga camera, even choosing to run a roll of 35mm film through it, to further push myself away from predictability. This week I took it one step further, digging out an old Diana clone (a Windsor, precisely) which is an even cruder, plastic camera that takes 120 film. The Diana and its clones have an almost mythical reputation among film photographers, and as you can see from the contact sheet above, it lives up to its reputation.

Maybe I’ve been on a lucky streak lately, or maybe I’ve finally learned from numerous past mistakes, but the results I’ve been getting with these cameras have been very satisfying. I think I have finally figured out the correct combination of film speed, focus setting, and of course, using copious amounts of black gaffer tape to control light leaks. What I enjoy most about shooting with these cameras is the unpredictability of it all. I honestly don’t know when the roll begins and ends, since I tape over the film counter window, so I arbitrarily lose a shot or two at the start and end of each roll. Framing and composition is a guessing game, as is exposure. But that is where the magic truly lies. Pulling a roll of just-developed film from the processing tank is always a wonderful moment of surprise. As long as there is some kind of image appearing, I consider the whole exercise a success.

Perhaps the unpredictability of shooting film in this manner is the perfect metaphor for our current times, and I am grateful for the possibility of some magical moments to occur.

2020: 19 (Try To Maintain Focus)

The long pause continues. Things can crest and dissipate, as the wind blows, as the sun rises and sets. Feelings sway, reactions sharpen, or get dulled to a nub. Facing the unknown, an unknowable, with plenty of time to reflect. Could have, would have, should have. I will, someday. I might, someday. I definitely will not, ever again.

I continue to work, I continue to sleep, to eat, to drink. To hold, to love. To cry, to get anxious, angry, bored, excited. I have trouble concentrating, especially when I’m reading. I listen: to podcasts, to music, to the birds, to the wind, to the neighborhood dogs that bark too much. Sometimes I have energy to spare, often times I am tired. Sometimes I create, sometime I spiral, aimlessly. Sometimes I shoot, sometimes I imagine pictures in my head. Sometimes I look, and most of the time, I see.

How are you holding up?

2020: 17 (When All Else Fails, Make 'Zines)

I hope everyone is dealing as best they can while we ride this thing out. Working from home for the past six weeks has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me. I am grateful to have a job and a paycheck, and a house to work from. But the downside has been a slowly creeping ennui as each day seems to blend with the next, and the charm of not showering and working in sweats has long lost its luster.

Thankfully I’ve still been motivated enough to drag my butt outside most mornings, sometimes for a run, sometimes for a walk. Sometimes with a camera in hand, sometimes with just my phone. I have been careful to listen to my inner voice, and not feel that I need to stay creatively productive during this lockdown. I know many artists and musicians, and I have seen a plethora of reactions to this situation. Some folks have been very publicly sharing their personal process, some folks have shut down completely. There is no correct way for artists to deal with a pandemic. To put unrealistic pressure on ourselves to create some kind of masterpiece during all of this is an exercise in self-flagellation. At the same time, I personally have realized that my photography is something that brings my life meaning. More than my career, currently.

So it was with this mindset that I worked on two zine projects this week. They both happened organically. One arose when I was literally staring at the junk accumulated on my desk. The other was the result of a meditative walk, listening to “Music For Nine Postcards” (mentioned in my post last week.) I sat at my desk, beer in hand, Car Seat Headrest in my headphones, and over two work sessions I pounded out the layouts. Thanks to a discount sale at Magcloud, I was able to print one copy of each zine for a grand total of 12 dollars. Just one copy each. Not sure if there will be more, or if these two will be for my eyes only. A record of these times that will sit on my bookshelf for years to come.

Whatever way you are dealing with the crisis is the right way. There is no judgement, no productivity shaming, no advice, no wrong way. There is only your way. Be OK with it. And stay safe.

2020: 16 (Me and My Shadow)

Staying home and staying safe are the rules of the day. That being the case, I still need to be outside, in the ever-warming New Mexico spring. I’ve been getting exercise by running three times a week… right at dawn, before anyone is out on the streets (save for a few dog walkers.) On one of my off days from running, I still got out as the sun was rising, for a pre-breakfast walk through the neighborhood. I decided to run a roll of film into my old K1000, popped on my headphones, and zoned out into the morning light.

I was listening to a tranquil, ambient album by Japanese musician Hiroshi Yoshimura called “Music For Nine Postcards.” It pushed me into a deep meditative state as I strolled. The light was bright, casting sharp shadows. I was alone with myself. I created a series of self-portraits, as my shadow was cast against the trees, sidewalks, streets and buildings in my hood. Everything became slower, my vision more clear as I walked. It was a perfect balm for the pangs of anxiety, boredom and ennui I have been basking in lately.

Grab your headphones, listen to the album and browse the gallery below to take a morning walk with me.