2021: 4 | Instagram (so much to answer for)

For almost as long as I’ve been on social media, I’ve had a love / hate relationship with it. There are many reasons to knock it, obviously. Well documented cases of security breaches, algorithms that favor some “content” over others, political divisiveness, mass marketing, users as the product, etc etc etc. Facebook is insidious, and I’ve always used the excuse that it was the only way I kept up with current photographic events, stayed in touch with friends and strangers, and above all, having used it as a way to promote my creative endeavors. Instagram, on the other hand, has proven a more frustrating experience. I figured I came to the platform after the golden days of it’s early adoption, when it seemed like a great place to build a photo-centric community. This was long before the paid advertising, the stories, the live feeds, the bizarre celebrity video crap that seems to infiltrate my account. I always duped myself into believing Instagram was a visual platform to share my “art.” What it ended up being for me, instead, was an endless stream of mediocrity, sameness, peppered with the occasional strong photograph from someone I admired, but even that got quickly washed away in the deluge. Nothing of any lasting value registered for me there.

Every so often I bore my serious photography friends with an anti-IG rant; its a subject that always boils my blood, I’m embarrassed to admit. I made a fairly steady contribution to my Instagram page over the span of 2020, and I posted the last image on my account on Christmas Day. It’s been almost one month without posting, and it has been nice to be able to continue my personal work without the added pressure of sharing something on a regular basis. I also let my “work in progress” remain just that, since even a simple post on IG ends up bringing to much expectation and early pressure to my experiments. I also realized that the ego boost from a few dozen “likes” is not a drug that I need to be addicted to.

Today I took the next step by deleting the app from my iPhone. Perhaps this is the next step towards deleting my account for good, who knows? I appreciate that I have this website as an outlet for my work, and that my weekly practice of posting on my blog allows me an outlet to share images, and more importantly, thoughts. Quality over quantity. In the meantime, I’m also stepping quietly away from Facebook, more noise I don’t need in my life. If you’ve made it this far into this diatribe, I thank you for your interest. I know my “audience” might be much smaller here, but it oh so much more valuable to me. Quality over quantity, indeed.

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another recent experiment in print manipulation and destruction

“Drink.
Always be drunk. Therein lies everything: it’s all that matters.
So as not to feel the dread burden of Time breaking your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, never stop drinking.
But what? Whether wine, poetry or virtue, the choice is yours. Whatever: get drunk.
And if sometimes, on the palace steps, in the gutter’s green grass, or in the maudlin solitude of your room, you wake up, and the drunken haze has dwindled or gone,
then ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock; ask everything that flees, everything that groans, everything that moves, everything that sings, everything that speaks: ask them what time it is;
and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, and the clock will all reply:
“It is the drinking hour”.
To escape the fate of those tormented slaves of Time, get drunk.
Drink deep, never ceasing.
Whether wine, poetry, or virtue, the choice is yours”

— Charles Baudelaire

2021:3 ::::::::::: Damage Control :::::::::::

My photographic practice continues to evolve. The more I look at social media, websites, articles, blog posts, newsletter, etc., the more I notice a “sameness.” There is no shortage of tropes, no shortage of cliche, no shortage of copying, no shortage of homage, no shortage of theft, no shortage of repetition. Which is all fine and good… there is nothing new under the sun; good artists copy, great artist steal. I’ve been challenging myself to create work that is not so easily reproducible, not so easy to emulate, not so ready to fall into the long line of trope and cliche. I also realize that this is a futile battle, since every idea that I’ve pursued has certainly been done by someone else, maybe better or worse, but I am certainly not doing anything completely original.

And yet. I’ve been throwing caution to the wind, playing with different lenses, different cameras, different films, and different manners of post-processing-tom-foolery, in hopes that I can satisfy somewhat the hunger for a unique vision that I can wholly own for myself. I’ve also been bridging the film vs digital divide with my current experiments, because it is 2021 after all. There is nothing like taking a pair of scissors and scotch tape to a strip of negatives, even if they end up sitting on my Epson scanner before flying out into the world, via a stream of ones and zeros. Maybe someday I’ll hang these efforts on a wall where a crowd of freely breathing, unmasked humans can wander and stare blankly… but that feels like a fantasy that’s months and months away.

This week, I’ve found inspiration and motivation from a great book I picked up by chance at the library. It’s called “Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950.” It is fueling my curiosity, and making me consider photography in general (and mine specifically) in a larger context. I also stumbled upon a poem by Yeats which really hit home this week, and since it’s public domain, I’ll share it here.

The Second Coming

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”

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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.

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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.

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2020: 52 (Assessment)

Well, holy cow, I can’t believe this is my 52nd weekly blog entry of the year. I guess we had a leap year crammed in to this shit show known as 2020, since we technically have an extra weekend after this one. But screw it, I’ll use this as my year end wrap up, and take next week off to nurse my food hangover from the holiday, and stay hunkered down in my office, burning more negatives and cranking some Nick Cave on my CD player. If you are reading this, congratulations, you have survived this trial by virus, social upheaval, political division, and toilet paper hoarding. All kidding aside, we have survived, though many of us have felt losses, large and small. I am not trivializing any of it, mind you. It’s been hard, and it will most likely get harder, but every day we see light rising in the morning and there is hope in that.

Here is my list of thoughts, observations, shout outs, lumps of coal, and above all, gratitude.

Grateful for Zoom, especially since it allowed me to stay connected to my band of photo geeks every Tuesday night through the pandemic. A welcomed respite from the doom and gloom, and always supportive conversations around the creative process, self-publishing, and small brewer suggestions.

Improv. It makes my life better. It makes me a better person. It is fun. It is more than you’d expect. Try it, you might agree.

The new Fiona Apple album was played more than any other in my house. A stunner. Listen to it if you haven't already.

Destroyer and Fleet Foxes (probably) round out my top three for the year.

Hand binding a book was a new challenge, and I used the early days of the lockdown to get my Japan book ready for the world. A cathartic process from start to finish. Thank you Brian for helping along the path.

Photographic experimentation throughout the year kept the wolves at bay for me. 2020 was the year I fully embraced my love of film photography. Something I plan on continuing in the new year. I sing to the muse not to abandon me yet.

Thank you, Blurb and Magcloud. Print your damn work, people!

35mm film burns better than 120 or 4x5. Trust me.

Buy a bidet.

CDs sound better than Spotify. Vinyl is the best, though.

I miss the ocean.

I miss travel.

I love my wife. She’s my best friend. And she’s a bad ass.

I finally know how to make a good pizza dough from scratch.

New Jersey never felt further away from New Mexico than it did this year.

Typos are the bane of my existence.

Therapy and pharmaceuticals help.

Proud to have voted Trump out of office.

I still love the smell of Stop Bath.

There is an unending supply of trashy shows to stream on the internet. I’m looking at you “The Boys.”

“Mank” was overrated.

Godard is still alive.

Tony Bourdain is still dead.

I am a shark.

Thank you for being part of my life, every last one of you out there.

I am a closeted optimist.

Better days are coming.

2020:51 (On Returning)

You can go to the ends of the world, in pursuit of the exotic, the unique, the visually fascinating. Or you could stay close to home, and return to the same places over and over again. Each will yield inspiration. Each will yield satisfaction. But they will also provide different feelings. Like the rush of a new love vs. the deep emotional connection of a long-term relationship. The former is fleeting; the latter can last indefinitely.

2020:50 (Self-Destructive Tendencies)

Metaphors are all fine and good, but sometimes the direct meaning of words is more appropriate. This year has been one of destruction, in ways small and large. And I’ll ignore stepping on the soapbox sitting next to me, holding off on the socio-political banter for the time being. We all need a break at this point, don’t we? Instead, i’m taking time to look more deeply at my work and process over the past year. Apropos, since this is entry number 50 for the year… how the fuck are we a few weeks away from the new year? Anyone who’s read this blog with any regularity (I know there are at least two of you) would know that my work has taken some radical directions this year. I’ve devoted myself almost exclusively to film photography in 2020, but there have been some forays into digital as well. I’m not a Luddite, I’m not a purist, and I’m not a film fetishist (um, maybe I’m guilty on that last count.) Most people don’t give a fuck what tools you use to create your work. It’s the final images that matter. At the same time, I can’t neglect the fact that the majority of my work this year has been a shift away from the pristine, singular image. There are roots to this shift to be found in my work over the past few years, but I think it’s been during this pandemically enforced, navel gazing year that I have allowed myself the freedom to pursue these ideas in many different ways. Some of my self-publishing projects have already reflected this move towards using several images to create a feeling, to convey my thoughts, to capture the character of a particular location. To push myself further away from relying on clarity, sharpness and other signs of a perfectionist slant, I started using my old friend, the Lensbaby, bringing unpredictability and happenstance to my photos. The deep dive into film brought another variable and an invitation to surprise. Further down the rabbit hole, pinhole lenses on my big boy dslr allowed for unrestrained exploration of shapes, forms and, as always light. Plastic cameras, slow film, home developing, scanning and post-production in Lightroom, along with a secret combo of software led me to a point where I took an even more dramatic step. I burned, scratched, pieced and otherwise degraded my roles of film, at once destroying while creating. Why stop there? I found an old lens for a Canon AE-1, that I knew was not functioning properly. So first, I threw it on the ground. Kicked it into the dirt. Stepped on it. I took a hammer to the lens. It did not break completely. Kudos to 1970s glass and metal. it still fit on my digital camera, by means of an adapter. And it became the latest tool for me to explore and record, without any hope of perfection. Or at least perfection in the literal sense. Because some of the photos I’ve been creating feel closer to an ideal to me than anything I have tried to create with “perfect” light, “perfect” focus or “perfect” composition. I’m not going to belabor the oft-quoted Picasso again, but to say that my destructive tendencies have lead to a fertile run of creation for me this year, well that’s an understatement. The muse is still here, and she brings deeper, more satisfying art from deep down in the well. And while that water flows, I’ll raise a glass and drink it. And then I’ll smash the glass against the wall.

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: 47 (Burn Blister)

The experimentation that this fucked up year has ushered in for me continues. Hours working from home allows for frequent, albeit short, diversions into my personal work. The equation is simple enough: a stack of negatives, some bleach, sandpaper, a lighter, plastic wrap, sharpies and some time on my hands. What started as a “what if?” proposition has been continually rewarding. From 4x5 negatives to 35mm negatives, from black and white, now to color. Freedom to play, without worrying too much about failure. That is the key, I truly believe it. Failure is often something we try to avoid at all costs. However, without the risk of failure, how do we make discoveries? How do we advance, when we only tread on the well-worn path? I have burned a lot of film this year (wink, wink) and some of it goes promptly into the trash can. Then, every so often, a wonderful moment of happenstance occurs, and I get something that is truly unique. One of a kind, not to be repeated. I think Picasso was credited with saying “Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” Or maybe it's vice versa. In any event, I’ve embraced this dictum, and it has reaped rewards both large and small. And since making art is often a dispensation of blood, sweat and tears, I’d like to add “blisters” to that list. Nothing like a drop of burning plastic on your finger to remind you what pain feels like.

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: 42 (Fail Forward)

I’ve been rolling the dice lately. Plastic cameras, nothing but film, no viewfinder, no meter, no plan, no expectations, no disappointments. Running 35mm film through medium format cameras, shooting pinhole, advancing film partially, double exposures. Shooting color film and developing it in black and white chemistry. Breaking all the rules. I’m feeling that this is all leading someplace… feels like I’m down in the sewers, just like Orson Welles in The Third Man. Darkness, dampness, dripping liquids, shadows, footsteps. Isolation, fear, paranoia. Yet free, and oddly self-assured. Or maybe just schizophrenic. My mind is popping, synapses firing in all directions, and then lethargic, confused, unable to focus and concentrate. This is life in 2020. The year of perfect vision, is that irony or not? So much more to come. While I breathe, I hope.

Orson Welles in the classic film, The Third Man. Watch it if you’ve never seen it.