So, here I am…

Today, I leave for a two (or three)-week roadtrip out of Oregon and through California. It is really something monumental at this point in my life. Without being too wordy, but still being honest, I’ll try to explain what I mean.

December 2010, I graduated from college with some dreams that were ready to become goals (not uncommon, I know), and moved back home to catch my bearings, and make some money by working part time. Things were put on hold by January 2011, when my sister had major surgery. I spent the next month helping to lift her out of the recliner she had to sleep in and assisting her walking, and then another couple months driving her places and lifting anything over 5lbs. She was brave, and it was a long recovery.

About the same time she was recovering, my mother threw out her back. She started having medical procedures every other week that would leave her bed-ridden for two days, and pretty slow for another three or four days after that. With my sister still unable to do the labor, it was up to me (though she did do a lot, but in other ways). Unfortunately, the procedures didn’t work, and she was scheduled for August spinal fusion surgery. She was in the hospital for a week, and rehabilitation center for three weeks after due to complications. Seeing her in that state was among the hardest things I’ve had to go through. It has now been almost seven months since that surgery, and I have been too worried to leave home for more than two nights because she has been recovering much slower than they anticipated. She cannot drive, sometimes needs assistance going down stairs, and many other tasks that require bending are nearly impossible. She will be starting physical therapy this week I believe, but to be honest, I feel like a bad son for leaving to do this, even though I have her, and my sister’s blessing. There is a palpable sadness in my heart while making my final preparations – and a feeling of selfishness. However, I see that I have done very little to make myself happy in the last 14 months, and it has taken its toll. I’ve nearly forgotten what it means to care about myself, and I fear I will lose complete sight of my goals if something doesn’t change. So, here I am…

I don’t know what to expect from this adventure. I’ll be visiting national parks, cities, friends, and friends of friends. I’ll have a notebook, and a camera, and I will fill you in when I return. My best friend, who I’ll be traveling with, also has a blog. He has a laptop and a digital camera, I however have neither, only a medium format SLR so I have to get the film developed before posting. It’s possible we will collaborate on some posts, since he will be the one with the means to instant gratification of digital technology. You’re welcome to check out his page (by clicking anywhere on this sentence). He does great work, and has been to some amazing places in the last year – you won’t be disappointed.

In closing: maybe there will be a post somewhere in the next two or three weeks, but it’s possible this blog will remain dormant until I return. This also means I probably will not be able to check in on your recent work, much to my regret.

I look forward to catching up with you on the road, or at the end of the trail, where hopefully I’ll have recovered some key parts of myself that can then be shared with you.’Till then, I hope you all stay well in body and mind (or go temporarily mad enough to create something incredible and life-changing). Thanks, as always, for your readership.

Analog ‘filters’

Three silver gelatin prints from the same 4×5 negative (Ilford Delta 100), and two different toning techniques, which could probably be replicated in photoshop using filters, but were done the archaic way:

print on Fomatone warmtone paper, no additional toning.

print on Fomatone warmtone paper, plus selenium toning, and bleaching with ferricyanide.

Made famous by Ansel Adams (to the best of my knowledge), selenium increases the archival quality of the print, and has varied toning effects depending on the paper used, the dilution of the chemical to water, and the time spent in the chemical bath. Also increases the contrast, which was furthered with the use of the ferricyanide (literally an in-and-out dip into a chemical bath).

print on Fomatone warmtone paper, plus selenium toning, bleaching, and tea toning.

About as simple as it sounds – after toning and bleaching, brewing black tea and bathing the print in it. The results varied greatly depending on the temperature of the tea – the hotter the tea, generally the darker the stain. Sometimes the paper did not like the tea, and would only soak it up in splotches, which can be seen a little in the lower-right area of the print (it was only a test print). Got the idea from photographer Tom Baril, who started as one of the printers for the famous Robert Mapplethorpe, and developed into an incredible photographer of his own.

I have one edition of the first image matted and hanging on a wall, if anyone is interested in purchasing. Dimensions of the print are 6 and 3/4″  x 9″. There is also a 5″ x  7″ version of the tea toned print matted and ready to go.

Tattered Standards

It seems love, the one most frequent,

is the flag ripped from atop the mast.

Frayed in passion, and tattered for its zeal -

flying its colors at heavy winds

when it could have been lowered,

and preserved or patched.

Mooring in a harbor with gentle

and steady gusts does not appeal -

we’d risk the high sea, if only to be lost;

little left but floating threads of who

we were within, and what we were without.

 

 

 

Image: an old Monotype, titled, “Sunrise, Stormy Sea”

February Chrysalis

Few (mundane) things are more defeating than to put your pen to paper,

To drag your hand across, and to know that whatever

Is written will fall short. But I write, because the early morning

Was something extraordinary, the master’s fine silver

Melted down and repurposed to embellish this town.

A week has passed with blue skies in day, full constellations

By night, and a present edge to each inhale that is winter’s,

And only hers. For the valley, February is soaked-through

On most occasions, dripping from the outside to the insides,

And back out again. Rain is inevitable, always, “soon.”

We are slaves to the rain; most cower under hood, under

Roof, under umbrella, under newspaper – always under,

In the body and mind, but I find security and comfort,

And often open my chest to leave my heart to its thunder,

And mind to its lightning, for the pooling water conducts.

That curtain has fallen back into place, and when I

Called it silver, that is no justice, it’s a molten moon

In color, midnight skin in feel (things needing your

Assembly, in that putting together between where my

Words end and where you begin – where there’s more).

There you can see deep in the woods, same as I do

From this city house. There is a rain that hangs to

the forest floor,  where the glowing fern hugs cold

To the ground as pine-needles scent the wet dew

Of their embrace – where they whisper and unfold.

Bison (reblog)

This is a reblog from the first post that I ever made public, which was almost a year ago. The poem (in an earlier form) was published in a small art and literary magazine. Sorry about posting this twice, I didn’t like the format that the reblog button used. Thanks for reading.

 

I could smell the red clay – dry, pleasantly

Natural, unpleasantly sweet like hay

In the field – holding the flattened grass tight

To the cracked earth with increasing resolve,

 

As the heat swelled in the days where evening

Seemed to never come. Walking among the

Giants grunts, rumbles, silence – listening to

The ancient clacking dialect of their

Two-toed shoes. Strange enchanted tones that

Made the modern me want to turn tail,

Run, the ancestral me to stay. To stay

And translate what it made me feel, you feel,

Because you were of different comfort.

You grew up in their unsettling shade.

 

You knew most by name, maybe by their look.

This seemed clear in the way they stared

Sideways when you made that noise, the same one

That set my mind to calm, to deep, deep stillness.

Unlike the swaying horizon, shaken,

Shivering in the wake of evening winds

That stirred dust from ground and matted hair

Alike, blending titan forms into soft

Impressionist forms, backlit by gradient

Yellow to orange. The earthy hue

Of our hosts’ unkempt, unbathed, unabashed locks,

Caked in brown mud, sparsely transformed to grains

Of dust so fine that when sent airborne

 

Appeared as twisting wisps of coughed smoke;

Invisible on your muted olive skin,

Showing as tiny moving freckles on mine.

With each movement by me or the wind,

Which now seemed to calm and cool even further,

The sun proceeded to fall at once

From sight, from feel, causing an audible

Shiver from us both, and from the silhouettes

That appeared far less threatening without mass

 

To give depth to their melancholy sighs;

Announcing end to day’s patent exposure,

Which returns red at dawn; an ember

Forced through cool, blue tinted night skies.

scan of silver gelatin print, printed from 35mm negative

Art (and coming to terms)

There is one thing that I spent a while wishing I could experience, knowing full-well that  I couldn’t: grasslands hosting an endless herd of wild buffalo. American settlers put an end to that for sport and greed; not my ancestors, but still I am American, and I feel in some strange way responsible, or at least ashamed. It was a series of acts far out of reach of our primitive sensibilities as humans to do something like that, but still it was done, and now we find them in small, fenced pastures. I think about the ancient peoples who wondered at migrations of animals, and who hunted them, fearful and thankful, and how they were so essential to their being that they even made drawings in caves and on stones. It’s like they were coming to terms with their world.

In early 2010, with all of the above in mind, I set out to make a cave painting. I used vine charcoal, red clay from the ground, and stones. I don’t have any caves near me, so I used a cement wall as the canvas. My aim was to make it simplistic, like the paintings in Lascaux, and close to life-sized, to give emphasis to the scale  of the actual animal. It was the largest work I had completed to date, and I fell pretty hard for the process of working in such a way: the physicality of it, the satisfaction of working my hands raw and muscles sore for something creative. It was completed in about 5 hours, and is still partially visible today. Here’s the result:

Titan

Titan (process)

Titan (self scale reference)

Photography on repeat (motion vs. still)

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare", 1932

As someone who considers himself a photographer more than anything else, I think about where photography’s place is among other media – it’s one of those things that’s inevitable to spend some time on. In the early 1900′s, the debate was between painting and photography, now it seems to be more between video and photography, especially with the way digital technology has shaped it; the two practices are becoming more and more alike.

From their onset through to the present, film (motion) and photograph (still) have been drastically different, yet strikingly similar. Without the still, motion would be impossible. When a video camera is rolling, it is not catching a moment – it is catching a string of moments. What separates photography from film is that photography needs (on most occasions) to capture a string of moments in a single, concise document.

What got me thinking about this film/photo relationship in any sort of depth was a statement in Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida (if you’re a photographer and haven’t read it – you should):

“Oh, if there were only a look, a subject’s look, if only someone in the photographs were looking at me! For the Photograph has this power – which it is increasingly losing, the front pose being most often considered archaic nowadays – of looking me straight in the eye (here, moreover, is another difference: in film, no one ever looks at me: it is forbidden – by the Fiction).”

In truth, I never made this connection, at least in a way that made me stop and reflect on it, until I read this statement. Every once in a while, after seeing a well produced video clip or movie, the emotional power it has on me makes me think that film is the victor in the bout.

The most powerful thing about film is its detailed scope of time. Not only do I appreciate the sense of time that its motion provides, but also the amount of time spent creating it. Maybe it’s unfair of me, but I also tend to judge photography based on the amount of time it took to create. This time is not limited to the time it took to capture the image or print it. A ‘good’ photographer (which would hopefully produce a ‘good’ image) should be consumed by their craft. The time present in a photograph is also evident in the way the photographer’s visions of composition, lighting, and ultimately the capture of a moment keep them up at night and occupy their mind anytime it’s left to wander. I want to see the obsession behind a photograph. Although some people may get lucky, photographs like Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Behind the Gare Saint Lazare (pictured above) show precision in thought as well as technical skill – he was only ready to capture that moment because he had seen its like (or at least felt its mood) over and over again in his mind.

Returning to Barthes’ struggle for intimacy with the subject in photographs – I feel this is an aspect of photography that needs more recognition. While not the more detailed or complete rendition of a subject that film provides, a photograph certainly has the potential of engaging the viewer on a more personal level than film ever can. As Barthes’ states, a subject in a film cannot enter the viewer’s world because it is ‘forbidden’. Anytime I have seen this attempted in a movie, it has been a non-issue; it doesn’t make the film more spectacular or personal. For me, those sorts of gimmicks just degrade the experience. Photography can capture a portrait of a person, place, or thing that breaks through the surface of the print in a way that a movie cannot ever break its two (or three) dimensional picture plane (or at least has not done for me yet).

I included a friend in this debate recently, and he mentioned that if you had a video playing in your house (with or without sound) it would become incredibly annoying. At first I just laughed, but then that observation sunk in. A video is very demanding of the viewer. It requires our time and attention, to the point of almost being intrusive. It also leaves very little to the imagination. It doesn’t illicit a response from our inner child – the one who loved to fill in the blanks, and to make stories and dialogue from the silliest things. Photography does do that; it taps into our ancient and youthful desire to tell stories, and to invest ourselves in the telling.

Though they are two different beasts, these differences are why I still see photography as superior to film, despite my occasional doubts. I would be hard pressed to find a single clip in even my favorite movie that I would go back to over and over again to view by itself. A photograph, when executed correctly, is a different story. There are a number of photographs, from those immortalized and hung in museums, to photographs of my grandfather as a young man, that captivate me no matter how many times I see them. It borderlines on magic the way a photograph can hang in the hallway of a viewer’s home and still evoke emotion after a lifetime of viewing. A photograph’s ability to capture the complexity of a moment, an event, an individual, a place, an object, etc. and the slew of emotions that can accompany those things is what, for me, sets it apart from all other media as the apex of art.