Sparky Campanella | Fine Art Photography | Blog

Art LA

2012-01-26T18:25:00.000-08:00

A good show at the Santa Monica airport last weekend. I liked the sense of impending doom that came from hearing planes roar overhead all day. Here's some work that caught my eye.

Soo Kim, Angles Gallery, LA

Soo Kim carefully cuts out substance within her prints to reveal empty space beneath. The craftsmanship is beautiful and the resulting negative space creates a semi-sculptural piece that references both absence and presence. Aesthetically pleasing, conceptually intriguing.

Sean Dack - Fitzroy Gallery, NYC

Dack’s unique c-prints begin with straightforward photographs of recognizable subjects which are then disrupted or left incomplete as they are transformed from analogue to digital or digital to analogue. But it is through these negotiations between digital and analog that Dack allows something new to emerge.

"In the end, what I am after is something that still relates to the language of photography, but breaks free of the use of a camera, as well as plays with the notion of a correct image, or what is assumed to be what a photograph should look like."

Sam Falls, American Contemporary Gallery, NYC

In these images Fall starts with dark and rather boring images of things—peppers, blackberries, tires—and these uses the object being photographed as a paintbrush to reflect a brighltly colored physicality of the object. Nice gimmick but I'm not sure if this particular concept has a lot of legs.

Isaac Layman, Lawrimore Project, Seattle

Isaac Layman is an abstract photographer of my own heart, taking everyday objects and through lighting, framing and Photoshop turns them into extraordinary images. I don't know what this object is and didn't even want to ask (although I'm guessing that it's the lid to a pot). I'm always slightly annoyed when people look at my abstracts and their first utterance is "What is it?" But I often do the same with others' work, we're just so tied to the idea that photography is always "of" something. We're fascinated and visually challenged when we can't figure out what "it" is, to paraphrase Bill Clinton. We're accustomed to absorbing the feeling or energy from an abstract painting, why does photography so beg a need for physical connection?

John Duncan, Gallery Niklas Belenius
Jigsaw puzzles on AL

John Duncan riffs on Courbet's L’Origine du monde by creating a reference that's a limited relief photo sculpture made of puzzle pieces. Behind the missing genitalia is a dull-finished aluminum which quite cleverly presents your own blurred reflection upon closer inspection. I like the historical reference, the way in which the image affronts the viewer, and even the concept of missing pieces in feminism, but like Sam Fall's work it seems a bit of a one-trick pony. Perhaps visual stopping power is a criteria for these shows as this image was drawing a lot of people into the booth. Quiet work is at a disadvantage when you're fighting for attention but quiet work is more likely to make me think, and to stick with me, than even your above-average pussy shot.

Interview

2012-01-17T13:10:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed by Daniel Rolnik about my Horizon and Complementary Color series. The post is now online at Daniel's blog.

Excellent job, especially the glamor shot of Monkey upstaging my work.

Inga

2012-01-10T00:57:00.000-08:00

I'm expanding my blurry fetish into portraits and have started to recruit models. These two images of Inga were shot less than a minute apart.

So what's with all the blurry? I've asked myself that a lot recently. All of my work for the past seven years has been tack sharp. Much of it was shot with a 4x5 film camera because it delivers incredible sharpness. I know, I say blurry and you think Uta Barth. Very good but Uta's work looks blurred only because she's photographing the space between herself and her subject. She's actually focusing on air. She wants to call attention to something we don't normally notice, namely the volume of space around and between us and how that empty space is so fundamental to how we perceive the world. She's also interested in getting us to notice the quality of light around us, so many of her shots contain the trace of shadows and sunlight.

Uta Barth

Ground #78

I've always found Uta's work conceptually fascinating and aesthetically seductive. It differs from what I'm doing in that she's calling attention to the unnoticed. I'm more interested in the mystery that comes from never knowing the full depth of the people, and things, in our lives that we do notice. The possibilities and fantasy of the unknown capture my imagination more than even the most fantastical known. I think the above portraits effectively do that because they're Goldilocks blurry - enough to make the details a mystery but not so much that you can't tell that you're looking a woman…likely a young woman but even that distinction I wouldn't know for sure if I weren't the photographer.

If you're in the Los Angeles area and are interested in being a model, please let me know.

White Album

2012-01-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

Well, not really. Actually not even close. Just playing around with minimalism, seeing how little content I can have in a photo and still create an image with power, tension, maybe even meaning. I wish it would snow…

Poetic Collaboration - Day 10

2012-01-01T22:16:00.000-08:00

Thus ends our poetic collaboration project. Or at least the first phase of it.

While the process has been a lot less collaborative than I imagined or wished, it has gotten me out shooting almost every day for the past ten. I've been mostly successful in being Zen about it, focusing on the now and letting go of expectations about the result. Now that it's finished and I've made rough prints of my favorites, it feels good to say that I'm happy with a lot of what I've shot. Most importantly, it was the process of simply getting out and making new work that felt the best.

Poetic Collaboration - Day 9

2011-12-31T03:47:00.000-08:00

Poetic Collaboration - Day 7

2011-12-28T16:19:00.000-08:00

Poetic Collaboration - Day 6

2011-12-27T00:07:00.000-08:00

Shooting in my industrial LA neighborhood and beyond into Vernon's old-world charm.

I'm really getting into blurry. And for once photography is saving me money—no need for new contact lenses.

Poetic Collaboration - Day 5

2011-12-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

Poetic Collaboration - Day 4

2011-12-24T12:38:00.000-08:00

Poetic Collaboration - Day 3

2011-12-23T11:53:00.000-08:00

Poetic Collaboration - Day 2

2011-12-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

This 10-day rush is getting me back to a more familiar way of making photographs, namely as an accompaniment to daily life. That’s how I used to shoot, taking my camera with me and capturing whatever struck my eye. It took a focused effort for sure, but it was “easy” for me. Perhaps too easy, as I thought it had to be harder. Given my puritanical work ethic and insecurity about not having an MFA I naturally took to an approach that was both more commonplace in the art world as well as personally more difficult, namely shooting in series such at horizon or complementary colors. That approach creates a nicely packaged body of work designed for marketing to the art establishment. Sounds grand but it’s not how I think.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly useful to push a concept, to try wacky new ways to communicate an idea in a way that's fresh and visually compelling. But there are a multitude of ways to skin that cat. I'm more drawn to William Eggleston way of creating a series of photographs with an aesthetic and emotional coherence that varies widely in subject matter. I think that’s actually a more difficult thing to do, to tie together pictures of tricycles, gas stations and light fixtures into a cohesive whole, but it also makes for a body of work that’s more layered and open to broader interpretation.

I’m trying to let go of the need for a nicely packaged end product and just to enjoy the process of shooting. There’s magic in just picking up the camera, that’s the only expectation I’m holding, at least for at least the next 8 days.

Poetic Collaboration - Day 1

2011-12-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

I started a ten-day creative collaboration with two amazing poets yesterday - Maureen Alsop and Joshua Gottlieb-Miller. I live in LA, Maureen lives in Palm Springs and I don’t even know where Josh lives, I’ve only met him online through Maureen. Thanks to my days as a software product manager I’m used to working collaboratively with people who are geographically remote, communicating and working from the Bay Area with teams in NYC, Cincinnati, Minsk and Melbourne. I’ve always been intrigued with the potential of doing similar with art and this will be my second time. The first was with Orly Aviv who lives in London and did a lovely worldwide collaborative video project called Sea of Seas.

My premise with Josh and Maureen is simple. From Dec 20-30 I’ll be taking photos and posting them here as inspiration for them to write poetry. They’ll be writing either as a response to my photos or on their own and sending them to me as inspiration for me to shoot in response. It’s more interactive than the Sea of Seas, reminds me of improvisational jazz. We don’t know where it’s going to go beyond these posts but have thought about a self-published book and an audio-visual installation.

Bottom line, I’m excited about the process and am using it as a way to overcome a limitation in my creative process, namely excessive attachment to the outcome. What do they say? “Don’t worry, be happy.”

Dec 7

2011-12-08T18:02:00.001-08:00

A few iPhone shots from last night. I was helping my friend Amy Brownson install one of her amazing flower mannequin in the window of the Eastern Building, downtown LA.

Set to Infinity

2011-12-07T03:34:00.000-08:00

Sounds like something Buzz Lightyear would say but actually it's where I've had my lens focused recently. Autofocus is overrated, sharp photos are too. Turn your focus to infinity and embrace fuzzy! The blur is mysterious and suggestive all at the same time. It lets your mind fill in the gaps and leaves room for possibility.

I'm especially intrigued with how blurry portraits obscure the details of our face but still offer an unmistakeable impression of a person. It's a good match for how my memory works. Rarely do I remember specific features on a person's face or the exact shape of their nose or angle of their eyebrows. What remains in my mind's eye is similar to this blur, an visual that's unique but not exact, and glowing with life.

For the multitudes of you out there who are reading this and know me, can you tell that the top photo is me?

Nov 20

2011-11-21T00:32:00.000-08:00

Rainy Sunday in LaLa, decided to take my new Pentax 645D out into my industrial hood to see if it really is weatherproof.

It is.

Nov 19

2011-11-19T16:23:00.001-08:00

I was talking to my friend and talented poet Maureen Alsop the other day about the sheer volume of information and images that we now experience. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said recently that we now create as much information every two days as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. Yes, that's every two days. Information is no longer a slowly filling lake but rather a raging river that's only going to get faster. User-generated content is responsible for much of this increase.

Take Flickr for example. Dutch photographer Erik Kessels printed out every image uploaded to Flickr over the course of 24 hours -- that would be 1 million photographs -- into Foam Magazine's gallery in Amsterdam. The mountain of pictures literally flow and spill into adjoining rooms like a flood. One million uploads are a drop in the bucket compared to the estimated total of 6 billion images on Flickr – the same number added to Facebook every two months.

I'm especially interested in this because my background intersects technology with fine-art photography. It seems that the iconic still image is being replaced by an equally iconic flow of images. How can illustration, photography or painting, all of which rely on presenting one image at a time, keep up? To me it's all becoming a blur. What do you think?

Nov 18

2011-11-18T18:14:00.000-08:00

Nov 17

2011-11-18T18:13:00.000-08:00

UVB-76

2011-11-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

I tuned into the UVB-76 stream today after reading about it in Wired. UVB-76 is the call sign for a shortwave radio station that's been broadcasting a repeating series of monotones 24/7 since at least 1982. The foghorn-type tones are occasionally interrupted by a Russian voice reading cryptic words and numbers such as "ТRUTNIK 65 12 18 47". The signal originates out of a rusted radio tower in the woods north of Moscow. No one knows what it means, who's sending it or why. It feels like a message through time, a mystery left over from the Cold War or something from the Dharma Initiative. It's an evocative accompaniment to a rainy LA day while re-reading Uta Barth's book In Between Places.

I've always admired Uta's art because she pushes the idea of what a photograph is. Her work is about perception and her intent is to create visuals that are more about experiencing a photo as opposed to reading it.

In Between Places appears to be full of out-of-focus images because she's photographing the volume of space between the camera and something else, like a wall. She's not interested in pointing a camera at a subject and imbuing meaning to subject. She wants to talk of light, space, silence and the feeling that comes from that, not the actual thing.

I'm interested in doing something similar with the re-envisioning of my skin series. I want to convey intimate emotions and feelings without the distractions that come from interpreting a portrait. What better subject matter to use than something as common yet intimate as skin.

Robert Irwin

2011-10-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

I'm finally at Robert Irwin's "Way Out West" show at L&M Gallery in Venice. OK so he's one of my favorite artists and it's the last day and last hour…so what else is new? At least I'm here.

The show is classic Irwin genius—to get you to notice the process of seeing and more importantly to question what you see and how you see.

On first glance these are just colored fluorescent tubes artfully arranged with tape exactingly placed as vertical stripes on most tubes. Look a little closer though and it becomes difficult to discern what's tape from what's active light to what's reflection to what's shadow. If you go further and make the presentation 2D in your mind, you'll see a symphony of lines of varying widths and colors that gets more complex the closer you get. Fill your peripheral vision with the light and you swear you're looking at a glowing painting. It's music transformed into light, with rhythm and harmony, crescendo and diminuendo, softness and power.

I'm a colorist and this work is visual orgasm to me. Maybe even better…I can look at it more than once every three hours.

Eros and Civilization

2011-10-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

My friend Tricia Lawless Murray is featured in the show Eros and Civilization on display now through October 7th at Human Resources Gallery in Chinatown, Los Angeles. The show is curated by Benjamin Lord and also features the work of Heather Cantrell, Dawn Kasper, Davida Nemeroff and Amy Sampson. All five female artists live in Los Angeles and use photography to "...explore the relationship between desire, power, and the act of looking."

I found Tricia's photos to be especially compelling, both conceptually and aesthetically. Tricia has an uncanny ability to combine portraiture with photos of inanimate objects to create an evocative mood. This work is no exception. She choose to digitally print her daring self-portraits on newsprint to give a softness to the hard-edge of the imagery. The result is visual seduction at its best, drawing you in to challenging images that show her as a subjected sex object. The stack of erotic trash novels to the right of her photos, along with the blow-up excerpt, make it clear that that this is not an exhibitionist display but rather a critique of the erotic aspects of female objectification and the male gaze.

The male gaze in an important aspect to my work on corporeality and as a man I'm often criticized for my motives in shooting nudes. It's refreshing to see Tricia, who's a strong feminist, to be brave enough to posit a view of feminism that acknowledges the male gaze for what it is. Instead of becoming hostage to it's power over women, Tricia takes control of it by shining a very insightful light on it.

He said "logical"

2011-09-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

Went to Annenberg last night to hear Leonard Nimoy and see some of the images he's produced over the years. He is a charming, humble man whose intention in shooting photography is solely personal expression.

Nimoy has been photographing all his life and while his early work included landscapes, his recent work is all portrait-based. Looking at a small sample of that work, a picture emerges of a man who's deeply inspired by the human potential, one who takes great pleasure in letting the humanity of his subjects shine through. Nimoy's approach to photography is not especially sophisticated nor is it intellectually deep (though he himself is). For example, his remake of the Herb Ritts photo above not only lacks the charisma, power and composition of the original, it's technically lacking as well.

OK, so he never claimed to be the next Herb Ritts. What his work does offer is a refreshing optimism, a warming counterpoint to an art world that often seems jaded, dark and sarcastic. His work may not be as thought-provoking as many, but it is illuminative of the human spirit.

Stag's Leap

2011-09-12T12:25:00.000-07:00

Why limit yourself to just one dead animal head in your living room?

All I Can Hear Are the Sirens

2011-09-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

That's the title of a film by Cheryl Younger, another fellow critter ("critique group member" is just too much of a mouthful) that will premier this Sunday to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Cheryl lived 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center and she witnessed the attacks and the subsequent fall of both towers. This documentary film reveals her first-person response as well as that of others she met and filmed in the months afterward.

The film will premier Sunday Sept 11th at 2 pm:

Downtown Independent

251 S Main St

Los Angeles, CA 90012

www.downtownindependent.com

I moved to New York in 2005 and so experienced the pain of that day from San Francisco. I remember my disbelief turning into anger at the violation, destruction and loss of life. I've always loved New York and the attack struck at the heart of the city's skyline and its soul. But as I heard from many of my friends who lived through it, the city's reaction to 9/11 was truly it's finest hour. Everyone was so happy to just be alive that kindness and compassion became the city's new currency. The people of New York came together with the resilency, grace and humanity that makes New York the greatest city in the world. I hope you'll join me in reliving that spirit with Cheryl's film.

Julia Schlosser at CSUN

2011-09-01T03:43:00.001-07:00

Julia Schlosser is not just my friend, fellow critique group member and foster mom to my two cats, she's also a talented photographer who draws on a strong background in art history to create unexpectedly compelling work. Her latest efforts are in video and on display now through September 24 at the Art and Design Center Gallery at Cal State Northridge.

Julia's show uses three video and sound tracks to create a tranquil yet mysterious environment within the gallery. You become immersed in her world and get to experience the rhythms of her daily life that feel anything but ordinary. A sense of voyeurism pervades and the tranquil oddity of it all left me feeling a bit off-balance. In other words—art.

I'll be at Julia's closing reception, stop by and let me know what you think of her work. The adjoining gallery is featuring a show of video and photography by Chinese artists Chen Qiulin and Weng Fen that I'm also excited to see.

Friday September 9, 5-7 pm
Cal State Northridge -- Art and Design Center Gallery
18111 Nordoff St, Northridge, CA 91330

Clair de Lune

2011-08-20T02:30:00.000-07:00

My first visit to the Hollywood Bowl tonight and I hereby take back as least some of those things I've said about LA not being as classy a place as Gotham.
Tonight's show featured clips from Walt Disney's Fantasia w/ live orchestra and fireworks even, under the stars on a perfect summer night. I've been to summer concerts in Central Park and they're awesome but they pale in comparison. Only Shakespeare in the Park surpasses this. Quintessential classy LA.
So special too to see the lushness of the hand-drawn animation. I love Toy Story as much as the next guy but there's a warmth and softness to Fantasia that Pixar has yet to touch. They also showed, for the second time ever, pastel and crayon sketches for a segment that never made it to the released movie. The orchestra was playing Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" while these beautifully rough sketches and graceful animations played across the screen. Fantasia has an innocence to it's humor (pirouetting hippos, for example) and a sophistication to the experience, both visual and especially auditory, that's absent from today's animation features. Pixar films are sophisticated edgy, an often sarcastic commentary on society or the environment. Fantasia has no political agenda and harks back to a more innocent time, even though of course the innocence was surface only. But isn't that what great theatre is all about—suspension of disbelief?
Fantasia is revery-inducing suspension of disbelief with Tschaikovsky to soothe your ears and Walt Disney to amaze your eyes. Quite the pair.

patience

2011-08-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

Back in San Bruno to get this Horizon shot and damn if it isn't too sunny today. Grrr.

The Horizon series is about how the natural and the man-made simultaneously complement and contrast one another to make something unexpectedly beautiful. While the top image is a nice shot with a blue sky, I think it's more compelling when the grays and whites of the parking structure reflect the grays and whites of the sky. At the same time I want the man-made half to have contrast and texture as a counterpoint to the soft diffusion of a foggy sky. That counterpoint requires direct sunlight on the bottom half while the sky is still foggy. I'm not at all opposed to making that combination in Pbotoshop but it's (usually) a lot easier to just get it right in the camera.

The bottom image I took from my car last week when I was here and there was so much mist from all the fog that I didnt even set up my 4x5.

So, patience. In the words of Scarlet O'Hara, "…tomorrow is another day."

Huntington Avenue

2011-08-03T12:06:00.000-07:00

I'm in the Bay Area at the San Bruno BART parking lot to shoot a "horizon" that I saw almost seven years ago.

If you know the weather in San Bruno you'll know how odd this sounds but it's too sunny right now to get what I want. However I thought I'd take some digitals to get a rough idea as to camera position. Amazing what a difference a few feet make.

The top photo was my first take as I thought that including the numbers would create more visual interest in the bottom of the frame. The bottom photo works so much better though as it's simpler and the uninterrupted white lines compel your eyes to the horizon line.

Photographers choose one scene at one moment to isolate something that's visually powerful. Sometimes choosing what *not* to include is what makes a shot work.

Now all I have to do is wait for more fog to roll in. Probably won't take another seven years for that.

Passage

2011-02-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

My father is dying. His gradual decline over the past two years became steeper the past six months. He's now completely unresponsive, neither drinking nor eating. My mom passed away seven years ago so this is not entirely unfamiliar, but there's a mortal vulnerability that I suspect I'll feel with both parents gone. The previous generation is gone and I've moved from death's on-deck circle into the batter's box. I have a friend who claims that men only really come into themselves when their father passes. I hope he's right because if so I'm about to become a much better man.
My Dad had his share of faults that's for sure. Why is it that when he was active and vibrant it was his faults that stood out most for me? Only now in his vulnerable silence can I more clearly see his many admirable qualities. He was certainly a lot more selfless than I've been of late. His whole life revolved around providing for his family, working and making sacrifices so my brother and I would have a safe comfortable home and a privileged education. He was the same in business, coaching and negotiating to ensure that the men on his salesforce were able to make a good living for their families too. He was a rock of dependibity; honesty, reliable, cool-headed. You could trust Steve Campanella to deliver on whatever he promised. No whining. No excuses. He always had a smile and friendly word for the people in his life, looking to make their day a little bit brighter. He even tipped our garbage men and milkmen (yes, I'm that old that we had milkmen growing up) at Christmas. "They've done right by us all year. They have families too." he would say.
I consider myself to be well connected to my feelings, especially for a man, but was unable until yesterday to tell him how much I admired him, how grateful I am for my upbringing, how proud I am to be his son. I'm doubtful if he even knew I was there and I'm quite sure he couldn't understand me. Yet his inability to modestly deflect my gratitude was probably what made it possible to speak my mind. He and I were never very close. He disapproved of me leaving the business world to pursue fine-art photography, a vocation he never could understand. To him a job is not about fulfillment of some personal vision, it's about making money to support yourself and the loved ones in your life. "That's why they call it a job." He also disapproved of my bohemian lifestyle and my "gypsy" wanderings between the coasts. It was that distance between us that I never dared cross. My Dad was too critical for me to risk getting closer. He had the ability to twist a statement of appreciation into a lecture about financial responsibility and how a career as an artist would lead to financial ruin and a disgrace upon the family name. It took his silence for me to speak up. For me to tell him that I loved him.

Leaving New York

2010-06-16T05:11:00.000-07:00

It's quiet now
And what it brings
Is everything

Comes calling back
A brilliant night
I'm still awake

I looked ahead
I'm sure I saw you there

You don't need me
To tell you now
That nothing can compare

Leaving New York, never easy
I saw the light fading out

leaving new york by REM

I'm not one of those people who frequently uses pop song lyrics to express my state of mind. However Michael Stipe is a talented songwriter and his poetry seems apt for me right now.

Poetry -- an elegant compression of words into an emotionally evocative form -- to define it non-poetically.

New York City is all poetry.

I've spent five years here, five amazing discouraging beautiful loving depressing happy sensual pitifully sad encouraging disgusting inspiring horrifying challenging wonderous indelibly memorable years. I can't remember experiencing such a spectrum of emotions over such a compressed period of time. And that's what sums this place up, an adrelenine junkie's delight, an adult Disneyworld with a quotidian elegance that never fails to entertain and amaze. It's a human symphony performed at allegro with a score that would overshadow even Mozart -- from the bums digging through trash cans to world-class artists creating beautiful insights to Hasidic Jewish business men hustling their next deal to glamorous models turning 6th Ave into a runway to aspiring subway muscians filling the tunnels with life to my hipster neighbors whose style make me smile, they all fill this city with the addictive pulse of human energy.

I love it here. I'm going back to California.

When I moved here from San Francisco five years ago I told myself I'd be back in time to renew my CA driver's license. I couldn't bear to give up that tangible tie to California that I carry in my back pocket every day. Well, as anyone who knows me will attest, I'm not one for dogmatically sticking to a plan, so I'm as surprised as anyone to be returning two weeks before my license expires.

When I left San Francisco I had a full-blown case of New York lust. I was frustrated with the limited San Francisco art scene and wanted to swim in New York's huge pool. I found the city brimming with as much inspiration as intimidation (though the latter lost it's grip as I pulled back the curtain on how the art world works). I wanted the cachet that comes from being a New York artist, I wanted to waltz into MOMA whenever whim dictated, become cozy with those aloof Chelsea galleries, listen to art luminaries at the innumerable lectures, stroll the aisles of the trade shows and immerse myself in all the other activities that fed my artistic soul -- theatre, dance, symphony, performance art, architecture, music. I did that non-stop for my first two years and while it certainly refined my eye and was great fun, I lost my own vision in the process of trying too hard to fit in. I feel like New York was the MFA I never got, an impactful rush that remakes your vision and leaves you feeling like a rat who been flushed down the sewer and swept into the East River, grinning ear to ear from the rush and the killer view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Make no mistake about it, I'm hooked on Gotham's siren song. But the city doesn't feel enough like home to stay. Instead I'm going to a place that does, and that has the second-largest art scene in the states -- LA. I loved it when I lived there twelve years ago as I found poetry there too, less compact and intense as compared to New York, but with rounder corners and a more balanced integration with nature. And not surprisingly, that happens to be a reasonably poetic description of who I am.

Robert Irwin

2009-10-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

Mostly sunny today, what a difference compared to Wednesday's cold wet misery. It's still cold -- low 30's I'd guess -- but at least I'm dry and even have fleeting moments of true warmth. If I can stay warm enough I'll stay here after dark to get some night shots as the next few days are supposed to be more wet snow and, in the absence of a hot tub, a shot of whiskey and a naked woman, better suited for studio work.

I've been thinking more about what makes an image powerful. My current conclusion is that powerful images are like pornographic images in that you know them when you see them but they're damn hard to describe. They differ from porn however in being an awful lot harder to make.

My dear and talented friend Chandra Meesig turned me on to the work of Robert Irwin a few years back and in particular to his biography Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees that's so skillfully written by Lawrence Weschler. I've been re-reading it here in CO and would like to share a few paragraphs that relate to power in images. He's talking about painting but the concepts are applicable to any art form:

"Strength was a big word in abstract expressionism; you were trying to get power into the painting, so that the painting really vibrated, had life to it. It wasn't just colored shapes sitting flat. It had to do with getting a real tension going in the thing, something that made the thing really stand up and hum...
...some people call it 'the inner life of a painting.' Shapes in a painting are just shapes on a canvas unless they start acting on each other and really, in a sense, multiplying. A good painting has a gathering, interactive build-up in it. It's a psychic build-up, but it's also a pure energy build-up. And the good artists all knew it too. That's what a good Vermer has, or a raku cup, or a Stonehenge. And when they've got it, they just jump off the goddam wall at you. They just, BAM!"

Yeah! That's what I'm looking for, that BAM, that WHOA, that whateveritis that stops you in your tracks. It's different for everyone of course, I have friends who yawn at Jackson Pollock's work while my heart races every time I see one. My artistic cork is more likely to pop when someone achieves that power with a minimum of visuals, whether Avedon's white backgrounds in his portraits or Sugimoto's seascapes that are literally just sky and water. That's what I work towards in my photographs, images that are as simple as possible and as strong as possible.

OK, so what does that mean in terms of how to shoot trees -- should they be towering trees? Dark and stormy trees? Bizillions of trees? You once again have not told me in which direction to point the camera. Well, I think trees and photography share an essential commonality. Neither could exist without light. (Of course every living thing on earth ultimately depends on light, but not at such a first-order need.) So that's where I think the power lies -- how trees, even barren ones, interact with light. My time-lapse videos show trees in transition from daylight to night to daylight again. My day-long exposures condense 8 hours of daylight into one image. My nightime shots expose trees using either artificial light or, as I'm doing right now, starlight and moonlight.

My goal is to make the resulting images as visually simple as possible. They will, however, ultimately be recognizeable; they can't be totally abstract. A limitation of photography is that a photograph can never achieve the complete abstraction of Robert Irwin's image above. A photograph is a trace, it's always an image of something else. Turning that recognizeable image into a visually powerful experience, that's the thing.

Here I go again

2009-10-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Into the woods that is. This time it's the Rockies, 9,500 feet up in late October. It's snowing lightly, quite beautiful but also quite wet. It's not cold enough to form powder, not sure whether to be happy about that or not. My feet and hands are soaking wet and I'm wishing for a hot tub, shot of whiskey and a naked woman, in that order.

I'm writing this from the self-named "bat cave", pictured above. I'm not sure what the dark mass is to the right of my head but if this were Jeopardy I'd take "Bat Guano for $100 Alex." They say misery loves company but in this case I'm glad I have no furry companions to share this space with me.

I've established a base camp of sorts from which to shoot more "Time in the Woods." It's about a half hour hike up from the trailhead, near a stream, quiet, peaceful. I'm on the southern-facing side of the mountain and as a result these woods are populated with Aspens as opposed to the fir trees on the northern face. At this elevation all the leaves are gone, but the white bark of the aspens creates beautiful reflected light, especially at sunset. Today however the sky is off-white and the trees are dark tan from the melting snow.

I've decided to continue working on this series instead of trying to create resin or latex-based photo sculptures from my skin portraits. Those portraits lack the kind of sensual power I want for them, and using less-than-powerful images as the foundation for a photo sculpture seems like the recipe for a house of cards.

It's hard to give up on an idea that still intrigues me yet whose execution eludes me. I'd like to believe that there's nothing I can't do (except unfortunately turn this bat cave into a whiskey-soaked hot tub orgy) and I console myself by saying that's probably true given infinite time and money. But I'm in the Rockies for the next seven weeks so why not take advantage of it by spending time in a beautiful setting doing something I love.

OK, so what am I doing here, artistically speaking? Trying to capture the passage of time yes, trying to give light it's authority yes, creating beautiful poetic images yes. And what does all that add up to? Simply put -- images with power.

Recall Sugimoto's Theatres or Seascapes and one of their most striking attributes is the power they convey. Like Sugimoto's work, the art that I most admire --Richard Avedon's portraits, Jackson Pollock's paintings, Fred Sanbeck's string sculptures, Richard Serra's steel sculptures, Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings -- all achieve tremendous visual or spatial power. And most do it with a minimum of content. So apart from freezing my ass off, that's really what I'm out here doing; creating energetically powerful images with a sparesness of content. And since a photograph always has to be "of" something, I chose the woods as my subject matter as it has a lot of personal associations for me as a place of renewal, grounding and beauty. It does have a dark side as well, as I discovered in Ligonier, and I'm anxious to experience that again in CO. But first, I gotta turn up the hot tub.

Anderson Ranch

2009-10-16T13:55:00.001-07:00

Why is it that everything I do these days seems to give stage to my demons? I arrived at Anderson Ranch earlier this week for a two-month residency, an opportunity to work in a beautiful setting unfettered by daily deadlines, financial obligations and general city pressures. Yet I'm feeling more artistic pressure than ever before.

Anderson Ranch is in Snowmass Village, CO, next door to Aspen. It's a beautiful setting though not as remote as I expected. The people are super nice, food excellent, woodworking/sculpture/ceramics facilities are amazing, photo less so. I have a better set-up in my own studio. But that's OK, I came here to branch out into using other materials to make photo sculpture, but in investigating the realities of doing so I'm wondering if that's the right thing to do. The materials I'd be working with to make the kinds of sculpture I have in my mind's eye are totally foreign to me -- fiberglass, resin, latex, even paper mache. Each has their own properties and tricks that take a long time to master.

I'm not sure I want to diffuse my focus by learning how to make sculpture versus spending time just getting better at more conventional photography. (Of course the all-day exposures and time-lapse videos that I made in the woods are hardly conventional photography.) I wonder if my itch to branch out comes more from an insecurity about the quality of my work as compared to a more authentic desire for new creative expression.

Of course just realizing that I may be harboring that insecurity is valuable. Still, it's unsettling and I feel very much adrift. I've recently felt a greater competence in my photography, seeing my horizons getting better and better, being pleased with the time-based work I did in the woods. Now I want to branch out into photo sculpture? Why?

I think of the various and subtle ways that I sabotage myself career-wise and believe that this could be one of them. There's great power in persistence, there's great power in focus. If I adopt the "what is the universe trying to tell me" mindset that I learned at Esalen, I'd see this unsettled feeling as an opportunity to reaffirm my special gifts as an artist and move past my insecurities about pursuing them.

Ah, the torture of being a gods damn opportunist. Can't I just wallow in my misery for a while?

Time in the Woods - Day 9

2009-09-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Camping out here at night has certainly foregrounded my unease in being alone in the dark in the woods.

There's not much of a rational arguement behind my fears. This is the country but it's also private property, so the chance of those Deliverance guys showing up is low. All of the animals here -- porcupine, deer, ground squirrel, birds -- are totally harmless. I had a close encounter with a porcupine one night in fact and he seemed more curious than anything. I broke my stay of silence to shoo him away, not knowing until the next day that porcupines cannot throw their quills. Even the black bears in this area have no brook with human beings. Still, hearing a deer crashing through the woods at night gives me the metallic taste of fear from not knowing from what, or from whom, it is running. This area would be ideal for alien abductions after all. There are big open fields for landing and only country folk with fuzzy video cameras for dubious support of their claims.

Rather than dream up the plot for the next X-Files movie, I decided to try and incorporate the creepier side of the woods into my photography. The image above is one example. Shooting at night is another. The days are pretty evenly split between daylight and night this time of year, so being in the dark comprises a large part of my time here. The intervalometer cameras are shooting 24 hrs/day, but at night the exposure isn't slow enough to capture any detail. A few days ago I decided to light the subject of one of the cameras and hopefully capture some of the duality I feel here, between the creepy unease at night and the beautiful calm during the day.

My intent in doing so comes back to what Sugimoto said about how he tries to represent light's authority. In the black of night, one flashlight can have a lot of authority. I hope I've been able to capture some of that through my work.

Time in the Woods - Day 8

2009-09-14T14:37:00.000-07:00

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

-Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

No time in the woods would be complete without some mention of Theroux and his two-year stay alone at a small cabin on the shores of Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass.

Theroux didn't live as a hermit as he received visitors and went into town on a regular basis. Rather he wanted to distance himself from society so as to better understand it. He wanted to deliberately live a simpler existence as opposed to acquiescing to the materialistic lifestyle that the industrial revolution made popular.

My time here wasn't inspired by Theroux, it was inspired by own my love for being in the woods. And although I only read a few segments of "Walden", I found it mostly plodding and sermonic, with occasional bursts of inspired prose like the quote above. Theroux didn't seem like much the party animal, that's for sure. A teetotaler with a distaste for new clothes, he's not the kind of guy you'd want as wingman for a night out in Manhattan. Nonetheless I do find fraternity with his desire to strip away the distractions of a materialistic lifestyle so as to allow room for other more important things to take it's place. (And yes, I am aware of the irony of using my iPhone to write aboutliving a less materialistic lifestyle.)

But enough of dead authors secretly yearning for a Bloomie's shopping spree. Last night was magical. With a chorus of ctickets and the gentle rustle of a cool breese in the trees overhead, thousands of stars twinkled through my silhouetted forest canopy.

I have two more nights here. I am looking forward to going home yet I'm also enjoying the feeling of my internal critic losing it's power over my creative instincts. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it's a "boot camp" thing where I had to be broken down by a sense of impending doom before I could break free of my critic's grasp. Perhaps it's Theroux's simple lifestyle making room for creative expression. In any case, I'm feeling a creative freedom that I haven't felt in a long time. It's still tenuous and a bit elusive, but when it comes the feeling is like a 40-pound pack being lifted off my shoulders.

Time in the Woods - Day 7

2009-09-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

I'm past the halfway point and past a crisis of confidence yesterday. More than a crisis of confidence, it was an overwhelming feeling of
nausea.

An independent artist's life is devoid of much external validation. (I mean "artist" in the broadest sense to include writers, actors and anyone in a creative field.) No boss saying "nice job", no regular paycheck, no tips, no quota to meet, there's not even anything that lights up or beeps to tell you whether it's working or not. If an artist's career were represented by a toaster you'd return it immediately. An artist's daily validation has to come from within.

The lack of distractions here has the effect of magnifying whatever is going on in my head. Yesterday it was my need for validation -- internal, external, subdermal, whatever. I've invested a lot of time and money to be here and am shooting film that won't be processed till I get back to Gotham. I have only an experienced guess as to whether my images will in any way represent the poetic calmness of how time passes here. And even if they do, will they be fresh and compelling and have that little extra "shiny bumpy" that stretches your mind beyond the expected and crosses over into the realm of art?

All artists face such insecurities about their work, I'm just more susceptible right now. I spent last summer in the jungles of Viet Nam having an adventure for sure, but career-wise it was the equivalent of pursuing a wild aquatic fowl. I've been working on my skin portraits for almost two years now and although they got me into the Anderson Residency, I'm happy with only four of them. I've spent the last three months scanning all 365 rolls of film from my "39 minutes" project and have submitted excerpts from the resulting movie to over a dozen film festivals with no success. And here I am again, pursuing a project that's personally meaningful, conceptually sound but perhaps not unique enough, visually compelling enough or timely enough that I'll be able to find venues to get it seen. Gods damn it, where's that fracking .357 when you need it?

I used to express my discouragement du jour to my amazingly talented artist friend Meg Hitchcock. The advice she gave me was to just continue to do the work -- with integrity and for myself. Sound advice, but honestly, would I be out here alone for 10 days doing this for just myself? Hell no. I don't do rt for myself, I do it to share how I see the world with others. To give back in some tiny way. But when no one else sees it but me, it becomes like masturbating in a very expensive corner.

So how did I get past it -- yoga? shamanic journey? vodka? One thing that helped was realizing that I'm on this path for the next four days and can choose to agonize the whole time or enjoy it for the beautiful retreat that it is. Another was realizing that this isn't life or death, it's just practice in a field which I love and in which I continue to build proficiency. If the resulting visuals don't meet my expecations I'll obviously be disappointed, but it'll also be another step along a path I want to take. And finally, I decided to mix things up a bit to increase the odds of failing my way to success. Last night I added a night shoot to my routine in an attempt to move towards the unexpected. In my why-the-frack-not desparation to move past my anxiety-fueled nausea, I came up with an idea I probably wouldn't have otherwise.

I hate self-doubt. I hate my constant need for validation. I hope that having once again worked through it, the pain will have begotten something worthwhile. Sometime it does, sometimes it doesn't. The only thing I can say for sure is that it seems to be an indelible part of this journey.

Time in the Woods - Day 6

2009-09-11T20:30:00.001-07:00

If you want to know what someone who's been alone in the woods for six days looks like first thing in the morning, well here ya' go.

Time in the Woods - Day 5

2009-09-10T18:12:00.000-07:00

It should come as no surprise that Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of my favorite photographers. His "Seascapes" were the inspiration for my "Horizon" series and much of his work deals with time, from his photos of the dioramas at the Natural History Museum to wax-work figures at Madame Trosseau's to long exposures of candle flame shadows to the above image from his "Theaters" series. This latter image was made by leaving the shutter of his 8x10 open for the duration of the movie, using the same aperture for the entire series. (He noticed that comedies exposed brighter than murder mysteries...) Sugimoto believes that light has an authority, a presence almost that any great photograph should capture. Damn hard to do, but what a goal to aspire towards in an artistic practice!

One problem with shooting film as opposed to digital here in the woods is the lag time in my learning. I won't know whether I've conveyed light's presence till I'm back in New York and the film is developed.

Things will either come out as I expect, I'll be pleasantly surprised by happy accidents, or I'll be disheartened by tragic mistakes. My friend Chris McCaw is another photographer who successfully gives light authority. He came about it by happy accident while shooting with a technique even older than film -- paper negatives. His long-exposure landscapes, where the sun literally burns a line in the paper negative as it crosses the sky, cannot be made digitally. Each image is a one-of-a-kind. If you're a fan of Sugimoto-san I encourage you to look at Chris' work for images that also take the fundamentals of photography - time and light - and represents them in a fresh and powerfully poetic way.

So where does that leave me? There is a measure of discouragement in seeing how others have successfully achieved a proficiency with their work, and there's a measure of inspiration too. I've had to negotiate a balance in those two emotions over the past four years in New York, as I've been exposed to sooo much artistic talent. At first it was tremendously discouraging to imagine how I could create at that level. And yet with a persistent effort over time I've seen dramatic improvements in my approach to my art, the concepts behind it, and the final results. There's a lot of mental, and mutual, masturbation between New York artists as to how to achieve "success". My best approach is considered practice -- build on previous efforts by blending personal experience with insight gleaned from other artists, especially those from other disciplines. That's one of the reasons why living in the dynamic NYC art community has been so important at this point in my career.

I've been trying to get into the woods all summer to do just that kind of considered practice and have only made it just as summer is coming to a close. But I did make it. Carving out time to create new work has been one of my biggest challenges in New York. It takes a tremendous amount of time to market previous work, and there's always more than can be done. And the City itself is a wonderful distraction, an adult Disneyland even if you don't have a lot of money. Add in relationships, friendships, networking, time for self and oh yeah that "day job" to pay the rent and there's amazingly little time to go out and create new.

I was fortunate enough to have been awarded a fully paid residency at Anderson Ranch in CO this fall and am so looking forward to it. I'll have almost two months of unstructured time to create new work in the company of 13 other artists, most of whom are not photographers. I'll have the results of this work by then and at least a little time to consider its success or failure. From there, it's like what they say about how to get to Carnegie Hall.

Time in the Woods - Day 4

2009-09-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Guess I won't be starting a career as a weatherman anytime soon. I refuse to check the weather on my iPhone, I want to be more attuned to nature and live in the moment rather than anticipating or dreading a change. Well, I was out at midnight last night and it was calm with high cirrus clouds, big moon, comfortably cool -- beautiful with no hint of rain. I even unzipped the rain fly on my tent, cockily confident in my prognostication abilities. This morning around 4 am I was awakened by you-know-what. It is poetic to wake up to the sound of rain on a tent, but that poetry turned to ghetto slang when I felt my sleeping bag getting wet.

At least the rain had the good sense to stop before my morning constitutional, and now things are again drying out. The rain/sun is another natural cycle that I'm only loosely connected to in the city. Here I myself am one of the things that's drying out. And not just me, but all of my forest companions take shelter during the rain, from the crickets to the birds. As things dry out, the sounds of life return.

The cameras stayed dry under their zip-lock tents. Of course the lens filters were wet; I'm hoping the resultant distortion and blur in the photos will reflect what it felt like for me this morning.

Last night i decided to reposition the camera that was pointed at my camp. As some of you know, I did a month-long work/study program in Shamanism at Esalen earlier this year. The primary technique I learned was to "journey" to the spirit realm and ask for guidance from either, or both, of my spirit helpers and animal guides.

Now I'm the world's biggest skeptic when it comes to spirits and animal guides, but I'm also open-minded enough to believe that I might be totally wrong. A journey for me is like a self-guided dream, done to the accompanyment of drumming to get my mind in a trance-like state. Before I left my good friend LaRae Cunningham (who generously lent me her tent and thermarest for this sleigh ride) sent me some MP3's of drumming so I could listen to them on my camping-essential iPhone. Thanks to her I've been journeying every night out in the fields, next to a big oak tree, under the moon. Last night I asked for guidance about my choice of subjects here. I got confirmation of two of the three intervalometer cameras and a need for correction on the third.

I've come to think of shamanic journies as a way of connecting with something you already know but are perhaps too distracted to realize or have or temporarily forgotten. My realization last night was that the images that come out of my photography must "make me cry". Not literally perhaps but they should be beautiful and poetic and striking enough that I derive optic pleasure from seeing them over and over. While the picture of my camp would have shown the beauty of the changing forest light, It would have also shown me on latrine duty. Not especially poetic. Instead I found an area similar to the photo above that feels like a natural cathedral. I'm not one for man-made cathedrals, it's here in nature where feel a connection to the spirituality of life. The wisdom in shooting the passage of time in such a moving location is surely something I already knew, it just took a shamanic journey to help me realize it.

And now, if you'll excuse me, a solar shower awaits.

Time in the Woods - Day 3

2009-09-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

I like the name "Time in the Woods" for whatever series of photographs come out of this adventure. I took several classes with Todd Hido when I was living in the Bay Area and one of the many things I came away with was to be direct and non-pretentious when titling work. A simple title leaves the work more open to interpretation too. Maybe that's another reason my Viet Nam jungle shoot didn't work for me. Shooting "green" in a jungle that had been sprayed with agent "orange" and calling the series "Complimentary Colors" is def clever, but I didn't come up with it myself. Using it always felt less than authentic. One reason why I switched careers from hi-tech marketing to art was to have more authenticity in my life. Art works best when it has conceptual authenticity; each "touch point" in the work should convey a consiatent and visually compelling message about the person making it as well as about the subject. Easier said than done of course...

Ah, the sun is shining thru my forest canopy for the first time in two days. No rain last night but cloudy this morning and still a bit damp. Feels like the weather is slowly changing for the better.

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had three 35mm cameras on intervalometers, each automatically taking one shot every 20 minutes and thus exposing two rolls of film every 24 hours. In reponse to all the cards and letters from my fan base, I want to say a bit more about this technique. The exposure is the same throughout the day so as to allow you to better see changes in the light; from dawn, throughout the day, dusk and then the black of night. Once the film is developed I scan each roll and create a frame-by-frame live-action animation. Each 24-hour day will comprise 12 seconds of on-screen time. If I stay here for the planned 10 days, and if all the film turns out as I hope, I'll have a two-minute movie. Or rather three two-minute movies, one from each camera, which I would present next to one another as a triptik. It's a bit like the Wallace and Gromit guy who spends all day making subtle changes to his clay figures to create six seconds of on-screen movement. Except I'll bet he has a place to take a shower.

Exciting stuff, but you still haven't told me in which direction the cameras are pointed. OK Mr Brass Tacks, one is pointed straight up to capture the swaying of the trees in the wind. One is in my camp and pointed out to capture the changing light at ground level as well as to record my presence in the woods. The third camera moves each day and shoots close-ups of leaves or plants. I point my 4x5 in the same direction as that third camera and create a single all-day exposure of the same close-up scene. Those all-day exposures will be made into conventional prints.

Gosh, that sounds like a lot of work to scan all those rolls of film and then animate them! Why not just use video cameras at a low frame-rate for the same effect? Well, image quality is one reason. Scanned 35mm film is waaay above HD resolution and that gives me the flexibility to make stills as desired. Most importantly tho I "see" with the eye of a still camera, not video. Each movie is really just a single shot over time. Yes there is movement but that's not the objective, capturing time is. A still camera is all about time -- time is one of only two variables available in a film camera to expose an image. A video camera uses a frame rate and aperture to create it's
images...it's just doesn't have the same conceptual authenticity. Nor the same opportunity to be so obsessive.

And now, it's time to start moving cameras for tomorrow's shoot.

The Woods - Day 2

2009-09-07T18:11:00.000-07:00

There's a reason why "rain" rhymes with "pain". I knew it was coming, after all these woods aren't green because of Sherman-Williams. The rain started last night and I was fairly well prepared, tho did have to cover the cameras in the middle of the night. Today is overcast and warm, occasional light showers, nothing this Brooklyn boy can't handle. I'm still happy and grateful for the opportunity to be here.

When I was at Esalen last year, one of the things that was so magical was the lack of distractions. No cell service, minimal Internet, no newspapers, and geographic isolation. The volume of the world outside was turned way down and in it's place came more appreciation for my surroundings and a greater self-awareness.

With the exception of blogging I'm doing the same here -- no phone calls, no music, minimal email (outgoing only), a journal to write in, nothing to read, and no talking. The lack of distractionss here helps me appreciate nature's rhythms and it's energetic range, from calm stillness to windy frenetic. Right now in the wake of the rain it's totally still and quiet.

I'm using five cameras for this project, four of which are shooting not just the woods but rather time in the woods. I thought a lot about what and how to shoot over the past few weeks. One of my most influential reads (thanks to Alec Soth's blog) was a chapter called "Choosing a Subject" from "On Being a Photographer" by David Hurn and Bill Jay. Here's my big take-away:

"The photographer must have intense curiousity, not just a passing visual interest, in the theme of the pictures. This curiousity leads to intense exination, reading, talking, research and many, many failed attempts over a long period of time."

I've been challenged by time ever since I've been an adult. I think it has to do with a desire to evade my own mortality. I have so much that I want to accomplish in life that I feel like I need three lifetimes to do it all. Reading that chapter made me want to blend my love of nature with my temporal nemesis. Plus it's cool to use the word "temporal" in a meaningful way.

There's something about being out here with nothing else to do but capture time's passage that slows it down for me. I take that as a temporary temporal triumph. My three 35mm cameras use an intervalometer to capture the day in 20-mInute slices, automatically exposing two rolls of film every 24 hours. (This is the same technique that I used for my "39 minutes" project.) The shutter on my large format camera is open for 24 hours at a time, capturing an entire day on one sheet of 4x5 film.

We only acknowledge the passage of time by the change in ourselves or
our surroundings. Cool an onbject down to absolute zero, where even molecular activity stops, and time, as it relates to that object, stops. Out here in the woods It must be a similar lack of significant change that slows time. In any case, If the film comes out the way I envision it, I will have two ways of sharing the poetic beauty in the slow-paced daily rhythms of nature.

The Woods - Day 1

2009-09-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

I love bring in the woods. I've been trying to do this project for a year now -- 10 days of camping out alone, staying silent, immersing myself in an environmemt where I feel at home, and using my photography to reconnect with Mom Nature.

I was in Viet Nam last summer, photographing the jungle that had been sprayed with Agent Orange during the war and was only recently growing back. That sounds like a cool project, I even had a cool for it (Complementary Colors) but i realized when i came back that the green of Viet Nam is not an authentic artistic expression for me. I have no deeper connection to Viet Nam and to the war than any other American, less in fact as I know no one who even served there.

I have a great connection to the woods of Western Pennsylvania; I grew up here. I spent many days playing silently in the woods alone, building forts, categorizing plants, catching bugs and even taking pictures. I'm in Ligonier now, about an hour east of Pittsburgh, staying on the family property of my best friend John "JT" Tippins. My parents lived in Ligonier for about 10 years when I was in my 20's and I've been to this property several times, so although it's familiar I'm still struck by it's beauty and peacefulness. It's not wilderness (as the neighbor's dog continues to remind me) but it is more familiar than wilderness and more authentic to the kind of visual poetry that runs deep inside of me.

On a practical note, I'm finding it difficut to stay silent, even tho I'm alone. I'm used to thinking out loud. Staying silent makes me feel like I'm going to burst. However the peacefulness it brings to me is unexpectantly medative and helps me to connect with the subtle beauty of this place. I also can't stop thinking what a great place this would be to have sex. Being in the woods makes me hornier than usual, brings out some sort of Cave Man thing apparently. About the only time I stop thinkiing about sex is when I'm shooting. So since I didn't pack in any Salt Peter, I think I'm going to be taking a lot of pictures over the next ten days.

Lampyridae

2009-08-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

is a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera, commonly known as fireflies. This is one of the three images I got from my shoot last month in Pittsburgh. I accidently double-exposed one image with a portrait. (Sometimes double exposures create magic but not that time.) The other two need to be scanned on a better Imacon than mine because they are so dark. I love the ambiance of this image, the suggestion of something mysterious and from another time.

That's good, cause this image is in fact about time. It was the result of a two-hour exposure with a 4x5 camera; the fireflies are the little green specs and lines. This is one of those photos that doesn't at all work on a small scale, click it to see a larger version that shows the chaotic beauty of their movement. And from a conceptual standpoint, I like how it fits as part of a series I've been sporatically working on called "decisions". The series has to do with being happy about time spent on whatever path you find yourself, instead of stressing as to whether you're on the "right" one. I mean, we can never know whether we're on the "right" one, so why is it so hard sometimes to appreciate things for what they are?

My current path has me back in Pittsburgh again, helping my Dad move from his house into an assisted living apartment. Actually he has made one move into a temporary apartment and will soon make another into his permanent one. In the meantime I'm dealing with the furnishings, accessories and memorabilia from a 3-bedroom house that don't fit into a 1-bedroom apartment. I'm glad that I have the flexible schedule that allows me to help him and since I'm staying in his comfortable suburban house while emptying it out, it's a nice break from the cement and sirens of Bushwick. An empty house presents some interesting photo ops and a new city makes it easier to see with fresh eyes.

The fireflies are almost all gone for this year, but I'm also looking forward to spending a week in the woods while I'm here to shoot green. Most people's eyelids flutter and they start tapping their watch when I tell them about that, but to me there's nothing better than a week alone in the woods taking pictures. More about that in a future post. For now, I gotta say that looking forward to the prospect of a month in Pittsburgh selling knick-knacks from a house in a retirement community as opposed to enjoying the sultry socializing of a languid New York summer, well, that sounds like progress on the "enjoying the ride" crusade to me.

Magical

2009-07-09T21:42:00.000-07:00

I'm out in the woods in Pittsburgh, photographing fireflies. I've set up my 4x5 and am doing three hour-long exposures tonight. The images may come out as black as the picture above but it is a magical experience nonetheless, sitting here alone in the dark, the trees silhouetted against the sky, the quiet sound of crickets and the occasional reminder of humanity by means of a train whistle or radio blasting from a passing car. The fireflies are an earthly reflection of the starlight above me, and yet are also reminders of how our planet teems with life. It's amazing the simple beauty we miss out on by living our daily routine inside of dwellings which are usually so distanced from nature.

I'm only in Pittsburgh for one more night and suspect firefly season will be gone by the time I next get into the woods. So my goal in doing this is not to create a full series in two nights but rather to use my work to simply notice the passage of time while I am more connected to nature. My 39 minutes project (a visual diary of 2006) was a way for me to connect with the high and lowlights of that year, marked out every day in 39 minute intervals. These firefly images compress an hour into a single visual and mark out time in a different way.

As I've become more focused in my pursuit of photography over the past few years, the two themes of sexuality and time have emerged. I suppose long exposures of fireflies comprise the intersection of those two things as the fireflies light themselves up to attract mates, but I'm significantly more interested in human sexuality than firefly. My 40 over forty series does however live at that intersection as it's about the impact of aging on female (human female) sexuality. I never thought one day "I'm going to shoot a project that lies at the intersection of my two obsessions" but rather was just drawn to it naturally and later get to figure out why. It's nice that my photographic attractions are conceptually consistent as it gives me more confidence to follow my intuition and not overthink things.

Well, a beautiful full moon is coming up and will soon wash so much light over my scene as to overshadow my lightening bugs. One magic replaces another.

Next?

2009-04-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

Wow.

I've been back in New York for three weeks now and have managed to
keep my Esalen glow legit, although the challenges of daily life have
dimmed it a bit I admit.

But still...what a transcendent month!

My time there was a potent combination of a location overflowing with
physical beauty and spiritual power, a supportive community of like-
minded people, a lack of outside distractions and a workshop that's
all about helping you reach your full potential as a human being.

I was especially surprised about the effect of being largely cut off
from the outside world. There was no cell phone reception at Esalen,
limited Internet access and only 3 (lightly read) newspapers for 300
people. I likened this lack of distractions to a falling water level
in a stream; as the water level drops you start exposing rocks that
were previously hidden. This quiet allowed me to pay better attention
to what was going on around, and inside of, me.

In one month I was able to explore issues of self, relationship,
career and family. It was a priceless opportunity to look inward. Now
the much bigger challenge is to integrate what I found into my daily
life. From that perspective I was glad to leave; I've uncovered more
than enough issues for now. But I so miss the beauty of Esalen and the
beauty of all the wonderful friends I made there. It was the first
time since college that I've lived in a community that was as fun as
it was supportive. I'm used to living alone and although the immersion
took some getting used to, what I miss most about Esalen are the
friends I made there.

So what is next? I need to decide whether to use this watershed event
to make some fundamental changes in my life or to continue down the
familiar and more comfortable path that thus far hasn't gotten me
where I want to go. I have made some changes already, and feel good
about that, but they were low hanging fruit. Time to pull out the
ladder and get climbing.

Let the light catch you

2009-03-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

Another issue I was exploring during my month as Esalen was how to be more successful with my art. Even though I currently have "horizon" on display at Humboldt State University and have been reasonably successful getting that series out into the world, the "Portrait" skin grids have been largely met with indifference. I haven't given up, nor have I done a full marketing launch of them, but with the exception of the PhotoNow 2008 show at Center for Photography at Woodstock the reception thusfar has been lackluster.

OK, so what? Art isn't about marketing, it's about a personal vision. And I'm still as excited about the conceptual underpinnings of "portrait" as when I started. My issue is that they were a ton of work to shoot, a ton of work to prepare, a ton of work to make display-ready...and very expensive every step of the way. The cost and time required to experiment with them has been a major inhibitor in pushing the series forward.

So with this angst as the backdrop I took a shamanic journey to seek the answer to the question "How can I be more successful with my art?" In this case I journeyed to the upper world (one of the three shamanic realms, all populated with benevolent spirits) and met up with my real-world friend Meg, whose spirit acts as my companion in the upper world, and my teacher, whose spirit directs me toward the answers I seek. In this case he led me to the edge of the cloud-like environment where I always meet him, pointed to the abyss below and encouraged me to leap. Upon seeing my fear and hesitation he replied with "Let the light catch you." Yes it's another variant on "leap and the net will appear", yet my phrase was more poetic and not one I had ever heard before. And as a photographer it obviously has special meaning to me.

The notion of letting go and giving into "the light" came up again the following week. One of our class exercises was to pick a card at random from a deck of "cloud cards" that our shaman instructors Nan and David had created. We were then asked to interperate and share the meaning of the card we had drawn. My selection may have been a coincidence, but whatever encourages introspection and analysis is valid in my book.

My take-away is that I'm probably trying too hard with "portrait". Overworked work lacks a freshness that comes from a more visceral approach. Of course I knew that already, but the magic of my month at Esalen was how things that I already knew kept coming back to me in ways that more impactful and more likely to result in a change in my behavior.

Call it spirits, leprechauns, divine inspiration or dumb luck, what matters are the results.

Brussel Sprouts

2009-03-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

You can fry them, sauté them, blacken, batter dip, or marinade, but
there's no mistaking the horrific taste of the brussel sprout.
Yesterday I was assigned the thoroughly unpleasant task of preparing the little sour balls for lunch.

Whenever I share my revulsion with my brussel sprout loving friends
(almost an oxymoron) I inevitably get the "Have you ever had them _____ ?" line. The answer is always "Yes, I have" and "Yes, I still hate them." I'm amazed that my mother never made us eat them, she was so big on other culinary attrocities like calves liver or brewer's yeast orange juice "shakes".

Anyway, people here at Esalen eat the nasty greenies like crazy. Yes, I do want to be of more service to the world, just don't breathe on me after I've served them to you.

I've never believed that the universe gives you exactly what you need when you need it, but I have to say that after a month here I am starting to give the idea more credence. With the exception of this month and part of my time in Viet Nam, I've always wondered if I'm on the best possible path. I spend enormous time and energy researching all potential choices, weighing the pros and cons of each. Once I've made a decision I then have to deal with the insecurities and anxiousness that comes from wondering whether my chosen path is in fact the best one.

An alternative is to just choose one, then be quiet and open enough to receive the learning from whatever happens along the way. Case in point are two people with whom I had close contact the past three weeks, both of whom are substance abusers. One of the issues in my life that I've come here to work on is my lack of discipline. Professionally and personally I often succumb to the temptation of the moment instead of choosing the initially less gratifying path that is ultimately more supportive of me living up to my full potential. It's
not substance abuse, but I recognized the same feeling of avoidance with these two people as I feel when I choose to surf internet porn instead of promoting my work.

These two people were squarely in my face, almost as if ordered up by my healing shaman spirits, except of course that I don't believe in spirits. In addition to my sadness for their condition, I was deeply disturbed by the parts of myself i saw in both of them. Both people are bright, compassionate, talented and loving. Both are also wasting their life's potential. I tried to tell them that, but both were too far gone to listen. If I view my encounters under my old way of thinking, I would consider myself unlucky to have my time here so disturbed. Instead I'm grateful for how the encounter has allowed me to see myself. I now wonder if I have the courage and the strength to use what I saw to help me realize my full potential. I hope so. Just as long as a fully realized life still allows for a healthy avoidance of brussel sprouts.

Intent

2009-03-03T22:46:00.001-08:00

My dear friend Miya Ando Stanoff is a talented artist who takes raw steel and transforms it into transcendently beautiful abstract metal canvases. Her work is strong with intent; she wants each piece to offer an opportunity for contemplation and introspection.

Shamanism is also rich with intent and I find the process similar to what I imagine Miya experiences. Shaman take mental "journies" to the spirit world to enlist the help of benevolent spirits to heal those of us in the ordinary world. I come to shamanism as a great skeptic. I'm an aethiest and think the whole notion of spirit realms and animal guides is a bunch of huey. So how can I effectively practice Shamanism? It comes down to intent and my belief that people who need help respond positively to others whose intent is to heal. Shawmen only heal those for whom they have permission to heal, this partnership creates the opportunity for an exchange of intents and corresponding adjustment in attitudes. The simple act of one human being reaching out to help another is powerful with purpose and intent. If the intent is honorable, I believe the receipent will be positively affected.

One could then imagine that healing occurs anywhere intent is positive, and I think that's true. My brother is a surgeon and I believe he approaches his work with similar intent. However his range of healing is narrow and deep; he's not in the business of stitching the rips in our psyche.

Shawnen aren't psychologists either but rather generalized caregivers with an intent to help. What I'm surprised about is the effect of that positive intent on the caregiver. I mentioned my self-serving feelings about my art in a previous post. What I didn't mention was how that behavior has spilled over from my art into my personal life and my dealings with friends. I find that a lot more bothersome than spending a year making art that no one sees. I'm hoping that time spent helping others will indeed heal the healer too.

To Serve Man

2009-02-28T12:46:00.001-08:00

No, not like on that Twilight Zone episode but rather in a dining hall. For me the "work" part of being a Work Scholar at Esalen means kitchen duty. It's generally a good time, working with fun people, being around beautiful fresh produce, being able to sample all the good food, listening to music. And cutting all the beautiful produce has even given me fodder for a new photo series.

However, like any job there are drudge aspects to the repetitive tasks and stressful aspects to getting everything ready in time. The latter reminds me of a scene from Shakespeare in Love, when the actors backstage talk about how somehow, miracliously, the show does indeed go on despite whatever comes it's way. The Esalen kitchen is very well run and when the unexpected happens it responds dynamically, like an organism responding to changes in it's environment. I've always been interested in organizational behavior and the impact of individual decision-making on the organization's efficaciousness. There is a loose-tight aspect to the kitchen's organization -- individual chefs are given lots of latitude with each meal, so long as they stay within budgetary and dietary guidelines. This is similar to the structure of the software companies I've worked where the product managers play a role equivalent to the chef, albeit less hands-on. As a result the success of each meal, and of each software app, tend to be highly dependent on the chef's vision and his/her ability to marshall the required resources to make it happen.

As a cog in that machine, I find the drugery more tolerable when I keep the above mantra of service in my mind. I came here to steer my life in the direction of being of more service and while I want my service to offer significantly more leverage than slicing vegetables, for right now it's an excellent way to reorient my attitudes. I like the feeling of satisfaction that comes from it and need to figure out how to achieve that same feeling in my New York life.

Expanding Horizons

2009-02-23T23:07:00.001-08:00

I have to rant for a minute. This blog is not at all a "photography blog" like Amy Stein's or Jörg Colberg's. I'm not likely to talk about the latest photo show I attended or the hip work of some Jen Bekman protege. I find some element of inspiration in all that and appreciate reading about it...up to a point. But after a while it all gets so insular and elitest as to be sickening. I mean, get a life! Art is about ideas and if all we do is go around sniffing one another's butts, the end product comes out smelling the same.

My biggest challenge is to create compelling visuals about a topic that I find intriguing and important. Alec Soth once recommended (and not on his blog...) that photographers should imagine they are creating work for their own personal museum and that only they have the key. You hope that other people will get something meaningful from seeing it, but far more important is to make work that continues to draw you back, continues to offer ideas or pose questions each time you look at it. That's hard. That's rare.

Where do such ideas come from? I think they're more likely to come from doing something important in the world than in reading about the latest hot Chelsea show. Gaining visibility in the art world is definitely helped by networking and self-promotion, but I find it all so nauseauting. I'd rather spend my time expanding my personal horizons and figuring out how to share my discoveries frustrations questions and mysteries through compelling visuals. And that's another reason why I'm taking a month to learn about Shamanism, so I can incorporate some of that ancient wisdom into my own work and revisit some of the important questions it brings up.

OK, rant over.

Four Waters

2009-02-20T12:14:00.000-08:00

This is a photo of Esalen's baths, a clothing-optional facility fed by natural hot springs. You soak in the sulfur-infused water while looking up at the stars and listening to the waves crash below you. It's incredibly peaceful and spiritually powerful. Big Sur used to be inhabited by the Esalen Indians and for thousands of years they used these hot sulfur waters for healing.

I enjoy the way in which clothing-optional hot tubs break down
barriers between people and present a shared experience that engenders trust and respect for diversity. I've found that ease of connection woefully lacking from my interaction with most people in New York City. And of course I also love looking at bodies -- I find the human form beautiful, even when it strays from what Hollywood and Madison Avenue ideals.

As special as the baths are, they would be incomplete without the other three waters of Esalen -- the ocean crashing below you, the fresh water for drinking that flows out of the Ventana wilderness, and the rain which sustains the ecosystem and replenishes the hot springs.

Shaman revere the elements as fundamental forces in our world that sustain our lives. Our shared experiences with the elements ties together all living things and allows us to connect with our ancestors as well. The four waters of Esalen create a strong bond that's essential to its powerful spirituality.

Esalen

2009-02-17T10:46:00.002-08:00

I'm spending the next month at Esalen Institute, a spiritual retreat center located right on the California coast, about 20 miles south of Big Sur. It's a pristine and isolated place, with only a few scattered homes to the north and south and the Ventana Wilderness to the East. The facilities are rustic but homey, with great locally-grown food and natural hot springs that flow into tubs perched 150' above the surf.

There's an energy about Big Sur, and Esalen in particular, that I find spiritual and grounding. It's the most peaceful place I've ever been and a powerful environment for self-discovery. Apart from the magical setting I'm here for a workshop on Shamanism. The idea was planted in my head when I was here for a one-week workshop last year and something about it has resonated with me ever since. This Shamanism workshop coincided perfectly with a show opening I attended at Humboldt State University, and since I no longer have Wolfe to care for, I decided to go for it. Had you told me even a year ago that I'd be here doing this I would have thought you crazy.

My desire to bring Shamanism into my life stems from a desire to be of more service to the world. With the exception of the Humboldt show I haven't been exhibiting my photography much recently and so have been feeling very self-indulgent about my career. I think we all want to give back, to make a difference, and using photography to share how I see the world is my way to do that. But if I'm not showing much it all just feels like masturbating in the corner. I suppose I could give back in other ways, manning a soup kitchen or helping at a hospice, but Shamanism's goal of helping others includes a journey of self-discovery. It's that combination that makes it compelling to me.

I start down that path tomorrow, estatic to be here and totally open to wherever it leads me.

thank you Wolfe

2008-11-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

for your sweet and generous spirit, for your comforting motorboat purr, for putting up with an irrepressible terrier for most of your life, for touching so many of my friends, and for being my steadfast companion for 17 1/2 years of my often turbulent life.

Wolfe died peacefully on Monday after a brief illness. In his last few days he had constant human contact including right up until the end, when he passed with his best buddy's face right next to his.

I'll miss you always Wolfe.

A few portraits

2008-08-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

I finally got up enough nerve to look through all my Vietnam photos. Better to not know than to be devastated by 50 rolls of junk. Fortunately, I'm generally pleased. There are so many abstract jungle photos it's hard to tell the great from the mediocre, so I started with the portraits of the boys.

Aù Revôir Vietnam

2008-07-19T18:47:00.001-07:00

I was in Vietnam for almost a month, the longest time I've spent in any foreign country except for a summer in France during college. And in all that time, I'm sorry to say that the place never grew on me.

My favorite moments were meeting and talking to the local artists that Brian hooked me up with, and of course in meeting Dr. Boi. With those people I felt a depth of culture and sophistication of thinking that was thought-provoking and inspiring. I admire the clear-eyed honesty of people like Dung and most of the people I met in the countryside, including the A Luoi girls pictures above. And I did enjoy a few meals that were beautifully prepared and delicious. But for the most part the country is in survival mode. Not surprising I suppose, Vietnam is a third-world country; it just doesn't make for a great vacation.

I was constantly being hassled on the street to buy something, a great deal of the food was unavailable to a vegetarian like myself, the best architecture I saw was left over from French colonial days, the electricity would go out every night for 3-6 hours, the street are a cachonomy of honking, the trains are roach-infested and (at least one time) six hours late, and anything that comes close to a cultural event always has a none-too-subtle political agenda.

Whiney? Perhaps. A tourist could level a great deal of criticism at New York and while likely well-deserved, the city has so much on the other side of the ledger that's it's worth putting up with the rats and filth and the dog-eat-dog attitude of the place.

That being said, the third-world nature of Vietnam and its turbulent past makes great fodder for a project like mine. In much the same way as New York's grit seems to inspire artistic creativity, Vietnam's past and present makes for fertile ground to explore ideas from renewal to repression.

So it seems likely that I'll be back at some point for work. Just not for a vacation.

Phùng Tüu Bôi

2008-07-19T04:04:00.001-07:00

Meet Phùng Tüu Bôi, the driving force behind much of the reforesting around Hué. A botanist by training, "Dr. Boi" (he's not really a doctor, I've just conferred him with an honorary degree) has not only spearheaded replanting in areas devastated by Agent Orange and Napalm during the war, he's also planted green fences around dioxin hot spots to cordon off the area from humans and animals and thus prevent more dioxins from entering the food chain.

Dr Boi is a gentle man with an easy smile and though he claims to be retired, he's the most active retiree I've ever met. His concern extends beyond the land to include the health and welfare of the people living in these war-scarred areas. His next project brings the reforstation effort to everyone's backyard, as he wants to plant fast-growing trees that produce non-edible nuts and harvestable wood to supplement the income of local people. Many people now sell fresh-water fish raised in ponds (bomb craters actually) in their back yards. Industrious yes, however many of these ponds, and the fish that swim in them, have elevated dioxin levels. The fun just never stops.

In our conversation I also learned about four other regions of South Vietnam that were heavily hit with the Agent Orange/Napalm blitzkreig and that are also undergoing significant replanting efforts. If I want to continue with this project and gather enough material for a book, I now know where to look.

In the meantime I'll have the chance to host Dr. Boi in New York in November. As a result of Christie Aschwanden's New York Times article last year, several concerned New Yorkers donated money to Dr. Boi's cause. He'll be coming to town to meet and thank them personally. I will have my photos printed by that time and will work towards staging an exhibition to coincide with his visit.

Hump Day

2008-07-19T03:34:00.001-07:00

Today I feel like I've passed over some hump, past my resistance to the uncertainty, confusion and akwardness of traveling by myself in an unfamiliar country where I don't speak the language.

I'm at a quiet, open-air bar with three other guys (all Vietnamese), a cheesy blinking-light ancestral altar, the smell of rain on hot pavement and my third $1 Heinrken. On the TV is the kind of B-grade movie (dubbed in Vietnamese of course) that would be lifetime employment for the sarcastic commentators of Mystery Science Theatre. The absurdity of this celluloid train wreck is magic though; it transcends all cultural and language barriers and gives the four of us common comic ground.

For the first time in three weeks I finally get the joke. For the first time in three weeks I feel just a bit at home.

Hanoi

2008-07-19T03:32:00.001-07:00

Yes, that is what you think it is. The staff of a very tasty restaurant where I had dinner one night is cleaning onions in the street. If you live and work in the city, daily life spills out onto the street with a seamlessness that I have a hard time getting used to.

The street is living room, dining room, business establishment, workshop, garbage pail, garage and of course kitchen. The only thing it isn't is bedroom as the whole city is literally shuttered at night and everything that was on the street during the day is hauled inside. It makes navigating the twisting streets of the Old Quarter even more difficult at night as the doorknob shop with the birdcages that's next to the combination mystery meat "pho" stand and gas station are all metal shutters. All you're left with are street names that change mid-way in the block.

Unlike Boston, Hanoi actually labels BOTH streets at an intersection. Despite the unfamiliar names and changing landmarks, it was easier finding my way around in Hanoi than in the city that did for GPS driving directions what San Francisco did for Rice-A-Roni.

Oh, and those green onions? They wete fantastic.

I knew I should have taken a left turn at Thôn Ke

2008-07-06T22:11:00.001-07:00

Apologies to Bugs Bunny for the title but it seems appropriate. Talk about getting away from it all, I didn't see a single westerner all week. Meals for both Dung and myself were $3 (including two beers each) and the room we stayed in one night was a big splurge at $12 because it had A/C. It was all going great until we ran into the strong arm of Communism.

Instead of staying on Highway 9 (the main road) to Dông Hà, I wanted to take a shortcut via an unmarked road. We stopped at the intersection with Highway 9 at what we thought was the road and I pulled out my Viet Nam map to check. A roadside convention quickly formed of local experts, all curious to know where the Westerner was going and, seemingly, how they could help. The map apparently made me look like Indiana Jones and everyone wanted a starring role, including the one-armed, two-toothed old man who reeked of whiskey at 9 am (sorry, no picture, clearly wasn't thinking...).

We learned that the road was indeed our sought-after shortcut and that it follows the Quang Tri river towards Bâ Long and then on to Quang Tri. The "but" was that the nicely paved road quickly turned into dirt and then required three river crossings of us and the scooter in a wooden long boat to get there. Now it really was sounding like Indy and the Temple of Dung so my eyes lit up and I said let's go for it. Dung was game so I folded up the map and off we went.

The first family we met was none too friendly, but the teen we ran into next became much more amenable when we offered him some chewy sesame squares that were to comprise my breakfast. We then met three kids playing in the Quang Tri river and I got a chance to wade into blissful cool water while shooting them. Onward and we stopped at a house with a great pimpled-face teen and a mute 12-year-old, both of whom had that powerful innocence that I've been seeking out this whole trip. I was happier than a water buffalo in mud, getting ready to shoot them both, when the local heat showed up.

If you know me you know that I have an issue with cops (CHP excepted) because they so frequently abuse their power. This guy was throwing his weight around big time and, according to Dung, was a "stupid hard-talking Communist." I had to restrain myself from getting into a pissing contest with him but nonetheless made it very clear that I was a tourist with no evil capitalist agenda. But as soon as he found out that I was an American it was game over and he forced us to turn around. I didn't want to push it for fear of getting Dung into trouble and had no desire to bribe anyone so unsavory, so we turned around. Apparently one of our map "helpers" had squealed and the Commies were on to us almost as soon as we turned down the road. Dung is a calm guy but for the first time ever he was furious. He could only talk about how much be hated Communism and how he wanted to move out of Viet Nam as soon as his kids had finished school.

The event put a definite pallor over the rest of our day and I could tell that Dung had gotten gun-shy about approaching anyone else. This was my last day shooting and I wasn't about to let some so-and-so end this part of my trip on such a low note. I passed on a DMZ tour in favor of searching for more teens, and just as I was about to give up I spotted a young guy walking his bike next to an older man. We stopped, Dung did his magic and I got a shot of the boy and old man together that I think will be the killer portrait for the whole series.

I've been working to let go of my need to control the elements of my life, to think of every turn in the road as just the perfect thing, no matter what the outcome. In this case it seems like it was.

A warm 7-Up in Laos

2008-07-06T22:10:00.000-07:00

I took advantage of my proximity to Lao Bao, one of the few border crossing areas between Viet Nam and Laos, to add another visa to my somewhat barren passport. I only had time to visit Houayloua, the first town across the Laotian border.

Although I've heard great things about Laos, this particular village was dramatically poorer and considerably less well-kept than similar villages in Viet Nam. I wandered the main street (the only paved road) and some back roads into the fields and was apalled by just how much trash there was everywhere, including in people's front yards. The squalor was even more striking because of the grandeur of the town's mountain setting. I suppose you could see the same in parts of some towns in the US, but Houayloua is on a major border crossing, it's not some backwater moonshine depot. I've been told that not all of Laos is this way, but every village I visited in Viet Nam -- bigger or smaller -- was considerably cleaner, with nicer stores and a higher quality of goods at the markets.

I stopped by a store in an unsuccesful search for bottled water (it's everywhere in Viet Nam) and chose warm 7-Up instead, the first western food or drink I've had the whole trip. The taste was like hearing a familiar song on the radio; it made my short visit to Laos seem just a bit less foreign.

Hope on the Ho Chi Minh Highway

2008-07-06T00:32:00.000-07:00

I spent this past week on the Ho Chi Minh Highway ("DHCM" at the top of the mile marker above), starting at A Luoi and heading north to Khe Sanh. The highway itself runs north to south nearly the entire western length of the country, from Hanoi down to Saigon.

During the war and before it was paved, the Ho Chi Minh Trail served as a vital supply line in support of Communist troops in Southern Vietnam. As such it was a prime target and by early 1965 the US Air Force was flying 300 bombing raids over the trail every day, using a combination of napalm, defoliants and carpet-bombing B-52s. These raids slowed supply lines along the trail but did not disrupt them all together, thanks to the ingenuity and persistence of the North Vietnamese.

I was interested in photographing the generation of young boys who are growing up in such a war-scarred region, wanting to capture the human equivalent to the reforestation I saw last week. Many of the young men I met had fathers who served in the war at their age or just a bit older. Several of them had lost their father to the war, some had lost their mother too.

The area is mountainous and beautiful, only partially replanted but not so severly defoliated as along Highway 49 that I shot last week. There are many areas of virgin land that truly deserve to be called jungle - dense, diverse and incredibly green.

Our daily routine consisted of me of the back of Dung's motorbike (loaded to the gills with equipment, water and film) slowly heading north, looking for teenage boys. Often we didn't have to look; my presence generated a chorus of "Hello!" wherever we went. Once we saw someone of appropriate age we'd stop and Dung would go into his routine, sometimes offering water, sometimes cigarettes, sometimes a bit of food and always a lot of talk. I'd shoot a picture first with my digital camera with the effect of wowing these kids into thinking I was some kind of magician. Their digital pose was often smiley and a bit silly, a marked contrast to when I pulled out my big Pentax 67 and they got quiet and serious. That camera has a presence that even these rarely-photographed kids picked up on.

I'd take just a few shots, sometimes of each kid alone, sometimes of them with another teenage friend. The boys were always either alone or with other boys. Vietnamese society is very gender segregated and only once did I see the kind of co-ed groupings of friends that is so common in the West. I didn't see a single boy/girl couple the entire week.

After I got the shot Dung was inclined to linger for another cigarette or more talk; I usually had to push him to wrap things up and keep moving. Even in the wilds of Viet Nam you can take the boy out of New York but never New York out of the boy. So I climbed on the back of the bike and it was off to find the next.

Although I pushed to get 20 shots a day, by the time I reached about 15 in the late afternoon Dung was clearly anxious to call it a day. It was good work and nice to feel a sense of human renewal in an area that had been so devasted during the war. I'm anxious about whether the portraits captured any of that tentative sense of hope that I felt. Unfortunately shooting film and with no labs here that I would trust with the processing, I'll just to wait till I get back.

Anything to get the shot

2008-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

What did I just say about not fully absorbing that creedo? Well how about staying with friends of Dung's in A Luoi and having to share the shitter with Arnold here?

Don't get me wrong, I like pigs and even though I miss the taste of sausage more than any other meat, I think they instinctively understand that I no longer have no dibs on their ribs. But when it comes to shared bathroom privledges, I do prefer a separation of pork and pie.

The people who are hosting us are gracious beyond belief, they serve great meals and even got us out of a little hot water with the local police. However this is the country and their one and only hole in the ground is in the pig pen. OK there is a partial wall so Wilbur can't actually come visit while you're squatting, but he and all his porcine buddies are right next door, squealing and snorting away.

Again, i like pigs -- they're cute, they're intelligent, they wag their curly tails like a dog when they're happy and they really don't smell all that bad. It's just their sense of privacy that stinks.

Can talk the hind leg off a coodie

2008-07-03T05:27:00.000-07:00

That#39;s an expression my grandmother used to describe someone with loquatious talents. That certainly applies to my guide Dung (pronounced "Young") who is able to engage anyone in passionate conversation. I'm into the second half of this project, traveling the Ho Chi Minh Highway shooting portraits of adolescent boys. Dung has been invaluable in helping me recruit kids and in making them feel comfortable, although I had to reiterate my request about a dozen times before he finally understood what I wanted. I didn't even attempt the "why". In his defense, taking pictures of teenage boys is not exactly a common activity for visitors to this area.

We've had the best luck approaching parents and first getting their permission, after being invited in for tea or water of course. Unlike New York, everyone here is happy and gracious about being interrupted by surprise visitors, and especially by a Westerner I would guess. Approaching boys in a group larger than three usually doesn't work; not only are they less likely to acquiesce, but their pose changes to one of false bravado when their friends are looking on. We came across a soccer game of 16-year-olds this afternoon that fed my fantasies of coming away with a Vietnamese adolescent version of Rienke Djestra's bullfighters. But when they finished their game and I started to gesture towards them with my camera, they scattered like mice. Afterwards I kicked myself that I didn't think about outright bribery; I haven't fully absorbed the "anything to get the shot" creedo.

When it does work, the kids here in the countryside have a vulnerability that makes for powerful portraits. This area is too poor for many people to own cameras, so these boys have almost no history of being told to smile when they pose; instead they're naturally authentic and serious. Their innocent soulfulness is a great counterpoint to my disquieting experiences of shooting in the jungle last week.

Last laugh

2008-06-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

Well actually the fish did as I refused to eat him and had to endure his Cheshire smile my whole meal. I've gone from beimg a pesco-veg to a full veg while in Vietnam cause the quality of the fish in all but the very best restaurants (or sidewalk vendors) is suspect.

This guy came from the streams around La Luoi, and while the Agent Orange used to defoliate that area during the war breaks down fairly quickly, the dioxins it was contaminated with have a 50-year half life. Although the denuding effects of Agent Orange are comparatively easy to correct through replanting, the dioxins are in the soil - and thus in the food chain - will be wrecking havoc for a long time.

Christie Aschwanden brought the issue to my attention through an article she wrote for the New York Times last year. With her help I got in touch with Phung Tuu Boi, a Vietnamese biologist in Hanoi who has done great work to limit the villagers' exposure to the most heavily contaminated areas. Mr. Boi has planted trees that grow to form natural fences around many of what would be superfund sites in the US. These trees both limit access to the area and produce a nut that can be harvested to make soap. The dioxins are still in the ground but at least they aren't getting into the local people's diet.

Whether or not my piscine buddy was contaminated I'll never know, but I figure that tofu and rice are safer alternatives. Plus they don't give me any 'tude.

Too hot for mosquitos

2008-06-28T07:16:00.001-07:00

And certainly too hot to be prowling the jungles of Vietnam to shoot green. I used to think I liked hot weather but I've never spent fourteen continuous hours sweating either. The jungle is beautiful to be sure, or at least that part of it that has been replanted and grown back enough after the effects of agent orange to be called jungle.

I'm shooting on Highway 49 between Hué and A Luoi, about 50 miles south of the (former) DMZ and 25 miles east of the border with Laos. Thanks to its proximity to those heavily contested areas, these hills were home to numerous US bases and airstrips during the American War, as it's called here. As a result the entire area was defoliated with Agent Orange to deny any cover to north Vietnamese camps or their anti-aircraft batteries. Agent Orange killed everything; it's hard to imagine this lush area as dead as the surface of the moon. And once dead, it takes almost a hundred years for the jungle to regrow. Fortunate the Vietnamese have done an amazing job cleaning up the mess we made by replanting thousands of square miles with trees and thus accelerating the recreation of a jungle ecosystem. And capitalistic as they are, the trees they chose (mostly eucalyptus) can be harvested for paper within eight years of planting.

I used to spend the endless days of summers as a kid playing in the woods and steams behind my house in search of creepy crawlers and enjoying the sounds and solitude of nature. Well the bugs are certainly here, just about five times as large and a lot meaner than in Pennsylvania. But there's something disquieting about the woods/jungle here. While any military equipment has long since been scavenged, the B-52 bomb craters, foxholes and tank roads give the place a subtle errie feeling. It's disquieting in a way that leaves me feeling nervous and buzzy, despite a horrifying lack of caffeine. I had to take a lot of pictures of myself to get even this one where I don't look like hell. This feels nothing like play.

Food, Pho, Bun

2008-06-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

How and what a people eat says a lot about who they are. I'm used to western traditions of eating out where everyone has their own plate and sharing is rare except when it comes to dessert. Although you're all gathered together around the table, your meal is separate, your experience more individual.

Here, as in much of Asia, sharing is common, and not just sharing dishes "family style" as in the southern US, but a communal eating experience where everyone shares all the dishes and serves themselves using the same utensils they eat with. Yes, it's unsanitary but it's very human and I like it...so long as your dinner guests don't have hepatitis. (Realize this is coming from a man who wraps his clothes in plastic and sterilizes his dishes when he washes them.)

It's difficult to get a lot of insight into a culture when you don't speak the language, but based on the time I've spent with locals so far, the Vietnamese people are as sharing of assistance and money as they are of food. The curmudgeon's view is that's the communism talking, the more enlightened view is that when life is hard people are more willing to help one another. Counterintuitive at first, but if you're rich you can afford to be independent; if you're poor you and your neighbor need one other.

Saigon

2008-06-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) reminds me of Queens with scotters, except there might be more people here who speak English. It's a no-
nonsense city with little elegance, filled with hard working people making a living everyway you can imagine and many ways you can't. The few beggars I saw look like they really need help, crime seems low and most everyone is honest. The food is good but challenging for a vegetarian; I did break down and have chicken pho one night. The poor quality of meat was a disappointing way to break 15 years of pesco vegetarianism. If you can find it, the tofu is much better.

Saigon was less polluted than I was expecting given all the scotters. It had few strange smells, the weather was like summer in New York City, and the pace overall is only slightly less frantic. A great deal of life happens on the streets, especially meals. There are endless street vendors serving great food for pennies, but more than that are all the people who eat their home-cooked meals on the street and even on their scotters. There are few casual street meals in New York, it's all elegant sidewalk tables at restaurants and cafes. Whenever I walk around New York eating I always get strange looks like I'm breaking Section 101 in the Consumption Code that somehow all New Yorkers but myself are aware of. The only rule of consumption in Vietnam seems to be to enjoy.

Even Ho Chi Minh is for sale

2008-06-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

Vietnam feels nothing like the drab communist countries that I'm familiar with. This place is alive with markets, expensive shopping malls, designer stores and (comparatively) expensive restaurants. Of course most of it caters to foreigners, but with China's rising prices and shortage of skilled labor, Vietnam is being looked on more and more as the next affordable place to do business.

The business climate here is of interest to my MBA side, but I'm more intrigued by the lingering ghosts of the war. I look into the nameless faces of the young men who drive the cabs or ride their mopeds inches from mine and all I can think about is what it must have been like facing them in the jungle forty years ago.

I'm here to photograph landscape that has been reclaimed from the effects of agent orange. It's a metaphor for the whole country I think; the pain is gone but the scars still remain. Capitalism helps to soothe Vietnam's psyche, but like a replanted jungle it's never what it was originally.

It begins tomorrow

2008-06-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

My trip to Vietnam that is. And my first time in Asia.

Wow, where is all this film going? Well hopefully into my new
waterproof backpack that Gary ( building super) is delivering to me. I
wonder if he can carry it for me too.

judy

2008-02-17T12:34:00.001-08:00

I photographed Judy on my last trip to San Francisco, continuing to shoot images for this series despite not really being happy with where it's going. I guess as long as you enjoy the process it's OK to not always be so tied to a goal...it's a hard thing for a results-oriented MBA to let go of. I met Nick Nixon at Mass Art last year and talked to him about this project and my lack of clarity around it. He says when he starts a project the endpoint is only about 15% defined in his mind; he just starts shooting and lets it go where it goes. In other words, he trusts himself.

Judy was nude in this shoot and half-way thru I decided to join her. That may seem weird and potentially uncomfortable to a female model alone in her apartment with a stranger, but to Judy's credit she wasn't threatened by it. My shoots are collaborative and making myself a bit more vulnerable helps further an intimacy between myself and my subject.

dianea

2007-09-09T09:32:00.001-07:00

i drove to Ithaca last week to restart my series on women's sexuality and aging. I shot about 20 women last year and stopped because i ran out of money for one, but mostly because i wasn't satisfied with what i was getting. it seemed like i was copying katy grannan instead of following my own voice. that's a problem for me in my work; i get a certain satisfaction from copying what someone else has done, but that's hardly why i decided to become a photographer.

one of the women i met last year but decided not to shoot, regina, lives in la and had gained weight as she went through menopause. she was squeamish about showing her belly in the shots and wanted to cover up with beautiful sarongs and belts and such. i told her it's not a fashion shoot and decided to cut my losses. although the waste of time pissed me off, regina made me realize something important about this project, that what i want to show is how woman transcend the issues in their life, and how their doing so relates to their sexuality. For regina it's her body, for joey it's a sexless marriage, for rebecca it's the current circumstances of her life, for charlotte it's the lack of someone to love, for keren it's her work, for dorrit it's her self-image, for azure it's her disease. we all have issues in our life that challenge us, and as we grow older physical issues become more important. it's similar to matthew barney's ideas of resistance shaping form, but in this case it's how aging - or life - shapes sexuality. the intrigue in each picture comes from the issues each woman facing and how, or if, their sexuality shines through despite it.

i met and shot dianea in ithaca; she was celebrating her last day as a 60-year-old the day we met. she was very gracious to allow me to stay overnight with her and so i hoped to be able to get shots that were more intimate than my previous sessions, which typically run 3-4 hours. dianea seems to not have many hang-ups -- she's a healthy active and beautiful woman in great shape, a published author, a mother and a psychotherapist living a well-adjusted albeit somewhat lonely life. apart from a temporary lack of a partner i couldn't find any significant issue that she was facing, or at least none that she shared with me. the photos, as a result, seem to lack much depth. i need to continue shooting, trust the power that lies in just doing, but for now i'm just as stymied by this series as i was nine months ago.