studies

been reassessing my natural tendencies in composition with inanimate studies.

here are some results.

If Miro and Mondrian birthed a digital photograph in my kitchen.

some sort of Magritian planet

Last night.

Last night, at the Zombie Burlesque. I like the bxw

anonymity

One of the most important functions as artists is to remain anonymous in the scheme of our pervasive bodies of work. This mirrors our reality as human beings in the scheme of time: we are as integrated, as futile as vast as our imagination of infinity. This notion constantly reinforces itself, as I have been embarking on late-night walks through alley ways. I am not interested in any sort of sociological study derived from the trash in alleys, more, I am interested in the anonymity and humility that presents itself in these night time scenes. I am also searching for symbols of deconstructed American identity (ie broken lamp post) and of course, visual irony (trash in the ocean-themed child's pool).

time to blog

took these images over the past few days.

until last week, hadn't picked up the camera due to a full time waitressing job i picked up to give myself the leeway to enjoy photography again.
"yes! a wedding." never thought i'd hear those words enter my thoughts. but alas, i actually enjoyed shooting a wedding, although it was an andrejka wedding, so i guess is its always enjoyable. i found myself shooting for myself during the spare moments of the bus ride out back from the ceremony at pictured rocks--this is where the first image comes from (although i'm tempted to put it up in b&w). i was surprised at my newfound fervor for shooting, as i no longer ever think about my own eye at weddings that i second shoot.

my second wind of shocking inspiration came after this wreched bike accident. motherfucker on the wrong side of the road in the complete dark slams right into me. had to shoot anyways. tired, i forgot most of my gear downtown.

when i went back for it, i couldn't stop shooting.

landscape templates

I noticed that this blog was getting awfully full with party shots. Hence, some landscapes from the past month. I don't show a lot of landscapes because of how easy it is for me to create them. Back at SLC in '03, Joel Sternfeld pointed out to our class the vertical approximately 1/3 through the composition of every one of his landscapes from American Prospects.  I find that my vertical lies about 3/8 through the composition, and that I abide steadfastly to the rule of thirds. These images aren't exactly pioneers in the rugged frontier of radical composition, but they have some good content.

Mackinac Art Museum

It's finally happening. This year, thanks to Dick and Jane Manoogian, Mackinac celebrates the innaugural season of a museum honoring the vast history and current practice of the arts on and about the island. For the opening season, they invited a smattering of island artists to submit pieces to a juried show curated by Mary Ann Wilkinson . Anticipating that they would only select one piece of the three that I submitted, I chose a wide variety of pieces that all somehow could be covered by one statement. God only knows how I was able to sucessfully join all three of these contrasting pieces into a cohesive body, (but if you are interested, you can read it below), but shockingly, they chose all three pieces. Each image will be shown as a lightjet print measuring 40" long. Here are the three that will be shown. Although the date of the opening reception is unclear, it is sometime during July. Check back on my blog or the museum website for further information.

My photographic anthem to Mackinac is ignited by the ironic dialogue between past and present unfolding on this island.  Here, as most places have, has seen a plethora of histories altered and mixed through time’s tilling. It is through this lens that I investigate island residents, unexpected landscapes and unique truth-bending narratives.

Versions of Ojibwe folklore reveres the island as the birthplace of man, as well as the earthly home of creator god Gitchee Manitou. Now, tourist-pilgrims visit the island daily to immerse themselves in historical reenactments-- one-dimensional attempts to revive an obscure utopian time. Like a land of ghosts repeating the same patterns over and over, the island seems a half-empty reminder of what may or may not have happened, once upon a time.  Instead, one finds the energy of what always is, fully intact, growing out of the cracks of our attempts to re-create it. 

Mackinac Island: Early French Fur Trade, War of 1812, Victorian Japonism, Chippewa legend all arriving today. Generations of men who moved invisible glaciers materialize as a replenishing series of eyes. Tour guides sing ever-changing myth to ponchos, tshirts and jackets respectively.  Thick blue trash bags, Varney hotel rooms and the eyebags of summer employees gradually fill. Fake indian paraphernalia rides horseback beside toy rifles the size of shipwrecks. Poets, alcoholics, boy scouts, bugalists, guitarists, politicians, summer cottagers. 

Transient home. Winter.  Life exists through all seasons.

Ode to water on the lens

I had been in front of the computer all day, so I ventured out with my girlfriend to take some pictures late last night. She's asking all these insightful questions about trapping energy in shadows, and awestruck by the snow, while I'll I can do is think about how fucking frustrated I am with the snow flying sideways and hitting the lens.

one more

Some Images From Europe..

This evening

what a beautiful rugged city evening. Dear ones. Rode bikes along the rocky train tracks towards the orange sky and mountains downtown past the dumbfounded security guard. Did not photograph. Fell three times. Decided to stay present. Rode into the train station to see how much the cheapest ticket out of this state was. $60, so decided to stay. Smoked a cigarette outside the rockies game. Rode bikes home and the fall smelled like air. Passed an overly conceptualized art show. Stopped in. Something about newly fabricated satchels designed to look old, while speaking to the ratio of age to artistic reverence. The shadows the hanging leather sacks left on the floor and walls were far more interesting. Talked about passion. Talked about fabrication. Talked about all that is burgeoning. Made spaghetti on the grill. Smoked a bowl. Burned my hand. Ate the spaghetti. Delicious. Listened to Modest Mouse. Talked about the continuity of love. Talked about the concepts of growing alone and growing with someone. Talked about people identifying some of us kids at a young age as "different" and then trying to fill that role our entire lives. Talked about seccumbing. Talked about passion, about Odelia and about moving. Joked about the lingerie. Talked about babies. Talked about age and about predicting the future. Talked about urgency, and the fact that lingerie becomes more risque the older we get. Talked about changing in front of the window despite the high school across the street. Talked about patience, about courtesy and talked about what to wear. 

Kids in the Neighborhood-and an age old question to the answer of "Documentary"

More images following the writing

There is something so inherent in this world that protects us from external influences that we do not need.

It is inherent for human beings to laugh. and it is inherent for human beings to fight.  Why do we build such polar stigmas around these two acts, if when we experience them outside the context of time, as present human beings, we find in those moments that they are made of the same basic energy-release.

When one is completely present with an inherent, sacred respect for life, acts with violent or erratically joyful undertones do not kill nor prescribe the future, rather they present opportunity for energetic renewal.

This energy that keeps us present enough to balance the forces of destruction and creation is the same energy that protects us from those external influences.

The kids that live and play in the neighborhood i reside in in Denver channel this charge and are able to exist fully amongst an environment that has been otherwise categorized as dilapidated.

But I think maybe this is their kingdom, and they aren't aloof to it as exactly how it is. They just see the textures as backdrop for their adventures and those little cardboard tubes I found them with as a way to see me--themselves on the other side of the lens. At least that's what they told me it was about when they were peering vigorously through the tube pressed up against the unfiltered glass and I asked them if that was why they were doing it. They nodded vigorously and pressed their eyes back up to the tube. They coulda been fronting.
So within the first thirty seconds of seeing those kids with those tubes, I remembered the humble beginnings of this little project I had articulated in some half-assed way...Something about the energies of fighting and laughing presenting themselves as blatantly as shadows and highlights. So I slyly asked those kids--"Hey, have you guys ever sword faught?" Immediately I stopped myself in my tracks with a vigorous judgement about teaching kids violence. But I combated that judgement. I told myself that if realized that if they found themselves hurting one another, I could use it as an opportunity to educate them as about handling vigorous energy gracefully-as a good coach would do, and not the violence of backalley-matress-dropping cardboard tube-fighting--Is anything really all that it is?

I could have taken one of two takes on this abomonable act I just commited against the holy name of Documentary Photography.

1. I just committed the ultimate sin. I am an isolationist and the truth ensues on its own. (EVEN THOUGH THIS DOES NOT ENTAIL FULL TRUTH, ASSHOLE!) But does that make truth more valid?

2. I  showed the motion, sped up the process of what may have been inevitable, so I could photograph to fulfill the purpose of giving voice and contribution to the world in which I primarily exist, and satisfy the viewer with a little chunk of time to doctor and nurse. I did, as I should, interact with what I am photographing in the sense that I am an adult who possesses (I'd like to think) a consciousness about being good to other people while enjoying the necessary release of sport, as a good coach does.
 As a photographer, I completely reject the need to record exactly what is happening when you are not a part of it. We cannot avoid our own subjectivity. We are a part of this world, whethere we like it or not. If we are merely recording here for something else there, it is impossible for us to have any impact because we are not really present-anywhere! Even rockstars need homes. This world is a complete organism, and unduely sever ourselves from that organism is our biggest wrong. What are we trying to prove in this lifetime that it is so important to piggyback solely on the coattails of someone else's energy-because when you take and do not give, you are stealing people's hard earned energies. And I would rather give those people the benefit of the doubt that they actually earned those energies because the skillet can't call the kettle black.I think that I pray to the universe for the conviction to uphold many different (often conflicting) truths all at once; salivate for double-entendres.
As artists, aren't we just a bunch of relativists anyways-so if we give power to our negative intentions, they arise; if we give power to our positive intentions, they arise. As photographers, we are not obligated to name, we are only obligated to participate and frame, and if the frame is genuine, it will not confine to only mean one thing.
What does it mean to steal energy? What does it mean to be a selfish photographer? Was it selfish to covertly position events that I knew the inevitable outcome of, even though I saw a fit lesson in it all. What does it mean to be a mover in a relativist, go with the flow world? What does it mean to be a a solipsist, a pure subjectivist in regards to yours and everybody else experience, in a moving world?
Can we really control our own decisions in any other place but the instant. Before your words are coming out if your mouth you have complete potential to change your mind-until the words are said. During the time we speak, our mind is busy forming the syllables to experience live and up-to-the-minute updates from our heart and our guts, right? And after you say the words, they inevitably change the course of life and seem to rudely invalidate anything feeling, right? Unless we somehow magically integrate our gumption with our know-how with our vision. Unless our tongues are valves, ventricles and atriums all at once. Maybe then our decisions beacon more present existence when we are present to begin with.
As a generally perplexed, and often bitter photographer, I do have moments where I experience the intense privlege of simultaneously extending time into omniscience, assigning new meaning to it like a poet would, and participating in the best way that I know how, I realize how incredibly important and honestly good it can be to exist as a photographer. Perhaps this is why I am so drawn to music--it parallels what photography has the potential to be in its best light. The musicians are present in their interactions with one another and themselves within the act of music, just as the photographer is completely involved in her own world that only exist because there are subjects. And please don't lie to yourself, no one is ever oblivious to you and your fat ass fucking lens unless they aren't present and it isn't very fair to photograph someone without them being present because you aren't giving them a chance to interact in the glorious interaction that is about to take place. Unless its some funny ass candid camera shit and you know and love them well.
Sometimes we photograph in solitude just as sometimes musicians play alone. But there is still subject-a building, ourselves especially. But there is stillness and interaction with the present that often trumps the image made (although not always)--in which case, the image still serves the purpose as a humbler to viewers. And the music still comes out of the soul of the sax player, and he knows, and the concrete and blowing leaves and echoes in alleys know that in order to breathe, you have to take in everything that is in the air.
We have many conversations, these days, about the honest-to-god point of any of this art-making business. Mostly us musicians and photographers. Why on earth am I spending my time finishing these images if the best of it was consumed in the incessant photographing and photographer-subject interactions? Because I am obligated to follow the image through. See it to the last branch, where it seamlessly enters back into the universe. By not sharing these images, I am not holding up my part of the bargain--I am photographing to give voice, so I must amplify the sounds of these voices. I am photographing because you asked me to assist you in seeing. If I don't photograph in a way that i interact with the voice of the subject with my own, the sacred moment of photographing crumbles and so too does the image built on the empire/franchise of the moment. (I say franchise instead of further pursuing a long, exhausting conversation into the night about the cliche of the moment). Now look. And the univrse gives me everything I need if I am doing exactly what I need to be doing. I thank the universe further for the internet in order to assist me in this matter.