Friday 27 June 2003

every time i have headed up i have taken some sort of risk. on the first residency - pouchcove.org - there being no darkrooms in the pipe house, i decided to leave real cameras behind and take pinholes and a view camera just in case. took nothing portable. heading up looked like the picnic in passage to india. there were two home-made pinhole cameras, a full sized tripod, 30 boxes of film courtesy of agfa, four mini fluorescent lighting fixtures from menards with four u.v. lights, a contact printing frame developing tank platinum chemistry in powder form and a deardorff special. this was the time before heightened security in airports. it was great fun hiking through pearson's with this taking it off the carrousel and walking some 50 yards into canada and placing it on a conveyor.

it was great. i slowed down, made work - a box of film a day. it being january no one in their right mind was there so i had the lower studio to use to develop my film and to shower and the upper studio to print.

i had been freed from the darkroom. platinum materials allowed me to make prints in room light at night. the exposure times were long enough that i could read while printing. i caught up on my backlog of doubletake magazines. reading hanging my feet out the window over the atlantic.

the cameras were too big to carry with me all the time - the deardorff was only there for insurance and was only used to start the portrait series - again this was a serendipitous event i had a completely new experience. there were times when i couldn't make snaps.

the working method wasn't mine, saw it while surfing the web when i ran across phillippe moroux - utopia.knoware.nl/users/philippe - where he would use a pinhole, polaroid - if only i could have afforded it - and made kallitype postcards. chose platinum instead of kallitype as i could control contrast better. chose agfapan 100 instead of polaroid type 55p/n purely for financial reasons. i brought my own lights as i realised that winter on the rock could be like winter in britain , sunlight simply doesn't exist. in hindsight am glad that i brought uv lights as i was free to be out and about during the day not having to decide between exploring and printing. my days were used to their fullest.

i had wanted to take this one step further the following year and bought the 10x8 hand holdable hobo camera from bostick and sullivan - but in their usual way of working they misplaced my order the camera didn't arrive in time for my departure and even though they acknowledged their mistake they bother to discount the camera or at least pay for the shipping. in fact they shipped it express adding the charges.

this was the second strike while up in pouch cove i ordered some paper from them and that time asked to have it fedexed. they rang back assuring me that the postal system would get it to me in time. it arrived the day that i was returning to the rock.

still have the hobo only now have i worked out the bugs - light leaks, and a viewfinder that makes me envious of that of the diana. kept it only because i had bought a 120mm nikkor for it and would have no use for the lens. the lens had arrived.

this time was to be a 21st century version of the residency in 1999. now with digital technology what it is, i have been looking for a digital camera, my i-book, signed up with blogger.com. my evenings would be downloading the images to the blog and having digital internet postcards.

i would still take a real camera and still wander the added option would have me come to terms with the digital the way that 1999 had me work through lack of mobility.

i am nervous when up there and don't have a darkroom, i see the film piling up and no way of verifying whether everything is o.k. one year it wasn't and lost half my negs due to a light leak that was due to a repair person.

this way i would have something to look at each evening a result from last year when i'd take the colour film that both my mother and i would make on the outing to the one hour photo in the dominion's in stravanger drive. we'd take them back to pouch and annotate them.

too cheap to pay for a site that will accept images - i don't have to buy a digital camera, but still plan to make an entry daily.

this could be tricky - mac to p.c conversions. internet facilities with limited times at the library or at wordplay. but as i said i like to take risks.
had been looking forward to this. ever since january i had been passing used cars thinking about their suitability . was thinking a saturn or a neon good gasoline mileage and both seem pretty popular on the rock. it wouldn't be used much but would be left so that when one of us was in the new compound in sullivans loop pouch cove we could get around. cars passed, in front lawns, along highways with "for sale" signs, would be considered.

this was to be the triumphant trip to the rock, to the new summer place. ocean on two sides, adding to the artists ghetto that sullivans loop and pouch cove was becoming. i was going to out do robert frank, i was recalling alastair mccloud's writing of cape breton and translating that to the avalon. i could smile knowingly at michael crummey's references.

to feel the distance i was going to drive, drive but not race. i'd play tag with the canada/us border. through michigan to sarnia or windsor a diagonal to penetenguishene to see where the painter john hartman lives - liked his paintings of the north, and always want to see what makes people who make around sense of place.

down to toronto, up to ottawa and montréal , i would take a deep breath and head back in the states to see burlington vermont and maine then back into new brunswick to and the trans canada through nova scotia - want to see halifax africville , cape breton then the ferry from sydney. i'd strain to get the first view of the rock.

wouldn't - although it would be hard - take the road to burgeo the road with only the village at the end has me curious - they'll be plenty of time for that. i would stop in corner brook to say hello to those i photographed then. then the watching the kilometres pass as i make my way to st. john's.

symbolically i should go into st. john's along water street stop at the duke, pass signal hill but being a resident now i could ignore the sites and take the transcanada to the new mile zero just by the wal-mart in stravanger drive.

then it would nothing heading out route 20 to pouch passing bruce's and turning right at points east to the new place.

this was one option. the other fly to baltimore , pick up my mother who was going to summer on the rock, and drive from there playing tag with the coast up through the boston states into the maritimes. 1800 miles instead of 2000 miles of driving but either way a respect for the remoteness of the province.

didn't come to pass. the house wasn't bought am still a transient. monday 30 june will look for the air canada jazz plane pull up at mitchell airport and anticipate walking on the tarmac leaving my bag at the steps and climbing aboard.

Thursday 26 June 2003

this is a test this is only a test

Tuesday 24 June 2003

wisconsin photographer living in newfoundland/newfoundland photographer living in wisconsin