Show and Tell

It seems that one of the evening rituals is coming back and comparing what we have done during the day. It comes sometime during the late afternoon or late evening starting before dinner on the picnic table in the garden but going on as both of us edit what we did.

Since we wander more or less together – I am a bit slower than Kendra with the size of the my camera – we most of the time photograph the same thing minutes apart. With the Deardorff I am a bit more selective at the outset, and due to the Deardoff being my “serious” camera, the digital is relegated to the on line daybook.

Kendra, while she brought a “real” camera, has been epoxied to the digital she borrow. Never the less the same subjects come up. The first thing noticed was how I approach objects head on as much as possible, she has no qualms about using the diagonal. While I centre she doesn’t.

A discussion follows, who is elevating the object to the thing itself who is letting the form rule, why should one abhor the diagonal. Is straight on more direct more confrontational.

I tend to allow space around my snaps and leave myself out of the visuals of the image, she holds things gets close. She worries about surface, I about atmosphere.

There is a reaching out to others in hers, there is an acceptance that they won’t be there in mine.

She photographs people well with the digital I cannot master the hour time lag.

Then the next day all of a sudden, the traits of one start to migrate into the other’s. Where once there was claustrophobia now there is a distance, where once there was a portrait of the object now there is a “tasteful” decentring.

While the show and tell happens sometime in the evening there is an extended crit session usually in the Saturn heading from some place to another – Cow Head to Sally’s Cove or from here to Trout River. Typical Midwestern crit, 20 minutes of debate then silence when again another point is brought up.

At times I cannot believe she is a ‘Tute student as she does more in a day than the average ‘Tuter does in a semester, or a faculty member in a decade, incoming chairs a lifetime. There is an engagement with the world that isn’t trying to be detached and Laputian like. I am not to this.

I am sure it is the air up here back in the land north of México things will return to normal and talking about work will again be much more valued than actually making it.