Lord Baltimore’s Mistake

Am in the second colony of Avalon - Baltimore Murderland – my birthplace to help my mum after her back surgery. I had also come to see if I could make some sort of work about the place. After a semester of being a true member of the full time photographic faculty – in making nearly no work, even worse I didn't even have a higher paying second job to have to worry about – I had finally focused. Plane travel will do that to you. Being forced to only two bags this was to be the analogue trip with Ubaldo and Joãozão and the surprising amount of film that I had left over from the summer when in any other case would have been long gone by now.

I was looking forward to seeing how my mixed feelings about Harm City had modified after the short trip out here after Yanksgiving. I wanted to see if I had got over the overly paranoid city and its inhabitants. I was wanting to photograph another North American water based colony with a unique accent hon. I wanted to deal with the wetlands and wooded areas that abound in the city I wanted to get lost in twisty streets with real neighbourhoods.

The weather was perfect for this – at least coming from the Frozen Tundra south – about freezing and at times as much as 10C, I could have coffee outdoors wander at will it was like spring.

I can see why Lord Baltimore would have left the first colony of Avalon after a year having to put up with gale force winds off the North Atlantic for Avalon South has a better climate. But if any of his relatives are about I would hazard that they would set sail north and east again.

Despite the warm weather there was no one on the streets, except around the Inner Harbour, There were a few souls at the Starbucks in Mount Washington but the streets were deserted. It seems that Balamereans don’t walk. There were traffic jams everywhere but no one without a car.

The constant vigilance supposed to make me feel safe made me feel uneasy. I felt more safe in Rio/Niterói where at least the vigilance was a human and the streets crowded. I imagine a crime in Baltimore will be video taped but not stopped as there is no cop about.

It is truly a gun culture, as I am waiting in a bank and see three inch Perspex protecting the tellers from the customers. This goes for gas bars. Receipts are checked when one leaves shops, i.d is needed to use a bank card, Nothing is ever left unlocked ever.

Wanted to visit the places my father worked but it would be safer visiting Cidade de Deus.

I think back to the summer when nothing was locked ever.

It is a pity Balamer could be a liveable city, again the parks, the rivers, the harbour, the bay, and the neighbourhoods. Want to photograph just south of Ravens Stadium, Along the Jones Falls, just have to build up my courage.

On the return after Christmas – am driving out so I ‘ll lose that focus one has when flying and can pack the machine am thinking – will I ever learn? – the Hobo. I want all the film from the summer gone by the start of term.

Multitasking Monothinking

I am in my usual “doing too many things at one time” mode. In the process of printing the snaps made this summer – the platinotypes, the colour digital and the snaps of people that I spoke to – I find that I can look at the black and white images with a detachment where I can – I think – determine whether the snaps were good or not. This is the case with both the platinotypes and the snaps of people – which once again I say should stop as some of them just get beyond the snapshot stage. While those snaps will make it no farther than the cataloguing phase I could have saved some film in not turning the endeavour into a conceptual exercise – I blame the ‘tute for this.

The colour ones though – the ones made as records of the trip to be posted here – end that detachment. Looking at those I remember Bonne Bay vividly and stop to try to imagine that I was in a place so breath takingly beautiful. The colour brings back the reality that I am supposedly beyond as we all know that photographs aren’t real.

They are bringing the minutiae of the place and I have to imagine less about the time spent there – the tickle from Curzon Village, the gulch, dinner at the picnic table even the poorly stitched together panoramas are more direct memory aids than the black and whites. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not.

Seeing them however brings up my second favourite pastime, looking for real estate on the rock. On the Avalon I can go through pages of places worthy of consideration – my favourite right now is in Witless Bay overlooking the ocean for $69.000. I find almost nothing along the Great Northern and when I do I realise that I cannot afford it.

I also realise that I don’t know how people who live there can afford to stay. Bonne Bay is being overwhelmed by people like… well me. I think about the regulars at the Seabreeze and wonder if their days are numbered. I remember the conversation at Edward’s shanty where he was debating whether the nearby resettled town Chimney Cove would be re-inhabited at least he could afford it. I remember Elaine telling me that she sold property in Trout River overlooking the ocean for $5000 and now someone trying to sell land overlooking Bailey’s Point for at least ten times that amount. I could afford it – yeah right – but could those who actually live there?

When there, we were remarking about the parks people and the townies and how they seem to be in parallel universes, looking through the real estate section I am beginning to see that the park is winning.

I am gobsmacked every time I look at the colour snaps, like being at the end of the road in Woody Point and would like to hanging around the place, but more people like me moving in can only hasten the change of the area.