before i start, i am at the duke. i come here now to upload the blog. i can walk here and upload it before anything would happen with the dial up at the flat. clarke's beach is packed so am up by the bar. i walk in head to the toilet - deposit before withdrawal. heading to the bar i say hello and am about to order when the barkeep points to the pint of smithwicks awaiting me. i love this town.
Photographically the time up here has been quite productive, I say this hesitantly as I have yet to see anything so all of this could be due to the excellence of the outings as a whole while I am merely making cliché upon cliché.
As I knew, the need to focus on what to bring and not look back helps as if I had the arsenal of equipment – which I still feel is pretty modest – I would have been constantly trying to choose rather than getting on with it.
It has also helped being a townie for a bit for it has given me the chance to make the snaps and explore the city and thus evaluate the thoughts that I had about townie life. It is quite nice as everything as at my fingertips and the view varies more abruptly than away from the area. the change in the land requires more distance and thus more subtle, I can go out a make snaps in between errands rather than dedicating a day to it.
However the Rex Murphy article and seemingly common bond of the outports in their tenuousness, has me preferring them. This – my looking to be more and more reclusive – is another entry.
Speaking to Kennedy on the phone he mentions that there is a big sea in Pouch Cove, it went unnoticed here in St.John’s. To rub it in he mentioned the minke and humpback he saw while planting Ted’s potatoes.
I realised that I have returned to my way of working while on the course for the M.A. to the point that it is the same camera, Ubirajara.
It has become the outing camera the way it was when I had my student Brit Rail pass and the knowledge of how far I could go on an awayday.
The other remnant is the Diana – a different one – but the bag is filled with the same that I used between 1980 and 1982.
Ziquinho tags along but stays in the machine, it is brought as it is easier to photograph people with him but when I don’t have access to him ‘bira is used without a second thought – as in Fortune with the family outside the St. Pierre ferry ticket office.
The only thing new is the digital point and shoot that I bring along thinking that I need to illustrate the entries – whether anything else will come from them I am not sure as it always seems that my unofficial work wins out over the official.
At the pet parade though I felt anachronistic. It came when I had to stop to change film. All those about me were blissfully snapping away – well except for that one person whose memory card was full – while I had to take a time out to reload. I also notice that I try to pace myself so that I don’t have that one image left on the roll when I move on to something else. I don’t like having to start to make snaps then stop abruptly to change film for in the time that it takes to change film I start to think and that is the death of what I actually saw when I stopped.
My method is to make an image quickly then edit it with another where I have moved slightly. If I actually think why I stopped, if I try to make some sort of rational assessment everything falls apart.
Again during the pet parade I was wondering why I cling so much to something that really doesn’t help my practice at all. Clarke’s Beach would be so much more interactive if I could make a snap turn around and show it to the victim. That sort of collaboration would be interesting and probably bring some relief to those who have been accosted. I really don’t think that an empty convenience or a laundry line could care less.
The travel load would be less as memory cards are next to nothing in size, I wouldn’t have to worry about the nice x-ray machines and having hundreds of rolls being turned out as they squeeze every one to make sure – box cutters and knives get through security at Pearson’s Airport but no roll will be untouched.
My survivalist tendencies are no longer valid as all the real cameras except ‘bira are paperweights without a battery.
I can only think of a couple of reasons for my irrationality. I like black and white and the active choice of it. Black and white in digital is an option not a default. While there is a button on most so that one wouldn’t see the colour on the screen, there isn’t the commitment. I realised this after looking at the work up in the gallery white walls grey prints coincides with my shaker aesthetic.
The real reason, though is true irrationality. It goes beyond the storage of the images, the translation of light to noughts and ones, the dependence of a technology to see the images, after all I do use and have made stuff with the point and shoot.
It has to do with the company I would keep with the move. It is a WGAS scar. There, those who are the digital fundamentalists – as seen by the transformation to the department while I am mercifully away – are the same that take anything but the final object cynically – at some time even that.
Away from the institution, I have no problem of – say - random fibroids using point and shoots as it is second nature and while there is suspicion of the medium there is engagement, it is the environmental ennui of that august academic school that has me not wanting to even seem tangentially associated.
Or I have to deal with the loser tech wonks who seem to have great plans but can only do it with the latest technology it seems that megapixals have replaced lens size in virility among male photographers and when that fails the discussion of the version of Photoshop or the Lightroom v. Aperture debate – of which I can hold my own I am ashamed to say.
It wouldn’t be so bad if some images were made that went beyond tests.
At present I can think of only one person who has seemed to move beyond all of this and simply make images but he is a Texan so he has other crosses to bare – or is it bear.
5 comments:
I think his name was Jim, that photo grad a while back while I was there, he talked a lot about how to make work out of school, how he lost a lot of ways to make what he used to make and thus his work changed, which he seemed to like because it became less...art like maybe? I think, you probably know him much better, but I think about that a lot after my time away and the frustration at VCU. I liked in France how I used items I never would have used before, bags, things I found, how everything had to be small due to cost, how using anything but digital would have had me begging on the street. It was all not really a "choice", but it was still a problem with a lot of different solutions. I could have after all asked for money from my parents every week to buy ink. (yeah right)
But back at school I thought, I have to change this, take advantage of all the fancy printers and such, but I do question what this does to the work and why. Do I really need large prints? Should I change cameras just to change? Lately it seems that I can't get what I want with that cheep camera I have so I have gone back to film. (Forgot how much it costs!)
I am not really sure where I am going with this, I guess I think a lot about what I use and why, and what things would look like with something else. Weaving is the same, why use a simple pattern and not a complex structure, and no matter what you pick someone will always ask why you did not use another. There is always a need to defend, and there is also a struggle in my mind between what I want and what I get and when the two get too far apart I guess I change the process.
Now I know why you don't like to leave long comments, you ramble cause you can't see what you wrote a minute ago. Ah well.
“now i know why you don't like to leave long comments, you ramble cause you can't see what you wrote a minute ago” but it really doesn’t stop me does it.
i understand all this but is seems to be another problem here – it seems that – forgetting the financial aspect – digital would be the way for me to go, i don’t make art, i annotate, when accosting these people up here – five to-day, three yesterday it would be nice to assuage their concerns by showing them what i took. i just found out something yesterday about a residency that would either be good with digital or with me getting a hernia as in 2005 – speaking in hyperbole there.
bought a printer so that i can give some snaps out while here – the woman in portugal cove south with the quilt, the two women in petty harbour.
i like that photography is so transparent but it seems that what people seem to like about my stuff is the less so – the dianas etc – i want them to look like anyone could have taken them i don’t need – unlike some of my peers – the validation that degree of difficulty brings – which may be needed when one makes work about as often as halley’s comet comes around.
i also know that it is illogical as to-day i liked holding zequinho when out and about in urban settings. likewise ‘bira in the outports. i don’t like holding even those oh so professional digital slrs they feel like they draw more attention to themselves than they should.
there is also a personal history with these cameras – walking to cape st, mary – which has yet to be written in the mauze with ubirajara brought back the time we both walked the yorkshire moors in similar weather situations 25 years ago, what camera made now will be around in five how can one bond and feel comfortable with something that will be obsolete next year.
there i have gone and contradicted myself.
and it was jim barry, ihave scarred him for life also
Good, he was never nice to me.
You do talk about your cameras like they are people, which makes sense for you in a way, but it does seem like a lot of your reasons for sticking to your older cameras seem to come from others, it sounds like you dislike WGAS almost as much as I do, if not more...but are they a good reason not to do or do something? It sounds more like you have always done things a certain way and you don't want to change, and changing sounds like it would only make the work "easier" not better. And don't you send people their picture later anyway, so showing them on the spot could take away from getting it in the post, and don't you like the post because of the time it takes? It sounds like you are trying to convince yourself...but I don't think other people should matter so much, it sounds more like an excuse than a reason, in a way.
"If I actually think why I stopped, if I try to make some sort of rational assessment everything falls apart." I think this is really interesting...
So was this one of your drunk posts, cause it does not sound like it...
nope you’ve got the wrong one my name ends in an “e"
(yes please if you insist one more smithwick’s but i have to go…)
it is nice to have wifi at clarke’s beach at the duke.
morning wifi at hava java then evening uploads while i download.
right now there is the fear that the 150 rolls used so far but not seen will have something happen to them from all the abuse given to them – security, ocean air, mauzy days, sultry days, cameras older than you are, spilt quidi vidi1892… i am afraid that when i am forced to return to the land of the bushwhacked that something will go horribly wrong.
everything else you have said is valid i am getting ahead in the entries here but have been showing the snaps made the with the point and shoot digital to the victims and still can post them. it is the immediate security blanket of digital v. the long term security of film.
i guess that i am also bracing for the inevitable.
i could name digital cameras also but they would have to be fred or george - some utilitarian name.
- oh no i can’t have another…well if you insist…
hum, if you were really drunk (or drinking) there would be no hesitation about having another, Clark with an e...
You might be right about the inevitable...I also can't keep up with your blog postings, too much!
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