take it easy...

but take it, studs.

excuses

so i wonder, while i am on the train, why didn’t i make his snap while i was talking to him. thought about it had my hand on the leiquinha in the bag but raced off. still had plenty of time to make the train but i feared that i would talk so long that i would have to race for it. didn’t think about it – the snap – at first it came when talking about invisibility. photographically it had potential – a night portrait on the streets with the security of the instant review of a digital slr. would have control my breathing, slowly squeeze the shutter and repeat if necessary. he wasn’t going anyplace he was in a wheel chair. my excuses were had the leiquinha which is disrespectful to people. i want something larger, slower levelling the vulnerability factor between the subject and me. it was night and i had a train to catch. but i was showing him disrespect by not treating him as i would anyone – nearly – that i run into. we chatted so a photograph – or at least an attempt at one – should have been the result. in not doing so i – unbeknownst to him – treated him with the same invisibility that he was bemoaning when people pass and not see him. i added to the justifications of my actions that i don’t want to photograph the homeless, disabled as i don’t want people to find fault and thus justification for their situation – no wonder he’s…-you can see why she’s… i regularly run into another homeless buddy, we chat, joke, i dip into his cup of change and pocket some quarters, give him a dollar and ask for change etc. but never raised a camera. i have a preference for their belongings, it leaves more to the imagination it also extends the awareness of them without their physical presence. but he wasn’t homeless he was buddy – forgot his first name – representing only himself. in the end it comes down to my guilt as to why the shutter wasn’t opened. to-day brought joãozão and between making grad students cry i race over to the customs house to see if i can find him and he remembers me. crossing state street i see him in his usual spot, a bus passes and he is gone. walk up look down the streets and find him chatting with a worker in a read doorway. he yells out a greeting, remembers me from last night. say that spoke to him last night and when i speak to people i have to make a snap. – sure. bend down to make one, with the leiquinha, in the alley as i want to be lower than he. make two. he says let’s head back to where we were last night and he wheels to congress and clark. make two more with joãozão one with a woman walking one where she dodges out of the way. getting up a taxi honks and the driver hands him a wad of money - i see what you mean. we chat longer when two more cabbies honk and put their hand out with cash in it. – yeah blacks won’t give me the time of day but these africans… not wanting to hinder his cash flow say good-bye and head back to the building where i.d’s are scanned to keep these type of people out.

congress and clark

turned down a ride to the train as it was too early, i like to wander, finding different routes, putting the leiquinha to use something that cannot happen in the mobile isolation unit of a machine.
– you just yawned but you can’t be a tired as i am been out here since 9am and made nothing, a one armed, one legged man said as he was wheeling his away toward me at clark and congress.
– jeezus no wonder who is out here? does anyone walk along congress? why don’t you get to a train station.
-turf wars, too many people fighting over their space. you know if one black man cannot help another what’s a black president going to do. if it weren’t for the african taxi drivers.
– hey, leave the guy alone, says buddy crossing the street – he talks crazy but he’s my cousin. we shake hands exchange names.
he continues with obama and how he’d vote for mccain if it weren’t for biden who came from workers where you going he yells at his cousin now crossing clark buddy signals something.
oli passes on his bike, calls out somewhat perplexed.
– most people won’t look at me.
– i try to nod.
– yeah then i know i am not invisible.
– we don’t look because we’re embarrassed by you, embarrassed that you are still around.
– embarrassed because they know it could be them but you’re right. his cousin pipes in. i am introduced to a worker at the boutique hotel and i take my leave.
– come around to-morrow.
- can’t am rarely over here work in the park.
– what church you go to?
– don’t live around here when you are back down head over to the customs house i’m always here. leave with his cousin who is chasing after a beemer with a punctured tyre, wishing i had made his snap and wondering why not.

i drove to get the papers because it was raining. pulling out of the circle and turning left i noticed that things looked strange. closing one eye everything looked fine. the other was missing a contact. strange. bought the paper came back to look in the machine and around the house finding nothing.

35 years of wearing contact and losing nothing then in three years i am down to my backup. having to buy new ones, tuesday i head into to be fitted for new ones. the usual jokes i cannot see the chart without my lenses, with them i can read the bottom line. he verifies this then starts the fast paced multiple choice quiz - is this better or this - here it was “number one or number two”.

he seemed to be taking more time than i remember. i also noticed that nothing was really improving my sight. he told me to rest my eyes a bit and we would start again in about 20 minutes. read an article in smithsonian trashing jeff wall.

back for round two and again nothing was really improving. he went out to make a phone call. it seems that my eyes had moulded to the hard lenses - from decades of wearing - and that the corneas were changing as he was measuring them. i needed to have my eyes rest before he could get a decent reading. there were two options wear one lens and let one eye rest then do the same for the other eye. five weeks an eye. or i could dump the lenses he would fit me with spectacles and the process would take only five weeks.

i opted for the second.

problem here was that he could only correct my vision to 20/60. to be able to drive it has to be 20/40. heading home would be interesting. found it somewhat ironic that i would be teaching photography blind. however, would bike to the train and in chicago i walk everywhere. my close up vision was fine i could read and look at snaps i simply couldn’t recognise people on the street.

the spectacles gave me headaches and in truth weren’t better than not wearing them objects looked clearer but there was fringing and fun house distortion without them out of focus but none of the other aberrations. the spectacles were only a benefit at night. i preferred the out of focus world, i started to recognise people via their actions and posture. taught with no problem, didn’t like the fact that i couldn’t drive.

still wandered with the leiquinhas - again as viewfinders rely on near vision and rangefinder cameras don’t require perfect vision as the determination of distance is more mathematical. it seemed that i noticed details better which seems counter intuitive.

it was depressing though, a week into this i was wondering how i would make it five weeks. i am of the opinion that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. my corneas had to return to their natural state after years of hard lenses but with those lenses and my mutant corneas, i could read text at great distances, now they are hoping for 20/20.

nightly helicopter search
light over upper park heights
avenue

3am gun fire somewhere along
reisterstown road

man urinating in the bush at
the mount washington
light rail station as
commuters pass

beaver trying to climb a wall
in westport

ah baltimore

walker's wander

i can tell when i am not disciplined as indecision sets in. i was to meet the trotsky of the tute in exile from the stalinist purge from the puppet leader of the department and her minion. hadn’t spoken in some time as i didn’t want to rehash school matters in front of him when he was now free - rancourous but free - and on to better things. he told stories of departments that were enthusiastic and engaged. the indecision came in as i was trying to choose what i was going to the walker’s wander.

actually i as indecisive about everything - the train to catch as i didn’t want to have to race to his place but didn’t want to go too long without coffee. i had determined that this semester was to be that of the 35mm when in cities and i had become quite good at only bringing the leiquinhas when i headed down to the school of archaic ideas in creativity i have even disciplined myself to stop even laden with all the modern didactic paraphernalia. this was different, although i wanted to start “note-taking” this was when i left the little ones at home and brought out the big’uns.

did decide on the leiquinhas, more or less telling myself not to head places where i would regret leaving joãozão behind -alleys, busy street corners anything that would hint at urban formalism. the leiquinhas were the cameras of things. surprisingly the day went fluidly images seemed to present themselves. i once again noticed that i situate myself closer with the leiquinhas than with anything bigger.

it was also nice to be cleansed of the lethargy of the state of anarchic indecisive challenges. down ashland diverting to see where an former inmate lived some snaps of what people had in front of their houses. quite a few snaps when back on ashland of the yet unopened businesses on the west side of the avenue, light streaming in. it was that magic time of the day too early for the businesses to be open but too late for the last prostitutes. i used the penetrating light at a restaurant at ashland and north, a bit early so wandered a bit more than as usual realised that i really wasn’t that early and walked with determination toward the safe house which meaned that now i saw more things to photograph which had me stopping even more frequently.

i tried my best not to talk of the asylum but it seems that lacking a life outside it makes for long silences when i try to think of other topics. wandered he neighbourhood as it was monday and it seems that people in bucktown don’t eat at the beginning of the week.

afterwards there was just enough time to make the train out of chicago if i walked with a purpose to the stop at clybourn, which i did except for the street furniture in wood street and the remnants of the homeless underneath the arches of the kennedy. my method of walking being photographic wind sprints. walk with purpose to make time to stop a bit to have a look repeating this with more urgency as both the station and the time become nearer.

so i am back feeling more like a dinosaur at the school of efficient art production. it seems that to be bothered less in the lab they are making sure there are no choices. all the printers now will have inkjet paper in them and to make a print one will simply swipe their i.d, be charged and make a print. the option of the human element in this will be the choice of a generic - glossy, lustre or matte paper. this lengthens the passivity in making a photograph to the entire school experience here. already in intro to photo students to make prints of their images place them into a folder and hit print. there are no options in the printing method and the snaps are done on the cheapest paper possible. now while they will have the option the time at the ‘tute can now be spent with printing being command p. my anachronistic self feels that an art school is all about options and even in a school that touts itself as conceptual - which usually hides the lack of ideas behind bad technique - it seems that the object is still important, to turn a department into a fancy walgreens one hour photo-finishing plant - seems to be against the idea of options. there will be two printers in the department left open so that people can use their choice of papers - and it seems that these printers will be free - so it means that either these two printers will be booked all semester long or the student not knowing how to work epson printers, will be used only for my class in the making of inkjet negatives. my feelings of superfluousness comes not from the policies of the department, but from the actions of the students. even though the new intro to photo is reviled by everyone who has taken it, there doesn’t seem to be a rebellion and a flocking to the analogue classes. people in them say they like the darkroom - although fewer and fewer have been in one but don’t like the frustrations it brings. manipulations is still full but most in the class are printmakers who want to expand their options then those who think direct contact - versus sitting in front of a computer screen - and options are romantic. i am guessing that most will never use their hands again to make snaps. my fear the department is correct and i am wrong due to the fact that no one was in the wet labs, no one seemed to have anything to develop from the summer - well except for baleful the steward and while this really isn’t telling yet, there were only a couple of people at computer stations and they were checking e-mail, i can only see the downward slide from last year. last year there was a hope though for while the wet was declining there was a compensation with inkjets by people making books and series. this may be nullified by the drive toward the generic that seems to be official policy in the department. it is pretty hard to make something small when the roll paper is 17 inches wide.

re-entry has been harder than usual and it is usually hard. i thought that it was going to relatively easy as i really didn’t get a chance to feel that i was living on the rock - even in the familiar settings of martin and gabrielle’s in pouch cove and the relatively quotidian ritual of walking elke’s dog.
it was - i feel - the missed rituals. coffee at hava java, montréal bagels from georgetown - didn’t make it to christina parker’s, early evening when i would see the regulars while reading the globe at the duke
it was also due - i think - of having people from the lower 48. i thought that it would be trouble free as i wasn’t depressed when the ferry docked in north sydney. i still had the urge to explore - impossible as there we did have to make some time.
i even liked maine. the shock this time was societal - which is strange as i don’t think that i have been with a group of yanks more afraid of the world outside in some time. doors were constantly being locked, windows drawn. it was when openness and curiosity was supplanted by defensiveness and suspicion. the coke machine at a layby in connecticut that took my dollar but the people working there wouldn’t take responsibility showing a sign on a machine no place close to the one that i used saying that i had to contact some company which they then refused to give the number. it was further on outside hartford where taking a snap of a bar patio that the owner comes running out screaming “who are you with?” the shock was go great that i missed ding dong ditch possibilities in new haven and in nyc and when i gained my senses also didn’t bother in north linthicum.
it was made worse heading to the wgas - i have to change this as it lost this dubious status - to find that there no one who shared my interests. i found that i was more excited talking to a security guard who has been dedicated to street photography for 30 odd years who has a real book coming our on south side baseball than anyone in the department, i know that i would have more fun with the coombs of portugal cove south than those here who broaden their experiences third hand. the chair and her mascot, named after the second part of the province, in a purge that would make stalin blanche, not only fired someone invested in the school but also wiped out everything that made the department function - a year erased. it seems that art here no longer will be about experimentation and options as they have streamlined the digital process by loading the printers with generic papers where students will swipe their i.d be charged to make prints. which is fine in a department where the new “direction” is to talk about photography as a cultural phenomenon rather than a device for exploration. week three and the labs are empty. being back used to be softened by those few people with whom who debate would happen. with the new direction i count the weeks until i can escape.

a clarification

to those of you getting the new hard copy version of yyt what i meant by it being off line was that it was not also off line. i reckoned that the guardian, the globe and mail and jornal do brasil all have hard copies why not the blog - only in my usual way doing it backwards. there will still be entries available on the world wide web but they - like the papers will be versions of the hard copies and arrive when i am sure that those who receive the off line version have done so - since it is international i am guessing a weeks delay.

this always happens at this time of year when returning to the asylum, the blog isn’t as necessary, it was set up for write people from away when it was difficult to get hold of the usual writing tools for a pixture postcard. i always came back to it do to lack of time - read laziness - in corresponding with people. digital snap, downloaded with a passage and away i go. i would do it at midnight before heading to sleep.

listening to my evil twin and my pocket book, i have cut back on my postings but need things tangible and need to not do everything in front of the computer. the pressure of balancing everything meant that what i liked to do was losing out. i realised this when i stopped racing for the post and started ordering a lot of books so that there would be something there for me.

working away from the computer is restful, it is quiet time. being in the darkroom means i can only listen to the wireless or think, constantly searching the web for something to do. the deadline changed. it was no longer writing at night but making sure things were done before the post went out. while there is an anticipation time and space, writing it at midnight in newfoundland meant that maybe night owls on the east coast would read it but west coast blogaholics would most likely be reading it about the time that i wrote it. with the post there is the wait for the hint of acknowledgement. so with glitches as i am about three weeks behind on both the on-line and off-line versions - i am back to my preferable manner of communication.