boyceville

i don’t think twice about spending months in villages of 100 people a good hour from the main road. wandering about i want to stop and spend some time along the port au port peninsula where while the population isn’t quite as sparse, the main city is a good two hours away. heading up to boyceville - well five miles outside of boyceville fills me with dread.

i try to understand this irrationality but cannot. i think it has to do with smaller places on the rock are more self sufficient but boyceville is that typical small town in the states - not far from a larger city - menomonie - made famous by as it happens turning it into the u.s. version of reading - but deemed worthy of a city by having a wal-mart. in boyceville one has the choice of cable-less television from eau claire and st. paul / minneapolis - only 90 minutes away.

it would seem that this would trump - deer lake corner brook but no. i am drawn to minnesota’s north shore. i want to drive and stay in dawson city so while i like being at the end of a road, there are places isolated places that are on the way to someplace else. i can only place this dread of this particularly empty space as there being no compensation for it. places that i seem to be interested in are due to actually seeing people out and about. what is lacking in amenities is made up with human interaction boyceville seems a ghost town.

there were signs that there were people about - a chair outside an open door of a factory - the designated smoking area - machines outside the gas bar, real people outside a church having their wedding portraits taken - but i imagined them racing back inside as soon as possible. five miles outside of town it was bleaker - a minor film still like moment as at the intersection of two dirt roads as a pickup stops to chat with someone walking a dog. a lone cyclist passes.

at times i worry that being the imperialist photographer that i am, i seem to need a lot of space and am interested in how little area i would need before i would feel that there was nothing left to photograph. i once i worried about the island of newfoundland as it could be too small now i have lessened my land grab to say bell island. but here with infinite space i found myself feeling more limited, more trapped. i felt that this had to do with the dependence on a machine to get about but i had one.

i can only go back to lifestyle. i attribute my lack of interest of the boycevilles of the world due to it being an interior world - a life based around being in the house. when the world outside is mentioned there is a danger involved - the badger sets along the driveway and a neighbour being chased by one, the chance of encountering bear - one goes out when absolutely necessary. so even on an abnormally and exceedingly warm november day most didn’t leave the living room. i paced the long driveway.

one upped by a painter

on the 4:13 back up to peasants pissoir while trying to make a dent in the backlog grantas to be read - the economic downturn has fewer people reading and discarding their new york times on their ride home - amidst the lasalle street types and the kenoshans calling it a day, an i-podded art student is working away two seats from me on the upper deck.

at highland park he leans across the breach and hands buddy on the other side the sheet of paper he was working on. buddy - whom i recognise as he gets down in winthrop harbour - seems puzzled not knowing what to do with it.

-you can have it - the art student says. it seems that it is a drawing of buddy.
-i am going to throw it away if you don’t want. buddy stares at it a bit and tries to find a way of not folding the paper as the student packs to leave the train.

obamarama day

on obamarama day, it being a nice sunny oddly sultry day for november, packed joãozão and ziquinho into the machine and headed out. i had spent one globally warmed november day trapped making slides and i knew if i didn’t take advantage of this one...well actually nothing would have happened as i tend toward days around 10c for wandering. i had to break what was becoming a pattern of not bothering to head out for perceived lack of time.

i was going to head along route 16 to route 19 to find this old amusement park before heading into madison having a coffee out in the back garden of zoma either before or after i headed over to the big o’s place standing out and staring until he showed his face. didn’t want to take an interstate as i needed to get back into the habit of stopping, and i seemed to remember the towns along the way being somewhat interesting.

windows down, blugrass from wort alexander cockburn saying that if one were really brave a madisonian would put out a palin sign.

a bit of a culture shock, i catch myself nodding to people as i pass, but forgetting that this is rural wisconsin, find that people do stop to talk and aren’t filled with the paranoia across the state line in illinois. i also forget that i cannot simply park anywhere as i pull off the road into a carpark that once out of the machine and across i notice parking only with permit sign. stopped in waterloo to wander the town - empty except for a few voters,

-where is everybody?
-out at the outlet mall in johnson creek.

watched the obama signs increase as i neared dane county

stopped outside marshall for the amusement park thinking that i’ll be chased off the grounds but no ask if i can have a look and buddy shrugs as he goes back to fixing his ride.

closed for the season but just closed i wander by rides that i thought has disappeared decades ago as they simply weren’t big or scary enough to-day - a wooden racer dip, bumper boats, go cart track.

not racing but it still being early wonder if i can push the outing. why stop at madison, there are sights to be seen farther afield, i was curious about the dells, baraboo, but while i knew that getting there wouldn’t be a problem leaving would be as there would be just one more thing to photograph.

settled on the free ferry across lake wisconsin a lame attempt to recreate the crossing during the navegatio. more back roads with the windows down but now there were curves and hills more towns but now smaller and less self sufficient

pulled up as the ferry was leaving parked and waited watching to see if the cable tensioned al all, some snaps of the closed concession and seeing the park, decided to be a foot passenger.

i am sure in summer this is quite aggravating as the ferry is part of the state route system and while the crossing is maybe 10 minutes there is only one boat. now though it was simply an extension of the slow roads that i was on. six cars a motorcycling couple and me boarded after one car and six bicyclists disembarked.
spent two ferry crossings photographing merrimac mixing objects and cheesy formalism people in the bar at the crossroads craning their necks to see what i was interested in before taking the slow diagonal route back to the outskirts of madison and a race down I-90 hoping that i would still be light along the rock - walworth county frontier where the land the once again flat the roads straight and you and can hear the air.

i have been a bit frustrated with my plans for the time when i wasn’t seeing grad students on friday, i was to pick an area of chicago and wander - something that i did with ease when i wasn’t doing it as a project - but haven’t been able to bunch the therapy sessions so that i have chunk of time where i can explore.

i do like carrying the leiquinhas as the cameras du jour when i do go a wandering. in fact i have been making it a point of having it on me when i pass through the homeland security wgas style and enter the wide world - even if i am only in transit between the ivory towered buildings. not only are they carried but visible and at the ready - which draws a lot of stares for while photography is talked about a great deal actual picture making is rare.

as a result when i conjecture about a potential picture i actually see if i am correct or not. i not only wonder but also experiment. this brings back the time when i had to walk between wgas and uic at lunch where i would try to take a different path. i am starting to notice light, patterning, surreal juxtapositions and as i don’t take it seriously, i don’t hesitate to let the film fly. i have even stopped on the way to wgas immigration/passport control put down the courier bag, dug out the leiquinha and made snaps.

the hardest part of this has been when i do head out on “official” rambling where i would normally carry joãozão for the detail and to feel like a real photographer. this is the reason why i only bring the leiquinhas as it is either one of them or nothing. while i haven’t been able to make it to say albany park or beverly,there have been walks to the west loop for lunch and trying to find some galleries, has produced not only snaps but again snaps of people - movers who have dared me to make a snap, the person who made my sandwich at graziano where i have photographed everyone there and been given samples of cheese. returning for another sandwich means i leave another snap. even in the loop i am prone to taking long ways to destinations, linger at corners, and walk on the side of the street where the sun penetrates windows.

it is still difficult for me to look at the results of 35mm film - so many images and they are so small on proof sheets. i, now, don’t worry about the image quality falling apart as i have lost interest in making large snaps and find engagement with my surroundings much more interesting.