michigan avenue mosey

the first time i headed to the south side it was with a friend from beloit whose sister lived in kenwood - wherever that was. remember getting down from the greyhound and taking the number 1 bus down passing my uncle’s house but also empty lots, vacant and boarded shops and bars on any window where someone lived. when we walked into kenwood, i said that when the next riots come people won’t have to go far. down the block from l’s house lived elijah mohammed, mohammed ali and now supposedly barack obama. it was the first time i encountered burglar alarms.

i remember getting down from the el at tech 35 heading up to teach in the i.d. and being told that the glass in the windows overlooking the robert taylor homes were bullet proof waist level down. i found this a pity as the south side always seemed more interesting than the north when i would venture down and then there was hyde park.

i did walk across 87th street - state street to the lake in 2000.

so when i said that i would meet someone at the southside community arts centre. i thought of walking. walking for many reasons. while winter isn’t bad it is convincing myself of that. when people say how horrible it is and seem to be one step removed from hypothermia. the morning walk from the train to the world’s third greatest art school wasn’t promising, my fingers were yellow from the cold the bald spot, stinging. i also hadn’t been on a wander for sometime.

it was a wander of curiosity and arrow straight, i was heading down michigan avenue not deviating from the street 38 blocks. curiosity as looking south now one can see the new utopiaville being built between the green line and the lake. while west of the loop there are tall buildings here it seems that chicago is trying to imitate hong kong with the highrises.

chicago is always trying to imitate something - what originality the city had is no longer apparent. i was looking for the transition from the brave new city into the old black one. it was further south than i thought, chess records is now surrounded by urban pioneers in fake loft like buildings. the chicago defender building boarded up awaiting the defender lofts. odd how these new living areas in the city feel like suburbs, no one out, no shops with anything useful to the neighbourhood - unless everyone is over 20 stone and need their nails done. everything is so regular and regulated that if one came across something by chance one would suspect that it was placed there for that effect.

my search for the local didn’t happen, crossing the stevenson while it was definitely more tawdry, there was now a buffer of mercy hospital, a car dealership and the i.d. what few people i met greeted me. it was only when i passed 35th that remnants of the old southside tried to appear - a store front church, mansions alternating with vacant lots but then there was the dunkin’ donuts. one last outing with the leiquinha as the term is over i can head back to the usual suspects. not a good one to end on as snaps were forced. made more poking around the art centre than on the walk.

history by default

thought that the scars had healed enough to finally work on some negs from the now more distant past. the negs were from the overreaching project run by a person so incompetent and self loathing that he could have a promising career as a minor dean in institution of higher education. i would have made nice income as one of the official staff but i couldn’t take the rampant stupidity of the person running it. the great plans for this archive ended up moulding in a basement of a college somewhere in the area.

i was pursuing what has and still interests me borders - as everything had to be done within the city limits,i was heading to where chicago stopped - and long walks of wonder.

it was on one wonder chosen in my usual illogical way - a walk across 87th street in chicago from the dan ryan east to the lake. it was a street i had never been down in an area where most would supposedly feel nervous - don’t know why except that it is on the south side.

it was february.

in trying to be systematic, and actually finish a project, was going through the sheets one by one when i came across this.

another reason why film trumps digital.
the image is not interesting at all, the only reason it was kept as it is attached to other negs and to cut it out would be more trouble than it is worth. if it were a digital file from someone who has been trained on a digital camera i wonder if it wouldn’t have been deleted soon after the image was taken. history wouldn’t have been allowed to build up around the image.

i didn’t know who obama was and while the neg beside this one had another political poster - and there were quite a few placards for politicos in the series, don’t even know if i made the snap due to that or if i was feeling particularly atget that day and wanted the penetrating light and needed something in the foreground.

now though there is this time based ping pong - what i know now what i saw but didn’t know then. the peripheral coming to the forefront. ironically this is one of the things photography because of its ease does so well - although fewer and fewer people with artistic pretensions for the medium actually deal with it - as at one time remnants were kept because it was easier than discarding them. now photography being made even more user friendly, the documenting of history by default is being obliterated by the wee trash can ikon on every camera.

is this the downward slope to being a real artist?

my 35mm paradox

with my want for slow photography i go for the usual suspects – exceedingly large camera, alternative usually iron based processes and the hope for sun. it works. there is slowing down at every part of the process which implies time to think and with the degree of difficulty a better chance of editing – is this neg really worth the time i will have to devote to it.

oddly though the slowest time for me is 35mm. while wandering the streets and note taking everything works smoothly, i experiment, don’t fear the blur, almost question nothing. development is also more straight forward as i don’t go for the overly toxic versions – choosing hc-110 to pmk pyro.

things screech to a halt when i head to the darkroom. with images from the hernia inducing cameras as well as the medium formats i head down and blissfully print with little problems. it is slow – tests, develop – repeat until satisfied – but steady.

the 35mm hand camera slowness is due not to the above but to dust, water spots etc. when working in the large formats it seems i that can drop and trample on the film and still print with little problems – admittedly with the hernia inducing cameras it is more due to the iron based processes than the cleanliness of the film but even they are more defect free.

with 35mm i get as close to a clean room mentality as is possible when i am processing – good wash – precise photoflo measurements , squeegee with webril pads – and still they look as if they were developed using water from the late lamented bubble of st. john’s harbour.

it has nothing to do with the relative size of the formats as looking at the films there is more gunk on the base of the 35mm film.

i am guessing that this is yet another reason why i have trouble with 35mm. not only are there too many images for me to edit at one time – i have the same problem with digital files thus the reason for the lack of images from this past summer’s version of clarke’s beach, i cannot break them down into manageable sections – but once chosen the amount of time needed to prepare them for enlarging. it causes an extreme version of editing – choosing nothing. the 15 week experiment with 35 is coming to an end i wonder if i’ll actually do anything with them or will they be archived until some date in the future which will turn into never.

headed out to give some of the snaps i made - buddy at clark and congress and the people at graziano’s. the first image i was pretty proud of the second not so much. when making the snap i had the lens that places an aura around people when photographing contre-jour on the leiquinha. i made an inkjet print to prove that i did make something but went to photograph him again.

even though i combed the area, buddy at clark and congress wasn’t there, a wander over to randolph street the long way as i thought i would also get culture. photographed some movers, made some other snaps and confirmed that there is no reason for a gallery like flatfile to exist outside of a tourist resort.

headed to pick up my sandwich and hand over the snap and pick up my veggie hoagie. was recognised and was asked to make snaps of the people making my sandwich, then handed in the snap to what i guessed was the owner of the shop, apologising for the quality and if buddy were there offered to make another.

buddy comes in loving it and wants a photograph of him with his father. take out the digital not wanting to have another disaster and so that can show them immediately what happened. made two as the sony has this quirk where the lens hood casts a giant shadow over the bottom third of the snap. made another without flash as i wanted more of an atmosphere. the father said that the son did everything, we chatted about parmesan cheese - like eating it straight - so we had a cheese tasting. got the sandwich and said i’d be back with the snaps.

there is a reason that i hate digital cameras - all digital cameras. i assume things from dealing with film that aren’t the case with digital. with film there would have been enough light to make the snap in the shop digitally it sounded fine but i forgot that it defaults to iso100. the atmospheric image was blurred. i cannot see the screen without spectacles so i use it for composition not for piddly bits. while the snaps of the people making the sandwiches were fine, the two of buddy and his father were flawed.
so i head back over first chance i get - a rainy chilly day - to give them the decent snaps and to show them what had happened and to offer to do it again. wondered how digital slrs work in the wet. arriving, the shop is closed due to a death in the family. try to squeeze the snaps under the door but no luck will have to head back. finally during the excessively long lunch period, i mosey over to the shop - like mosey and am upset that william least heat-moon used it first.

the son sees me coming up the street and greets me, inside the preparers ask about their snaps. i express my condolences for the death. as i am ready to hand him the photographs, he says that it was his father. hesitate a moment then hand him the image. he’s grateful, i feel sheepish as all i worried about was the quality he is only concerned about the memories, i still apologise. he thanks me and asks me if i need anything say no as i have to head back as i plan to photoshop the dark lens shade shadow out of the other image.