south west crouse

between the showers and with a lessening of the wind. i decided to take the deardorff across the road to south west crouse. i would park near the grave site and the trail head walk around the cove to the other end of the community and make snaps on the way back.

the area seemed to have potential for not only the formal with the rooms and stores on the cove side of the road, mixed with hints of habitation - gloves, cords, weber grill.

made it to the cul-de-sac and had a couple of snaps made, wood pile that mirrored the house behind it, the weber grill, and was heading down a few steps to make a snap of those same steps mixed in with the possessions left on them.

pick up the camera on the tripod to let the legs fall to so that i can lock them level. with the second leg i notice that it leg has fallen off completely - well not completely it was being held on by the centre brace. it seems that manfrotto uses some sort of white metal for its locks.

what followed resembled a 21st century remake of a chaplin or keaton film as i struggled to make sure that the camera would make it to the ground gently.

managed to get the outfit back to the road where i set it up by the house of buddy who was watching as he was heading back from his store and picking up some firewood.

asked him if i could leave the camera in front of his house while i went back to the machine to safely retrieve it.

of course camera-less i saw all sorts of photographic possibilities.

picked up the camera brought out the hobo to finish the outing after chatting with buddy - but not being able to make his snap - didn’t want to seem a stalker. this made an image that i wanted to make even harder as he had hung up his gloves on his line that broke up the rigid formal qualities quite nicely. kept walking back and forth in front of the house hoping that he would go inside so that i could make it. a tripod brings out all sorts of the curious. i am always waving to people in windows as i pass.

i even went back later that day with ubirajara to make the snap and as the shutter went off buddy came out the door.

finishing my allotment of sheet film for the day, and more or less trying to figure out what i was going to do for the rest of the residency. tried gluing the leg back on with the resin that i had bought to affix my front number plate when it came loose when foley pulled me out of a ditch by the post office - mirroring a similar mishap in 2005 - to no avail.

in the end when my brain started to function again i realised that i could use the tripod but in a height challenged mode. i could continue on my way, unknowingly using the pinholed bellows freely.

recaps

- that summer was a great summer. paul said as i ran into him driving through trout river. it was when i was up at parks canada with minnesota flats. photographing and hanging out at the seabreeze.

it must have been true as i was using that summer as a basis for this one, hoping to use what worked so successfully then once again in a place that was even more remote. it would be the same modus operandi where i would restrict myself only to the french shore.

it was the cusp of the season. the “warmth” had returned but everything was still on winter hours - closed. sunset café, granite coffee, trout river interpretative centre, even the post office. i had forgot this. i wanted to deliver some new snaps - taken during the navegatio but forgot last year. luckily trout river is small enough to go to the director’s house.

as i had stated there was a lot of equipment brought along but that was due to the anticipated length of my stay in the atlantic time zone and to the east. they all had their strict roles - joãozão could be used on the mainland and while wandering new york city, ziquinho would be brought out once in cape breton and on the way to conche. it would also be used when the residency ended. on the residency it would be only the deardorff.

after the gravel road to conche everything looked promising - heading down to the cove that first evening standing by casey’s store and seeing two orcas, a lot of dry wood under the bench on the porch, an assuming house with a large kitchen, but so clean i felt intimidated about developing and printing.

it turned out to be the anti parks canada - not due to anything the french shore interpretative centre or the people of the great northern did but due to everything else. the cusp of season where further down the great northern had me questioning why nothing was open as spring had won out. here winter was still trying to hang on - gale force winds with snow showers. when the snow did stop it was replaced with rain, and rain, and rain.

still quite proud of myself, i soldiered on. the rain - and snow - and gale force winds - came in spurts, i would head out and wait. i felt that good fortune was with me when even though the deardorff was blown over but the camera came out of it unscathed.

i think slowly so i was particularly proud when i rearranged the bathroom to develop film at night and the kitchen to dry the negs. i had a work routine down. there was even a lounge to replace the seabreeze. this was going to be great.

except that a good number of negs were ruined by a light leak.

puzzled over it and decided it was a double dark slide so returned the next day to re-photograph the images that i wanted a a few more.

again the light leak. the same spot but not on every neg.

it was intermittent. since i was developing half the negs every evening i didn’t worry as i could return if i really wanted the snap. it was there on quite a few but only because i knew what i was looking for. i reckoned that the images would reflect the place. functional but not pretty.

as i back up i would head out with either ubirajara or ziquinho.

a book of platinotypes - why not - came of it and am quite pleased.

returning to the states in the dark i placed a light within the deardorff turned off the lights in the room and had my own planetarium from all the holes in the bellows.

no final de contas ...

um jogo bonito vence uma laranja mecânica

i am becoming more and more certain that 10x8 no matter how seductive the negatives are, isn’t the format for me. while i like the rigour and the ritual and when wandering about here visibility works as i learn a lot about the the area from what i am told by those who stop and gawk. the slowness doesn’t bother me, i can still walk - although hills are a killer. i find that it is best walking with the camera if i have it on the tripod with the legs long enough to have a nice balance. it isn’t the limited amount of film that i can take at a time. 24 exposures which means twelve when i am too far away to be able to easily return to make another snap if something is wrong with the neg. it is how the decision making process is changed.

i knew of this in theory with the looking hard before placing the camera down, walking around to make sure there was a better angle then once the camera was placed playing with the edges of the frame before inserting the film. through this process first impressions are obliterated. due to the size of the screen, and with patience, the ability to see how everything lines up i am pretty much sure of what the neg will look like. there are no surprises. when an neg is edited out it is because it is boring, self evident why i cannot see this when i place the camera down i am not sure.

with a hand camera, an image can be made before i am aware precisely why i have stopped. after the first impression i can guess as to the reason and make snaps that maybe improve on what i thought that i saw. this usually entails worrying about the edges, how lines match up shifting back and forth a bit more or less what i would be doing with the plate camera. when i look at negs from a hand camera even though i go through the second guessing at the time of the taking, the initial impression usually holds up. that decision though is made when i am away from the scene, sometime later when cooler heads are in play.

i also pity those who are taking the standard image class. while i hate the fact that large format classes seem to outfit students with monorails - cameras best suited for the confines of a studio. you can spot a large format student kilometres away with the steamer trunk hold the camera attached to a cart the tripod precariously attached to the top. when if schools only went for field cameras a tow decent courier bags would carry camera and film. the tripod could be carried on a shoulder.

this will be worse with the standard image. while the 10x8 deardorff isn’t light it is well balanced. i can place it in a back back, place the dark slides in my timbuk2 bag and throw the tripod over my shoulder, after the first image the camera never leaves the tripod. the new new outfits while the cameras will be flatbeds - sort of there is an excess of wood meaning that they won’t fold as compactly. the “cases” will be plastic tubs with wheels, that barely fit the lockers hardly portable. after reading about lois connor biking with her banquet camera in china and how important portability is with nicholas nixon can only image how this mini caravan will effect the way those in the class will photograph. what ever the case there will be no hiding in the studio.

if all the people that i want to hang out with weren’t on the avalon, i’d probably not return. yeah sure i’d miss, hava java, the duke, and being able to find the globe, bottles of coor’s light and the western star aren’t quite the same, but the reason that i liked places like pouch cove are so much more present along the great northern. i realise that this is back to my isolationist tendencies but due to the circumstances of these places there is a sense of community and while it at times may fall short of my “strange” needs - no curry powder at the foodland in roddickton things seem geared for those who live here and here that is a much more exacting balance. conche has two conveniences less than 300 metres apart. i am sure that if something was in either of them that didn’t sell the profits would plummet as there would be no back-up.

while right now this is extreme,unlike bonne bay where being the off season only the essentials in town are open here everything is. granted the lounge only has three people in it during the evenings, but kearneys does a good substitution for tim’s where people meet over their morning coffee and the restaurant under the bed and breakfast is open.

i like to have to actively entertain myself. the days are longer but time doesn’t drag, with less amenities, it seems that more gets done. i like this paradox. i also know that this is a choice due to the house having neither phone, internet nor television service. houses over the area have satellite dishes and i heard the morning crowd at kearney’s talk about updating their face book page.

i miss pouch cove but in the times that i have been going there i have noticed that it is becoming more and more greater st. john’s it is becoming less of a community and more a place for people to sleep at the end of the day. st. john’s provides most of what is needed cape st. francis and while there are also two conveniences in pouch cove, two restaurants, and a lounge.

being off the avalon, i also notice how much the rest of the province is ignored by the capital, except for the call in programmes and the fisheries broadcast, it gets little notice. labrador might as well be alberta.

last year seemed to be a high water mark for everything. while i didn’t mean it to be my attempt of photographing everyone who spoke to me turned away from away of making the trip personal and to remember those with whom i came in contact with and became more of an exercise pathetic midwestern art schools would foster.

that is not true for the most part those i photographed last year had the importance of those of the past, but i could feel myself become more sanguine to the point where it became a photographic portrait session. there were a few times when i was with the wrong camera - it seems that during the navegatio of 2008 the people camera became the digital - and would ask the people to wait while i got the proper one. talk about spoiling the mood.

even in 2008 i was worried that the process of getting the photograph was more important than the underlying reason. last year was worse.

this year there is no running back for the correct camera, in fact i have photograph few of the people i have talked to as the chat was more important than the photograph. there are a few times that i regret this - fred in her machine telling me about potlotek, the guards at marine atlantic escorting me back to my machine after i left the confines to get something from tim’s, the scandanavian who befriended me but with the exception of fred they would have all been the type of image that the documentary expert in the department would have made - completely soulless ripe for theory.

i like this new moderation, as again the moment is more important than the photograph, marianne who cut my hair with her next customer - joking about a may december - “november i’m not that old” relationship, tom coming back and the camera being raised while we talk about the time that has passed since i was at the bank or montréal building.

last year was a good wander, while part of it bordered on pure mannerism and it seemed that i forgot why i like to wander, not to get some place but to go, it allowed for all the excess in what i thought i was supposed to be doing run through my system and i am much better for it.

this is certainly different than my last wander up here. i think that last year things became overly complicated due to forgetting why i come up here. i over packed in cameras, although this time it is worse with the deardorff, the medium format crowd even joãozão who hasn’t seen the rock in a good six years and and a digital. this time however it is the trip that is multitasking. the race to the rock, the race back to nyc, what was to be another more leisurely return to the rock - frequent boating miles on marine atlantic, meant the different cameras. am sure that i’ll be asked to make snaps at the graduation hence the digital. joãozão because it is still my favourite camera for flânerie, the other medium format crowd for everything in atlantic camera and for the second crossing.

last time like a camera clubber i worried about what camera to take when i headed out - would i run into people, would i need something for this, i realised that i was more worried about the postings that i was about making work.

it was a breaking point, by this time last year there would have been seven postings i would have stayed up to write, make the jpgs, and publish. this time, i am making sure that i remember the day first that i get down all the - even more - boring detail of what happened and if there is time, i make an entry. while there are snaps appearing, i leave the digital behind when wandering. i have become quite disciplined. an outing entails taking the deardorff, using it until i run out of film then picking up ubirajara and continuing until i have to leave before it gets dark - so far i have seen 20 moose along the road - mostly cows - and i plan to be in conche before it becomes duckish.

also the excitement of posting has somewhat diminished. this could have been a flash back to the days where there was no wi-fi in pouch cove and i would make midnight runs to the airport to file, if i didn’t make it to wordplay on time. as i sit outside the french shore centre here to check email, that excitement could have returned but i found something equally as exciting - post cards - think of them as postal tweets, which i have been sending out to those who do write. i can do this from the comfort of the kitchen here in conche again following a deep tradition here in newfoundland - being kitchen centred. sat in the front room by the wood stove once but it didn’t feel write. i write the tweets, head down to the post office chat with the worker and off they go, nothing is of immediate importance that it has to be read immediately and while i do like seeing that people in iran, saudi arabia and from coast to coast to coast here read it at times, i can get to sleep much earlier.

at the end of term, being asked what i was planning to do, i mentioned my driving once again to the rock and my desire - since i have now been in every province east of the prairies - to hit all the provinces before the end of summer.

it was met with horror from one student. that’s so far why not fly?

my glib answer was typical of someone who finds anything longer than a tweet “war and peace”. turning onto autoroute 20 just beyond the city of québec the true answer was made apparent.

while i tend to grin and bare the area between the u.s. border and montréal, once on either 40 or 20 things change. it is here that i see the geography change hints of the north show up from the first moose warnings to the beginning of the pine forests that first whiff of newfoundland while still in the nation of québec.

having said this though southern ontario is necessary as i need the flat of the land outside sarnia to appreciate the views of lake ontario around oshawa, the beginning of the saint lawrence at kingston, the wetlands that confuse the ontario québec border. how can i see that topographies have little to do with borders.

how does one experience 100km/h meaning 130 in ontario, 100 south of montréal but 120 between montréal and québec and 150 on the côte sud.

from however high you are in a plane how can you distinguish the flat of southern ontario from the that of côte sud of the st lawrence. a comfortable flat between with the river and the laurentians in the background. where silos and churches compete.

there is no scale in a plane like there is no scale from map to map, ontario prince edward island they both fit on the same size map. going from sarnia to cornwall i now know what 800 kilometres feels like, i also know that while it is the same distance between port-aux-basques and st. john’s the latter takes longer.

how much time should travel take?

how much dignity should be surrendered for speed. full body pat downs and no liquids?

would i have seen the skate border along autoroute 20 westjetting it east?

how about the oh so tired overworked server at the tim horton’s in brockville who wasn’t sure what was left as even though it was 10pm she had just started but none the less when she had got her bearings, apologised for not having bread for a large egg salad sandwich nor lettuce - we’re just off the 401 and it has been non stop - gave me extra tomatos to make up for it.

or the worker at canadian tyre who commiserated with me when those out of wedlock pæderasts at bank of america denied my purchase.

or the people at the town and country motel who took the time to have a bit of small talk before giving me a room over looking the saint john river.

there is the advance warning of atlantic canada along 185 between riviere-du-loup and the new brunswick border and while the trans-canada in new brunswick is now all new and moose free with an arizona like border fence to keep them off the road - playing tag with the saint john river proves that you certainly in a new terrain.

i can taste the coffee at the bridge street café in downtown sackville - and wish i wasn’t rushing and could stay for food.

i can see the red of the mud when the rivers leading to the bay of fundy are drained due to low tide.
i can marvel at another flat of the tantramar marshes.
i make sure that i am not importing bees in to nova scotia.

but above all, while photographing a ball park in potlotek nova scotia, a machine pulls up and the driver’s window rolls down. having seen me photographing the chubby’s in st peter thinks that i would be interested in potlotek chapel island to the non native. it is a sacred place for the mi’q mak. fred then goes on to tell me that i am interested her sister works for the mi’q mak interpretive centre and she could arrange to take me out to the island by canoe to look around and photograph. when i come back through if i have a couple of hours it could be possible. it is still not the tourist season so being out there could be great.

now i feel like i am in a rush. jokingly tell her that she is going to have me miss my ferry and apologising in advance as i shall be racing through cape breton on my way to nyc for a graduation. nevertheless she hands me her email and says if it is possible let her know.

i head down to the shore to look at the island - her cousin said it was a mere kilometre away - and she is right, i so want to get on that island. i thank her in absentia for telling me about the place and try to get in touch with my sister to see when exactly i have to be in nyc.

this little outing has me questioning my dedication on some of my more audacious wanders. leaving bonne bay where i had my oil changed by paul martin - not that paul martin. i still liked the world down the 30 odd kilometres of route 431. bonne bay nestled in between the water and the tablelands. sped down the trout river gulch - 150 k/mh again gobsmacked at the tablelands still with snow on the top and the green of the opposite side. it was more peaceful now it was still winter and all but the essential were still closed.

leaving i am always aware of what is left behind and out on route 430 it is hard to image that the towns exist.

this was the reason for wanting to head to other more remote towns, to travel the now completed trans-labrador.

this curiosity was due to ignorance. while i still use maps instead the of google equivalent - scale changes and while i know that some distances are long i have no tangible reference.

this wander has been all about scale. here i am on the island further away from the avalon than chicago is from new york. i have gone almost from tip to tip - channel port-aux-basques to conche 400 odd miles - i have to deduct the bonne bay diversion. for most of the transcanada i was alone, north of rocky harbour the same but that was nothing. driving roads like this is driving in autopilot - except for the moose. it was when i finally left the 430 for roddickton that my patience was tested. a mere 70km but one that had to be done at the speed limit. this wasn’t due to the three moose grazing near the edge of the road. this part was due to the size and number of potholes. there were parts of the road that looked like someone had just finished having war games. the speed limit went down to 50km/h and that was optimistic. that could only be obtained in a 4x4 or a big rig, a saturn would be swallowed up.


i know that i could make 70 km, i was way ahead of time - time being getting off the road before dark when i would have to worry even more about the moose population. i felt the amount of road kill deer in michigan was some sort of warning - there must have been two dozen. then heading up the transcanada just before the codroy valley a road kill moose. i also knew that the road from roddickton to conche was dirt 24km of dirt. roddickton itself was not only the moose capital of the great northern but also the pothole capital - marked speed limit is 30 clicks and even at speed the road turns into a slalom event, dodging portholes and on coming traffic.

i now wonder while i could possibly do the bay d’espoir and burgeo highways as i am sure that they are fine 100 click roads, i wonder what would have happened if i could have book passage on the ferries last year and thus had crossed over into labrador from québec via that dirt road and then dealt with the trans labrador - 481 km of unpaved driving.

bought supplies in roddickton as while i was told there are two conveniences in conche, i doubted whether they had vegetables. then made my way to conche making mental notes on what to photograph - so many wood piles so little time. unpacking i realised that i had forgot to buy table butter. i’ll do without it.

perfect...

r c-d

The house will be open for you. The keys will be on a hook inside the door. Conche is only a small community, just drive around until you see a light blue two storey house with a sign in front of tree which says"Casey House".

Be careful on our road. It is a gravel road and we have a large moose population. Conche has two grocery stores but do not have a gas station. There is no cell phone coverage in Conche. Casey house does not have telephone or cable. We do have wireless internet here so maybe you can link into the neighbors for internet. If not, we have wireless at the Centre which you can use. You can also use the telephone here.

it has been harder than i had expected returning to the ritual of these entries. i am enjoying the post card tag that i was playing with people - a stone age version of twitter - with others exchanging letters there was quite a resurgence in the post. it was refreshing to see the traits of the senders in their choices, their care in the whole package.

at the same time, even though i was teaching two digital classes - imagine - i put mine away and picked up the leiquinhas in an effort to be so mobile that i could make snaps whenever and wherever. leiquinhas instead of the usual medium formats simply because they seem oh so trendy right now. i was correct with lesser weight more snaps happened.

i thought that i would start practising here at the end of march, then 15 april precisely a month before the residency started but choosing postcards and answering real letters took precedence.

the delay came also from looking forward to the summer. the residency, the world cup, sound symposium, and reunions on the avalon.

i am still fretting the sale of sullivan’s loop am grateful to the alioths for allowing me to use it all these years am sad to see it sold as it did feel like home, especially in winter. even though in recent years i used it less and less, it seemed that it would always be there whenever, the urge arose, the improvements, wi-fi throughout, the printer, books left by others. evenings after a day of wander were peaceful there overlooking the cove.

last year i have come to realise that i am more bayman than townie. i am preferring places like cox’s cove, lark harbour, the port au port peninsula. while i still like the duke, hava java and the bagels from the georgetown bakery, i also like granite coffee, java jacks and the legion.

corner brook has become big enough.

i'll miss sullivan's loop but it seems i was drifting west anyway.

i also thought that the closer to the departure date the more i would focus and my tendency to hedge my bet with too much equipment would be quelled. this hasn’t quite happened yet. i do know that last summer was a bit much. with the digital, i was spending more time trying to guess what i would run into and thus what camera to take than simply heading out.

the plan for the residency is to replicate bonne bay - the deardorff, a box of film a day, pmk pyro, and platinotype materials. when i thought of this it was to put a stop to the automatic picture taking. it was an acknowledgement of being in a small place for a fortnight - too short a time but still no need to race through.

like bonne bay i want to be able to show what i am doing while i am there. taking into account the sea change that has happened in photography that was hinted at by minnesota flats and her time in gros morne and in homage to her, i thought about a hybrid version - film, scanner and printer. this was also insurance as i didn’t know the accommodations and the possibility of a temporary lab.

have gravitated back to the deardorff and the hobo - that diana camera on steroids - and platinotypes partly because it will give me practical experience for the 10x8 class in the autumn, partly because in slowing down i find that the days are longer and i have more time.

the itinerary...

for a complicated summer
racing up to conche and the residency at casey house - no stopping, no gawking, no snaps, unless i get to cape breton with time to spare. likewise heading up western newfoundland 12 hours from the ferry to conche want to get started.

ferry is booked but worry as it is the atlantic vision - the one that caught fire the day before i was to take it.

may on the great northern, it could still be winter. there is a chance of flurries on thursday with a high 2C.

june back to the mainland - via the joey and clara smallwood - to nyc for a graduation. this time i can stop, ding dong ditch, make snaps. plan on going slowly through sackville, and saint john entering the states at calais. want to find a place where i can stash some equipment.

then back up through calais and the ferry again, to pouch cove - supposedly there is a road from the the burgeo highway that heads through buchans - for the sound symposium and the world cup. leaving when the place is invaded by minor cbc presenters.

finally a slow(er) return trip cape breton and bas st-laurent.

somewhere in this time i hope to travel the bay d’espoir highway.

no wonder they have blagojevich and daley...

feeling nostalgic was trolling you tube for a decent version of cidade maravilhosa when i came across the olympic bids for rio de janeiro and chicago.
rio 2016
chicago 2016

i don’t know which is more pathetic.
chicago thinking that a bunch of people passively standing about talking about what they will do in the future is an excellent piece of marketing.

or that they thought that they would become the 2016 summer olympic bid using it.

what i get from these two entries is chicago makes promises rio does.

the proposal...

Casey House Artist's Retreat
Artist in Residence Programme Conche

I am interested in the idea of sense of place and what forms it. this could be because I constantly wonder what would have been if I had stayed in Baltimore Maryland - Colony of Avalon 2 - where I am the fourth generation of my family to have been born there, rather than passively deciding to go to college in the US Midwest, even though away now for 35 years I still see the move as temporary.

For the past decade, I have been visiting and travelling about Newfoundland seeing how others answer the question. At first it was the community created by people thrown together in St. John’s. This community seemed closest to my psyche, the people I met - be they those from off the Avalon or true Comes From Away - seeing themselves defined as exiles awaiting the call back “home”.

The more I have been travelling the island - I had hoped to make it to Labrador but bad planning on my part had me postpone the trip - the more I have become interested in not those who leave but those who decide to stay.

I don’t want this to sound overly romantic, in fact I don’t want it to sound romantic at all, but it is my opinion that in outport Newfoundland one has to concretely decide to stay. Because of this I find not only a strong sense of community but also more self sufficiency than one finds in populations three and four times the size of these communities.

Where the natural choice of moving away - as, it seems has been the policy of the province since the resettlements of Joey Smallwood through the consolidations of government services to more centralised cities to the boom of the Avalon from oil, financial security would warrant - seems the sound choice, I have been interested in what has people staying.

My interest in sense of place has become more intense with the recent resettlements of Great Harbour Deep, a community near Rose Blanche, and now Grand Bruit, but also equally importantly with people now returning - via ATV’s - to places like Chimney Cove for cabins and summer use. As an aside, this idea of place and community had led me to gravel pit camping until it ended this month.

The idea was complicated by deciding to see how remote the Rock is by driving but driving slowly making it to the eastern most piece of land before the waters that separate the mainland - and Cape Breton - and the island - Gaspésie, Île Miscou, East Point P.E.I. and the Cape Breton Highlands.

During the drive I realised that there were parallel senses of place - anglophone and francophone particularly in Acadie. This questioned my idea of Newfoundland, which seemed to be more tied to the English and Irish - as it seems Conche is - than the French and Basque. While I had seen the tricolor terre-neuvien, it was overwhelmed by the pink white and green, the union jack and the new provincial flag. Tuning the radio, I saw that Radio Canada comes from the mainland.

Acadie seems to cross the maritime provincial borders, where it seems that francophonie in Newfoundland is separate and quite hidden even along the French Shore.

My curiosity had me planning on travelling the Port-au-Port Peninsula, researching the idea of sense of place with the added wonder of a parallel - actually two as I saw signs in Mi’kmaq - community.

I did speak to a person at Port-au-Choix questioning him about francophonie and me mentioned Conche but time was limited.

When I was told about the artist retreat in Conche, I have been trying calmly rationally write to apply. This would be ideal for me. While in my official work, I tend to photograph objects as representations of habitation, give and take – human contact has become an important part of my process, being available, showing what I am doing to those where I am in the hopes that I my visual story telling will generate verbal recollections of the area, which then sends me out with a new understanding.


Being able to stay in a place for a length of time, seeing and allowing to be seen is important in my process as I visually work through my prejudices, to the more subtle. I find this exceptionally hard in Newfoundland - perhaps the reason that I keep returning - as I find layers that when left to themselves can be dismissed as, say decay, nostalgia etc, when I am speaking of a continuity and adaptation to preserve community.

Explaining my working method concretely as for the most part photographers unlike other visual artists usually “note-take” while in an area the finished work only being seen once the photographer has access to a studio or lab. It being important that what I do be seen in the place where I am working, traditionally I have brought an exceedingly large camera with me – 10x8 inch negatives – so that I could develop the images and make decent sized prints – using processes that don’t require a darkroom – platinum – so that I can show rushes immediately. While I may modify my working method a bit – still using film but scanning and printing the work via an inkjet printer – it is still imperative that the work influence more work via conversations with those who see it – than somehow editing what I have done when I am no longer in the community.

It is my working method when I am more in transit.

I am obviously interested in the artist’s retreat in Conche but also in Conche specifically being situated at the end of the road some twenty odd kilometres from Roddickton. One doesn’t choose to pass through Conche. Specifically Conche as it has a working harbour, it is centrally - well - located so I can make extended visits to Englee and the towns along route 438 again searching for senses of place.

Thanks in advance for looking over this overly long letter, I apologise for its length.

the rhythm of the crossing signal marking the approach of the 5:59 train into the city has me humming helpless.

and

i am reminded that the .... of the signal is the marconi S plus one (when actually it is an H).

thoughts turn north.

-mummy, why are those old geezers playing the theme songs to all the csi programmes?
-because the superbowl is on cbs.

ghost species

was reading in a granta of a couple years back - am roughly two years behind in my reading - a naturalist who mentioned ghost species - animals that while aren’t extinct yet, will be, as everything that they needed to survive has disappeared or been supplanted. while they may continue on in controlled environments - zoos - in the wild they are more or less awaiting the passing of the last one. a good human example of this would be the shakers.

i was reading this on my way back to peasants pissoir after a foray into chicago to buy darkroom supplies. headed into a camera shop that at one time would have everything possible to buy some oriental select vc paper. on the paper shelf that would have had not only ilford but foma, forte, and afga, as well as the ones that survived - bergger, adox, kentmere, only had ilford and a few remaining boxes of what i needed -two in fact - bought them out. asked if oriental had met the fate of other paper manufacturers. no, they simply don’t get much call for it. while waiting, i looked up at where the shelves would have been filled with pentaxes, minoltas, leicas, and hasselblad were empty.

they weren’t even replaced by their digital versions well not to the extent that it had been. so is the silver gelatine print a ghost species? the process seems trapped between the hand coated processes - platinotypes, ambrotypes, etc where the chemistry is still available, one simply has to do the compounding - and inkjet where - in the same shop - there was now more varieties than there ever were silver gelatine options.

there was the solace that photographic paper was much cheaper than inkjet but with the gap closing - the lessening of demand having photo paper soar while price wars bring down inkjet - i fear a quicker decline in choice.

i reckoned that materials would go the way that it did with movie film - available but expensive now i am not so sure about that. it seems that the new hybridisation of photography is almost complete. while it seems that film is still a necessity when anything larger than “35mm” is used, this is not the same for the print. the new work ethic - to which i only partially subscribe - seems to be film, scan, print. while i like the added options of new surfaces- especially when it comes to making books - i don’t want it to be at the expense of older ones.

passively distancing myself more from the art world. headed out to get some culture as a friend was showing in a gallery as i had promised to see the work but missed the opening, combined seeing the show with a wander.

the gallery is quite prestigious. one of the premiere venues. i was curious about the work as i had only seen bits of it but it did seem than the artist worked from hints rather than the obvious.

my growing disaffection with galleries was evident. i was shocked by the size. by now i thought that i would be used to sistine chapel sized photographs but no they still shock. especially when i don’t understand the point except to fill the room. well not fill the room but make the room feel appropriate for the work being seen. how do you make a large white space intimate?
confusion then set in as i wasn’t sure where to go. the entrace was in the centre of the room which where the walls were shaped like an “H” in the middle of the space with prints i later found out on all wall surfaces. although i could see the first three when entering i didn’t know where to go.

did this strange dance as i first went right - then left then turning around found prints behind me. gave up and did an infinity shaped walked starting to the left.

let me stress that the images were beautiful. the work had a stillness to it, the world made by the photographs was enclosed. i am still deciding whether the enclosure is active or passive.

the space ruined it, due to the size of the images i could never block out my reflection nor that of the light coming in from outside. all the subtleties were competing with the reflections. there was no correct place to stand. i would want to verify an gesture, read a look only to find my face in the spot of it bathed by light flooding in from outside.

i was thinking of sequencing obviously in a much more binary way than what happens in a space with free standing walls. thinking that a space like this would want the relationships to change as one moved about the room - i stood back and watched to see if images changed when they were seen with others. i wondered how size - for there were differing sizes from the now wallet sized 50x40cm up to 120x100cm - would play in the distances of the images relative to each other was i walked the room. i wondered if the walls when they became barriers would work with images that while on the same wall were separated by the new barrier. i could intellectually justify all of this. i could reconcile the spare quality of the space, how the lights from the corner window could possibly be part of the work - or at least influence the reading.

i simply couldn’t justify the barriers set up by the reflections, the glass, nor the wish to spend more time with the images privately - well this was a gallery and it was a week-day how much more private can one get.

i wondered why this wasn’t a book.

it wasn’t conscious. i was tired of the lack of memory. not the lack of memory that occurs when the the card is filled. not the lack of memory meaning no recall. lack of memory meaning that i had no time to digest the day. to have what i thought of the day reconcile on how i documented the day. the rigour of the nightly postings, the proof of my value as a photographer by turning the camera around, even after i pulled out the book from a previous wander. the day was being defined by the photographs when before what i experienced and what i had photographed had only a tangental relationship yeah there was an attempt to preserve with the camera but with the distancing of film with the added element of black and white something else arose. the immediate colour overwhelmed my recollection of the day having me wonder why i didn’t remember it that way. black and white - and distance - worked as an aide-mémoire not as stand in.

i also missed the time lag of letters - not realising that letters are truly the thing of the past - the distancing the possibility of thoughts being crossed in transit, the idea of a conversation and something tangible. while i liked checking the hits on the site and seeing that at one time there were dots on every continent, i would have much preferred to physically correspond with the viewer and found that the writing was becoming more like public speaking rather than the exchange of ideas.

so everything stopped, i used only film with its time lag and while less successful on this point, tried to write post cards again. except for the postcards of the recent trip - this year’s extension of clarke’s beach, i used technology that wasn’t meant for multi-tasking, i headed to the darkroom where all i could do was listen to some minor cbc presenter and his ideas and think.

as an homage to the passing of kodachrome used up the six remaining rolls of kodachrome 200 with an expiry date of sometime in the 90s. wandered with the leiquinhas.

i found that this last outing around the maritimes was too complicated photographically - too many cameras, too much effort on cataloguing. now that i have admitted this hasn’t made it any easier as there are some colour digital snaps that i liked - it seems that time of day had a lot to do with it. there as also the comparison of the same image made unofficially in colour then again officially in black and white and now having a hard time in choosing.

during this time i found how quaint my thinking was, while i was mentally debating the connectedness of a weblog, facebook makes this as relevant as the typewriter.