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.