( old objects new ideas )

in preparation for the future

2010-12-13T14:31:00.004-05:00

i will be continuing my blogging efforts at a rival web-space. please refer to: http://OldObjectsNewIdeas.wordpress.com for further updates, explanations, justifications, etc...

the future is the same color as $$$

2010-12-12T00:15:00.004-05:00

untitled, 2010

this photograph, as yet, hasn't a title. but it has a context. which is thus: this is the view from my (former) studio in Vermont. I was told VT is the Green State & almost everything out my window corroborated this story. this image is my attempt to keep VT green. anything aside from the approved hue was covered up with pieces of photographs of grass - the dark squares are the tape adhering the trapezoids to the glass. there are so many moments in so many days, i wish to relocate to VT.

Thanks Bernie Sanders. i'm sorry that the next half-century (+) will be something to fear. fare-thee-well 20th century American-Liberal idealism SLASH common-empathic-sense: you were shortly lived, but deeply felt.

long island city & eternal return

2010-11-19T15:14:00.005-05:00

10th street & 44th road. Long Island City, 2010.

upon a recent rescreening of Joe Versus the Volcano, i realize that i may have been fated to work in this most centrally located neighborhood. lic first factored into my life at some point in the 90s, when i saw this movie as an impressionable youth. one moment always stuck in my brain as a very sad, albeit very literal metaphor for urban and office life. in the very first scene, as joe makes his way to work he sees a single daisy growing from the concrete. a moment of hope soon dashed, as one of his drone-like collegues unknowingly trounces it in the long march to the office.

now, twenty years later: i work there. a stepping stone between brooklyn & manhattan that i precariously balance upon day after day. just like joe.

2010-11-13T22:50:00.003-05:00

tivoli 2010

i am trying to make sense of the sense i make. something about 'uninhabited' landscape, language & representation. how images stand-in for 'the real' of experience, memory, place, desire. not necessarily that which is known, rather what is felt. like reading a great novel - the prison - the liberation of interiority. "tell me a story" - use photographs. text is directive, too directive. allow me to tell a story about myself.

NOSTALGIA: the comparative space between now & then. in photos, the then of history. in literature, the then of the fictive. in mind, the then yet to be. & the now? only the earth moving - each individual breath.

thanks, New York Times

2010-11-03T15:50:00.006-04:00

you sure do know how to illustrate the obvious. seriously, this is journalism?

2010-10-12T15:44:00.003-04:00

Long Island City, under the Queensboro Bridge, 2010

this scene i photographed last week with my cell phone, is a startlingly accurate representation of how living in new york city feels to me. (i'm second in on the right with my back to the camera.)

back in brooklyn

2010-10-02T19:16:00.002-04:00

here's an image of johnson, vermont at night. right outside of my former studio. i'm back in the city now, which is - you know - cool. now it is fall. hopefully yr reading this at some point in the future so that won't be true anymore. possible you could be reading this in the past? well i guess now is the past to the former scenario's future - so possibly. no, not really.

2010-09-20T16:07:00.002-04:00

here is a photograph i made yesterday. don't think i forgot about the ball. returning city-side on friday. i'm taking all these green things with me.

confused like the state

2010-09-13T21:06:00.002-04:00

i was told by a sign on the side of the road a few weeks ago that vermont is the green state. i just googled "vermont's slogan" & "freedom & unity" popped up. these are the kind of notes i take.

2010-09-07T20:49:00.003-04:00

digital sketch for, Useless 2010

this is a digital snap shot of a large format picture i made today. while waiting for the light to change & the wind to die down i fought a mighty battle against northern vermont's finest mosquito infantry. there were many casualties, the most painful of which was the truncating of my photographic sojourn.

perpetually ready for the country

2010-09-04T17:06:00.003-04:00

this is the view from my studio in Vermont. it's been a week, i think. at some point in college I made it a "goal" to lead a lifestyle in which it was easy to lose track of what day it is. i can now officially say i have achieved said goal.

it's been unseasonably warm until today, so my first week was spent exploring the local underwater hot-spots. it's quite a scene, let me tell you. full of minnows, well worn stones & craw fish bouncers. i was able to find a tie-dye shirt near a waterfall in the woods. yeah, totes VT.

Equivilence Approaching

2010-08-25T00:07:00.005-04:00

West 52nd Street, NYC, 2010

In less than a week I venture off to Vermont, a state I have never set foot in, for precisly one month. I look forward to this change of p(l)ace, for I haven't forfeited the hum-drum in nearly two years! Locally, otherwise: it has been one long, hot, monumental summer. The afternoons' heat could not contest with the midnight sweats. Leaving the last few weeks a blur of the uncomfortable, undesired & unacceptable. Yet, we negotiated it all. And, I, for one, am glad it's over.

Looking forward to printing in B&W, shooting in the color green & gazing upon a horizon further than previously imagined...

Low-Fied

2010-07-22T17:39:00.008-04:00

Los Angeles, California, 2009

In the last two years I've been teaching quite a bit. The budgets at the orgs I'm working with are rather slim so "the perfect print" & "camera techniques" do not drive my lesson planning. My students work with novelty point & shoots or incredibly cheap digital cameras, so I suppose I've been inspired. In this same time frame, perhaps in order to better understand how to teach "good photography" with less than ideal materials I have taken to shooting with plastic film cameras.

The above image was shot with this awesome apparatus I found in a thrift store in Iowa. It cost me ten dollars! The lens cap reads "camera" in large bold letters - in case I forget what the black object hanging from my neck actually is. "Focus Free!" it proclaims on the plastic lens which has three proper f-stops. It's 35mm & the frame counter is busted. Ten dollars!? There also appears to be a hot shoe, but alas my flash is broken so I have not been able to test it.

summer means the same again!

2010-07-10T20:58:00.006-04:00

our fort @ the beach! queens : nyc : 2010

since my last sorrow-filled post i have spent a bit of time in the atlantic ocean, the delaware river & even a hotel pool in midtown. please excuse the excessive self-pity from weeks previous. you must understand: swimming is fundamentally important to my basic physio-psychic balance... maybe even more than art making. yeah really. but don't ask me to give one up especially since i barely have time for either these days. here is a photo of my friend at aforementioned beach. s/he was upset upon finding out their person was present in the photograph.

i can totally relate. below is a 2003 photo by one mister gregg cornish in stone harbor new jersey.

yes, that's me. isn't she twenty years glorious? it's fitting that so many photo-dweebs (the aforementioned "i heart photoshop" subject included) have such extreme issues giving up their representation easily. nor do we attempt to seize control of the photographic moment by striking a signature pose. we fight, we hide. it's easier. it's better. it makes it incredibly difficult to figure out what we actually look like & we like it that way. mystery. avoidance. absence.

i have a great distaste for the the moment when i'm forced to stare down the barrel of someone else's metaphor. so i run as if my life - for my representation - depend on it.

with a word like summer, who needs a vocabulary

2010-06-23T17:49:00.004-04:00

point & shoot to film - maine 2009

words have these inherent often uncontrollable meanings which are not always congruent with our direct use of said word. summer for instance. summer means many things, but not this summer, for me at least. i have not going swimming ONCE since the swimming season began & i'm not sure when the occasion will arise. bummer. i go to the office, i turn on my fans, i sweat the sweat. but in this city? only cold cold showers. double bummer. ice cream truck & teenagers on the streets until all hours. working around other people's vacations while the concrete stinks & you never feel clean. i used to walk barefoot through fields & lawns, swim in seas & lakes, scratch the sand out of my scalp over continental divides, breath deep the air from the tops of the tallest trees.

there was even this one time - i pushed over a fifty-foot rotten pine. it crashed to the ground with a thunderous applause. but no - not this summer. not this word. not now. not here, for me at least.

Idle Time / Busy Mind

2010-06-10T23:04:00.003-04:00

I have three enlarger pieces in a group show opening tomorrow!

Come say hi.
NURTUREart non-profit
910 Grand Street, Brooklyn
one block from the Grand stop on the L
7-9pm

Curated by Juan Morel Campos Secondary School students:
Amanda Holmberg-Perez, Cody Castro, Danny Ortega, Fernando Reyes-Duran, Gisel Mateo, Karina Matlock, and Jeff Pauta.

the artist is absent

2010-06-04T03:11:00.006-04:00

or at least s/he was.

so very pleased to be a part of this project: THE ARTIST IS ABSENT this past weekend at some gallery on the upper west side. truly transformational. freeing the voice? not to mention being a part of the set up & strike. truly inspirational.

this project will be extending into my summer, as one angela beallor & i will decipher how to publish this event beyond the day's events.

STAY TUNED!

2010-05-26T17:08:00.002-04:00

Jean Baudrillard. The Ectasy of Communication. Semiotext(e). Cover

2010-05-04T17:12:00.003-04:00

Roland Barthes. Barthes by Barthes. Translated by Richard Howard. Berkley: University of California Press, 1977. p.1. (9.5 x 6.5")

while i was shooting this:

2010-04-13T16:56:00.004-04:00

lee was shooting this:

mexico so long ago.

old drawings new digi-tainment

2010-04-07T16:51:00.002-04:00

crayola thin tip marker on title page of day by day planner, July 2009

half performance - all landscape

2010-04-05T17:32:00.005-04:00

The World Spins Round (in) New Jersey, Coney Island, Pennslywaynia - all summer 2007

i have (another) ongoing project that i all but forgot about! i have a delightful beach ball which doubles as a glow-in-the-dark satellite picture of earth which i have taken to traveling with. these are documentary photographs of the ball in air - which I "placed there" all over the world (albeit these three are humbly from the mid-atlantic). i have tons of these images kicking around in the old digi-files. i'll see if i can find more come future.

2010-03-30T15:35:00.005-04:00

Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems. The Pocket Poets Series: Number 19. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1964. p. 58. (6 3/16 x 4 3/4")

Not just what is writ, but how it is printed. the first in the Pages Series: when i see some text looking particularly potent on a page, i'll post it.

only the most relevant medium's masters...

2010-03-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

Earlier this week, an artist I know made an off-hand comment referring instead of Alfred, to Albert Stieglitz. Why, oh why did this infuriate me so? An excusably simple error, a personal annoyance, yet something continues to nag at my sense of stability. Proceed indulgence...

It's not that I feel as though the legend of Stieglitz was somehow besmirched, quite the contrary: as if this minor flub solidified his master's status in my unconscious. Why, in my most knee-jerk reactions am I still so wedded to authenticity & the facts I've been fed? What do I care if he goes down in one person's subjectivity as Albert? Isn't this sort of convolution something I've come to view as important: those moments that draw awareness to a form (even if that form is as banal & esoteric as the History of Photography), making us question why it is we think the things we do?

Ahh, yes so it is personal but with generational, aesthetic & polemical self-consciousness. I was angered because in my unconscious I responded: "how could one possibly mispronounce The Master's name!" While my conscious immediately re:responded to that with: "Ah jeez, Leopold! Come off it already - who gives an F? There are far more important issues to get riled about than a fleeting moment of 'disrespect' & shame on you for interpreting it as 'disrespect' to begin with, what are you a Modernist? Just gross."

And so ends another episode of: don't dish it if you can't take it.

redact : rewind it back

2010-03-24T13:49:00.004-04:00

BIG, 2009. sharpie on magnet that came with phone book

& now? an exceptionally cute mammel...

2010-03-19T00:30:00.003-04:00

lil' sqrrrl, 2009 & yeah, i need to take new pictures. i'm working on it...

the photograph : the status update

2010-02-25T00:10:00.004-05:00

as proofs of existence - as means toward communication
a quiet of previous centuries, longed for.

seldom proofed?
experiential - experimental

rebsite update!

2010-02-22T11:26:00.002-05:00

successfully updated my website, sans content however. no worries - i'll be to fixing it... soon.

Bacon for break fast

2010-02-09T15:16:00.004-05:00

work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office work work work work work work work work work work work work work work office (wrong! i didn't eat breakfast)

Upcoming in NYC

2010-01-18T16:44:00.002-05:00

Untitled (Bed Stuy) 2008

this photograph was included in the inaugural group show at 25CPW & now will be shown there again. details to follow...

now that's impressive

2010-01-10T20:49:00.003-05:00

brooklyn heights, 2010
way to go winter light - yr fleeting but there's really nothing like you.

this pretty much sums up where i'd like to be

2009-12-28T15:55:00.002-05:00

which is to say - sitting on an airplane headed anywhere. or perhaps it means behind the lens rather than in front of the screen. either way - not here, behind this desk.

pinhole image taken en route to philly from iowa, 2008

california: seriously, I mean for real

2009-12-09T13:47:00.004-05:00

returned to a dreary new york & an under-finished apartment from a long weekend in los angeles. a wonderful reception & great accommodations thanks to Ali. fun adventures & this jaunt to Malibu with Sue & Eddie. can we talk about how incredible this place is? or can we talk about how lucky i am that my olympus registers lens flare so perfectly? there are lots of conversations we could have but for now i'm stuck on the fact that i always knew i'd live in new york - i just refuse to believe it.

Los Angeles Bound

2009-11-27T16:10:00.004-05:00

Going to LA on Thursday. Moving to my new place on Tuesday. Busy week...

THURSDAY NIGHT!

2009-11-17T16:52:00.005-05:00

25CPW opens its doors! reception 11/19 6-9 pm. show runs through dec. 13th. 25 Central Park West at 62nd Street. steps from Columbus Circle.

can't wait to see you.

city life is basically the same...

2009-11-11T17:21:00.006-05:00

all images to be titled, 2006

i used to work in an office beyond cell phone's reach. i once drove cross state lines to my job deep in western connecticut. during the winter months my first task of the day was to gather firewood & start up the wood burning stove that would heat the office during working hours. i had other tasks but this one was probably my favorite. i had a boss & only three coworkers. this doe, this fawn & an incredibly verbal chipmonk.

my boss began buying these guys lunch & by the time spring rolled around i would be dining at this proximity to our friends. now, i do not necessarily agree with the ethics of feeding wildlife, bringing them closer & closer to our desks - so as to objectify their beauty & make oneself feel at peace with nature & old age. but he was my boss so i didn't say anything. i guess my guilt over the whole thing has kept these 4x5 negs tucked away for four years. the scans aren't great but here they are.

tiny city come dance with me

2009-11-10T16:12:00.006-05:00

(to be titled), 2009

my friends are building a fort in deep west philly. here is a photograph from the abandon building next door. there is so much water saturating this roof that it was not unlike photographing on top of a water bed. a friend had to hold the camera steady as i carefully maneuvered so as to not get my equipment wet. my feet did not fare so well...

Introducing: 25CPW

2009-11-09T15:08:00.004-05:00

25CPW is a diy gallery some colleagues & are starting. Please join us for our first major event on the evening of November 19th. If you can not make the opening, our work will be up through December 13th. Also the first From Here to the Corner reading is scheduled for December 8th!

Hans Solo Bear

2009-11-03T16:54:00.000-05:00

look what i made at work today!

Objective Affection Extended!

2009-10-19T22:08:00.002-04:00

The show in Brooklyn Heights has been extended THREE WHOLE WEEKS! That means that you have until November 20th to come see it! Isn't that great? I know: it is!

here is a photograph my father took of me

2009-10-13T17:45:00.003-04:00

& the back of that photograph. it's a shame the date on prints only refers to when the picture was processed - not when it was taken. i wonder how much time elapsed between those events...

oh right, i'm moving again...

2009-10-06T00:27:00.003-04:00

i am a landscape photographer & this is my favorite patch of broken glass in ALL of west philadelphia. i will miss it when i'm gone.

how far from here

2009-10-01T17:45:00.001-04:00

Maine, 2008

then i woke up

2009-09-28T17:14:00.003-04:00

& summer was over...

emily & i on the ferris wheel. the very top of wildwood, new jersey. july 2009.

2009-09-16T12:27:00.000-04:00

i have work in this show!

2009-09-07T17:25:00.002-04:00

so please by all means, GO! More info to follow... or here for now.

Also if you are in Philadelphia check out my play, Desert of Hallways which opens this Thursday September 10th! for info: WN's (my production company's) blog

(insert a clever title here)

2009-08-11T16:32:00.001-04:00

2009

looking & listening / watching & reading

2009-08-06T12:06:00.002-04:00

Mexico, January 2008

i would very much like to...

2009-07-28T00:44:00.003-04:00

bring my lovely Zone VI 4x5 Field Camera with me on my jaunts around town but unfortunately it's much too much awkward weight for me & bicycle alone. methinks i need to rent a car...

i've been teaching... a lot.

2009-07-20T01:30:00.004-04:00

this portrait was taken by Robert, a former first grade student of mine from Bryant Elementary School in West Philly. point of view (pov) is everything.

once upon a time...

2009-07-13T15:01:00.003-04:00

i made photographs. a 2007 case-in-point:

consider this my promise to return to the ground glass. so everyone take note.

Chinatown NYC

2009-07-07T17:30:00.002-04:00

outside
inside (the bus)

i'll repeat myself again, b/c nature does it all the time. the phenomenon brought to you by a generous donation from: SCIENCE!!

nt

2009-06-30T11:28:00.005-04:00

pinhole image taken in my mother's front yard, 2008

also, it just occurred to me that NT (the abbreviation for "no text") is the same as the word/sound "nt" i like so much. well go figure!

nt (as defined by me) means neither not nor not not. it's a way of saying this may or may not be the case. as in "i am in new york nt." always pause before you use it though. pretty similar to "no text" which means that you are sending a correspondence without any text (pause) nt. i.e. all correspondences are a form of (con)text. phew, my brain hurts.

also i guess this means my title for this post is no longer relevant. nt.

old (spanish) objects

2009-06-22T15:39:00.003-04:00

i took this photograph of a relief of Don Quixote at the Hispanic Society of America an awesome & under-known museum up in Harlem. Sheesh, talk about old objects! they got ancient stuff & modern stuff, paintings, crucifixes, Goyas, El Grecos, incredibly rare & beautiful maps. etc... check this place out.

usually monuments have a tendency to freak me out. it has to do with the past event & the (often) problematic aggrandization of that which is far more complex & probably offensive. but there's something so lovely about creating a monument to the fictional. a celebration of the literary, the satiric & creative forces which tend to come in second in our collective historical memory.

furthermore, i read the first third of Don Quixote last summer & was astonished that something written in a foreign tongue five hundred years ago could actually make me LOL. but it did! i never finished it, however, i mean in this day-in-age, who has the time?

the weekly commute

2009-06-17T17:03:00.002-04:00

chinatown bus, walt whitman bridge, above the delaware river, philly bound. that's camden in case you couldn't tell. there are many cities in betwixt new york & philadelphia: houses, doors, lives. some trees too. i don't see much from the bus' window: some cars, trailers, fast food brands, a prison or two, sometimes people walk across the bridge, maybe a couple birds in the sky, a few dinosaurs & air planes of varying & incredible size. i don't think i could count the number of times i've traversed the new jersey turnpike in my lifetime - but i sure would like to try someday.

glow nation!

2009-06-12T15:46:00.005-04:00

i've been doing some painting in the past few days & apparently so has my old chum & consistent collaborator Patrick Hebron. P paints with pixels, i paint with glow-in-the-dark goop i purchased from www.glonation.com. don't you just love the internet & it's collaboratory possibilities?

stay tuned...

2009-06-07T21:24:00.003-04:00

HF40137066C (Abe Lincoln, U.S. Federal Reserve Series 2006), 2009

this image is from a new series i've been working on for the last few months tentatively titled, The Currency $eries. we use money everyday but very rarely make visual or mental note of the monetary notes we carry & exchange constantly. i have been using these two dimensional objects as my negative, using the color enlarger to document & emphasize the watermarks & the strange details we overlook on a daily basis. the images i create are a permanent reference to the actual bill that, after use, i put back into circulation. i think i used this $5 dollar bill to buy dinner later that day.

i'll try to get more images up on my rebsite in the near future.

(re)photographing the archive

2009-06-02T13:54:00.003-04:00

usually any writing on the slide mount refers to medium or size, but look what i found in the files today! i wonder what REB meant to the person who wrote it...

when i undertook the study of light many many many moons ago, i was under the assumption that i would one day become a professional photographer. well, that didn't happen quite as i had anticipated & at some point i got dumped on old man archive's door. instead of taking photographs for my bread, i digitize pictures that have already been made: (mostly) anonymous photographers' documents of artworks that were produced by another person. one man's archive consists of thousands of images & i battle against time & decaying emulsions armed with only 2 sophisticated scanners, a wacom stylus, photoshop 2 & my own fastidious compulsions!

okay so let's recap: artist - makes drawing, sculpture, object, etc. at some point in the past. photographer - documents object at a date closer to the present (but still pretty far away) than the original fabrication. reb - scans 2D film object (that photographer had made of artist's rendering) into binary code, fixes up any temporal wear & tear & organizes files & objects appropriately. it's a boring, time consuming task - but somebody has to do it...

& then we didn't

2009-06-01T16:07:00.002-04:00

back from boston.

i guess i should be writing (poetry) instead

2009-05-24T16:51:00.009-04:00

my beloved angela beallor using my (also) beloved 4x5 in 2007. she is photographed with a cell phone in front of her former home in queens.

i blog of her this day of days because she has a show up at the border street cultural center in east boston that will be closing this saturday may 30th. to commemorate this event she's hosting a reading - of which i am one of the participants. check the details here

(formerly titled)

2009-05-19T17:40:00.002-04:00

i hate the title i gave to this 2008 picture. so i'm not going to include it. it may have had something to do with being afraid of spiders - maybe.

photographs of photographs

2009-05-17T20:03:00.003-04:00

Stephen Shore's Beverly Boulevard and La Brea Avenue page 151, 2007

from an ongoing series of photographs of decaying book pages & the images that inhabit them. this project has taken a different direction in the last year, but i intend to return to these moldy texts again at some point soon. also: i hope these can read as the respectful homage which engendered them & not (only) the oedipal gesture i realize they are.

the familiar & the foreign, all together all at once.

2009-05-13T13:29:00.007-04:00

this is an image of my old intersection in bed stuy. i walked passed it the other week, someone is building (yet) another condo on the block nxt to the pretty old building i often wished i lived in. well it's all the shame to me.

photography & new york. i'm attempting to sew together a theory of their relationship. let's take some notes, shall we?

i move past hundreds if not thousands of cameras a day - those seen & those hidden. the city as a landscape. the city as a spectacle. the city as the internet. the city as all the photographs of the city while still in the city. the city as a bar. the ongoing event, the ongoing missed moment. the ongoing shutter snap. billboards. public art. comodifiable art. the fashion world. the blog scene. the city as the offices & spaces not seen. the romance of poverty. jacob riis. diane arbus. the city as the ultimate climate for the other. exoticising just about anything except the middle class & midtown (after hours). new jersey? the light in the subways, the shadows of the buildings. the views: from brooklyn, from the bridges, from nj, from skyscrapers, from yr bedroom window. the familiar & the foreign all together all at once...

more importantly: the psychic space of the color darkroom on a slow day.

portrait of the artist (at work)

2009-05-12T14:36:00.003-04:00

this photo was taken by one ms. brina thurston at some point in the last year. the bowl i am eating out of is probably worth more than both of our salaries combined. now isn't that just neat!?

duly noted

2009-05-11T18:52:00.000-04:00

providence rhode island 2006

2009-05-10T18:37:00.005-04:00

wayne train station tunnel, wayne pa

w. philly april 2k9

2009-05-09T14:28:00.007-04:00

this phenomenon made possible by a generous donation from: SCIENCE!

revisions, restorations & rebeginings

2009-05-08T14:43:00.006-04:00

so let's face it: i make photographs & this blog has remained dormant for over a year. so let's revise the mission: not just sporadic thoughts about photography, but why not include some photographs as well? that's what the people want, isn't it? another pretty facade to click? i thought so. shukran.

the subject of yr photograph :

2008-05-06T14:02:00.005-04:00

it can not just be what you choose to point yr lens at but how you choose to do the pointing.

Each glance becomes when (re)titled 'search'

2008-04-24T23:08:00.002-04:00

We love what we photograph, for we want to preserve it forever.
We photograph in order to own, as we search in order to find.

the ever factual now . . .

2008-04-01T22:14:00.001-04:00

the most fragile instant has roots.
(michel foucault)

re/presenting

2008-02-24T22:50:00.004-05:00

representation is to death as communication is to life.

( & re-presentation is an attempt @ communication. )

time demarcated by substance

2008-02-23T21:20:00.001-05:00

as in the amount of film left on the reel.

reality in a glance

2008-01-22T00:42:00.000-05:00

photographers are excellent editors : to take a photograph is to interrupt a narrative & draw attention to the moment it imbues

i'm not sure, but i think this has something to do with photography

2008-01-21T19:18:00.000-05:00

The Pencil Story 1972 - 1973

I had this old pencil on the dashboard of my car for a long time. Every time I saw it, I felt uncomfortable since its point was dull and dirty. I always intended to sharpen it and finally couldn't bear it any longer and did sharpen it. I'm not sure, but I think that this has something to do with art.

john baldessari

( that which makes us uncomfortable in life [in reality, in truth or in fact(s)] must be mutable for action alleviates our anxiety )

re: digital (photographic) technologies

2008-01-18T22:48:00.000-05:00

ours is the ability to (re)move mountains

medi(t)ating

2007-12-12T01:27:00.000-05:00

i like how a picture of a camera
is a picture of the eyelid open.

i like how taking a picture is the act of closing one's eyes.

reduce, re(f)use, recycle

2007-11-12T21:29:00.000-05:00

It has been said, a thousand times, that a photograph can say a thousand words. What then? So can an angry laundress! It is much better that a photograph should say fewer words plainly, and those the ones intended.

A photograph like that can save a thousand words.

- David Charles, Commercial & Industrial Photography for the student, the laboratory, the commercial studio & for the industrial workshop 1959

ReConstructions (a begining) [written for/after mary mattingly]

2007-10-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

( Farway places seem the closest as remote ideas the ones I hold in my heart. I have been left, lost, cheated & lied to but I have never, ever been betrayed by my own fantasies. In fact some of them have even become ardent realities. )

What do memories mean to a nation that has none ? History is constructed with when the bullet’s outside the barrel & shutter is snapped shut. We edit our definitions with every image pasted in the album or placed in textbooks. The real is demonstrated in facts, the lens is a science & the camera a sword.

( The pictures of me on the first day of school lasted a year into the first grade, for father was taken before graduation & mother opted not to draw the camera. Mine is a childhood forgotten & seldom recorded. I remember naught before this moment. )

Our task is not to make you believe what we believe so much as to make you see exactly what we see. We fight for the right to be represented as to be seen & heard is as to breath. Yet the soldier in Capa’s picture, did he actually fall ? Facts have become unstable & all constructions de . . .

( I want to build myself a new life but I’m afraid to find the words their meanings. )

So we shant speak for truth anymore, & we could never speak for you. Ours is a new state of desire & a government of infinite questioning. Our propaganda will not deliver to you the word as our sentences are made up of yrs & yrs & yrs. We had a dream tomorrow night of the great fires of yesterday.

( This vision is the real of imagination, rumination & literature. I speak of when only when told. For then does not exist only this moment in now. )

We want to talk to you. To hear yr words & breath yr thoughts. We are not here to tell you anymore. We seek only to listen & re record the images & bullets yr own eyes have seen. For histories do not repeat themselves so much as undulate & intertwine. A new text is forming from deep within the mines.

( The time is now. The place is here. The I is we. )

something : things to gaze upon

2007-10-13T03:13:00.000-04:00

photographs i made a few years ago

unknowing is the beginning of the accumulation of knowledge

2007-10-09T00:12:00.000-04:00

a photograph is about a particular event at a particular time
a contact sheet is about chronology.
one (particular) photographic event leading into another.
the rest is history. the stuff around. the stuff beyond.

the photograph is comparable to a tale told at the dinner table.
a record of the day's events.
the record of days (of) events becomes history - in()between the frames.
much too weighty for jovial dinner-time conversation.

histories scream but are seldom heard.
books & scholars sifting through dust
the mire of what once was, chiseled out of water.
the lens silences that which can not be re presented.
silence are facts dying.

yet we must intervene
photographers are practitioners of history - albeit anecdotally
how does a brief sketch become a haunting vision ?
when a contact sheet reveals more than its author intended
when the machine sees more than the eye.

how am i to decide what's true -
i'm even unsure
whether the soldier
in Capa's image actually fell.

( the space between a document & an image
the place in which our conversation must start. )

con(ned)text

2007-10-01T01:38:00.000-04:00

photographs are only about the look of things
( how does this look & to whom )
appearance is a surface we battle with consistently
( by battle i mean accept )

if we could ennact our assumptions
( we might begin to understand )
by understand i mean nt
( nt a wor[l]d of appearances )

( how does this look & to whom )
questions are photographs are phragments
( the surface of reality )
is the slipperiest of slopes

( words precede & follow photographs )
with out them we are left asking
( questions are a desire )
must every desire must be phulfilled

( how does this look & to whom )
what of photography is desire
( to look upon a thing )
to learn something new about some thing

is to see to know
( could we call this a document )
what does construct mean
( in a wor[l]d ripe with illusion )

i polish this surface
( with every photograph never uttered )
i scour this surface
( with every object written in emulsion )

in/action

2007-09-22T14:00:00.000-04:00

there can never be anything inherently wrong with an image, only how it is used.

magritte the phor phather

2007-08-03T01:07:00.000-04:00

Magritte intuited photography* to a greater degree than most of the medium's masters. imagine this painting surrounded by 16 photobooth pictures of the Surrealists (Dali, Magritte & Max Ernst amoung them) in shirt & tie with their eyes closed. Published in La Revolution surrealiste, 12 (15 December 1929) the whole piece is entitled (for those of us fortunante enough to not speak french) : I Do Not See the [Woman] Hidden in the Forest.

there is some thing(s) (always) in the refusal.
the repetition of the closed eyes. the ease of the process. the height of the gesture.
we do not know what we are supposed to be looking at.
the naked & bashfull woman or the blinded men that surround her.
who is the subject of this portrait : the artist or the muse ?
( the relationship a phool's phrase )
has he gone blind from his own creation or the thought there of.
there is something impotent & powerless in this painting.
( a fact most photographers deny )
do we see that which we represent ? or do they transmute themselves. . .
is there a 'they' of which to speak or merely more 'me' than we have room for ( ? )

another picture ( a latter thought ) :

here we learn more through Magritte's spontaneous photographic refusal. the muse & the artist become one in this self portrait. the mastibatory narcissim of ages : an admission of being an open book th(r)ough turned back. a picture ( ultimatly ) taken for his own bemusement. yet, he has thought hard of representation & the real that photography can nt deny. what does a picture like this supposed to mean !? we learn : we are able to understand more through puzzles & fragments than a completely stated portrait. he teaches us that we learn nothing about a person by looking at their cold objectified face, no matter how expressive they can be. the truth lies in momentary decisions & (seemingly) arbitrary props. the lens flattens that which the human has made round. we can see more in our mistakes than in our rehearsed takes.

thanks magritte for sticking to painting but disseminating yr truth through all the arts.

*usually when i use the word 'photography' i am refering specifically to the 'study of light' as i have come to understand it.

this is my photograph this is my thought

2007-07-30T00:54:00.000-04:00

:

i am making a photograph
i am making a photograph
i am making a photograph

[ ]

a piegon perches in the underground
a pigeon perches in the underground

[ one day ]

a pigeon perches in the underground

[ next day ]

a pigeon perches

[ days & days ]

the pigeon perches still

[ ]

s/he is making a photograph
s/he is unmoving
s/he does nt wait
s/he does nt know

[ s/he is making a photograph ]

a photograph is never made
[ a photograph is in its making ]

a painting is the time spent
[ buying paint
strech ing canvas ]

actions & decisions
errands & illusions

a painting is looking at painting
[ a history a fool's phrase ]

a painting is a photograph

[ there is no history
there is only making
there is only now ]

a poem is an unuttered thought

a photograph is a poem

a photograph is a now

a now is all the thens
[ collapsed from before to after ]

:

the day a blog is born is a very good day

2007-07-14T23:42:00.000-04:00

:: i will attempt to piece together the fragments that make up my loose understandings of all things representational. i will then attempt to sew together letters & words & punctuation to communicate these understandings to you - a generous public ::

( A POLEMICAL BEGINING )
amateur representationalists of the world unite : you have nothing to lose but any interest in mass media

! take to yr cameras ! yr darkened rooms & cinematic memories. . .
let us, if you will please, grab hold of the modes of production.
how to counter our vapid image saturated society ?
do nothing but make pictures, instinctually if perhaps blindly.
the medium for the revolution's sake begets : death to seamless commercial aesthetics ! throw away yr spot tone & pro lighting kits & understand that truly beautiful photographs exists all around, just waiting to be realized & 'clicked'.

photographs are made in the time that takes to make them
photographs are in the making - so why do we constantly attempt to hide the seams of our means of production ? ( this is step one : embracing yr 'mistakes' )

the medium is inextricably linked with the commercial world – it’s true. yet the art world acts as if jeff wall's mimicking of advertising (& proliferation of modernism) is THE solution. devoid of dust & digital noise his light boxes hit our consciousness with a thunderous $$$. a lightening bolt struck earth, but it looked so much like the Coke-a-Cola ad that proceeded, i paid it no heed. we must learn to turn away from the already existing, so that we may return to representation with renewed veracity. we need not adopt the language of advertising & celebrity culture to make ourselves more understood. i suggest a return to the primitive, the explanatory (grain, pixels, chemical stains, oh my !) ,a conversation about a conversation can be the most satisfying conversation of all.

show me some thing new, show me some thing that does not want to sell & I will show you an original photograph.