A blog about photography & transformative art
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Right about there you'll see the javelinas," our host told us as we toured the town of Patagonia for the first time. Even in midday the small village in southeastern Arizona was pretty much empty. I figured the javelinas would be good company. I immediately made my plans to meet them.
"See that hill over that? That's Mexico." Our dear friend seemed excited to point that out to us as we looked out from a high, Arizona hill. The Arizona hill looked much the same as did the Mexican version. It was fun to imagine the hills in different colors like one sees on a map. But, no, they looked pretty much the same. "We'll drive down there and a bit and check out the border up close," he said as we walked back to the car.
In their day, Polaroid Land cameras were stunning. Up to that point in my young life, instant photography was the most enticing innovation I'd ever seen. I received a small Polaroid camera (called the Polaroid Swinger) for Christmas one prepubescent year and wanted to photograph everything with it. The photos weren't all that great, but the immediacy of the results was addictive. I loved everything about it. One would click the shutter, pull out the developing package, count until the processing was complete, pull apart the package a peel off the print. And there it was, a complete photo! I even loved that acrid preservative that one applied to the image afterward. Sticky and oddly pinkish, the preservative came loaded onto a long swab-like applicator that was sealed in a black, plastic cylinder. Applying it at the end was the best part of the whole process.
I rubbed my sandpaper eyes. I realized that I forgot to blink—for about an hour. Deep into the development of my new web site I began to wonder. Were we humans really meant to co-exist with computers? PHP, CSS, HTML, FTP...blah, blah, blah. After my fifteenth phone call to tech support I rubbed my sandpaper eyes. I forgot to blink.
A headless rag doll greeted us as we entered the boarding house of an Arizona ghost town. The floorboards, what was left of them, were covered in dirt. On closer inspection it wasn't dirt at all but rather the excrement of a million bats. I'd suddenly had enough of ghosts for one day. I shivered as a jolt went up my spine. I needed some fresh air. I could have sworn that the headless doll snickered at me on my way out. But can a doll snicker without its head? It must have been my imagination.
Well, we made it! The new site is up and running. It has a few bugs here and there but we're chasing them down with our fly swatter. I'll post a new blog entry once I catch my breath. It will be good to get back to art, photography, and writing again.
The new platform here will allow us to make constant additions and improvements. And we'll soon have a variety of blogs from different contributors. We hope you'll come back to see how things evolve!
We used to have this hole in the backyard. It was meant to be a new drainage area for the septic system and was one of the many of dad's unfinished projects. He'd always get jazzed up about one thing or another and we'd spend a weekend digging holes or re-roofing the house or sawing wood or banging nails into this or that. I always knew he was serious when he'd remove his shirt and put a sweatband around his forehead. Normally a crewcut engineer with a pocket protector and slide rule, it was not a reassuring sight. If you've ever seen Michael Douglas in Falling Down, you'll know what I mean. He was a weekend warrior with a very short expiration date. Once Monday morning came and he put on his name badge and pocket protector the project was over, whether it was finished or not. And it was never finished. That's why there was a big hole in the yard for about fifteen years.
I often find myself out on a limb—way off on a tangent. It's a borderline condition, not enough OCD for medication, but I do obsess a bit much on my art projects. Then—poof—they burn out like a pop of flash powder. So is it with my window-reflections series.
It's a brisk day in Northern California. I pull my coat collar tight up to my neck. This stops the downward draft that goes all the way to my waist. The overall visual effect makes me look like one of those little spies in Spy vs. Spy (Mad Magazine, circa 1968). On this day, I feel like the black spy waiting for the white spy's engagement. I prowl the sidewalks on the balls of my feet—the way cats do.
I saw three big cameras at the farmer's market this weekend. They seemed to transform the photographers into something imposing and separate from the life of the market. Lenses are getting longer and bulkier. It used to be that a zoom lens was an extravagance—it was most certainly a tradeoff in quality. Back in my youth, most serious photographers used prime lenses because zooms were so unsharp. Now everyone seems to use a zoom lens. I do, though with ambivalence.
