I don't really show the pictures of the people that interest me the most because I don't think I have the narrative to back it up in its own right yet, and flickr isn't the forum for that work either, I've kind of dug myself into a hole there withe whole street and what I defined as the kind of street I wanted in Seattle Street and which has generally become accepted as an acceptable version of that decisive, contemplative, gag, style, which doesn't really rely on any level of intellectual insight to understand or appreciate, the pictures of the people I am really drawn to are highly reliant on my audience being open to seeing something that they normally don't even register and having their attention drawn to it, ..and so it's been my belief that my Audience is infact not American at all. See Street photography has become about shooting the oddities and the highlights of the everyday or at least that's the premise; using the "everyday" as an excuse to make pictures of things that stand out of that "everyday" entity which really doesn't mean what it is in that context anymore. Look at the London Street Photography festival as it stands now, at 3 years old, and all of the pictures have a basic sameness to them and a sensationalism to them which irritates me now. Seattle street in a similar way has now got a formula too, which is fine, it's human nature and ultimately it's 'caretakered' itself, and its my baby but I feel like I have other avenues to grow.
exhale
Im looking forward to having less stuff, to being able to think singularly and having the space to move around within myself or atleast the ability to simplify my mind and my hangups about the amount of things I have that now spent more time preventing me from doing the things that I want to be doing then thinking about all the things I cant do because I have all these worldly possessions which have begun to have this psychological effect of holding me down like a large bag of rain in a storm. Who cares whether or not its true, for me it is, and so I am washing away the last ten years of my life in the belief that accumulation and stagnation were a comforting fortress of security and the feeling of being able to own these things in the first place is quite a nice feeling and a sense of achievement. I think Im coming up on some kind of personal enlightenment. Am I gong on about this too much? Perhaps I am, sorry, but its a convincing filter which I have to speak out like an exhalation.
inference&gesture- darklife
Strangers in the light, point me in a direction, any direction, and tell me something, Ill be that decision, changes are afoot, I can only see things a one at a time but eventually Ill get it all down.
Coasting in to point conclusion
There are things happening around me, things I have allowed myself to believe I can’t control, though they are not necessarily causing me any undue panic. Things I know I should be taking care of but I am not because I feel deep down in my gut, that they are not entirely all that important on the grand scheme of things. Things like my citizenship, I should have taken care if that at at the end of last year, but I didn’t and the same rationale then as. Ow is in my head for not doing it then as now; ultimately, I want a reason to come back to the US; I want to come back to the certainty of a job and a place to live because I ultimately believe that I haven’t saved enough money to do exactly all the things I am discovering that I want to be doing, like more traveling. A lot more traveling, and I want to be engaged in photography on a more international level whether that be self funded or otherwise. Work or pleasure, but definitely socially aware.
I think the last ten years of living has been a party for me, coasting along in comfort mode satisfied with the knowledge that I actually jumped off the side of the earth and survived, and in fact flourished. Complacency was a gift to myself in reward for actually achieving. But that’s a whole other story.
Certain things are running out, household things, supplies, what were once necessities. To quote Derek Jarman as he was degenerating from aids, he caught himself window shopping for shoes, and realized that he didn’t have much time left, his words were “aren’t these shoes good enough to walk me out of life?” In the same way I feel that there are things that I generally do to make the ship that is my life, run smoothly and so, I periodically replenish necessities. However, now I’m finding that I’m letting things go, change is coming, and I want it to be a shedding and a purge also. Saturns return. 40 is the big one, and I’m feeling good about it, time for change, time to loosen the grip on the fear and insecurity that youth brings.
Zabriski Point
thoughts in the park
thoughts in the park a video by irq506 on Flickr.
lying there I thought about some things in my recent past. regrets, unfortunate convergence of circumstance and inevitabilities and responsibilities.
i feel like i want to be just like everybody else but ive tried and I cant be.
I’m just sad about steering in a different direction then my girlfriend and ultimately derailing a good connection.
meet the divergence
me and sounds in the snow
spent
Ive come to the conclusion, perhaps a little slowly, that my job is actually having negative repercussions on the rest of my life. I have no motivation and little or no inspiration. Typically about this time on Sundays when I have had the day off and have had some time to relax and release the tensions of work, I start to feel like I want to read a newspaper or look at negatives or work in the darkroom. Its not a hard job per say, but it is consuming, dealing with you, the public where you draw from me and typically its a one way flow. its time for a change, and a long vacation away from here. I am ready.
Ways of seeing without looking, yet being aware.
Ways of seeing without looking, yet being aware.
I think in fairness its very difficult to shoot America (specifically America at this point rather then anywhere else) and shoot an oblique and objective take on it without it looking like all the rest of the photo essays on the place. I say that primarily because the US is so extensively established in media whether that is US generated or otherwise that it is difficult if not impossible to shoot a series of images of the country with impartiality.
I think this piece reflects that, unfortunately. It is very easy to come here and shoot things which specify the extremities of US culture because they are easy to see and seek out and ultimately easy to shoot and will ultimately draw a sensational value. Its a very different thing to come here and shoot it from the inside out and make it look normal, which is something nobody does for their documentary projects, its something that isn’t favored in the current trend of photography rhetoric and academia. So effectively non sensational work is out of fashion.
