I've been not all that involved emotionally with shooting these last few months...did some street shooting again in NY but apparently lost momentum to work on them and post here. ..but I'm digressing, as I've been for months, mostly unfocused on doing anything new, but knowing that something has been perculating deep somewhere in the ether, not yet forming into anything I can grab onto even as a spastic leap, all akimbo, into the unknown and start swimming until I find land or whatever....
When a photographer friend told me last week he was planning to roam around the State Fair on Sunday with his camera, I asked to go along. Luckily he happens to be a morning person so we arrived about an hour or so before church let out, giving us reasonably nice light and room to walk at a normal pace. All that changed about noon:30 when the hoards stampeded for fried everything on a stick. The long lense I thought might work well for catching faces, etc. became the dead weight I carried the whole time in my backpack...it was so crowded it became exhausting, so after seeking out and finally finding the NC State ice cream stand that came with rave reviews, and devouring the reallllly good stuff in a cone, we fled; but not before I nabbed the last shot of my day....a weird food stand with a big strawberry on top offering " Pig Licker Blooming Onions." Damned if I know what that's all about, and didn't even want to know....the Krispy Kreme Burger was enough to observe and watch throngs of folks waiting not patiently to throw their money down for 'em.
Looking at the stuff I shot later at home, I decided to work with the images as though I'd used my plastic toy camera, which is now retired. The feel of the fair, seemed to go with a state of mind found in weird dreams and memories, In terms of content, I'm also very drawn to words, signs, printed T-shirts...have been for years. Barbara Kruger, a conceptual artist whose signature work is made by using collages with words, or words alone as slogans is an influence and inspiration to me, though my photos are nothing like her art. The words and context of the fair have really nothing in common with Kruger's work, but something of her essence often follows me into the world of words.
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| Mmm, fried pickles...right. |
Photographs © Ellen Giamportone All rights reserved.
