Out on the Streets

Street photography's been going on since cameras got small enough to carry instead of lug. Historically and traditionally, after color film was invented, most streetshooting was done in black and white ...it's the way it is...gritty, immediate, "decisive moment" stuff. A long linage of shooters, such as Atget, Stieglitz, Strand, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, Kertesz, Evans, Levitt, Frank, Arbus, Winogrand, paved the way for what now has become a glut of everyone snapping everything every moment of the day in every way on everything electronic and digital. The new world culture is here, and it's pretty much in color. Color photography was presented to the art world when John Szarkowski curator of photography at MOMA put up the first exhibit of color prints by William Eggleston 1976. So much for the outrage that ensued over that breach of tradition...and here we are now.

The problem I myself am having with the color or black and white dilemma of street shooting is that in the "old" days of film, I'd put black and white film in the camera and would go immediately into the zone of seeing in tones....not so anymore with digital; even if you set the camera to black and white, when it's downloaded, those pesky pixels show up as color....you are forced, or at least, seduced into looking at your stuff in color. At bottom of this back and forthing, is that I've been noticing I've begun multi-seeing, or maybe it's multi-level-tasking when I'm shooting on the fly now, and it's annoying and confusing the intentions of being one pointed and focused. It's like parallel universes going on simultaneously as I intuitively shift back and forth between seeing in color and translating into black and white tones...or not, at any given time out there.....(confused and dazed yet?)

Last week I was in NYC and of course went through all this weirdness once again. In sorting through images I converted many that seemed to ask to be black and white, and that was that, and left many that were obviously only color images to remain where they belonged...that left a group that worked both ways, to my eye and inclination, so I put the two versions of each image together and will let you decide which works for you.....any feedback would be interesting for me to hear about. Ok?

Toy Camera

The last few weeks have been hard to pin down as to where my head's been. I've hardly picked up a camera since returning from the road trip productions in Pennsylvania...that just doesn't happen. I think my very cells are rearranging, readjusting, regrouping from the experience of revisiting those homes of my past. I'm not going to post any more of the images from this new series; the two previous posts are all that I can do for now. The rest of the files are in the hard drive (+ 2 backups)....and there shall they remain, sweet little pixels, until I decide it's time to view them with the fresh eye of objectiveness, which now is impossible.

So, in the meantime.. I was going through some toy camera images to gather a submission for an upcoming juried exhibition in Vermont with the subject of the show being "Dreams and Fantasies." By way of explanation, a toy camera is really just that; it's plastic, including the lens. The body doesn't fit tightly to the back, so it has light leaks. I love mine; some people tape their cameras but I don't. Also known as "crappy cameras" they have names like Holgas, Diana, Banner. Mine is a Banner and I've had it forever. it uses 2-1/4 film. It has a little lever that goes "click" and there ya go....

Night Shooting Road Trip - Night 3

Giving me directions to her house in Bath, PA., my friend Ruth said, "Look for an old barn with the word 'Sleep' written on it. Fascinating.The new night series I'm out here working on deals with memory, concealment, dreams...The barn was a really cool location, the image plan hatched, and in spite of a drizzle the next night, a crew of an old photo friend from Allentown, Ruth, and I went off into the late night. The barn is located on a two lane highway in what seems like the middle of nowhere, but is apparently the only way to get to somewhere, judging from the number of cars speeding through. The camera set up on the side of the road opposite of the barn, and time exposure of 30 seconds necessitated no traffic time every time we opened the lens. There are a number of red and white streaked frames, but it wasn't too bad. Coordinating and checking the varied strobe flashes, looking at each frame as it was shot, had me and my assistant Ron, running back and forth across the road, waving flashlights so not to trip into a hidden ditch along the side by the barn. All of a sudden, we see a cop car slowly drive up and pull into a turn out next to the barn by our car...it's past midnight. I'm standing by the camera at this point, dressed in the black night gown I'm wearing for the photo, wondering how to explain what we're doing out here without getting chased away. The cop doesn't get out of his car. I thought they're supposed to approach you, not the other way around, but this is Bath, PA for christsake so maybe it's different here. So there I am, flashlight in hand, traipsing across the road in a night gown in the middle of a drizzly night to face a cop. Weird. I came around the back of his car to the passenger side window to avoid standng too close to the road, and was about to tap on the window, when I looked in to see that the cop was absolutely oblivious to my being there....he hadn't noticed us there at all....not the flashlights, not anything....he was lost in his own world, focusing on the cigarette he was putting in his mouth. I just stood there, peering in at him for a moment, then turning off my flashlight, stepped back from the car window into the shadows to watch him turn off his dome light and drive off. Surreal.

Night Shooting Road Trip - Night 1

Months ago I wrote a grant proposal that I wanted to create night images that went beyond what I have been doing for the last three years, which is photographing scenes lit only by moonlight, or street lights or whatever source was already there illuminating the image I was making. My paperwork stated I'd now be working in a new way, adding my own light sources, and make a limited edition of 16"x24" archival pigment prints so please give me the money for a wide bed printer....and so they did. Now, beyond the steep learning curve of this new printer which is still in its very large box taking up much of my work room because I can't bear to deal with it, I had no idea what was gonna get lit up in the dark...
More about the series I'm about to explore in Pennsyvania, where I grew up, in a few days once I start it, but for now, here is last nights re-shoot of something I did in Maryland where I stayed for a few day earlier this month and again last night on my way north. After a lovely supper with his family, my photo friend Scott Robinson whom I've know since our days in the trenches called Los Angeles, and I re-shot this because I didn't like what I was wearing in the first version...hadn't paid attention to "wardrobe."

The important lesson for me to remember here is the need to sometimes really push yourself into action to get out the gear, set it up and know you'll hit stride, although it's late at night, you've had a bit of wine, and would rather just talk about maybe re-shooting some other time.

The day had just begun

Eating scrambled eggs the other morning....yes, with ketchup...my mind wandering inward as it often does, especially when a cup of chai is also involved, my attention suddenly snapped back to my plate. There, born of absentmindedness and a fork, was the Ketchup Rooster.

In Honor of the Photo Gods

Not leaving the local landscape and routine for about 3 months got to me last week, so I arranged a visit with friends who live in Maryland. The first 2 hours on the road was exhilarating.. feeling the freedom in freeway. Just north of Richmond, VA, everything changed...2 small accidents within a mile of each other slowed traffic to about four miles an hour for too long....then the chaos theory as it pertains to traffic patterns kicked in, and my fantasy plan of breezing along like the dudes on route 66 of yore, were dashed. Deciding to take a momentary break to gas up, pee, and perhaps grab a sandwich,  I chose an exit that boasted a Subway shop. Well, the sandwich place wasn't exactly where the sign near the gas station indicated it was, so, faced with a huge expanse of asphalt and what looked like a truck stop down at the end, I took off in that direction. What I found was the gem of the day. There, in a little grove of trees was a tiny white chapel, replete with pointy tall steeple. Off to the side front a bunch of motorcycles were parked. Looked good to me. Not wanting to disrespect the two scruffy bikers standing around made me decide  not to immediately start shooting photos that included their bikes. Wonderfully, as soon as I planted myself squarely in front of the chapel, the one guy suggested that perhaps I might like to include the bikes in my photo!! "Wow, good idea." I offered in my innocent lady voice. Score. But the best part was yet to show itself...it happened that when I went over to the side where the bikes were - the guy  over there had on a vest with his club's name on the back-----Twisted Souls. It couldn't get much better than that. Except that it did...the first shot didn't show the steeple very well, so I asked him to come over to where I took this shot.

It is with great respect and love I bow to those laughing photo gods who occasionally offer up to us mere photo-image-hunting-mortals the magical combination of  time and space co-incidence that produce a perfect situation to aim a camera.

Los Angeles - Deep Muck Cultural Concerns

Tearing scabs off the cultural landscape
reveals bloody layers of previously picked
and poked layers of man-made icons,
celebrity bandages, and billboard gauze
barely covering the oozing yellow infection
of our self-inflicted wounds.

Forever recycling endless pretty impostors
not truly believing the lines written for them,
A hint of understanding lurks too deeply behind the surface
of dissassociated denial
to take anything at face value.
The face has been cosmetically altered
anyway,
sabatoging the wisdom of age from celebrating
anything remotely substantial.

Irony splashs shiny glossy over
neo-reality, post-realism, nilism and hip-hop.
A new paint job hurriedly washes the slick
oily walls of current ideas,
leaving barely a moment of fresh, if not quiet,
rectangles of silence, before a new multiplicity of
one sheets, TV sweeps, .coms, or yet unpublished
graffitti take fleeting residence.

Poets move words around each other
searching for new turns and embraces
to end
the pain of separation.
Few can describe the eternity of their recurrent
anguish.

Artists rehash history, reinvent conceptual redundancy
then beat themselves to death for not communicating
their deepest struggle for transformation and ascension .


How many can break thru barriers of their own forgotten making
into realms of the invisible, unspeakable fullness?
Some actions take the courage of outrage
Some, the strength of a whisper
Whatever the form, faith is the master.

Some true mad souls keep reaching
Thru the quicksands of culture.
Not clinging to the seeking,
they struggle.
Not clinging to the struggle,
they seek.

- Ellen Giamportone
1999