Wednesday, October 28, 2009
children.
Richmond got hit brutally these past few days. As news about a group of boys and men gang raping a girl on campus at Richmond High spread- and others taking camera pics and videos throughout- a firestorm in many minds and hearts has too: lots of pain, rage, grief, despair, horror; also coming together, courage, pride, creativity. It's a challenging time to be working in West County. The young people seem to be getting the worst of it- the most vulnerable and the most blamed. After a bunch of meetings and conversations all day, I felt like sitting down and going back to some older photos I have of children, and just stopping and taking another look. Hope you will too.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
HolgaLove
I don't have a cameraphone, I just have one of those old skool cell phones that can only, you know, make calls... and sometimes it can't even do that very well. So instead of doing an installment of CameraPhoneLove, I'll do a version called HolgaLove. I went with j's philosophy of working with what you've got and doing it with love- I think that that philosophy is what I'd like to strive for in almost anything that I can think of doing in my life.
I started taking photos pretty young, probably around 11 or 12... not because I thought I was interested in taking photos, but because I was my family's historian. I took photos on all of our family trips. No one was more interested in creating a fantasy of a happy, wholesome family than I was. I think I learned how to frame photos from experimenting during all of those years, but I never really got to learn photography technique or the mechanics behind cameras. So a couple of years ago, after starting to shoot with a digital SLR for a little while, I thought it would be neat to revert back to the basics and see what I could do with film.
I started out with the cheapest option possible: disposable cameras. I shot a few rolls off of disposables and found that I really liked the quality of not getting any second chances, which also means no second-guessing. Whatever image you take is what you get, which makes the image perfect in its own finality, however overexposed or underexposed or blurry. Disposable cameras also give you zero options in terms of focus, exposure, etc. The only decisions you get to make are 1) how to frame the photo, and 2) whether or not to use flash. So I got to see what it was like just to have fun with a camera that I had handy at almost all times.
Then I invested about $50 in a Holga 135, the 35mm version of a plastic camera that was originally manufactured in the 1980s as a super cheap mass production camera in China and Hong Kong. The Holga is constructed in such an inexpensive, shitty way that photos consistently come out with light leaks, vignetting, blurring, and other qualities that one can't even hope to predict. Going with the philosophy of "using what you've got," the Holga is now many photographers' cult favorite because you'll often get really beautiful, soft focus, unpredictable images. To use a Holga, you need to paradoxically care enough to invest in buying and developing film, and also not care a whole lot because you can't ever know how the photos will come out. It's been a good lesson for me around taking photography seriously while also letting go. Here's the first installment of HolgaLove, i.e., doing it with love-
I started taking photos pretty young, probably around 11 or 12... not because I thought I was interested in taking photos, but because I was my family's historian. I took photos on all of our family trips. No one was more interested in creating a fantasy of a happy, wholesome family than I was. I think I learned how to frame photos from experimenting during all of those years, but I never really got to learn photography technique or the mechanics behind cameras. So a couple of years ago, after starting to shoot with a digital SLR for a little while, I thought it would be neat to revert back to the basics and see what I could do with film.
I started out with the cheapest option possible: disposable cameras. I shot a few rolls off of disposables and found that I really liked the quality of not getting any second chances, which also means no second-guessing. Whatever image you take is what you get, which makes the image perfect in its own finality, however overexposed or underexposed or blurry. Disposable cameras also give you zero options in terms of focus, exposure, etc. The only decisions you get to make are 1) how to frame the photo, and 2) whether or not to use flash. So I got to see what it was like just to have fun with a camera that I had handy at almost all times.
Then I invested about $50 in a Holga 135, the 35mm version of a plastic camera that was originally manufactured in the 1980s as a super cheap mass production camera in China and Hong Kong. The Holga is constructed in such an inexpensive, shitty way that photos consistently come out with light leaks, vignetting, blurring, and other qualities that one can't even hope to predict. Going with the philosophy of "using what you've got," the Holga is now many photographers' cult favorite because you'll often get really beautiful, soft focus, unpredictable images. To use a Holga, you need to paradoxically care enough to invest in buying and developing film, and also not care a whole lot because you can't ever know how the photos will come out. It's been a good lesson for me around taking photography seriously while also letting go. Here's the first installment of HolgaLove, i.e., doing it with love-
Friday, October 16, 2009
scotland, reprised (for a.stride)
Scotland was my last stop in a month of backpacking around Western Europe in the summer of 2004. I felt inspired to go through some of my photos from that trip after reading a.'s entry. I think of Scotland as one of my favorite places in the world. My memories of the country are all colored green and gray... brilliant green hills, gray stones in rain.
That summer, I'd been traveling through Europe with a friend who had been my high school boyfriend four years prior- a situation which, as it turned out, brought up dynamics that I/we didn't know how to navigate. To keep our friendship intact (which, in spite of the previous three weeks, seemed worth doing), we agreed to part ways for the last week of our travels. He headed to Dublin to drink a lot of Guinness; I headed to Edinburgh to see where I'd go from there.
I passed my first day in Edinburgh with the mentality of someone who knows how to spend time alone- I bought a skirt, reported a lost ATM card (a lot of swearing was involved as I tried to figure out how to call a 1-800 U.S. number from a Scottish pay phone), walked to Greyfriar Bobby's Kirk and wandered the tombstones under the trees. A light rain started to fall. My Let's Go guidebook recommended the Elephant Cafe as a place made famous by J.K. Rowling, who apparently first began writing Harry Potter on a napkin there. The cafe was right around the corner from the kirk, so I went in to get out of the rain.
As I took a seat at a corner table with a pot of tea, I was fully hit with how alone I felt- shaking off rain in a city where no one knew my name, with no destination in mind and nowhere to go back to. A guy came up and asked if he could share my table. I glanced up and said that I didn't mind. I went back to occupying myself with the Let's Go guide, which I didn't actually need to read, but I had no other reading material at hand and had nothing else to do to look busy. He left his bag and went to the counter for pie, came back. I gave him a brief stranger's smile. We read. He looked over at me, after ten minutes of silence, and asked if I was reading a Lonely Planet.
No, I said, it's Let's Go. I've been calling it my Bible. Where are you from?
I'm from California.
Really? Where in California?
Oakland...?
Are you kidding me? I live in Berkeley!
We put aside our books with sudden interest, joined by the miracle of meeting a fellow Bay Area dweller in an Edinburgh cafe. I would have mistaken him for a Brit; he didn't carry himself or talk like a tourist. I asked him what he was reading. He held up Immortality by Milan Kundera and asked me if I'd ever read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I hadn't. He told me that it was about love- about the desire for one's actions to be free of consequence but, at the same time, the conflictual desire to feel the weight of a lover's body on top of one's own, the beauty of that weight and consequence.
I felt myself letting go of my defenses to meet him in conversation. He became not just a stranger with whom to make small talk, but a person who used words in a way I'd never heard before, who could make me fall in love with a book I'd never read. We talked sociology, travels, misadventures, our own future plans. A couple of hours later, as the crowd in the cafe thinned out, he asked me if I wanted to go on a walk. Here was someone I didn't know how to say no or yes to, so I tried a Sure. I had laundry to do at my hostel and a bus to Inverness in the morning, but for the suspended moment I liked that we could be two travelers keeping each other company in the rain.
That summer, I'd been traveling through Europe with a friend who had been my high school boyfriend four years prior- a situation which, as it turned out, brought up dynamics that I/we didn't know how to navigate. To keep our friendship intact (which, in spite of the previous three weeks, seemed worth doing), we agreed to part ways for the last week of our travels. He headed to Dublin to drink a lot of Guinness; I headed to Edinburgh to see where I'd go from there.I passed my first day in Edinburgh with the mentality of someone who knows how to spend time alone- I bought a skirt, reported a lost ATM card (a lot of swearing was involved as I tried to figure out how to call a 1-800 U.S. number from a Scottish pay phone), walked to Greyfriar Bobby's Kirk and wandered the tombstones under the trees. A light rain started to fall. My Let's Go guidebook recommended the Elephant Cafe as a place made famous by J.K. Rowling, who apparently first began writing Harry Potter on a napkin there. The cafe was right around the corner from the kirk, so I went in to get out of the rain.
As I took a seat at a corner table with a pot of tea, I was fully hit with how alone I felt- shaking off rain in a city where no one knew my name, with no destination in mind and nowhere to go back to. A guy came up and asked if he could share my table. I glanced up and said that I didn't mind. I went back to occupying myself with the Let's Go guide, which I didn't actually need to read, but I had no other reading material at hand and had nothing else to do to look busy. He left his bag and went to the counter for pie, came back. I gave him a brief stranger's smile. We read. He looked over at me, after ten minutes of silence, and asked if I was reading a Lonely Planet.
No, I said, it's Let's Go. I've been calling it my Bible. Where are you from?
I'm from California.
Really? Where in California?
Oakland...?
Are you kidding me? I live in Berkeley!
We put aside our books with sudden interest, joined by the miracle of meeting a fellow Bay Area dweller in an Edinburgh cafe. I would have mistaken him for a Brit; he didn't carry himself or talk like a tourist. I asked him what he was reading. He held up Immortality by Milan Kundera and asked me if I'd ever read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I hadn't. He told me that it was about love- about the desire for one's actions to be free of consequence but, at the same time, the conflictual desire to feel the weight of a lover's body on top of one's own, the beauty of that weight and consequence.
I felt myself letting go of my defenses to meet him in conversation. He became not just a stranger with whom to make small talk, but a person who used words in a way I'd never heard before, who could make me fall in love with a book I'd never read. We talked sociology, travels, misadventures, our own future plans. A couple of hours later, as the crowd in the cafe thinned out, he asked me if I wanted to go on a walk. Here was someone I didn't know how to say no or yes to, so I tried a Sure. I had laundry to do at my hostel and a bus to Inverness in the morning, but for the suspended moment I liked that we could be two travelers keeping each other company in the rain.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
city of angels
Last night, sitting and waiting at the airport in Los Angeles, I sent j and a.stride a text-
Cars in the downpour.
8pm. Drinking coffee.
LA never sleeps.
It had been raining all day, just as it had been in the Bay. The city was full of wet and smog, long hours, endless highways, plastic cars. I was aching to fly home. Thinking about j and a, who'd been reminding me via texts and voicemail that my absence was felt. Thinking about that night a few years ago on the way back from Yuba, when I watched merhawi and a.stride trading off iPod tracks in the front seat and felt, more clearly than ever in my life, the weight of the men in my world. I was thinking about the way life shifts and comes into perfect, unexpected symmetry. Thinking about home. Felt so grateful I could have laughed out loud.
One of the photos I took in the LA area yesterday was of one of the most beautiful trees I've ever seen, on the CSU Fullerton campus. Another was a quick blind shot while driving west on the 105. Turns out that, totally unexpectedly, I photographed the same curves in wood and in concrete.
Cars in the downpour.
8pm. Drinking coffee.
LA never sleeps.
It had been raining all day, just as it had been in the Bay. The city was full of wet and smog, long hours, endless highways, plastic cars. I was aching to fly home. Thinking about j and a, who'd been reminding me via texts and voicemail that my absence was felt. Thinking about that night a few years ago on the way back from Yuba, when I watched merhawi and a.stride trading off iPod tracks in the front seat and felt, more clearly than ever in my life, the weight of the men in my world. I was thinking about the way life shifts and comes into perfect, unexpected symmetry. Thinking about home. Felt so grateful I could have laughed out loud.
One of the photos I took in the LA area yesterday was of one of the most beautiful trees I've ever seen, on the CSU Fullerton campus. Another was a quick blind shot while driving west on the 105. Turns out that, totally unexpectedly, I photographed the same curves in wood and in concrete.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
scotland.
The initiation of this blog has inspired some reflection in me. I began to rummage through some old works- images, journals, essays, identities. I found these photos from a trip to Scotland in 2004; I wanted to share. Returning from this trip, I made some profound shifts in my life. It was kind of an interesting turning point for me, and I think going to this landscape where 'I'm from' and yet have never been, and returning to where I've been, but never know myself to belong, kind of revolved a bit around my time in scotland. Going back and looking at what I was looking at then and how I was looking at things has been cool to experience. It's interesting to see something again after some time. It actually feels like looking at something completely new; which I suppose it is.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
CameraPhone Love: part 3 (for btown.)
I met btown. on a drizzly, grey early evening in Edinborough. I walked in the rain under dim street lamps lonely, lost, and wide open. So was btown. Our bus left us at a coffee stop. We're still here.
btown. loves wires. And skylines. I took this photo awhile ago on my phone while driving through the Fillmore, thinking about how much she loves wires and sky. A month later- rainy, grey, endless morning- I was looking at puddles on the sidewalk, and feeling each of my 30 years as if a burden. I dropped her a text, that I'd like to share with this photo:
Beneath my two feet
The sidewalk's crack- thin- stretches
All the way to you.
(thank you.)
tuesday morning: fire and tea.
Sent an early text to j prince; he got dressed and strolled over in the rain- first of the winter. Acoustic sounds and a little fire, the perfect kind of morning. Remembering this haiku:
First rain of winter-
Traveller
You can call me.
- Basho
Monday, October 12, 2009
Use what you got and do it with love: a philosophy.
As a lover of street photography, I have been researching one of the genre's most beloved tools: Leica M series rangefinder cameras. They are beautiful and unique instruments. As I read articles, and reviews and see the photos they take, I have become interested and enamored with the culture behind the cameras and the practice of using them, they force you to grow as a photographer in that everything is old school and manual. I have not seen anything quite like them. I went to a store in the city today to try one out, and looking through a rangefinder system is very different than SLR's, it took some getting used to, but I was into the challenge of it and found the experience inspiring. Unfortunately, they are extremely expensive, and it doesn't feel right laying down 5 G's right now. I left the store feeling a little down about it all. Right then my phone rang and I got to thinking...there is a camera in my phone...wild. If I could show someone from 100 years ago that I have a phone with no chord and that it has a camera in it, they would loose their mind right there.
Also, There are people now that would be amazed by my magical phone, and people who would love to have any camera. So, the thought is simple: what if I didn't take for granted that there is a camera in my phone; What if I recognized it as tool, like any tool, that has strengths and limitations. After all, many of us have witnessed amazing art that has come from very limited resources; Like hip hop, graffiti, Lomography, and the list goes on.
Therefore, I have decided to start a camera-phone project, and to take it somewhat seriously (and somewhat not at all, that is the point) and treating it like it is equal in terms of one concept: That if you use what you have to create something, and you do it with love, it almost always shines through to people and they can feel it; they can resonate with the idea you are putting out there. This is not to say that we should not take our selves seriously and not buy nice photography tools, but lets not miss the point. The goal is to have an experience, and we all need to work with what we got.
so here is the first installment of 'CameraPhone Love.'
(photos developed in Light Room)
Treehouse self-portrait
j and a,
i've found that it works well to resize a photo to about 700 pixels wide and then upload it with the image size as "large."
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
We have arrived. The first haiku.
The curtains flutter.
Your old plaid shirt gone missing.
The Fashion Police.
Your old plaid shirt gone missing.
The Fashion Police.
-btown
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