Somerville Boxing Club

Duane Michals

I went to see Duane Michals last night. He was speaking at the Morse Auditorium on Boston U's campus. The lecture was sponsored by the Photographic Resource Center at BU.
The turnout was really good, probably abround 200 people. And it was way, way, way more interesting/fun than any - and I mean any - poetry/fiction reading I've attended.
Even with the increasing awareness of photography as an art form, I think the medium has a tough slog ahead to achieve some respect.
People generally think of photography as a documentarian utility, impossibly real to be imaginative. While that can be true, and some of the greatest pics are documents, I think there are plenty of possibilities for creative expression with a camera. And I don't mean photoshopping a pic to death. Whatever works, works, though.
Mr. Michals sort of echoed these sentiments last night emphasizing the role of imagination in every aspect of art, stressing its integrity in any artful pursuit.
Some of the images he showed last night were really inspiring. One, of a field of fireflies double exposed against a nighttime fireworks display gave me plenty of ideas of my own involving a sack of flour in my garage.
He also produced a series of images on String Theory which were really amazing. The photos in series were really effective. Individually, I found myself wondering how the hell he produced the pics. I was too timid to ask him in the Q&A afterwards. Maybe I'll get the chance someday. He's pretty old though, 74, and he made a remark that he suffered from Alzheimer's.
That rattled around in my head for the rest of the lecture as I compared his behavior to my grandfather's. He seemed fine. But, boy, that word Alzheimer's was a real zinger. Powerful.
Even though he did dis Warhol as a cartoonist (no shit man, he was a professional illustrator - missed the point - patterns, repetition - oh well) I really enjoy his work. He stays really lo-tech which makes him seem like a survivor, the best American virtue. By limiting his resources (no computers/fancy cameras) he relies on wit and luck and grace and charm to survive. In that way his pictures are very interesting and a little bit heartbreaking.
I'm trying to do stuff like that.

Jockey in Blue, Red & Green

Monkey Like Cactus

Dolls... From Hell

More Pyrex

Librarian in a Lightbox

I went and bought a few clamp lights at Home Depot t'other day, and today I set up my mini studio to take a few shots, these being the best of them.
For my lightstage I am using a beer soaked, antique stool given Beatty by my mother. Beatty since has given it to me and it's FABULOUS!
To light the subjects I am using the clamp lights thusly: one big light clamped onto a bookshelf overhead and two lights clamped onto the stool illuminating either side. We call this fill light and my fill is pretty harsh, so I call it glare.
I need to engineer a better lighting system to diffuse the light better. Oh well. I think being an amateur is part of my sophistication.
I'm really trying to think of and create concepts which can only exist as a photograph. Which means they are fleeting, time-oriented concepts, hence the curling dyes and liquids. I started to make a diorama to photograph, but decided that a diorama photographed was an archival activity and as such, not terribly interesting.
Somehow all of this is helping me define what photography is not, and may thereby allow me to someday back my way into a good photograph.

What I Feel

This is the last weekly assignment for NESOP. I came across a cool Duane Michals photos essay in which he builds a miniature pyramid in Egypt. His pyramid takes shape in the foreground of a series of six photos, the ancient pyramids are meanwhile visible in the distant background. It was interesting and I like the narrative structure of all of his work that I have seen. It seemed flip and easy and, actually, pretty cool graphically. His mini-pyramid was integrated well with the ancient pyramids (graphically I mean, no sarcophagi - catch?) So I thought I could do something similar in the basement. Plenty of boxes and cool backgrounds. So I tore down and rebuilt a stack of A.C.'s. Then I took some self-portraits near them.
What does this have to do with the way I'm feeling. I have no idea, but it's a good description of getting some work done. And getting work done is a good feeling.

Me & Spike

Just pushing it for interesting shots. I will shoot from every conceivable location within this apartment before it's all over. Anyway, I thought this ended up looking like a crime scene photo and I suppose that is due to the way I developped the image. Fairly cool, high contrast, and Spike looking off at the light and me looking into the camera seems to create a mysterious tension.
Still can't get a decent B&W print to save my life, though.
Will spend the entire day tomorrow shooting in the basement. Then another day at Redbones. Whee. JB asked me to pick up another shift. Back to full on burnout.

What I Think

This series of photos represents my latest project at the New England School of Photography. The title of the post is the title of the project as it was assigned by the professor. We were told to shoot what we think. Professor Armor said, "This is where the rubber hits the road." Implying that, for once, the class should really think about their photos. Well, too late for me. But I caught his drift. Some of us need prodding along the path of contemplative shooting: he is asking for images that stretch beyond shots of the family cat playing with the computer wheel mouse in front of a cat oriented website.
So how did I get to these shots? As always, I'm struggling with something and currently it's a question of how satisfying photos can be in a creative sense seeing that they are, essentially, limited to capture mode. That is, how much creative input do I have in the photographic process?
Teacher doesn't think photography is an art form. In fact, he seems to think it dangerous to even discuss such a thing, going on and on about the beer requirement for such a discussion (which is fine with me.) So I'm in the shower thinking about how I can be more involved in the process, squeezing shampoo in my hand, then squeezing more and more into my hand and taking the bottle farther and farther away from my hand and seeing the stream of shampoo and thinking maybe that would be a good shot.
So I pursued that with honey, coffee and wine as the liquids all with different viscosities. I used a flash to stop the liquid (we saw some really cool photographs a student took at MIT's strobe lab, so that's where that comes from,) then I rotated the image 90 deg CW for a skewed perspective. Again, the prof went over the effect of rotating reflections to produce novel images and I chose to put that to use.
Finally, I've been wanting to incorporate Beatty's use of dyes in water for some time so I applied that technique on the remaining three shots.
More later... And an edit...

Boston Common

Bones

Honey Pot Hill Orchard

Topsfield Fair

Through A Glass Darkly