i like to tell stories

undated, but at least 3 years ago.

going north.

going south.

same rest room, only days apart. they must paint it daily, the second visit had none of the previous words of ‘wisdom’, but offered up others.

or it could also just be that i am breaking all my special glass things recently, all by accident.

la quinta, nashville tennessee, room #328.

got in at 12:50am, checked out at 3:30am.

caeser.

sometimes, pictures just seem to go together, no matter how unrelated or unintended any metaphor.

i never walk around and shoot in nyc. one day, well, three different days for whatever reason, i had a camera on me and made these, years apart, years ago and almost forgotten with countless other images on random rolls of film neglected to be scanned.

i miss using different cameras, being digital and being cheap is a bad combination. the beauty of film is different formats and different tools that fit your hand and eye so differently then one another, even if they are the same format. my eye molds what i see, but some cameras make that love feel a certain way like no other can.

58th st, 52nd st, 55th st.

my brother came to visit, twice he’s visited me in the 16 years since i left home, maybe if i had a real home it’d be different, but i got him a ticket and he came. i was so busy trying to keep him entertained, i forgot to make pictures of him. i always have a camera when i go somewhere, but never when i am in nyc doing things. so in the last 1h, 46min and 24s of his visit, after staying up all night and getting him into a cab too early in the morning before the sun rises, i finally snapped a few.

it’s the closet i’ll ever come to taking my own portrait, but i have said all this before.

if he ever stops smoking, i’ll lose all these random odd moments. he smokes, i fiddle with cameras, a habit is a habit.

it all happen in spring 1996, but in june of 1997, across the street from the visual studies workshop and not so far from where minor white did and thought his things in rochester ny, sitting in a church converted into a boarding/halfway house, i decided i would write it all down, i didn’t want to forget a single thing.

i can remember writing it so well, the bad desk lamp bounced off the wall, the single window open, the breeze of the crisp june rochester air coming through the window, the soft sounds of night outside and listening to those renting the rooms around me scream and fight because they were trapped in their little rooms too. i couldn’t write fast enough.

i dare you to read it here.

i wrote this in a journal i have since given away, i have no good copy of this story, other then what i am posting here. i wrote at the little desk where the light table is in the photo linked below, that walmart bag and paper isn’t trash, but rather the only bag large enough to hold all the film i just had processed and was scrambling to get printed that summer. i think some part of me knew that vacuum of living and breathing what you love with no regard for the daily nuisance of making a living and normal everyday life was about to end, i miss that vacuum.

this is where i lived:
[chapel hill]

this is who it is about:

11/23/07 + 8/20/05

it’s a process, much like any other.

emeryville. i only lived there 3 months, but a couple times i got lost in my head so much i had to go make things, i slapped my dads yashica mat 126 on the metz potato masher i had and went for walks around all the industrial buildings looking at things and trying to not get mugged all at the same time, i remember not having a sync cord, so i shot at 1 second and manually fired the flash. later that year, i did the same where i lived next around the castro or even later in the richmond, all 1995, all yashica mat, all on free donated E-6 film over 10 years expired and run C-41 two years after i shot it all in 1997. nothing mattered, just shoot it. 10 years later, i finally have looked at most of them, but i still have only made a few scans, someday, i hope to make more.

i have never been drunk, not really, i tried tonight, i thought it would be a funny gift for my friend nate’s birthday as i wasn’t sure how the piniata i filled with candy, condoms, lube, glow sticks and a rubber chicken would go over with someone over 30. 3 beers and 2 shots. the beers i choked down over a few hours, so i really didn’t feel the supposed joy. i did two shots, well, 1.5 as half of one i choked on so it ended up down the front of my shirt. half of someone else’s shot fell on my camera as i tried to get a funny picture, thus i now have a whiskey stain on the sensor. i left kinda early, non drunk, alone, thinking of women with a pocket full of condoms, candy, lube and wondering who got that damn chicken.

email a friend far away in CA a silly song for his birthday.

wait around till it’s time to leave for event.

wait for bus 20 min, when it doesn’t show, go to train.

walk from 8th to 10th ave in fancy shoes.

walk in past books and everyone into the back room where the party is.

walk around party, no one looks at you or talks to you, you look at everyone, wish to talk to them all but don’t.

note all the names and faces and dresses.

notice all the walking art that doesn’t notice you.

see PLD. see criag mcdean. see all the students from the school you cannot get into.

see more fashionistas and photo dorks then there really should be in the world and let it go, you’re one too.

see all the people that must be the people behind the people, the ones you would rather know of then the man himself. the ones that get shit done yet remain faceless.

stop staring at them as they notice you trying to notice them.

look for people you know or hope to see there, but don’t.

pay for book on CC you shouldn’t have brought.

confirm your little copy is presigned as designed to avoid the awkward.

walk around and look at big beautiful prints by t.ruff that he stole off the internet and claims are his now.

walk out, squeeze past pld and cmd smoking and go wait for bus.

get home, flip thru all 1000 pages, take dumb snaps, email those that should of gone with you.

so i finally made a book of the BTK story. i have to say, it really goes next level when you touch it and go through it page by page versus click by click. it reminds me of how much i miss any printed photograph really.

it was mostly ready to print, so it only took 3-4 hours to print them all out and put together this one copy, i didn’t try to figure the price in paper/ink, i don’t want to know.

see BTK online HERE.

MORE

packing up finally, more cleaning, from far too long of just stacking them in the corner.

when i was a freshman in photo college, freshman weren’t allowed to check into the studios or check out medium format cameras. so the very first day of official classes my sophomore year, i did both. having spent the summer thinking of different ways to light someone and since i didn’t know anyone all that into letting me practice light on them all day, i shot myself. broncolor and an RZ for the first time. it was a fun day.

granted there isn’t much that can be done with lighting thats all that ‘new’ to an extent, and i by no means am saying i did either of these before or better then anyone, but i recently saw this exact set up (above) on the cover of a big entertainment magazine with a celebrity and it made me laugh, remembering this picture i made of myself the last time i let my hair actually grow.

so unless you’re one of the rare photographers that just somehow manages to overwhelm the lighting style done before you so many times, everyone calls it ________ lighting, just keep doing what you want, only tweak it or overwhelm the world with it so they think its yours. see what i mean, i did this years ago and actually very differently then ________, it’s not even so very different then above, before ________ had overwhelmed the style so much, you cannot think of anything but the lighting and who did it before you and better, after they learned it from someone else then tweaked it. so until i find something i like or grow the ability to overwhelm the world with it, i’ll keep playing.

cleaning the journal table made me actually get to the journal under it all or on top of it all, depending on the day. after seeing another journal of mine recently that i had given away, it seems the journal is on the brain quite often lately. part of me misses making them, actually making something with my hands that i can touch. while the other part of me finds i cannot escape how distant everything in them feels, the content itself and the aesthetic. they are mine, and i remember every nook and cranny detail of making the pages and all the pictures, but when i hold it or look at them, it’s like it isn’t mine just the same.

i stopped dating pages this time and skipped around from page to page, unlike the others where i did a spread at a time till it was done and moved on. so at least 3 of these following spreads aren’t even done. i stopped it on 1/23/05, i’ll save that 8 of 8 spread till 1/23/08. i didn’t stop on that date consciously for any reason, even though the date is a significant one, it’s just how it happened.

i haven’t touched my journal table since january of 2005. then it became a place for photo related or love related or loved thing/object/trash placement for almost the past 3 years, as small as this place is, it went untouched.

then, the other day, i just had to put it all away. bought fancy boxes, scooped it all in, then set boxes on table, so it’s a start, or at least a small dent.

coney island + long island, i wish i had photographed you more.