I often struggle with boredom, as noted numerous times in this blog. When boredom sticks around too long, it’s dark sibling depression is not far behind. I could put it more poetically, and say that melancholia and ennui are frequent visitors to my life; part of an ever growing segment of humanity, I know, I know. In any event, the only thing that keeps the wolves at bay, it seems, is activity. Idle hands are the devil’s playground, no joke. I’m grateful to have my little art studio where I can keep my hands and my mind occupied when not much else is going on. No need for grand artistic statements; sometimes it’s just doing “the work” that is its own reward. It’s the process, not the product, after all. Case in point, I started making little, mini zines this week. One sheet of paper, folded a few times, then bound in some scrap test prints. Voila, instant art. Oh, yeah, these things are small. See battery photo above for scale. No matter, it’s a great little exercise in assembly, sequencing and focus. Not sure what I’m going to do with these. They accumulate quickly. Most likely I’ll distribute them freely, most likely anonymously. Small visual haikus for the universe. A small ray of light from the darkness.
2021:3 ::::::::::: Damage Control :::::::::::
My photographic practice continues to evolve. The more I look at social media, websites, articles, blog posts, newsletter, etc., the more I notice a “sameness.” There is no shortage of tropes, no shortage of cliche, no shortage of copying, no shortage of homage, no shortage of theft, no shortage of repetition. Which is all fine and good… there is nothing new under the sun; good artists copy, great artist steal. I’ve been challenging myself to create work that is not so easily reproducible, not so easy to emulate, not so ready to fall into the long line of trope and cliche. I also realize that this is a futile battle, since every idea that I’ve pursued has certainly been done by someone else, maybe better or worse, but I am certainly not doing anything completely original.
And yet. I’ve been throwing caution to the wind, playing with different lenses, different cameras, different films, and different manners of post-processing-tom-foolery, in hopes that I can satisfy somewhat the hunger for a unique vision that I can wholly own for myself. I’ve also been bridging the film vs digital divide with my current experiments, because it is 2021 after all. There is nothing like taking a pair of scissors and scotch tape to a strip of negatives, even if they end up sitting on my Epson scanner before flying out into the world, via a stream of ones and zeros. Maybe someday I’ll hang these efforts on a wall where a crowd of freely breathing, unmasked humans can wander and stare blankly… but that feels like a fantasy that’s months and months away.
This week, I’ve found inspiration and motivation from a great book I picked up by chance at the library. It’s called “Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950.” It is fueling my curiosity, and making me consider photography in general (and mine specifically) in a larger context. I also stumbled upon a poem by Yeats which really hit home this week, and since it’s public domain, I’ll share it here.
The Second Coming