Where Are You Going?

More time in my old hometown. I’m not going to pretend that it’s an enjoyable place for me to visit. With the cold, damp blast of winter, it’s even less hospitable. My camera provided little solace, though a wander through the woods down the block from my father’s house gave me a small bit of nature; a reprieve. Back when I was a kid, you could cross paths with a skunk or a possum in these woods. But in the decades since I left, deer have become ubiquitous in the area. They show little fear of humans, which is maybe a blessing and a curse for both sides of the equation. I did come face to face with this youngster while wandering through the late February thaw / muck. We sized each other up before parting ways. Two lone creatures trying to get through life while surrounded by suburban sprawl, we shared something in common on a gray afternoon in New Jersey.

2022: 26 This Place

Hard to be an optimist these days.

2022: 10 Kyiv

“Ball of confusion, that’s what the world is today…” A short stroll through the 21st Century…terrorism, war, market crash, war, racism, violence, mass shootings, political unrest, a pandemic… and now…another war. Growing up during the Cold War, I always had a fear and suspicion of Russia… or the Soviet Union, as it used to be called. Also, a fascination with the Eastern Bloc as well. Berlin split in two…the fear of a nuclear war. What’s old is new again. I have become obsessed with the plight of the Ukrainian people and their country, becoming surprisingly hawkish, in fact. But at the same time, I feel sad and powerless and afraid and… and… and…

I used to joke about this clunky 6 x 6 camera of mine, this Kiev 6; calling it a Russian tank. It weighs a ton, and is somewhat unreliable, but I love it anyway. Little did I know that the factory that brought this camera to the world, to my hands, was actually based in the Ukraine… then it was part of the Soviet Union, so what did I know? Anyway, my little personal connection to Kyiv (as the Ukrainians call it, thus I will as well) doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans, but still, I placed a new, different value on this camera this week. Whose hands worked to build it ? What are their offspring, or even them personally, doing right now?

2021: 48 Saul Leiter

I watched “In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life With Saul Leiter,” by the British filmmaker Tomas Leach this week. It is a wonderful film, at times amusing and at times very sad. The idea that a master photographer can live a quiet life in New York City should be comforting, I suppose. But I also was struck by seeing an aging, lonely Leiter sifting through the detritus of his life, and my heart hurt when I realized that here was a great artist, living…not so much in obscurity, but in anonymity. Saul Leiter, who died in 2013, brought color to a genre that was deeply entrenched in monochrome in the 1950s. His eye gravitated towards subtle abstraction, which I find curious, considering the chaos and complexity of the “real world” on display in the streets of New York. Maybe the fact that Leiter was also a painter has something to do with this.

Those of us deeply immersed in the world of photography probably hold our “heroes” in high regard, and we expect them to perhaps live a life that we might envy. Yet watching Leiter sitting alone, surrounded by his life work, stacked in old film boxes and gathering dust, it made me wonder what becomes of the even less recognized artists out there. What becomes of all the work they (and I) create through their lives? Maybe never destined for a book or a museum show, but instead sitting in piles in an office or studio. What treasures will go undiscovered, or under appreciated?

2020: 42 (Fail Forward)

I’ve been rolling the dice lately. Plastic cameras, nothing but film, no viewfinder, no meter, no plan, no expectations, no disappointments. Running 35mm film through medium format cameras, shooting pinhole, advancing film partially, double exposures. Shooting color film and developing it in black and white chemistry. Breaking all the rules. I’m feeling that this is all leading someplace… feels like I’m down in the sewers, just like Orson Welles in The Third Man. Darkness, dampness, dripping liquids, shadows, footsteps. Isolation, fear, paranoia. Yet free, and oddly self-assured. Or maybe just schizophrenic. My mind is popping, synapses firing in all directions, and then lethargic, confused, unable to focus and concentrate. This is life in 2020. The year of perfect vision, is that irony or not? So much more to come. While I breathe, I hope.

Orson Welles in the classic film, The Third Man. Watch it if you’ve never seen it.

2019: 47 (Goodbye, Polaroid)

I have long held a deep appreciation for Polaroid film and cameras. Even back in the 80s, I had a Polaroid Spectra as part of my image making arsenal. About five years ago, inspired by Patti Smith, I purchased a beautiful Polaroid 360 camera off of Ebay… with a sharp glass lens and Zeiss viewfinder. It’s a thing of beauty. And as of today, it’s a beautiful paperweight in my office. A couple of years a go, Fujifilm decided to stop making their peel-part film, the only instant film that would still work in this camera. Immediately prices on a 10-pack of film started to creep up. What once cost 8 or 9 bucks on Amazon slowly increased in cost. Today, a box can fetch well over $50 on Ebay (and since it’s not being made anymore, folks are buying up expired stock.)

I decided that once my stockpile was gone, I would retire the camera for good. That moment arrived this past week. I took the 360 down to the bosque, and shot off my last 10 sheets. The whole process was over in about 30 minutes. I didn’t belabor the ending, shooting freely, and quickly. Fittingly, the absolutely last exposure to come out of the camera got jammed, and as I jimmied the camera back open to release the sheet of film, I unintentionally fogged the last exposure. Upon peeling, it reveals a wonderful gradient of pale blue within its signature white frame.

Unlike the Impossible Project / Polaroid Originals resurrection of the other instant film formats, I seriously doubt we’ll see another company pick up the mantle and large scale produce this specific kind of instant film. Dying formats are a sad reality in the world of film photography. Thankfully, renewed interest in film photography in general has brought back other films, and I will happily continue to run rolls of 35mm or 120 film through the rest of my camera collection. Still, I will miss the excitement of taking a shot with my old 360, waiting those seconds before peeling apart the packet to reveal the one-of-a kind image I just captured. Sic transit gloria Polaroid.

2019: 30 (Nostalgia)

I am by nature a nostalgic person. As I scrolled through the photo album on my phone looking for images to share on this post, I immediately was drawn down a rabbit hole of memories. I suppose photography is the most appropriate medium for me, because of this particular type of affliction. I can look at an old photo and not remember how old I may have been when it was taken but I do remember the photo itself… and can somehow be transported back to my yard in Dumont, New Jersey. I was 11 or 12-years-old, wearing brown, plastic frame glasses, holding my first pet dog “Gigi” close to me. I can actually remember the smell of leaves decaying in the autumn sun; I can remember the names of the families who live just behind the hedges in that photo.

When my brain can no longer process those memories, what will those pictures mean to me then? As a middle-aged man, I can be transported back 40 something years into the past. And sometimes it’s the photos themselves that I have the memories about, because they appear and then reappear in photo albums and in boxes in storage when I stumble upon them; or yes, even as I scroll through the 1000+ photos I have saved on my phone.

I’ve been trying really hard to be in the present moment not obsess or have fear or anxiety about the future and yet I can easily be pulled into the past by looking at photographs. Photos of friends and family members… some of whom are dead now, and those who in the photos look so young, when in real life we have all aged. I think there is a certain sadness to every photograph that’s taken. Even if it’s a celebration of a moment of joy, happiness of life being lived at its fullest at that moment. Because these documents will take on a completely different tone when viewed six months from now… five years from now… 20 years from now. Our skin will be more wrinkled, our hair will be more gray, more friends or family will no longer be with us. Every photograph carries that sadness and waiting.

Susan Sontag covers some of the same ground in her book “On Photography” as does Roland Barthes in “Camera Lucida.” Both books should be mandatory reading for any serious photographer.