PROOF
I’ve always enjoyed sharing my work freely with the world. What you give is what you get. I use the word “proof” in a general way; this work is proof that I am alive, proof that I see the world this way, proof of concept, proof to myself, proof to you, proof of love, proof of mortality, proof of my senses, proof that generosity is its own reward. I make these cards by hand and leave them for strangers at a special place. Maybe you’ll get one for yourself.
After a month of downtime, travel and vacation, I am back to my weekly blog entries. I hope everyone has been having a good summer. I was lucky enough to leave the 505 for an extended trip, and it really did the trick to refocus my energies and see new things.
My trip began with a red eye flight to JFK airport in New York. An early morning arrival allowed me to have my “go to” breakfast of whitefish salad on a pumpernickel bagel at Russ and Daughters. I then strolled a few blocks to the International Center of Photography to see the fantastic William Klein exhibition. I was visiting as a guest of the museum, as I had recently interviewed the curator of the exhibition, David Campany, for my podcast. Listen here: “William Klein: YES” The show was inspiring, and overwhelming. I’m looking forward to adding the catalogue book to my library as soon as it is available.
The trip then took me to the closest thing I have to a “happy place,” the New Jersey shore. Time on the beach is alway a pleasure, as it brings me back to the days of my childhood, sitting on a blanket in the sand and jumping into the waves of the (this year..frigid!) Atlantic Ocean.
Next was an early morning commute back up to NYC, to meet my wife at JFK for a transatlantic flight to Budapest. We had a friend getting married there, and used the occasion as a great excused for a return to Europe…after years of prohibited travel. Hungary, despite its questionable political situation, is a beautiful country, and the city of Budapest is particularly gorgeous. The wedding itself was an amazing experience, filled with songs, performances, comedy and Central European craziness.
Next on the itinerary was the city of Leipzig in Germany. A former East German manufacturing hub, the city has been on the short end of reunification. This has actually been turned into an artistic advantage, particularly the old factory buildings that now house art studios, galleries and cafes. The Stasi Museum in the city was also a sobering, yet insightful site I am glad I got to visit.
Our final destination was the great city of Berlin. The city is very dear to me for a number of reasons, having been there two times before this trip. However, it was 15 years since my last visit, and I was curious if the city had changed much in that time. I was happy to discover that it had not. The edgy, funky vibe on the streets was a present as ever. Between too many cigarettes and too many weisse beers, we saw some amazing art shows. The Berlin Biennial was in full swing, and I also attended a great show by Susan Meiselas at C/O Berlin. I also discovered the work of Sybille Bergemann, and took home a book of her beautiful photography.
The most surprising thing that you, dear reader, might want to hear is… I did not bring out my camera once during the entire trip. Yes, I had my iPhone for snaps and Instagramming, but I did not even attempt to do any “serious” shooting on this trip. It was a refreshing change of approach for me, and I am glad that I am not experiencing any remorse for the decision not to shoot this journey. If anything, it gave me the time and space to let other things in…good food, good times with my wife, and the rest and relaxation my brain really needed. Even so, it’s good to be home and back to work.
Friends and followers of this blog probably know that I have mixed feelings (at best) towards Instagram. I’ve been struggling with the vapid nature of the selfie-centric platform ever since I jumped on board, and have had a strong hate / love relationship with it ever since. My disdain grew stronger once I left Facebook late last year. Maybe having one less social media platform made the ‘gram warts show even more obviously to me.
I have yet to depart from Instagram, and try to reconcile the fact that I still use it, mostly to communicate with my circle of creative friends. I also see it as a way to promote my podcast, for better or for worse. But I really wanted an alternative, something like Tumblr, back in the early 20-teens, when it really felt like a creative platform, before the bots took it over. Another aging hipster I know told me he found an alternative, and I decided to give it a try. Lo and behold… Pinterest.
I had originally dismissed Pinterest as a platform for crafty Moms and fashion / interior design wannabe Millennials. I don’t even know how I formed that bias in my mind, but that’s how I perceived the platform. Instead, I have discovered (albeit very late to the party) that Pinterest is a great way to find visual inspiration, and it satisfies my need to scroll through eye candy on my iPhone. What it does not do is fill me with contempt, with envy, and with feelings of insecurity. I have no skin in the Pinterest game. I don’t use it to go fishing for “likes” or instant validation. Instead, I see a parade of imagery, not just from random creators but from great artists I already know and love. Case in point, my feed is currently heavy in Robert Rauschenberg, Sigmar Polke, Robert Frank and Brice Marden. These names alone keep me inspired, and the tangential images that populate my feed feature visually connected content that has pulled my down numerous rabbit holes of discovery.
Might I suggest that you also give it a try? It might make the eventual Instagram plug pulling much less painful and probably more satisfying.
Last year I participated in a film swap, sponsored by the great folks at Lomography. They connected film shooters from all over the world to collaborate on a film sharing project (you shoot a roll of film and then send it to the assigned person to shoot the roll again in their camera…double exposures!) Last year’s project was so much fun I decided to throw my hat in the ring again this year.
My roll of film arrived this week from Perth, Australia(!) so I was excited to run it through one of my cameras as soon as the grips of Covid released me from being homebound. After shooting and processing, I noticed the doubles didn’t come out as prominently as expected. The iso rating / underexposure approach didn’t yield clear double exposures. Having been granted permission by my shooting partner, I decided to inflict my (soon to be patented) creative destruction approach to the processed film.
Bleach, flame and dirt was inflicted on the negative strips. I took a fairly haphazard approach to this destruction, not really caring if I went too far with it. The results are very much to my liking and my Aussie friend was pleased as well. Some traditional shooters may cringe at this approach, but I find it liberating to succumb to the happenstance of pouring bleach onto of a strip of film. And one thing is assured, this definitely creates one of a kind images.
Sometimes I don’t consider myself as a “photographer” anymore. Yes, I primarily work in photo-based image making, but as far as “straight” photography goes…I have moved on. Yet I am uncomfortable disposing of the designation completely, and I feel that just calling myself an “artist” seems too general.
I have been going through a large body of work from a project that has taken over four years to shoot. I’ve been edit my selections via 4 x 6 prints. This has led to a preliminary layout for my next self-publishing project. Once that grouping was complete, I decided to take another pass at the “bleach, burn, scratch, cut and tape” process I started to utilize during the early days of the pandemic. This approach continues to interest me. It continues to surprise me. I get lost in the process, and never really know where it will all leading, image-wise.
Ultimately, I’m happy to consider anything I do as part of my creative practice and whatever label applies to me is secondary. Call me what you will.
In September 2015 I went to Porto, Portugal for a one month artist residency. For a long time I had fantasies of taking an artist residency and had applied for a handful but did not get accepted. The Porto residency seemed a little bit more casual; not a rigid application process (but I did have to show work and do an interview before I was excepted.)
I knew little about Porto when I took this trip. I also was coming off of a major abdominal surgery which had complications resulting in a fairly serious life-threatening situation for me. It was after this health challenge that I realized (and I know this is a cliché) that life is short and you shouldn’t put off things you wanna do; things you want to pursue. You really don’t know how long you’re going to be on this earth. So it was in this mindset that I decided to travel to Portugal. I boarded a plane for Portugal at the end of August (the day after my birthday) not knowing where I was going or who I was going to be living with. Everything was literally an unknown to me.
I arrived in the city of Porto, not knowing what I was going to do or if I was going to do anything at all. I brought plenty of camera equipment, of course. I did plenty of research for resources in Portugal. I even connected with a friend who lives in Lisbon ,who I was planning on seeing while I was there. Other than that, I also carried a copy of Moby Dick with me, in case I was not feeling creative at all, at least I could tackle a good book in the time that I had off.
I shared an apartment building with a group of other artists from all over the world. There was Patrick, an illustrator from Great Britain. There was Juliet who was an illustrator from Canada. There was Rann, who is a musician, there was Ivan, an artist from Mexico City and myself. The house was tended to by two Norwegian artists, and two interns from the Czech Republic (who were both named Lenka.) There was also a house cat named Latto. The house was near the old part of Porto, at the border where the city turns modern and contemporary. The building itself was at least 100 years old, and had large wooden windows opened up to the street…which allowed plenty of flies to come into the house. One of the first things I did when arriving in Porto was go to a hardware store and try to explain that I need it fly strips… not speaking a word of Portuguese, of course. I mimed it and they understood what I needed. The windows of the kitchen of the apartment looked out across the street to a brothel. All day and all night there were older women on the sidewalks escorting blue-collar man into the brothel. I would often sit at the window smoking cigarettes, just watching the endless parade of johns.
There are other things that I remember about Porto. There were definitely smells. The apartment was on an alley, upstairs from a small café where every morning the smell of a garlic infused caldo would waft up into my bedroom. There is also the smell of bacalao, dried cod which is popular everywhere in Portugal and the distinct salty, fishy smell was everywhere. There was exhaust fumes from buses and cars. There was the smell of cigarettes of course. And oil paints and inks, and a dirty bathroom, and the incense that I would burn to keep the mosquitoes away, and the smell of an occasional rain on the cobblestone sidewalks and streets of Porto.
There were taste as well. I would often eat a small pork sandwich called a bifana. There were the Portuguese tarts with coffee in the morning. The taste of cheap, local white wine from the nearby Douro Valley bought at the local grocery for two euros a bottle.
And of course, there were sounds always sounds in the city. The apartment was a few blocks away from a church that would ring it ancient bells regularly, especially early in the morning; it was a beautiful sound. My fellow artist across the hall was is doing a series of artwork with an old typewriter. He stayed in his room with the door closed almost all the time. But I would hear the incessant clacking of the typewriter. At the end of the month when we all shared our work that we created, I remember he filled his room with sheets of paper with oddly designed geometric shapes that he typed out on the typewriter, hanging on string from wall to wall.
I could go into the artwork that I created while I was in Portugal. I feel like the less I say about it the better though, because the artwork that I created was the result of everything that I allowed myself to experience. And it was these experiences that were far more important to me. I did eventually create a book and an exhibit of the photographs from Portugal. This was a huge step forward in my belief in myself as a photographer and artist. It also began a self publishing journey which I continue to this day, almost obsessively.
So this rambling entry is really just to document my feelings about time. Not only the time that I spent in Portugal, but also the value of giving myself that gift of time to pursue something deeply important in my heart. My hope is that reading these words encourages you to consider giving yourself the gift of time to pursue whatever it is you are interested in. It doesn’t have to be a month overseas. It could just be an afternoon by yourself. It might lead to something amazing, or it might just be a much needed break from your routine.
Wandered out early this morning to experiment with a new bit of gear (gasp!) Thinking about a new project. Shadow and self. Jungian thoughts. There is always the sun. To be continued?
When I was a kid, one of my hobbies was collecting stamps. Every few Saturdays I would walk to the next town over where they had a stamp and coin collection shop, and I would browse the cardboard boxes of canceled stamps that sat on the counter top. I’d spend about an hour filling up an envelope with (easy to find) postage stamps to add to my collection. The more I got into the hobby, the more I saw the value in finding stamps that had unique artwork or especially stamps from far away countries to fill my album.
I had these thoughts in my head as I checked on the traffic for this website earlier this week. It’s interesting to see where visitors to the website come from, especially when they’re from far away places. As a photographer and an artist, I always wonder who is seeing my work. The majority (I’m guessing) are people I’ve never met. This is especially true when it comes to people visiting the website. I enjoy seeing the names of small towns and obscure locations scattered all over the globe when they pop up in my web traffic analytics.
Again, it reminds me of being a child and wondering about other places in the world; how people lived, what they ate, how they dressed. Even then I think that I had a curiosity about the world that would grow into my desire to travel when I got old enough. It also manifests itself in a desire to interact with people (specifically other creative people and photographers) who in one way or another share a common aesthetic or sensibility with me and my work.
I might never visit these countries, the cities, these far-flung places… But just the idea of knowing that someone somewhere halfway across the world is looking at my work, that’s still a thrill for me.
Why do humans make art? It serves no utilitarian purpose yet it does have value in our lives. But what forced human beings originally to create art? Is it some glitch in the development of our brain? What is it that sprung out of human evolution that spurred this need to create? Art is not integral for our survival. Art, however, does make our lives worth living. Art embellishes our existence. But we can survive without it. We need to eat to sleep for shit and piss and fuck but we don’t need to make art. Art and its value is completely reliant on how it’s perceived by our brains. I find this whole idea not only intriguing but also confounding. And I say this as an artist; I say this as someone who is driven to create. Even the creation of commercial art (advertising something to sell) is rooted in some deep-seated place in our brain that response to pretty things, colorful things, loud things. I don’t know where this comes from. I don’t know if anyone knows where this comes from. I am not proposing that we shouldn’t make art. Most of my days are filled with thoughts about art (if not straight down right creating.) But why do I do it? Why do we do it? Is there an answer to this question?