Three days alone in a car. Cameras, film, a tent, a cooler, Spotify, Podcasts and my mind to keep me company. Time to think, to look, to stop and go as I please. To eat bad road food, to pitch a tent for the night, build a fire, drink cold beer from the cooler, stare at the flames, stare at the rising full moon. I’m not sure why I was drawn to explore the area I travelled through. Kansas was one of the few states I hadn’t yet set foot in, so there was that. I had imagined a certain type of environment. I had assumed it would be flat farmland (partly correct.) I also expected small town America to show it’s “oddness” to me. I also knew I was heading into a “red” state, and I was reminded numerous times that this was the case. I think it was Greil Marcus who coined the term “old, weird America.” I thought I might see some of that as I wandered. Alas, I did not. I did shoot a few rolls of film, not sure if there will be anything of merit or worth on these rolls, but we’ll see.
I started out of Albuquerque and took I-40 west to the town of Tucumcari. I’ve always held a soft spot in my heart for Tucumcari, and it seems I pass through there every five years or so. Not much changes. Or if it does change, it’s not for the better. There is a sadness that hangs over the town. Old Route 66 still crops up here, amidst the decay and neglect. I once had a fantasy of buying one of the old brick buildings in the middle of town, and opening up a photo studio, or a gallery, or some kind of “off the grid” type of destination, ala Marfa, Texas. Maybe when I have a million dollars to spare I might still do it. I shot about a roll of film while in Tucumcari, and I realized that I am drawn to decay, to debris, to old remnants of a past glory. Sounds cliché, I know.
Look, I am able to recognize beauty in the world, even stand in awe of it. The sublime is something I’ve surrendered to. But I just can’t get excited to photograph it. I don’t think I could come close to being able to accurately represent it anyway. I can, and do, document the crumbling world, the dashed hopes, the sadness and depression that reflects out from my soul. That sounds too morose, especially considering that I consider myself an optimist, after all. I have come close a few times to losing hope, but I cling to it still. Glass half full. Yet even my attempts at exploring beauty through my work has my grubby fingerprints all over it. Black and white, blurs and grain, high contrast, scratches and dust and flares. I struggle to think of any reasons why a person would strictly photograph pretty scenery and make nice, pretty pictures. I just can’t do it, and I rarely want to look at it either.
I realize my particular approach to creating images is a well-worn path. Sometimes it feels like the flavor of the month when I peruse Instagram or watch YouTube videos. Everyone seems to be shooting film with an old camera. Everyone is looking for the urban decay of the desert, of old broken capitalism. The Salton Sea, Route 66, neon signs and old rusty cars. Abandoned buildings falling down in a wind-swept desert. I’ve done my part to add to the myth. I’m waiting for a new way for seeing to arrive in my brain, focus (or un-focus) my eyes and see the world in a different way. I’m unsure it will happen. There is truly nothing new under the sun.
My way of seeing may be unique to myself, but it does sometimes look like I’m just repeating tropes down often (and often times better) by others. I yearn to create images that look like only I could have taken them. I yearn to take images that are extraordinary. Not meaning superior, but truly extra ordinary. I stop myself from pressing the shutter plenty of times when I catch myself repeating a well-worn cliché. I think I am drawn to film photography because it still retains an element of surprise. I never really know what I’m getting in the frame until I see the film, hours or days or weeks later. I have embraced pinhole photography lately because it pushes even a modicum of planning and expectation right out the window. When I open the shutter on the wooden box camera, and count to 5 or 10 making an exposure, I am aware that I am in a moment, unrepeating and unrepeatable. No two exposures will look the same. Others may have shot from the same exact spot that I am standing on right at that moment, but my picture will not look like theirs, nor theirs mine. This is what drives me to continue.
My birthday just passed, and I used it as an opportunity to reflect on my age and my mortality. I don’t know if I’ll have one more day to live, or 40 more years. When I’m gone, will anyone give two shits about my photographs? I’m betting no. My thoughts? Maybe a few curiosity seekers who go down a google enabled rabbit hole will stumble upon my psychobabble. It’s clear I do these things for my own gratification, though I’m grateful when anyone else pays attention. Even more so when they reach out and share a thought about a photo or a passage I’ve written.
So back to the road trip. Kansas… corn fields and wheat fields for miles and miles. Small towns with little houses, Trump signs and American flags everywhere. Dots on the map that are home to grain silos and 24 /7 filling stations and not much more. As a suburban / city boy, I guess I needed to see this land for myself at least once in my life. Heck, this is where our food comes from, at least a good chunk of the processed stuff we rely on. This is farmland and cattle land and railroad land. Built by sturdy folks who came and took from the land… after taking it from the original inhabitants of this land. This is the place that was called “Bleeding Kansas” right before the Civil War. This is the place where the struggle for workers rights and progressive politics has been usurped by a unique brand of conservatism. Jesus. Guns. And the soil. Not weird, old America for sure. Confusing new America, perhaps.
Even when I crossed the border into Colorado, not much changed. Not the signs or the flags or the farms, or the dots on the map. It wasn’t until I could see the Rockies, off in the distance as I approached Trinidad, CO that things started to feel familiar again. And as I crossed the Raton Pass and re-entered New Mexico, I immediately felt like I was back in my place again. Even though I was still hundreds of miles from home. I’m guessing the non-Anglo elements of New Mexico’s population, along with its tough economic luck, and a scrappy, defiant mentality helped create a diverse place that just feels right to me. It is still “weird” here. Maybe ominously so, sometimes. When the sun goes down, there is still a sense of foreboding I haven’t felt in other places. Certainly not in places as strikingly beautiful as here. My muse seems to dance freely here in the desert. She dances to slow sad songs, I guess.
