Ng.

Unbelievably, the bird still continues to fascinate. Why would this be a decisive image in some way?

I think what it boils down to is a question of intentions.


On 7th Ave, the sun was at it's highest point. Everything around me was reduced to blinding glare. I could barely open my eyes, people were shoulder to shoulder, and everyone I saw had a glowing halo limning their entire body. I had a moment of realization that this was no different than what I viewed as permissive about night work. If I was visually restrained, so should everyone else be, right? (Ignoring sunglasses and the fact that those facing me on the sidewalk would have actually had the sun slightly at their back.) Aside from this, for the first time I felt the desire to use the camera for a function it's well-made for; as a surrogate organ. This has been a current fascination for me; perhaps it's just that I went to see Cronenberg's The Brood two weeks ago for $7, and using a camera from waist-height always, even when you get used to it, feels odd, as if your navel had grown a pair of eyes. Corrupted.

If I was blind, then so must everyone be; in this state shame is an impossibility.

Which makes shooting aggressively very, very easy.

High noon. Now that one's really obvious. I can't believe I hadn't thought of that.


Tomato Workshop:
A series of projects that function as "creativity stagnation killers."

Tomato doesn't agonize over subject; a characteristic almost unheard of in the design world. Tomato's main guideline, as I understand it, is that the contents of the quotidian can be rigorously collected, interpreted and reinterpreted, removed in layer after layer from their literal translations, and presented.

So a comic strip in which there are as many panels or pages as there are waking hours in a day (not a random day, but that day), but if you can't draw and you want to represent the individual hours as groupings of horizontal lines, or pictures of piles of stones, or cloth dolls... it's all okay.

Photography plays a major part in their process, and is characterized by a swinging between the mundane, presented in perfect Scandinavian deadpan, and what I sometimes view as the European ideal of sophisticated, "open" conceptual work.

Work posing questions over making statements.


I suppose that this came to mind because I always dreamed, as a younger man, to take one of these seminars. I was sure something magical would happen. Now, I wonder if I need the seminar anymore.

All I do now, all day, is figure out ways and reasons to shoot. I had always used the inescapable presence of the quotidian as a permanent, locked reason not to shoot. Everything becomes routine.

But what if that is simply ignored? Treated as irrelevant, even harmful?

I've realized that my personal "opening" to the exterior is laughably basic.
Night? Rain? Doors?
But fixating on these things has given me a body of work from which to cull decency from.

The definition of decency is slid around, for fun, and I suppose, perhaps unconsciously, as a light challenge to the viewer and myself.

This stuff is so rudimentary, I feel slightly embarrassed to even make it public.


Street work has personal value, to me, as a sort of photographic test that I can give myself. And not just as a check box to tic off. I attempt to take singular, selective glimpses into historical photography, often into a single figure. (One of the disadvantages of an introductory photo history course is that the forward march must be maintained, and it's infrequent to see multiple images from the same operator.) But looking at historic work makes certain things obvious. One is that at the beginning of the twentieth century, many things that we identify as being much later innovations were in fact quite common. The atmosphere and trappings change wildly, decade after decade, with one photographic apparatus iteration after another... but the street hasn't been not present as a subject for quite a while now, and the "hand-held" camera was around for a while before Bresson starting lurking around puddles.


Aw, c'mon, who am I kidding? I do it for the danger.

Did I just have a genuine spiritual moment?

Alright. So tonight standing around I took the opportunity to ask the young man in my class who was so bothered by the picture of the bird what the deal was.

His eyes widened slightly. "It wasn't personal," he said.
"I know that. I wouldn't ask, otherwise."
And then he told me about how after Freshman year he had hoped he would never have to look at another fire hydrant, hubcap, or pigeon on a subway platform again. He invoked the word cliché. And he told me he thought it brought the other images down.

Which are reasonable thoughts to have about it.

I was about to write that the question of separation of the images had already been dealt with, but I suppose there are simple things to learn here. Something about grouping, sequence, etc. But, in this case, I'm going to overrule those issues, because the greater issue is of a difference of opinion in regard to the edit.

Perhaps this is a roundabout way to think about it. But I think the merits and flaws of the photograph are fairly obvious. It's not an abstract image, full of depth and symbolism, or overflowing with the "human spirit" or "hope in the face of adversity." With some pictures, it is what it is. This sounds dismissive, but I don't mean it to be. Part of me wonders, and sometimes worries, that I'm a bit too attached to the "straight" shot. By that I don't mean unmodified (which we won't even think about getting into here), but in regard to an image "trying to tell me something."

Are these conflicting ends of a spectrum? I'm talking in big, broad, fundamental outlooks, here. Our sweeping, Ansel Adams at a lectern statements.

"The moon... can only be photographed... at... f 11, with a 2 % cyan filter, and an exposure of no fewer than 47 minutes." [Uproarious applause.]

Do any of you view photographs in this way? As, on a fundamental, even unconscious level, that some images seem to simply be, while others seem desperate to tell you something.

I think the thing that can really get on my nerves with these kinds of images is that often, an image can be doing something unusual, or confusing, or drawing attention to itself, and you can be pulled into looking at it, and thinking about it... and it ends up being a stupid piece of shit. And it doesn't even have the decency to know it!

It doesn't know that tight jeans are annoying in the eyes of older people, or that piercing and tattoos are oddly cliched photographic elements as well, or that sex is inherently an awkward, sensitive subject, and that it takes deep consideration and... well, basically, they're like mines.

And we, aspiring, young, inexperienced, semi-educated photographers can only paddle worriedly through an ocean of cliché.

How do you do this?

The only method that I know, from my own experience, is that you have to attempt to photograph with the mindset of a little girl.

How else can you explain why it is that every photographer, every photographer eventually finds him or herself drawn into shooting flowers?

We're like moths; we can't not.

I accept this, because I must in order to continue to love photography. We will all be repeating subjects with historical precedent. There is nothing we can do to avoid this, other than being aware of the predecessor's existence, and having thoughts on their work, which, if we're any good, we should have some insight on their work, since we're obviously two people who share an interest.

So to all you freshman photographers, figuring out what shutter speed means (my big realization right now; underexposed pictures look kind of amazing if you're shooting on high-quality glass), squeezing off shots of your first real-life bum, or sleeping man, or the ferry at Staten Island, all you millions of cliched photographers; I'm right there with you. Don't let your edit go cold. Include your brother's birthday party. Take a picture of you grandmother's dog, but take it very seriously. Try to pose the dog against a regal background.

Take pictures that say absolutely nothing at all, but are interesting in and of themselves, as pictures. Two things I've internalized lately; turn your flash off and it's never too dark to shoot, or more precisely, try to shoot.

If you can start doing that, and know that you're doing it, I say have an edit somewhere that's for fun, and not only "portfolio" stuff. What does that even mean?

I'm just in a good mood. I was taught recently how to print digitally, and I found myself pleasantly thrilled at the quality of the output. They printed wonderfully, and not only that, I was shown how to do proofing easily and economically, in such a way that you can even work around an uncalibrated monitor by simply making minor adjustments based on print test strips instead of histograms and bullshit. If you happen to be near bright sunlight under which to examine the print, this is a big plus. There isn't a light that gives information about real color more reliably and powerfully than sunlight.

I made a few prints with large areas of heavy black to see if the matte Harman paper I had in storage in my locker would be able to get good results.

Expecting loss of detail early helped me have realistic expectations, but what I really wanted to know was, "Can I get the details on Christ?" And they're there like it aint no thing, resplendent in rich, beautiful, muted tones. [Editor's note: We are aware that rich and muted are not complimentary terms; unpaid assistance appreciated.]

Good week. Although I could have done with a day apart for those two mid-terms. Yeash. I'm always a burnout at the end of the week.

Don't ask me why this image looks like it's from a negative that was carefully stored at the bottom of a bus driver's pocket. I don't know. I could get the dust, and I would if I wanted to print this, which I think is inadvisable, but that hair/scratch doesn't look like it's going anywhere. If it bothers you, does it help if I claim that it snowed early in NY this year? Also, you can tell at night I get much more stalker-ish about photographing people. And most people accept this! They don't know if you're wasted, or a cop, or what. If you're not popping your flash in people's faces (which I still try to be respectful about), they seem to accept that being out at night on the street means they will be photographed.

Admittedly, less so in the Bronx and Uptown than in downtown Manhattan.

But enough that it feels normal. Also, another big epiphany was in my demolishing my aversion to landmarks. What a fool I was! A famous location is a perfect photographic pass. If you're near one, you're fair game.

Before work on Sunday last week, I stood in front of Tom's Diner on the corner of 112th and Broadway, holding a cup of coffee and photographing with abandon. Tom's, but mostly the people outside Tom's, and people photographing Tom's, or being photographed standing in front of Tom's.

Everyone shoots in, around, and especially in front of Tom's. Tom's is that stupid diner that was the exterior location of the diner in every episode of Seinfeld. After deriding them for years as rube tourists, I now find myself walking with them, sharing their moments, elating.

We're here together, stranger. Let's share this moment forever, and it will be weird.

Let us pray.

Since birds are like tiny dinosaurs, I'm also brave.

I'd say interesting critique tonight.

Perhaps we frightened one another. It feels like that; we saw that we (my collective class) could rip one another apart, like feral gladiators, and ultimately, I think we didn't like it. The advantage is that it seems like maybe we can start talking about the work (perhaps even critically, carefully).

Although... I don't know. Someone wanted to criticize me tonight... I'm realizing I'll have to talk to him individually, because (of course) part of me is curious about what it was about this one picture that bothered him so much.

The pigeon.

Which... well, unfortunately, it's complicated.

Now there are, perhaps, many reasons to dislike the photograph.

He said that it offended him, or... well, I don't remember his exact words, but he was trying to express profound displeasure about this sole image. It was all rather quick. First, he seemed angry that I would dare show such a picture. I got the impression he took it as thoughtless; a postcard. Then the class seemed to collectively leap to protect me, deriding this closed-mindedness. What subject taboo? A pigeon? Pshaw.

My defense was almost certainly dismissive. In terms of offensive imagery, something I take an interest in, I just don't see it. It's perhaps unsettlingly banal, but I had two images on the wall that were ridiculously dark (both literally and figuratively), and two more that were light and happy and silly. The bird was, on the wall, acting only as a bridge, or an island. Putting aside that, to me, a photograph of an animal is utterly populist. But my dismissal went further than this, though. To me, an image like this is an affirmation of everything that I loved about photography before I started to take it more seriously, as well as a commitment to fundamentals. I don't want to stop making what I sometimes call simply "NY" shots; unpremeditated, ugly, dirty. I don't want to apologize for something fleeting and un-special. I don't want to commit myself to some closed-down perception of the "perfect." Do you need this shot to be lit with HMI's and captured on a $30K Hasselblad? Because 1. that will never happen, and 2. it wouldn't help anything.

I claimed immediately after being given permission to speak that the images were not what would be called a sequence. Actually, that came through in a number of ways; but I tried (and perhaps succeeded) to convey their separation in their arrangement on the wall.

So yes, separate. But I had just finished saying that the picture was a "scene illustration" for a story that went along with it, which I told very concisely, careful to note that the date and time of the photo did not match the date and time of the story.

So I told this quick, uninteresting story about jumping on the subway tracks, which in telling didn't nearly do justice to the experience. The adrenaline, the amazing process of both weighing your life in relation to a book, while trying to calculate what you know of "typical" train patterns, all in under 90 seconds, while briefly taking stock of what you think of as your "reflexes."

I took my backpack off, unhooked my umbrella from my wrist, and jumped down, got the book, and scrambled up over the dirty platform, which was about neck-high, with some but not much difficulty.

It was exhilarating.

But... as a visual aid for this experience, which I viewed as essentially filling the "intimate" requirement of the critique guideline, it seemed perfectly adequate, and not altogether unenjoyable to look at. To me anyway. But I guess my chandelier-swinging tale of derring-do would seem intimate from my perspective. Perhaps it was only that, afterward, there was no one there to laugh with. One man who met my eye gave me a barely perceptible nod, to which I said, "Sphew," and chuckled politely. Not that I wanted a standing ovation or anything, but... you know. White boy did alright.

It is, in fact, like a photo postcard. It's sentimental, sort of, but also rather thoughtless and ungainly. It was spontaneous, and strange, and uncertain.

Have you photographed a bird? They're very tense. I was very still to get this shot. I can't remember if I'm zoomed in all the way; but judging from the vignetting, I'd guess probably.

I now keep my Yashica in its case in my right-hand jacket pocket. I keep the lid of the case open; I can pull on the cord and have it in my hand, on, with the flash off, in under ten seconds. It's not silent, but in public, it's certainly proven quiet enough.

It's become my "train" camera. I don't even look through the viewfinder anymore. It's my low-pressure, high risk camera. I steady it on the lip of the jacket pocket, or if I'm feeling hopeful in low-light on any available relatively flat surface.

It works great, and feels very low-key; something my politeness sort of spoils in my street work. My timidity forces me to ask permission of a cognizant subject.

But from my pocket (literally a hip-shot), I feel more bold. I'm not taking your picture, sir; it's this damned hip-camera.

I won't deny it's sneaky, and cowardly, and probably very suspicious and weird. And I have yet to review the results of this method. Which will be undergoing spontaneous rearrangement, as this morning I switched out a spent T-Max 3200 for a much more colorful NPS 160.

I can't be shooting nothing but color, though. Maybe now is the perfect time to shoot my 120 Tri-X 400 in the Seagull. Or perhaps I should let it go, and return it to its owner, my friend Arturo. I dunno. He might be mad at me.

Anyway, sorry to peter out there. I know everyone only reads to find out which brand and ISO of outdated film I'm currently shooting.

Hope some of that may have been interesting. Thanks for reading.

(And since this is basically nothing but a shooting diary anyway; one little thing that I've enjoyed doing for the first time: shooting in the rain. As with my first successful "night" photograph, the first thing that dawns on you is, "so much wasted time." I had been holding myself back, telling myself that I needed another point and shoot that would be my "beat-up" camera, not realizing that rain is not acid, and that cameras are moderately tough, and umbrellas can be shoved down the front of your coat and balanced on your head, freeing your hands and protecting everything. Obvious; but what a joy. Actually, this is making me realize that my anti-umbrella policy had some drawbacks. Which was only rescinded because I lost all my baseball hats, somehow.)

Something finished. [What what?]

Alright. I know that this demands some form of commentary. After all, if I'm attempting to challenge myself and talk about work; why not my own?

I'm working on it. But... damn it. I finished something massive, and relatively satisfactorily. There are definitely problems with it, which maybe I'll get to, although tonight I was thinking that extended artist's critique (rather than statement) may possibly sabotage a work. I think, fuck it.

I've got more work in me, and this is early. Why not sabotage away?

So... I'm working on that.

But if you want to slam it before I get to it, be my guest!

Things that have already been pointed out; potential racism of only portraying Chinese wholesalers, due to the racial diversity of the field.

Response: dude. I know. All I know are the semi-arbitrary limitations that I imposed on myself starting out. I draw a pretty nuanced line about executing photographs dealing with race, while attempting to be careful about racism, which, in photography, can exist in both portrayal of stereotypical behavior, or even in technique, surprisingly.

But I find that, in photographing race, (which wasn't how I viewed these, but more as a question of nationality, or, perhaps since I'm a white [urban?] suburbanite, internationality) one rarely gets stereotype. If you're an honest person, and can perform an edit; what you get is reality.

Besides, there's not even a person in these. Don't you need people? Maybe Confucius is racist, these days. (That is who that is, right?) Anyway.

(Also, amazingly, my dictionary of all things, pointed out that Confucius' name is a Latinization of a word meaning "Kong the master." Kongfuze ([K'ung Fu-tzu]. That's way cooler! Stupid Latin.)

Also, the wide, establishing shot, contains non-Chinese wholesalers, and is therefore something of a lie; as well as, for including cabs, a somewhat poorly composed shot.

Response: dude. Check the rooftop. See the scanner artifacts? That shit was straight.

Tell me that's a bad composition. [insert eyes-crossed emoticon.]

Also, color and B/W mix oddly; atmosphere of surveillance (which the audio would intensify, certainly). Also, my excellent professors are blowing my mind with their fancy educations; and are exposing me to the inherent unreliability of photography as truth (of course), although I maintain that such a thing exists, and is valuable to sports photography, and nature work. (Although the conclusion I came to was that the responsibility for photographic truth lies with magazine and web editors, whose responsibility it is to value and vet the work they pass forward.)

I don't care about modification, yet.

Let me take a good picture first.

Oh, and a last thing to point out as already covered is that I still suck in Photoshop, and can make my expired-film, underexposed shots (the first two colored pieces of signage) look more like, you know, an appropriately made photo. (I would like to hasten to add that only those two are "underexposed," [p'shaw, as if such a thing existed], and that it's a real testament to the power of a 120 negative that the colors are still, to me, absolutely gorgeous.) When I mentioned Roe Ethridge (perhaps lamely attempting to protect my "decision" by citing a known and established shooter), I was told, politely, that work like that is "sentimental."

Which was super on-point! This was meant to function as "documentary."

In that; I failed.

Ha. Maybe it's all covered.

[Shooting notes, multimedia instructions (some user assembly required!), and audio, if I listen to it and it's interesting, to follow. I have a show tomorrow night that needs material = perfect opportunity.]

Something in progress.

1st AD, Director.

Listening to show archives, I found myself remembering that I had loved the lyrics to that weird Ukranian song. The one I claimed was Michael Jackson's Beat It?

It was called Vorony; or Crows.

When so-called friends tell you what to do
listen, just do what you really want!

My friends said, "don't look at her,
she is too young and doesn't understand"

When amongst crows, crow like them
When amongst crows, crow like them

On their advice I left her
And tears flowed down her face

When amongst crows, crow like them
When amongst crows, crow like them


I was genuinely moved by these lyrics back then, and find myself still moved by them now. Is it weird to say something "moved" you on the Internet? Whatever.

The picture is from a batch that I'm struggling to work on for a friend that are absurdly overdue. It's not retouched at all. I guess I'd describe it as "personal," whatever that signifies. (Apparently it means I don't have to Photo Shop it. Huzzah.)

The big show.

Empire State Building lit to mark PRC's 60th anniversary. NYC, Sep 30th, 2009.


Beijing, China, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009.


Beijing, China, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009.


PLA air force pilots. Beijing, China.


Chinese President Hu Jintao. People's Republic of China.

Meanwhile:


Sweden’s Sofia Mattsson covered her eyes after defeating North Korea’s Kum Ok Han to win the gold medal in women’s freestyle at the World Wrestling Championships in Herning, Denmark, Wednesday.


Jakarta, Indonesia.


United Nations General Assembly President Ali Abdussalam Treki, top center, listened as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi addressed the assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York Wednesday after President Barack Obama. Mr. Gadhafi praised the president’s first speech to the assembly, but railed against the “inequality” of U.N. member states.


A supporter of ousted President Manuel Zelaya sat on a rock during a protest in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Tuesday. Baton-wielding soldiers used tear gas and water cannons to chase away thousands who demonstrated outside the Brazilian Embassy, where Mr. Zelaya took refuge after sneaking back into the country Monday.


Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The rehearsal:


The National Grand Theatre. Beijing September 17, 2009.


A member of China's first class of women fighter pilots prepares to board her aircraft during a ceremony with new flight gear designed for women, at a People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force base in Beijing on August 30, 2009. The pilots will make their debut during the upcoming National Day Parade. China could launch its first woman into space as early as 2012, the candidate being chosen from this group.

[Yes! Cute Chinese astronauts! Or taikonauts. Or "yǔhángyuán" (宇航员, "sailing personnel in universe") or "hángtiānyuán" (航天员, "sailing personnel in sky.") The world is beautiful, sometimes.]


A police anti-explosive container is placed on the platform at a metro station in Beijing on August 19, 2009. Beijing police will step up their anti-terror efforts ahead of the 60th anniversary on October 1 of the founding of communist China, with more street patrols and checkpoints, state media said.


World Expo Center, Dalian, China. September 11, 2009.

So much to look forward to: film at the lab and a date with a light table, a loupe, a small notepad and mechanical pencil, and a Nikon negative scanner. And an idea for the shoot after this one.

I'm thinking self-portraiture, which I've written about worryingly before. I want to combine two areas of interest, in fact; the other of which I've also already written about in the intro Kawanishi post.

Midtown.

You could be forgiven for thinking, "Why would you combine two subjects that you've previously expressed only disdain for?"

But isn't that what photography does? We steal things.

I hate Midtown for the opulence, and the tackiness.

What better way to mentally attack such a place than to impose yourself upon it?

Plus, it's a perfect area to shoot, because of the population density. And tourist density. In places like that, everyone looks and no one notices.

I'm also somewhat fascinated in photographing in areas that are under a constant barrage of surveillance. Both in vernacular, memento images, and CCTV monitoring.

Today, following my new policy to enter unlocked doors, I found myself observing a collection of security personnel, American flags, an X-ray machine (and me with a film camera in my hand!), and a 50' indecipherable logo. In a gigantic, dim space, with absolutely no casual foot traffic. Security and I nodded at one another, I looked around, took a meter reading, didn't shoot anything (that damn X-ray machine!), and left. It was really cool.

It's a good day to be alive.


Photojournalism showcase:
Falling terribly behind on these. Although in fact it's simply impossible to keep up on them. I don't know how to add them into my daily routine.

I'll admit it. I'm always thinking about Blade Runner. It's basically an admission that I am fundamentally a nerd. But why I mention it is that often, the commonly held cliche says 2012 fire-breathing pyramids and mile-high Coca-Cola ads in LA equals Tokyo on steroids.

Bullshit.

The future? China's idea of itself.

That is a true display of might, man. This is a superpower; and things could change in a very fundamental way for a long time.

(Also, interestingly, is that if you've ever seen a banner with a hand-painted scrawl demanding "Free Tibet," and thought, "Yeah, they should free Tibet. Huh. That's still not 'taken care of yet?'" This is a purely visual representation of why things are the way they are.)

Patriotism seems to thrive on symmetry. Or manifest itself as such. Why is that?

Idling.

[All images taken and, of course, owned by Anton Kusters.]

For some reason these Kusters gave me a lot of anguish. It would probably be better to just go into talking about them in whatever way I'm able, but I've got to work through some of the issues that these raised for me.

I found these through Burn. I've linked there before. I'm almost a little frightened to look at Burn. No matter how much time you give to it, it never seems enough. The caliber of the work presented there is almost too much. It crosses, sometimes, if you're in a weak mood (such as following the receiving of a series of mediocre contact sheets) from inspiring to crushing. If you really look, it makes you nervous. Not have I matched this (I haven't), but can I?

I suppose anyone striving toward something has these moments. I think, sometimes, secretly, that when someone says they don't view other's work in their field because they don't want to be influenced, really, they're probably afraid of being intimidated.

I don't know. Sometimes it's like a test. You flinch, disgusted with the depth of your admiration and jealousy.

And where you go from there determines something fundamental. Will you learn something? Take something away, something you can use? A rigor in your edit? A boldness in your shooting? Instead of looking at your meter reading and lamenting, again, damn, it's so dark in here and me without my tripod and cable release, or do you wedge yourself against a filthy wall, unmindful of the filth and city-grime on your clothes, unmindful of noise and other's eyes, willfully shutting out their thoughts, your imaginings of their hateful, "look at this fucking kid; thinks he's Larry Clark," and think, only, narrowly, "A quarter second. I can do that. Breath. Easy. Hold. Do I like that line against my frame?"

And it's done. Not to be considered again until, days later, you're hunched over a loupe, or peering uncertainly at a poorly, crudely calibrated screen.

Or maybe not. Maybe you don't learn a damn thing, or think a damn thing. Maybe I'm totally wrong. Maybe when I shoot I should be thinking about Beethoven, or tits in slow-motion so slow that it barely moves, or repeating kōans, or wondering about my death and whether anything I do, say, or make will outlast my blip on the cosmic calendar.

Really, accurately, probably I and others don't think a damn thing. You think before you get there, and after, in editing. In the moment, today at least, my thoughts were meter, curb, light, bicycle messenger, cock shutter, frame, frame, release, traffic, winding, and then walking, looking.

It feels really good.

But the Kusters.

My two problems:

One is that it makes me feel unworthy. Is my blog worthy enough to show this work? But this gets all tied up in bland, internet related copyright bullshit.

The work is online, I found it, I loved it and was deeply moved by it.

My job here, as I see it, is to bring attention to that moment of transcendent admiration. Not to worry about my permission to bring attention to it. If you didn't want me to be moved, then you shouldn't have shown me. Or crippled the moment with the subtle concessions to commodity that go along with the approach of the sublime and the internet. Size, resolution, and watermarking.

Fair?

The second problem is the enormity of the task of briefly summarizing the Yakuza.

Of which I will defer, out of convenience, for now.

Recommended viewings could include the films of Kitano, Suzuki, Fukasaku (specifically the five-part Yakuza Papers) and Miike. Also the documentary Young Yakuza by French documentarian Jean-Pierre Limosin.

Recommended reading might include:
Karl Taro Greenfeld's Speed Tribes.
Anything by Yasunari Kawabata 川端 康成 Kawabata Yasunari, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa 芥川 龍之介 Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, or Mishima.
And The Japanese: A Cultural Portrait by Robert S. Ozaki, still the best book on Japan I've yet read.

And with that ridiculous homework list and the very earnest recommendation that you Google this photographer and read the accompanying text on his website, which talks about his process and procedure of facilitating access to his subject (in projects under Odo), I leave you to contemplate the work.

Thanks for reading.

Jerk? Nerd? Oh, why decide?

Twice recently I've managed to piss off classmates with not-very considered comments. Each time I've found myself somewhat surprised. For the most part, as I've gotten older I've found my sense of humor, and that odd adolescent drive to say something "controversial" and shocking, has mellowed and cooled. I don't really have any particular investment in upsetting anyone anymore, for the most part.

Which I suppose is why I find myself a little off-balance when it happens anyway.

In critique today I pissed off a classmate good and plenty. How did this happen?

First, perhaps, it might be necessary to give some degree of context, and background. In brief: this classmate and I have been in the same department from the same starting point. We've shared many classes, instructors, and prior critiques. We rarely have conflict. In fact, you could tentatively say that we're friendly, though probably not what, strictly speaking, you'd call friends. In a lot of ways that count, we're essentially almost strangers.

(It also must be made somewhat clear that when I say "critique," I'm using the term extremely loosely. Nearly no one in my class is interested in learning to discuss photographs intelligently. It took me two years to realize that it wasn't going to just happen automatically, and that I better read a fucking book or ten on the matter, because, to me, it's important as hell. About as important as I can envision.)

Her work. Prior to this semester it was very restrained, formal, and nuanced landscapes, and a smattering of sensitive portraiture. This semester she took pictures of her television, showing Midnight Cowboy, and began exploring a sequence of self-portraits. A drastic and violent shift inward, which I wouldn't say alarmed me, but certainly caught me off guard. This should be exciting, no? A new direction. An inward gaze frightens me, somewhat. I think it may be one of the most challenging directions a photographer can take their work. Which, to me, means that it has a far greater chance of failing miserably than succeeding splendidly. The impulses to clean, protect, and beautify are almost irresistible. To me, that's pure poison. A glowing, siren-shrieking bio-hazard symbol.

She's expressed an interest in using a high ISO. This is something that I've been a little surprised to see as an emerging collective preference of a lot of my class's work. My thoughts on this are far from formed.

I would say that, often, I'm impressed with what she does. I think she has great potential, and feel confident that if she continues producing photographic output that she will amass a fine body of work.

Fair? I'm not blowing smoke. I would say that she had a bead on her methods and style much earlier than I did; she's been moving toward it almost since our first semester together, whereas it's taken me until just this semester to begin to get a handle on what I want to be shooting, and how.

That being said....

There are two issues in evaluating the images we were looking at today.

The first is that it was an assignment involving compositing. I should say upfront that I am somewhat biased toward this technique. As with anything, it can be utilized very well, with a level of mediocrity, or poorly. Mostly what I've seen have been the latter two. I get the tremendous application potential, and the strength and flexibility that it grants toward commercial imagery. But as with any specific photographic technique, I think it requires a great deal of practice and nuance, training, foresight, and talent in execution. It seems, to me, to be a much more painterly approach toward image making.

Simply, it's not really my thing.

It's one of the more concrete, specific iterations of the hackneyed "film vs. digital" debate. A debate that, at least in my school, everyone seems quite content to ignore.

Image building, versus image making, perhaps. Fantasy or straight photography.

Still, we execute assignments because, in this school, that is part of what we do.

The second issue has to do, again, with personal bias.

The image that sparked our brouhaha was an overlay, double exposure type thing combining a portrait I'd seen before and a film still, taken from a photograph from a television, from Midnight Cowboy.

Things I've seen before. But not, to me, an evolution or development of these pieces I'm familiar with. Everything that had irked or concerned me about the film capture appropriation approach was still present. As well as a rising sense of boredom.

So we started talking.

Talking about a piece is different than writing about a piece. In writing, I have the opportunity to return to what I've written and ruthlessly edit, refine, and make clear what I'm trying to say.

In conversation, I have a hand full of darts. About four. And I throw.

"A feminist critique of this work would criticize the feeling of domesticity emanating from that television screen."

Oy.

What a fucking idiot I am. Men a thousand times smarter than myself have probably made personal, internal pacts to avoid discussing anything related to "feminism."

The response: immediate anger.

Problem: her reaction was to tell me that, essentially, my reading was wrong because it absolutely did not match her intentions as the executor.

My response was that we were now discussing a question of authorial control (what I had meant was authorial intentionality), and that my stance was that she had no claim to a right to veto my statements. (In what I think of as a "straight" photo, an appeal to return to the actual subject of the picture wouldn't have been out of hand; but at this level of abstraction, I claim that I can think what I want with a greater degree of validity.)

All this came from my wanting to examine questions of an inward gaze, and the inherent domesticity of a television screen. Eventually I managed to come around to what I'd wanted to in the first place; that isolation and insulation are more generic human conditions than ones specific to a gender, but the whole thing was well and truly fucked by this point.

It ended in conversational armistice. Everyone was only interested in attacking me for a statement that, to me, I had already nullified.

"Be angry," I said, again bored, and now frustrated.

The rabble made comments they took as clever; it's not that deep! Don't be a nerd! A later photograph was prefaced by its taker with, "There isn't, like, a concept," to which someone replied, "Don't worry. Someone will make something up." (The work was far too boring to bother thinking much of anything. And also, in an extremely ironic state of affairs, so was my own composite tacked to the wall that we failed to have the time to get to. Although I still choose to congratulate myself on a display of competent masking, if not anything particularly clever.)

You know what? Fuck right off. Your eye-shadow isn't externalizing your anguish, millenial.

What I would have liked to have happened (and I suppose, as a lesson that can be learned, what I'll attempt to do if anyone manages to say anything about one of my photographs that makes me angry) is for someone of a cool temperament to say, "Let's unpack that statement."

Because when I rode the train home tonight, tired, having shot something that I was trying to figure out, and replaying the critique in my head to figure out how exactly I'd detonated that bomb, I unpacked it myself.

I said the opposite of what I'd meant to say.

What I had meant was, "A misogynistic reading of this work would say that the feeling of domesticity emanating from that television is a byproduct of your being a female photographer."

Which probably would have pissed her off even more; but at least it might have been true.

Now pardon me while I go memorize lines from In the Company of Men & Oleanna.