Last night, I pulled a book of my shelf I haven’t looked at for quite a while.
I Want to Live Innocent by Torbjorn Rodland.
The book is curious. I think what I appreciate the most is the degree of self-skepticism. The whole idea of photography is embraced – with strong formal and visual sensibilities – but also questioned as to how or whether it can create meaning. The pictures are smug and luscious, which I find both infuriating and interesting.
And given something about I Want to Live Innocent, this seems like just the right place to allow this strip of pictures to continue to live. I hope I forget, and have the same delight finding these pictures with Andrew again.
HARPAZO (v.): 1) to seize, carry off my force. 2) to seize on, claim for onself eagerly. 3) to snatch out or away.
Nadja by Andre Breton was first published in France in 1928. The novel is often considered a defining piece of Surrealism.
The novel describes the author’s restless and obsessive relationship with Nadja, his young lover, as well as his relationship with life in Paris.
The last time I read Nadja I was probably 18 or 19, but loved the book for the anxiety and malaise depicted. More than a woman, Nadja is a metaphor, maybe a vision, and represents the life we desire rather than the life we live. Nadja is like the white whale, always just out of reach.
Published between the World Wars, Nadja represents the longing and disaffection that characterize the art of the times. The story is told in a first person narrative, interwoven with photographs of Paris.
The other day, straight from Little Brown Mushroom, I received a copy of House of Coates, the collaborative book made by Alec Soth and Brad Zellar.
Immediately, I am struck by the similarities I see between Nadja and House of Coates.
House of Coates tells the story of Lester B. Morrison. The story is told with a mix of prose written by Brad Zellar, and photographs by Alec Soth (though attributed to Lester). The photographs, presumedly, are all take around Soth’s hometown of Minneapolis, MN. Like the character of Nadja, Lester is more a metaphor than a specific person. If Nadja represents the unfulfilled longing and desire of war rattled Europe, Lester is the broken spirit of middle America.
A person can’t properly hide in this world unless they believe there’s someone out there looking for them. There”s a good deal of ego invested in the act of hiding. Or maybe these fugitives think there’s someone out there in the world who wants something from them that they’re not prepared to give. The sad truth, of course, is that the world seldom wants much of anything from such people, and that is a truth that could do nothing but further hurt the feelings of men who had had their feelings hurt so many times and in so many ways that they could no longer feel anything but hurt.
Lester can’t really be forgotten, because he was never really noticed. He is an exile in his own land (he never strays too far from where he was born). He spends his time in a sort of no man’s land, that part of any city that grew with its development but was quickly forgotten, with nameless hotels and prostitutes, and is full of broken things and broken people.
Harpazo – inscribed on the spine – is an important idea and turning point in the story. It’s a religious term, typically used to describe religious rapture or deliverance.
Towards the end of the story, Lester meets Majel, and begins to discover love and trust again. She encourages to embrace religious salvation, and in the end, we are left to contemplate whether Lester discovers faith, or whether he commits the ultimately act of nihilism (though this also might be act of faith).
I stumbled upon 8 geese – a mother, a father, and six downy babies – looking for food along the banks of Six Mile Creek in Ithaca.
The last week has been filled with some acute ups and downs. There was one moment, here at Six Mile Creek that binds it all together, or at least has allowed me to cope with it all.
Monday was grey and damp, but still warm. Wanting to escape from my life for an afternoon, I packed my bag with a book, a rain coat, and a bottle of water, and hiked as deep into Six Mile Creek as possible.
Six Mile Creek is both very accessible, and also rather wild. The trails by the entrance are just outside of downtown Ithaca, and frequented by families and dog-walkers. The trails are wide and well groomed. Just over a mile in, the trails become more narrow and more overgrown.
And this where I went, eventually about 4 or 5 miles in. I was sure to leave my phone and music behind, and once out beyond the primary trails, I was totally alone. The ground was soggy down by the water. The air was full with sounds from the birds and the rushing water. I loved the feel of the wind on my body. It was only couple hours, alone by a waterfall deep in the park, but I felt renewed, more clear in body and mind than I had in months.
The other day, I gave a talk about my photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
In showing my work to some of the students and faculty at RIT, I decided to show some work from my most recent series, a work in progress I call By Night (or A Wolf Among Wolves).
So I finally scanned some of the real photographs. The prints are all silver gelatin, toned with selenium and tea. I like this toning combination; in the end the photographs look something like albumen prints.
I like to think the subject of my pictures is about something more than time, but rather addresses timeless problems and curiosities – of beauty, anxiety, doubt, and darkness – and thus I like to think the techniques I use reflect this interest.
In presenting my work at RIT, I talked about another recent interest or discovery I’ve had with these pictures.
A few weeks ago, I was looking through some work prints, and began to wonder of if these pictures were better understand if I reconceived my original interpretations of or methodology for resolving them.
I thought a bit about Listening to the River by Robert Adams and a Shimmer of Possibility by Paul Graham.
In both these bodies of work, the photographers abandon the typical photographic approach of finding a picture to surmise the discoveries or meaning of a particular moment.
The pictures are sequenced so that we can see the photographers looking for or discovering something meaningful, and the moment(s) of seeking become more important, perhaps the real meaning.
I began pursuing these photographs made on winter nights about 15 months ago. In the beginning, I sought that picture, the one to encapsulate each particular night.
About a month ago, I had these three pictures hanging side by side in my studio (just work prints still, mind you).
In seeing them side by side, I saw something similar to what I love about the pictures made by Graham and Adams, a short narrative about or a map detailing the discovery of a place and something of its meaning.
Together, these pictures showed me a movement from something ruined, to the aspiration of something sublime, to the sublime itself (of course out of reach – and as an aside, this negative of the moon is quite nice, but I can’t get a good scan of it). All these pictures were made on one night in one location, at a grocery closed down for lack of business.
And so, I started looking at all my work prints with this in mind.
These next three were all made on one night, over a span of about 20 minutes. In that time, the tripod moved no more than 10 feet, and a powerful snow storm set in.
Now I am trying to decide if I need to go back and reconsider the pictures finished in the last year, or if now I am just pursuing the next chapter of the story. Either way, I am excited by this door I’ve opened with the pictures.
My first serious girlfriend sold pot and made fake id’s to help pay her way through college. I can’t tell a lie, this was part of the attraction. I fancied myself an outlaw, but for me it was all an intellectual exercise – be it through Nietzche, dada, or Alistair Crowley – I talked the talk, but she walked the walk.
Perhaps the id’s were her most ambitious use of the medium, but she also dabbled in photography. So when I first got a camera, the two of us would go photographing together. We’d explore the industrial districts of Denver and Colorado Springs, photographing the graffiti and ruins we found.
I really fancied the graffiti.
Before I really discovered photography, I explored several other mediums in attempt to find a voice as an artist – chiefly in music and creative writing. Regardless of the medium, many of my earliest creative endeavors began in these industrial districts. With my music, I would walk through junkyards and down train tracks, looking for old pieces of metal or oil drums that I would then bring back to my studio and use as percussion instruments. With my writing, I would interview the people I met in these districts, mostly homeless and disaffected.
Strangely, I felt satisfaction that these people I met trusted me with their stories, and treated me as an equal rather than as a rich college kid (was it Diane Arbus who said that the freaks are the aristocrats of the world, those that have really seen and survived their test in life). And I never felt threatened. I wanted to be with them, and learn from all they survived.
The stories they told would always be outlandish tales, lavish with sex and drugs. It was hard to know what was true, their whole lives seemed clouded by drugs and desperation.
Reading Jim Goldberg’s Raised by Wolves has brought some of these memories forward again – interviews, music, graffiti. There is no comparing the depth of my investigation with Goldberg’s, though perhaps here lies some of affinity for his work.
It came up in a recent conversation I had with photographer Gregory Halpern.
Raised by Wolves, by Jim Goldberg.
Of course I knew the book – taken it out of libraries several times over the years – but I’d never really known the book. In the past, I’d always flipped through the pictures, and read enough of the text to get a general understanding.
I now think of it as Goldberg’s best work; it’s too bad I’m such a late-comer. Raised by Wolves is a narrative documentary about homeless teenage runaways in Hollywood and San Francisco.
The narrative techniques and strategies are wonderful. The story is told in fragments that don’t relate directly, but all elude back to each other. Goldberg collects and compiles interviews, letters, and photographs to document and portray the lives of these youths. The narrative is broken and inconsistent, just like the lives it portrays.
Strangely, Goldberg’s narrative reminds me of Fazal Sheikh – in the journals and writings he provides in his books about Somalia and Afghanistan – Bill Burke – his collage narratives set in Southeast Asia – and Larry Clark – the hard-nose narratives of Tulsa and Teenage Lust.
Goldberg’s narrative is blunt and difficult to take. The tragedy of these lives is presented (seemingly) clear and factual.
I have some hesitancy in accepting all of Goldberg’s intentions, or perhaps what his presence is in creating and compiling the narrative. He is a sort of anthropologist, participant, and friend. He is there to record the lives without judgement or intervention, and also to give few bucks and a helping hand.
Though in the end, Goldberg’s clarity and story-telling win. The narrative is powerful and emotive. He knows when and how to let the subjects speak for themselves. The pictures are simple, and project a sort of honesty. These lives are full of drugs and destruction, and their anger and despair is given without shame.
