Blog About Photography

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It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t thrilled to meet so many of the people I admire in New York over the weekend. I would recount the whole thing blow by blow but my good friend Shane Lavalette has already beaten me to the punch. He has been far more thorough is his recounting of Friday night than I ever could be. I will say though that among the folks I got a chance to hang out with were Jen Bekman, Eric William Carrol,  Joerg Colberg, Amy Elkins, Shane Lavalette, Christian Patterson, Richard Renaldi (guy’s got serious muscles, by the way), Amy Stein, Alec Soth, Brian Ulrich, Zoe Strauss and Shen Wei. All the photographers and bloggers from all over the country in New York for the same bunch of events made this one of the most exciting weekends I’ve had in a long time.

It’s hard to have any regrets about a weekend like this one, but I do wish I had been able to talk more with Christian Patterson, Richard Renaldi and Joerg Colberg. I also didn’t even get a chance to say hello to Edward Winkleman, Lesley Martin, Paddy Johnson and Martin Parr. Even so though, I can’t say that I have any real complaints. I was amazed that everyone I met was so incredibly nice - it was practically like being with family. I also want to say that Amy Stein is just about the sweetest person on earth.

I also got to spend a good chunk of my weekend apartment hunting in various Brooklyn neighborhoods. It’s still just a little too early to really get serious since I’m not moving until mid-August, but it was really helpful to get a feel for how much you get for your money in the various places. And since I have no money (checking account: $133.60, savings account: $43.60) it looks like Bushwick is my best bet. Luckily, it seems like it’s a terrific neighborhood. It’s a quick shot to Williamsburg and into Manhattan an I particularly like the Puerto Rican flags that fly over many of the blocks I wandered down - it will be like living inside a Winogrand photograph. My friend Emily and her boyfriend Ian were kind enough to let me crash with them for a night at their place in Bushwick and I had a great time.

Now I’m back in D.C., and it’s time to run to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner. Then, I’m going to hit the books. Tomorrow is my last day of Biology.

This weekend turned out to be well worth the trip to New York.  A New American Portrait at Jen Bekman is an absolute must-see - a terrific set of images from some of the most influential folks in contemporary photography. Before seeing the show, I was most interested in seeing Alec Soth and Brian Ulrich’s images - I admire both of those photographers a great deal, obviously, and both are pretty much household names. Their work, of course, was terrific to see. I’ve never viewed anything by either of those guys in person before and that was great. I have to say though that I think Christine Collins and Amy Elkins kind of stole the show. I wasn’t that familiar with the work of either of those gals before this weekend and they rock. I know that’s not the most high-minded discussion of their work but hey, it’s the truth. If I had a few thousand extra dollars to put towards buying art, I would buy one of Christine’s images from the show - I’ll certainly be jealous of the people who end up with any of those images on their walls. So, congrats Jen and Joer for putting up such an incredible show.

For the past three weeks or so I’ve been shooting with the Ricoh point and shoot I bought at a thrift store in New Jersey. I picked it up because I liked the look of it and it had a sticker on the side that said “Lori,” which is almost identical to some stickers I had when I was a little kid that said “Greg,” for me to stick on toys and stuff. Lori was great while she lasted. I’ve only developed a couple of the rolls but she cranked out some images that have become fast favorites of mine. There images have a quality to them that the same kind of snapshots I shoot with my Nikon F100 lack. The shitty optics and the complete lack of exposure control infuse the images with an enhanced sense of spontaneity. There are plenty more of these to come I would guess - I have about 25 rolls I shot thru Lori in a shoe box under my desk waiting for pay day. But this is not a happy story. This is a story loss, a story of heartbreak.

Like all of the deepest and most passionate loves, my wild affair with Lori has come to a cataclysmic end. On Saturday, a group of my friends and I went swimming in a river out in Virginia somewhere. It was an amazing time, the kind of time legends are made of, and Lori was on hand to capture it for me. I took her in the water with me quite a bit, taking extra care to keep her from getting too wet but I’m sure you can see where this is going. For hours we were in and out of the water and Lori was doing just fine, dry, happy, firing away. Then, literally when I was getting out to get ready to leave, I set Lori down into a crevice in a rock. I needed both hands to pull myself out and I wanted to put her somewhere sturdy. That crevice, of course, completely full of water, she got pretty much submerged. I took her batteries out. I opened her up with a screwdriver, methodically drying out her innards with my roommates hair dryer. But it was all no use. Lori is gone.

Photography is an expensive undertaking for everyone, but I think it’s particularly expensive for me just because of how I do things. I think I have to get used to the idea that I will be paying for camera repair frequently, endlessly. Lori cost me $25, and now I’m going to spend $75 fixing her for the second time because she had a light leak when I first brought her home. This is pattern that I’m sure will continue indefinitely into the future and no matter how much money I may make from whatever, I have to resign myself to a life of poverty because I have to fix or replace everything all the time.

Really thinking about this though, I suppose it’s alright. If I can feed myself AND buy film AND repair all the shit I break all the time, I suppose that’s some kind of quantifiable success. And what good is a camera if you can’t take it the water anyway?

Update: Nevermind. Lori works just fine.

I’m on a JPG Mag tear right now and I just submitted my prized interview with Joerg. They gave me this bit of code:

So, you know, check it out and vote and stuff.

© Greg Wasserstrom

I don’t know why, but I’ve never submitted anything to JPG Magazine before. A post on Liz Kuball’s blog reminded me that I should probably do this from time to time, so I just uploaded a photograph I took of Britt a couple weeks ago that I think fits the current fashion theme. Maybe pop by and vote for it?

I’ve been embarassed to post this to the blog for a couple of days but right now I have a couple of drinks in me and I’m going to do it just the same. My friend Carmen is getting into erotic photography and I put together a little page for her to look at where I sort of talk through erotic photography as far as I know it, which is not very much. So if any of you kind people want to add to the page, let me know.

© Christian Patterson

Another post about my favorite subject: me. I’m awfully sorry about this. Amy Stein wrote a great post a couple of months back about how the readership of her blog expanded so much when she stopped writing so much about herself and more about photography. I hope to soon follow her example, but apparently not today. An entry over at Conscientious just got me thinking about how I define myself. Joerg said:

A couple of days ago, Ed Winkleman posted about a scientist who produces beautiful images, but who refuses to consider herself an artist. As always at his blog, the discussion that followed is quite interesting. Needless to say, part of my interest stems from the fact that in my day job I am a scientist myself, and I keep running into people who just can’t comprehend how a scientist would know something about photography. So when people ask me what I “do”, I’m always a bit of a loss what to say, since I don’t want to define myself through any single activity.

I sort of feel the same way as Joerg does and I too often have trouble answering this question. Clearly, photography is a serious pursuit of mine; but I’m also finishing a degree in political science. As we finished out senior year, we were all asking each other what our plans were. Acquaintences were surprised to hear I’m planning on an artistic career instead of a political one, “wow, that’s a big a change,” etc. And since I’m not trying to get a job covering politics as a photojournalist for the Washington Post, I guess it would seem that my passions of mine are unrelated.

To me, of course, political and social, critical writing and photography are not at all unrelated and each are tools I can use to put forth a cohesive view of American culture. My work is not inherently political because often times I find art with too heavy-handed a message off-putting. We live in an era where we let viewers interpret what we make for themselves so I by no means want to advance any kind of agenda or anything like that. But I am looking to bring all the things I do together and put forth complementary projects of all kinds encouraging, and hopefully stimulating, critical thought.

I’m an aspiring pointer-outer-of-things.

© Greg Wasserstrom

© Francisco Scavullo

I just picked up a ticket to see Black White and Gray: A Portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff at Silverdocs on Saturday. I don’t know all that much about Wagstaff, but obviously I’ve had quite a bit of exposure to Mapplethorpe. Just from reading the description of this film, I learned that their roommate in the early 1970s was Patti Smith. This flick’s gonna be sweet, I’ll write about it after.