Blog About Photography

© Greg Wasserstrom

I tin­kered with the new look of my site a bit more as well as the pho­tographs included in The Dol­drums and I’m happy with the results. You can check that out at greg​wasser​strom​.com. Sub­tle changes, and I car­ried the pink through to the blog. Looks ok, I think though I want to redo this entire thing. At the moment I dont really have the tech­ni­cal exper­tise or the time — plus I should focus­ing on more posts!

Also, I’m going to start post­ing more of my writ­ing which hope­fully won’t bore you too much (I’ll illus­trate when­ever pos­si­ble). I’m real­iz­ing, con­trary to what I have said in the past, that my pas­sions for pho­tog­ra­phy, writ­ing and pol­i­tics are all com­ing from the same place. It’s all the same pur­suit — it’s all obser­va­tional, descrip­tive, revelatory.

And this just occurred to me. The pho­to­graph I’ve included in this post is a newish one, from The Dol­drums, and I’m quite happy with it. But a pho­to­graph as sat­is­fy­ing as this one isn’t with­out com­pli­ca­tion. When pho­tog­ra­phers take images like this one, are we not lit­er­ally tak­ing it? What I mean is, since I didn’t this scene up myself, since I came across it in some­one else’s apart­ment, was it not their cre­ative sen­si­bil­ity that makes this shot inter­est­ing? Cer­tainly, I com­posed the pho­to­graph, chose what to include and exclude, but doesn’t that make it a col­lab­o­ra­tion? Can I really take credit for it?

And finally, if i may say so: I’m very happy you’re here. Writ­ing this blog has been tremen­dously reward­ing for me in more ways that I can recount. The rea­son for this isn’t any­thing I’m doing at all — it’s you. Inter­act­ing with you is won­de­ful and I’m thrilled to get to know so many peo­ple I’ve com­mu­ni­cated with through this forum in the real world. This whole thing means a lot to me, so please don’t go away!

Her hair is up, tied up some­how, I can’t really describe it, but it’s like a lit­tle girl’s might be. It’s this kind of muddy, inde­ci­sive shade of brown. White wires come down from the ear­buds she’s got in her ears, her head bobs, her body sways back and forth, lightly, com­pletely asyn­chro­nously with the rhythem­less flute music drift­ing across the sub­way plat­form. Her coat is white even though it’s the first day of fall and she has a scarf tossed around her neck, its white and black and fuzzy, like TV sta­tic. She looks down at her feet, her toes pointed inward and maybe wrig­gling a bit in her black on black can­vass shoes.

Another time I fell in love on the sub­way, I was com­ing up out of the sta­tion in a part of town I only visit when I need to buy some­thing for the apart­ment. A girl was walk­ing ahead of me, there was a cer­tain some­thing to her stride, and again those black can­vass shoes. It was still warm then, or I should say, much warmer than it is now, and her skin shim­mered slightly. On the street we went dif­fer­ent direc­tions. I turned around to watch her round the cor­ner. How pleas­ant that she’d done the same.

Back on the plat­form, the girl in the white coat she steps for­ward, peer­ing down the track, check­ing for the train. It’s com­ing, and then it arrives. I loose sight of her. I write about her from memory.

© Greg Wasserstrom

I just updated the long-​​neglected port­fo­lio part of this site, added a new series called The Dol­drums, the set my Fjord and Must Warn Oth­ers selec­tions came from. I guess I’m sort of still work­ing on it but at least now it’s up where it can be seen.

I’m still work­ing on my sex book, The Hon­or­able Parts. I promised it mid-​​August which was incred­i­bly pre­sump­tu­ous of me because I don’t have nearly enough pic­tures for it yet. So give me a call next time you’re about to knock boots, and I’ll come hang out. Sound good?

© Greg Wasserstrom

me: hey!

Bryan: hey man

me: hows it going/

howd the show go?

Bryan: pretty well. just got back

fuck­ing awesome!!

me: yeah?

Bryan: yeah, you sold one

me: i did?

holy shit

Bryan: yeah, the swim­ming hole

me: fuck­ing a

how much?

Bryan: i think $75, it’ll buy an african child school supplies

me:

dude that’s rad

im so stoked

Bryan: yeah, the gal­llery was small but super nice and the instal­la­tion looke dreally good

me: fuck­ing a

Bryan: lots of peo­ple for the open­ing and al. old guys with berets and shit

me: haha

do you have any pics of it?

Bryan: nah

there are shows on last nights shoes .com

but they are only shoes

me: hahah

So this would be the first time I’ve ever sold a print to some­one who wasn’t a friend or rel­a­tive. I’m glad that mile­stone could occur as part of the MWO launch, and the money will go to char­ity. Also, I didn’t real­ize how pro­fane my speech is until read­ing back. Sorry, Mom.