Aug 4, 2020 | Blog
Here is another one of a kind print from the early 2000s. This is a self portrait taken with my old Mimaya TLR (twin lens reflex): the film slipped when advanced. I would get many frames that overlapped (a precursor to the pinhole images I do today). The camera normally shot a square but with the overlaps. the images became rectangles. This silver gelatin print I toned in sepia, then blue toner. It is the only toned print I made of this self-portrait and I will make no more because this print is made on Portriga Rapid, grade 3, fiber based, double weight, warm toned black and white enlarging paper which is not made anymore. This image was shot and printed shortly after 911; I am wearing a New York City firefighter’s t-shirt which was sent to us by a nephew who was a firefighter and worked at the Trade Towers after the attack. I felt like I was in a prison, looking out at the world after 911. This image is this week’s one-of-a-kind offer, printed on 11 x 14 inch paper and matted with 4-ply museum board 16 x 20 inches. Ready for the frame! Price, including the mat is $200.00 plus shipping and tax. Go to the shop on this website to see the image with the mat. Thanks for your interest.
Dec 13, 2015 | Blog
It’s been two years since the Pinhole Project began and well over 2000 people have made an amazing array of long exposure images. Very, very inspiring. I intend to do a blog post on some of the images soon. Bear with me while I update the archive and create a website just for the Archive in 2016. In the meantime, I have been shooting with several pinhole cameras/devices recording the image on film or digitally. The images here represent new work with a few of these cameras. Last summer I shot with the 4 x 5 pinhole, my old buddy, onto color negative film while on the Northern California coast. These images are different than the ones I made two years ago there with the same camera. They frighten me a bit: a cross between faded Kodachrome postcards of my youth and an off-beat surrealist future where the world is unpopulated and lonely. The image below, Salt Point South, is a ten minute exposure during the golden hour, crashing waves flattened out and all the world with a magenta cast . I love standing by the camera during the exposure, knowing I won’t forget the smell of wind and the glorious light. This image is of course not “reality.” It is 20 minutes of time compressed onto a sheet of film exposed though a tiny little hole punched in metal on to sheet film. I did not even get to see it for almost a month.
The image above, Usal Beach, was made on a close damp evening, another long exposure, around fifteen minutes. There were a lot of people around that beach, walking through, unrecorded. The place had a kind of creepy air to it, four miles down a bumpy dirt road, once a “doghole” where loggers lived and worked a hundred years ago, creating a company town which has totally disappeared. Now the place is run down, full of ghosts and garbage, discarded bullet casings and strange cries in the night.
This past year I have also been making images with several homemade camera obscura boxes that project an image through a pinhole into the back side of the box. A hole drilled beneath the pinhole holds the lens for DSLR. It is a wonderful way to record the pinhole image without film. Inspired by one of my heros, Abelard Morell and his camera obscura room photographs done around the world, I decided to try my own hand at homemade portable obscura boxes. I am interested in the way the images feel contained yet expansive at the same time. And I like that while I am making these images I can stand in front of the camera and create a self portrait of sorts. Here is diptych from my old haunt, the Argo Trainyard, just a few blocks from my house. This image was made from two images taken side by side, both long exposures on a windy afternoon and I was able to stand in for the first exposure. For the second, I had to shield the box from the wind.
Another image made with a similar box/contraption, taken outside my front door, with my neighbor standing and chatting during the five exposure.
Both of the above images were inspired in part by a project that I almost got to do but in the end did not–I was hoping to make an old grain silo into a camera obscura. These boxes started as models for that project and evolved into life forms of their own. I do have a self portrait from that silo experience; the pinhole in the silo projected the image of me onto the wall opposite as my DSLR teetered on an upturned bucket inside recording the projected image.
There are many more experiments. I give you a few of my favorites. Why do I like these images better than a tack sharp image made on a tripod with a DSLR or a film camera? What do these images have that those other images do not? I don’t know the answers yet, but I do know that I like to record the passage of time with long exposures — more than a minute and less than oh say 90 days. I like the fact that I have to keep the camera (DSLR) and the camera obscura box together both on separate tripods and move them around together as one big contraption. With the large format pinhole and film I like how the time exposures change reality. These cameras make photography difficult and rewarding — wonderfully so in a world where photography has become so very rote and predictable. Lensless photography is simple but not easy, modern yet historical, unpredictable and thrilling.
Note: The featured image was taken with a great big old cardboard obscura box, with the DSLR. An early experiment, the box had a light leak on the corner which created a lovely red line. And there was some junk inside the box that could have been taken out but wasn’t. Heres to the happy accident.
Oct 4, 2014 | Blog
Quite a few years ago Jess and I took a roll of film of each other, standing in the same place with the old twin lens reflex I was using at the time. I found this contact sheet recently and pinned it to the wall. The two rolls of film, overlaid as shot are full of surprises and laughs, scary in an oddly shocking way. All and more than we intended at the time. I wonder why I put the sheet deep in a box and did not look at it for years. It is a beautiful contact sheet printed on some old (even at the time) single weight glossy silver gelatin paper. I now see this contact sheet as the piece for this shoot, not individual frames. The overlaid negatives merged because we shot standing in the exact same place. It is odd because I remember the day, the weather but I do not remember the place. It was no doubt the yard, the scary out of doors where we lived in the woods with its glowing light, trees on all edges, an old cabin in a small clearing.
This post is an ode to these two rolls of film that merged and celebrate the happy accident, the unknowing intent, the down right luck involved in making art . Not all contact sheets are works of art in themselves. But all contact sheets teach us about how we see when we make photographs. Can looking at work in this linear fashion be done effectively with contact sheets made from digital images? I ask my digital students to make contact sheets from their top twenty images from an assignment. They love looking at the contact sheets but it is a completely different way of editing/looking than making a sheet from a roll of film. What are the effects on how photographers are learning to see? I don’t know the answer to this. If anyone does, please let me know.
Apr 5, 2014 | Blog
Why is the word selfie so distasteful to me? I am not a stranger to the self portrait; I have made them regularly since 1978. But what is the difference between a selfie and a self-portrait? The selfie is a quickie, in this quick world of ours. It is a snapshot in best superficial sense of the word, the selfie is an ad; a Facebook post, a few quick likes, it does not linger. The self-portrait is slow food. It simmers then surfaces in the strangest of ways. It reveals itself slowly and asks more questions than it answers. Bragging rights do not exist in self-portrait. More often, the self-portrait is embarrassing and can come with apologies and disclaimers. Self-portraits exist usually in editions of 1. Self-portraits are not big sellers, at least not while the photographer/artist is alive. (I can attest to this. I had a show of 40 self-portraits and sold one).
I have read that the world would be a better place, if everyone, from the worst possible lowest form of human kind to the best most incredible person, all got four hugs a day. Perhaps the selfie is an electronic hug. I admit that I do make selfies. I point and shoot the iphone and get a tiny little fix, a second of instant gratification. I like that electronic hug. I make a little connection; I get a little shock of recognition. It feels good. But then I get off the internet and it feels even better to work on an idea, make a self-portrait, print an image, a beautiful, rich print to put on the wall and contemplate. To ask some unanswered questions about myself. I hope that I am not too old school about the selfie vs. self-portrait controversy. I ask only that when people point and shoot and make a selfie, they try a little harder to make an image that is not superficial. We all have the need to create reproductions of ourselves and the iphone selfie makes it too easy. I think photography should not be taken so lightly; it should be difficult; the self-portraits we make especially should be difficult.
That said, here are two images made of me by me. Does one seem more “selfie” than the other?
Feb 25, 2013 | Portfolio
I don’t know why I have taken so many self-portraits or what meaning they might have as photographs. But I have been taking them steadily since I first started out as a photographer in 1978. Many of them were/are reactions to conscious or unconscious stimuli, moments presented when the camera was ready. Others were set-ups, experiments with equipment and/or printing processes, attempting new techniques. And some were made out of reflex and habit to satisfy the urge to click the shutter, not to make any type of statement.
Self-portraiture confuses me. Like many people, I rarely like a photograph of myself and feel self-conscious when a camera is pointed my way. I would much rather take responsibility for making my own image and the consequences incumbent upon it. As I edit the self-portraits, I try to forget that these are in fact photographs of me and choose images that I like, that are able to stand alone. I continue to make self-portraits and will post new ones as they are made. These images were made with a wide variety of cameras and printing techniques. Some are one of a kind and have been sold. Many were printed from black and white negatives and are available in limited edition silver gelatin prints. Many are digital based images and are available in editions of 15. If interested, please inquire about pricing and availability.
