Ponder

Originally Posted Tuesday, May 21, 2013

This looks like the cover of an old crime novel or thriller, I think.  It is really quite something.  Do you know who the model is?  I'll tell you one day soon. 

But I'm not making these sort of pictures any more.  I am trying to make other images.  It is hard.  I carry my cameras around with me, but I am shy outside the studio now.  It takes a psychic energy to approach strangers on the street that I have not been able to find and utilize.  I know it is there.  I've done it before.  But I am just having a difficult time of it now. 

I went out yesterday with an old Diana camera from the '60s, the plastic things they used to give away as prizes at the fair.  They are full of light leaks.  I bought mine on eBay a long time ago before they started making the new ones they sell in Urban Outfitters now.  Mine has black tape on every seam to keep it more light tight.  There was film in the camera.  I have no idea what the images might be.  I took the camera outside and photographed. . . bushes and shrubs.  The camera give things a dreamy look but isn't really good for people and it isn't good for distant objects.  It has a limited use, but for that it is pretty.  I finished the roll and will take it down for processing today.  A start.  Plants and inanimate objects. 

I've been thinking about the blog and who follows it, and it is about an equal number of men and women as far as I can tell from the comments I get both here on the site and to my email.  I wonder what will happen when I begin posting pictures of gardens and fences?  As repetitive as the girl images are, so are all the others.  Another empty lot.  Another pitiable person sitting alone or in a group surrounded by urban or suburban sprawl.  Cowboys, rednecks, hillbillies, or crackers doing hillbilly/cracker things.  A rebel flag.  A KKK hood.  Pit bulls on thick chains.  A big old thick fingered daddy holding his little daughter.  Tatted up gang members making gang signs or holding up a gun.  Getting close, using a wide-angle lens that distorts just a bit.  Little girls in uniforms and dresses or in their bedrooms relaxing or getting ready for the prom.  War torn _______ (fill in the blank).  Cultures in transition, the old juxtaposed to the new.  A hospital bed.  A dying mother or father or a brother undergoing chemo.  On and on and on.  Repetitive. 

I am more fascinated by style than content.  Rather, the two should coincide.  Over the years, I've given you a list of links to photographers I've liked.  They have all possessed a distinct style.  Wolf, Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner--you know them right away.  None of their books translate visually.  No good movies can be made from their fiction because the power lay in their styles. 

Penn.  Newton.  Avedon. 

Etc. 

So what should I become?  What do people who tire of women on a stage desire to see?  That is always the question.  What do people want to see?  

More.  They want to see more.  They want to see things that they don't see themselves.  They want to look behind the curtain.  Sure, some people want to see Yosemite again.  (Adams.  Style.  Repetition).  But some want more of Sally Mann's daughters, too. 

Bonnard's wife in the bath.  Matisse's fabulous odalisques. 

But there is that crazy Picasso changing styles and forms and colors over and over and over again. 

I know the project I want to do, but it is far too controversial and too much trouble.  But. . . oh, my. . . I could leave you breathless.