Brando

Is it true? Is there a place that is Eden? An old hotel. . . . Before the crowds came? Before money drowned us? The world earlier writers knew. . . . Perhaps always in travel there is that idea of Jung’s, of something already imprinted in us for which we are unconsciously searching. Sometimes not so unconsciously (James Salter ,There and Then).

I did not go to Peru as a photographer. I took only a small Olympus XA camera with a fixed lens. I shot slide film because I hoped some of the images would find their way into one of Brando’s slideshows. And so the photos went into plastic sleeves and were put away for twenty years or so. Recently, I looked at them and found that they were becoming ruined, victims of a mold that must have formed during the many days of moist heat and no electricity after the hurricanes, so I decided to scan some in order to save them and email them to friends. I was not careful, for the scanning is time consuming work. I was quick but inevitably learned more about the scanning as I went about the task; consequently, the quality of the images I send is varied. After spending a couple of weeks with them, culling some hundred slides from more than a thousand, I decided I would write a narrative about the trip to explain the images. This, too, was undertaken haphazardly and so the quality of the prose is uneven. I send this out to my friends only, for friendly fun. Don’t try to revoke my diplomas.

In 1986, I had just completed my master’s degree and had decided to go with my friend Brando Perkins, to Peru. Brando, who had studied at the Frank Lloyd Wright Institute when he was young and was an architect of some standing, was, by the time I met him, doing less architecture and was becoming more involved in the travel business. Brando owned Brando Adventure, a small company that he began in 1973. Sole Proprietor.

In his late forties, Brando had few possessions. For most of the period I knew him then, he didn’t have an automobile. He rode his bike around town, and often I would see him carrying his architectural renderings in a leather bag from Mexico strapped to his back as he went to meet a client. Once in awhile, however, something red and fancy and expensive and impractical would catch his eye, and he would buy it. For a short period he drove a show-winning MG, but he treated it like a Jeep, charging over curbs and through yards, and once at high speed straight down Park Avenue through a large, white tent set up for the grand opening of the new Ralph Lauren Polo store. The car was in the shop more than it was on the road, and he eventually sold it, I suspect, to avoid incarceration.

His apartment was mysterious to me then, the small, dark, second floor of a wooden house on Virginia Avenue on the periphery of a decent part of town. I don’t know if Brando had a telephone. I don’t think I did. As I remember it, I would simply drive to his house in my Jeep and knock at his door on the ground floor from where I could look straight up the flight of stairs to the second story landing. I would wait to see if he would appear, and if he did, he would always descend in a grand manner and greet me with a strong handshake and a big, hearty voice. His apartment was mostly unfurnished. He slept under a down sleeping bag thrown over a mattress on the floor. Bookshelves of cement block and untreated pine boards lined the walls. He had an architect’s table, a drafting lamp, and a swivel chair in the small living room. And that was that for furniture. Various crafts and artifacts from his trips littered the rooms randomly—a Mexican rug, some erotic clay Peruvian figurines, an African mask. If you were lucky and he was tired of working, he would shove whatever he was laboring over aside and throw down maps of places you would wish to go, places you were convinced few had gone. It was as if the world were new.

I had been to many of Brando’s trip parties before. They were grand affairs on a small scale and budget, and they were legendary. It did not take many people to fill his apartment, so of course everyone I knew wanted to go. Not to be invited was tragic. Inside, there was nowhere to sit, and mingling was difficult. Shoulder to shoulder, people stood in the living room and kitchen, on a short, crowded porch with jalousie windows, and on the landing and stairs (but never in the bedroom). The refrigerator was filled with Heinekens and later there would be various bottles of liquor, something brought back from a past trip—Greek Ouzo or Mexican Tequilla or Peruvian Pisco—horrible liquors certain to make somebody perform a haplessly egregious act. The air would be thick with voices and something else. There were pretty women and interesting men and the promise of travels. But moments before the night became outrageous, Brando would turn out the lights and begin a slideshow which he would slowly narrate. It was not a narration, really, but a lyrical conjoining of esoteric facts and obscure quotations and short tales of mishap, all stories of former trips being highlighted by what had gone wildly wrong, warnings to the timid that called to those of us huddled in the darkness as a siren’s song. Here was a slide of Hunter Carlson drinking tequila from the bottle at breakfast, another of the bloody feet of a girl I knew who had gotten drunk and danced barefoot in a local bar all night until she had to be carried back to her room. There were photos of women Brando had met, a former Venezuelan beauty queen, the daughter of a mayor of a small Mexican town, a German who ran a hacienda in Argentina. There were photos of muscular guides, one, a magnificent man for whom a women had left her wealthy husband. There were pictures of temples and ruins and museums and paintings and fabulous meals in unlikely places. Travel and romance. Brando had been and we had not, but he would take us with a promise to get us there and back, in and out, as he would say, but that was all. You couldn’t be certain what would happen once you arrived. He was no tourist guide and these were not tours. And then, too soon, the show was over and the lights would come on, and the volume of conversation would become deafening, people shouting excitedly, some writing checks as down payments for forthcoming trips. And then suddenly, as it always does, something would go unforgettably wrong, and there would be a crash and a scream followed quickly by an intervention. Outside, a car would rush away and somebody would be consoled, and then there would be the inevitable migration, the last hangers-on slowly realizing that party had ended for now.

Travel tourism was in its nascent days. The boom was about to come. I knew I had not yet seen anything like this.

One of the problems I have developing a recognizable style is that I keep forgetting what I did to get a look. It is often weeks before I get back to processing photographs, and my memory doesn't seem to work the way it used to. And I don't write anything down. I know most of what I did with this photograph, but I must be forgetting something because I can't seem to replicate it. I can't even remember how I made the border.

Last Days

I wrote last night's missive between drinking at the museum and drinking during the election returns. The fellows and gals at the Camera Club are good people and bring every bit of wit and wisdom to the world that they can offer.

Something has happened to all my files on my hard drives. Plural. I can't find anything. End Times.

It's Not What You Do That Pisses Me Off. . .

I went to a photography opening at the local Art Museum tonight. I was duped. It turned out to be an exhibit by the Kamera Klub.

I don't consider myself a photographer, let alone a Photographer. Cameras both obsess and embarrass me. An acquaintance I don't especially like, a Professional Photographer, once tried to insult me by calling me a Shutterbug. Yes, I said, I like that. I am a Shutterbug. Don't misunderstand me. I am in love with photography. I studied it in college, though it was not my major. I got a degree in Zoology, but I didn't take my foreign language requirement but rather kept taking photography courses until the Dean of Arts and Sciences called me to his office and said, "Don't you think it's time to graduate?" He said that the university would have to begin charging me out of state tuition, etc. Even after graduation, though, I studied with some very wonderful and talented and recognized photographers. It was usually fun. They were great men and women who liked giving their impressions of life. Most didn't make a big deal out of it but encouraged us to find our way. I am an image junkie and look upon pictures incessantly. I like to watch, as Chauncy (?) says in "Being There." A camera gives some permission to do that, to stare at people without getting into a confrontation. Not as much as it used to, but still more than is possible just walking around in the street. There are so many good images that it drives me crazy. And I have so many in my head that I would like to make given the time and courage. . . .

Oh, those images from the Kamera Klub were awful.

But who am I to complain?

Here are some images from the trip I took during the three months after they made me graduate, before I had to go to work, my gypsy/hippie travels on Kerouak's Road around the U.S.A, in the dust of Robert Frank and the fumes of Arbus. Derivative work, as always, but it is mine.






If I am going to show this sort of thing, though, I shouldn't complain in public about the Kamera Klub.

Cameraholics Anonymous

You can tell a lot about a person by the cameras s/he uses. Perhaps not uses, but owns. I have too many. It keeps me from developing a recognizable style. I read some advice in a forum once that Jock Sturges gave to a good new photographer. He told him that there are only a handful of art photographers in the world who make a living and those who do have a trademark style. You know who took the photograph as soon as you see the picture. Good advice, I guess. I studied with Jerry Ulesman. No mistaking one of his photographs. Recently, though, I went to hear him lecture, and he said that with the advent of Photoshop, he felt as if he had been teaching horseshoes for the past thirty years. He is married to Maggie Taylor whose digital work is wonderful. Funny combo.

But I've gone astray. I found Frank Petronio's blog online the other day and spent a couple of hours reading through it. I wrote him a fan's note and he turns out to be a very friendly and helpful fellow. His site is full of good stuff. I am linking one of his entries here in which he talks about his camera obsession. Awful.

Here is a photograph of a very good photographer using her favorite--a Holga. After a while, I guess, you just simplify.

Whiskey at the Fin de Siecle

The Whiskey seemed to help. I didn't get sick, but there was a downside. I didn't do much today.

Eve

Something bad is in the offing, I fear. I ate seared tuna at a dive on the beach for lunch, and now my stomach is painfully distended. I will skip dinner and seek to kill any little beast that might inhabit me now with a slow but steady drip of Glenn Fiddich. It could work.

2007 has not been a good year for me and I am not loathe to see it go. The year ended with a cancelled trip to Tanzania (for which I have not gotten any money back) and someone stealing thousands of dollars from my bank account for the past ninety days (I don't check my statements very often). My girlfriend left Christmas day and will not be back until tomorrow, so I am sentenced to spending New Year's Eve alone. It is a self-imposed exile, but exile nonetheless. It is OK. The weather has turned and the night is wet. I am already in what passes for my pajamas. Selavy.

I have been slow and old for two weeks, so this morning I woke at 4:30, made coffee, got a bunch of cameras together, and drove through the misty predawn to Sebastian Inlet State Park. I had not been there for many years and had forgotten that there is really nothing there to see. But I wanted to do a field test of my Polaroid 600 SE camera with the no longer produced 665 pos/neg film (I have a fair stash). It was a test run for using my Graflex Crown Graphic with type 55 film later when the 665 runs out. I won't bore you with the process, but it is cumbersome and requires a lot of voodoo that seems to fairly hypnotize the crowd. The first photo I took was of a fellow surf fishing from the beach. Without confronting him, I was framing through the viewfinder when he began talking. "It's awful. They just catch the mullet for the roe. They only come out when the females are full. They sell it to the Japanese. Greed. The water around here used to be alive with mullet. Now they're gone." Small skiffs were gathered about the mouth of the inlet, men tossing cast nets into the sea. "What are you fishing for," I asked him. "Dinner," he said.

Next week there will be a big professional surf competition on the other side of the jetties. World famous. "I don't know why they don't have the contest over here," the fisherman told me. "I like it over here better. I surf right there, Monster Hole." He waved to a spot about a hundred yards offshore. "It's called Monster Hole because of the size of the sharks. The kids don't like to surf here because of that. They want to surf where the photographers are," he complained.

Courage up, I approached some other people to pose. Things were working. This was a breakthrough. I was pleased. I sloshed around a zip lock bag full of negatives for the rest of the day. They are washing now. If there is anything good there, you will be the first to know.

Making Coffee 1975

These are scanned from an old, mistreated proof sheet. The negatives are long lost. I don't remember the girl's name. She was in the photo class ahead of me at the university. We only spoke a couple of times. She had seen some of my photos hanging in the gallery and asked me if I would help her shoot her self portrait assignment. These are my timid photos. Then she had me shoot what she wanted with her camera. She scared me to death. I hope she is famous now.

Art Nudes

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Old Photos

Won

I won the bid on the Hassie Xpan and can't wait to get it. Meanwhile, I'll keep working with the Polaroids.

Waiting. . . .

I have bid on the new camera, the Hasselblad Xpan. I am nervous waiting. One more hour.

Here is an image from 1975. All of the negatives from this time have been lost. This is a scan from an old, fading proofsheet.

Camera Obsession

What could be more Modern than a camera? I have an obsession with both. Just now, I am looking on ebay at a Hasselblad Xpan. I do not need another camera. However. . . .

Photography and Modernism are contemporaries.

Lachrymose

Lachrymose. The weather is beautiful here, now, but I am unequal to it. I should be out making images, but some grand ennui has me down. My limbs are limp, my spine bent. My head hangs. It is Saturday, the finest of days, but I am slow, limp. It may take me some time to Make It New.

Make It New

I've been thinking about listing my blog with some other sites, but then I thought again. I need to work on it a bit and get some more representative photos up. That is what I will work on doing in the next few weeks.

Boxing Posters

I didn't go to Africa. At the very last moment, I got an email that said the trip was cancelled. The fellow I paid for tickets could not afford to buy them. Long story that I may tell some time.

Here are some photos I made in the meantime. This kid isn't too fast, but he is tough as hell and hits like a train. Keep your eye on him.

Hong Kong

I must finish up with China. I am making mistakes, posting the same pictures, writing the same narratives. I leave for Africa in one week, and I must get ready for that.
Hong Kong was an add on part of the tour, and only half of the group went. And in Hong Kong, everything fell apart. The first night there, against my will, we ate at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I did not want to eat there, but I did not want to be a spoil sport, either. The next day, half the group was sick. We were going to Macau. It would be fun. We would take the famous Star Ferry. We did not realize how difficult re-entering mainland China would be. We thought that since Hong Kong had been taken back, that is was China. But it isn't. There has been some sort of grace period to allow people to get used to things, I guess. Those from the Mainland cannot travel so easily to Hong Kong, so the border is carefully controlled. We stood in line in a hot cement bunker for hours with thousands of others, barely moving, sweating, holding place while bits and pieces of our group ran to the restroom.




Finally we were there. Macau was dreadfully hot and stale in August, and the group split up. Some went to the casinos where the air was cool and dry. I walked the tourist route, the "old" streets, and drank beer and got dizzy with heat, dehydration, and exhaustion. We walked high up a hill to a park run by old men. There was a heirarchy, it seemed, for some sat up high where it was cool, while others stayed in the lower reaches where the air was warm and not as fresh. Cheap radios played tinny popular music.


And after dropping back down the hill, my companion and I came to an old church. We walked through to the walled grave yard where a lone woman tended to the grounds. Maybe I was drunk with heat and beer and fatigue, but the old grave sites affected me terribly. Most burried there were killed by disease at an early age. Some came from England to be killed by "pirates." Those with long lives were mainly admirals and administrators. What brought these men here in the early parts of the nineteenth centurty, I wondered? It must have been horrible, yet they came to conquer for god and country.
That night we ate a tremendous restaurant, the Cafe Paris. It was a perfect bromide to what had become the usual cuisine.
The next day, I went to Kowloon and saw the markets and the porn shops. Kowloon, apparently, sells everything.




But this narrative is not interesting and I will simply quit rather than try to tell the last day with any verve. It is not possible now. I am thinking of Africa. I shall take my Imperial camera there and see what parts of the older world I can bring back. Selavy.

Shanghai to Hong Kong

Shanghai's importance in China's history is short, but for me powerful. Not really the history, but the images that emerged of an exotic, cosmopolitan society where Russians and French and Americans rubbed shoulders with Chinese culture. Like all border towns, it was decadent. Or so it seems in movies like "Shanghai Express" with Marlene Deitrich or Bartle Bull's novels set in that era. But you cannot find old Shanghai. It is gone but for a small area only part of which I saw. The Bund. There are a few colonial buildings standing, a few old mansions, but Shanghai is a modern city looking forward, not back. Along the Bund, scammers look for hapless tourists, but it seemed no worse than any other big city. People strolled about and shopped in the large outdoor mall a few blocks away, and people were exceedingly friendly. There were groups of young Chinese, art students, they would say, at the University in Xi'an, who would stop you and engage in chat. They would ask if you wanted to come see their exhibit just a few blocks away. I would always talk for a minute and then pull out my Polaroid camera and soon we were all having fun.Some of the group, however, had read that these "students" would lure you into a bar where they would order drinks that were hugely expensive or that they would take you down an alleyway where you might be mugged. The guide books say that you should not talk to anyone who approaches you on the street and wants to practice his/her English skills. And of course, others on the tour came back with harrowing tales of being taken from building to building in search of the art exhibit before they realized what was happening. "Shanghaied" flashed in their incredulous eyes.
Being a foreigner in a far away place can be unnerving, I guess, but I never felt much danger. Once when I was walking through an alleyway in a hutong, I saw a group of men and felt my spine tingle, but who knows if there was any danger there. I told my companion to turn around and we left without incident. Often enough the men would stare and I would raise my camera and gesture and they would either say yes or no. Sometimes a rough group of workers would gather about and laugh as the Polaroids shot out, obviously making fun of whomever was in the portrait.Somewhere along our tour, I asked our guide if it would be possible to rent a car or driver and go into the country to photograph all the things I was seeing through the windows of the bus. He told me that it would be dangerous, that the villages were controlled by the mafia and that I would not be welcomed warmly, that indeed, I "might be overwhelmed." Lovely phrase. When I got home from China, I wrote to a photographer who has a wonderful book about China, and recounted this story. Here is his reply.

"It sounds to me like the officials were just covering themselves
or trying to ensure you stay with the program.

All the time I hire taxis or take a local bus, ask it to stop,
then wait by the side of the road when done to return.
China is safe. The people are not physically aggressive,
except in commerce!

So, your physical safety in China is very, very rarely an
issue during daylight, especially in the countryside.
Also, people are particularly merciful to a hapless
looking foreigner. So, I keenly fullfill that roll.

I remember getting an earful like that my first time through
the 3 Gorges of the Yangtze River. It was a merely ruse to
keep me on an awful ship. I eventually went AWOL and
travel immediately became both less stressful and more
fruitful."


I am certain, though, that is what you would have guessed.

We left Shanghai for Hong Kong, the last stop on our trip. Bejing and Xi'an were full of historical sites, ancient capitals and centers of trade for many dynasties. Shanghai was a recent phenomenon becoming a major seaport at the turn of the century. It's brief history, however, is visually well documented