A few Saturdays ago, there was a trip to Asbury Park. Again. As I was anxious and bored, I wasn't up for staying at home so I took off and did some running away.
Unsurprisingly, I have been watching, like everyone else, the slope the American economy has been sliding down the last year or so. I am disheartened and worried and cynical and terrified about what the future holds for this country; I fret about my money as well as my future on a regular basis, even though I am relatively gainfully employed. I have seen and benefited greatly from, in my brief 24 years on this planet, a hugely prosperous upswing in the economy and watched, wide-eyed and stupid, as the foundation... Read the Rest →
com⋅fort [kuhm-fert] –verb (used with object) 1. to soothe, console, or reassure; bring cheer to: They tried to comfort her after her loss. 2. to make physically comfortable. –noun 4. relief in affliction; consolation; solace: Her presence was a comfort to him. 5. a feeling of relief or consolation: Her forgiveness afforded him great comfort. 6. a person or thing that gives consolation: She was a great comfort to him. 7. a cause or matter of relief or satisfaction: The patient’s recovery was a comfort to the doctor. 8. a... Read the Rest →
My thoughts on picture-making have shifted greatly over the last 12 months or so. School taught me to think about picture-making as a means to communicate some greater truth about your subject and relate to greater social issues. Coming home and working in a environment that is about picture making in another way, a way born solely out of aesthetic has made me re-evaluate what it means to pick up a camera. I work among those* who’s main purpose in making pictures is to make them fit into a mold... Read the Rest →
Secretly, I have always wanted to be a Southerner, one who is born from the South. Sadly, I was born above the Mason-Dixon line and don’t get to have such an honor but I figure I can always visit. Or live there as my stupid hopeful plans go for the next year or so. When I set out last Thursday for a 8 hour drive to Winston-Salem North Carolina, the sun was bright and the weather forecast was promising for the trip: 85 degree weather with clear skies. Car packed,... Read the Rest →
I find comfort in the menial tasks of domesticity, where my life floats beautiful around the mundane. In small housekeeping based tasks, I find satisfaction in keeping a clean space, a clean house, meticulously organized and put together. It is no surprise that upon coming home, I have found myself more willing to put up with and maintain my mother’s expectation of order that has been established long before I was born, long before she was even born. In washing dishes, I find time to mediate. In making my bed... Read the Rest →
It’s 4.30 on a Sunday in mid-March and right now, I can’t think of a better time to be breathing in the crisp, mud-scented air than this moment. I listen to six cylinders and gravel crunch under the wheels and my brain is rapid-firing at me with thoughts about what the fuck I am doing and who the fuck I am. I downshift for the stop sign and brake. Here, now my head and heart is full of wanting of direction and an idea of what I will be in... Read the Rest →
During a long, cold drive home from Boston this past weekend, I zoned out on the rhythm and sounds of the road when the familiar opening lines of Springsteen’s cover of This Land is Your Land woke me up from my road-induced stooper. I reached down to turn it up and started thinking about the lyrics, about the land I was driving through. Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land makes me well up with tears. I try not to get sentimental or patriotic, since my relationship with the United... Read the Rest →
It is just barely 8.30 AM on a late December Sunday and I am crunching over snow in damp leather boots, wearing the same clothes from the night before. Here, in quiet rolling rural Pennsylvania, the snow and the ice and the silence and the cold have settled into the land and the air. However, today it has started to warm up, in a freak accident of winter, and the fields and the horizon are thick with white fog. Black trees divide fallow fields into loose grids and here, the... Read the Rest →
Recently, I started working at a large photo lab here in L.V. Through the tedious and unending process of scanning film and eventually printing pictures (I’m still in training alright?), I see a large number of photographs that normally I wouldn’t even bother thinking about. I get an odd excitement when I get to make reprints or when I pull film out of the C-41 machine. I find it extremely interesting to get to look at photos, be they good or mediocre. It’s getting to see into a life that... Read the Rest →