New Year's Eve Memories (Then and Now)

Two years ago tonight I was in Michigan, celebrating the holidays with family and friends. I had flow back to Michigan after three months at my new job in Oregon to reunite with those I had left. I spent the three days after Christmas in Grand Rapids with good friends, an alternative to driving through the thick snow to the Upper Peninsula; family illnesses (my grandmother was in hospice and my friend's uncle was in the hospital) made us think twice about the long trip. Instead of white outs, frozen lake races, whiskey, cribbage, and chili, my friends and I settled for the three latter festivities.

My flight back to Oregon was supposed to be on December 30th. I was to be routed from Grand Rapids to Chicago to Boise. There was a problem: weather. Planes were getting in late to Chicago, which meant I would be delayed to Boise. Rather than spend the night in the airport in Grand Rapids, I elected to go back with my friends for a final, impromptu night.

This meant that I arrived in Boise not on the 30th, with time to travel home (Oregon) for New Year's festivities, but on the 31st. After a brief bomb scare  in the Boise Airport, I paid close to attention to Trip Check  and airport monitors that showed the weather. I-84, my main route to get home, was open, but was in poor conditions. Rather than risk injury, crashing my car into the side of a mountain on New Year's Eve, I formulated a plan.

The Fairfield Suites courtesy van picked me up around 10pm to take me to my car and the hotel. The shuttle driver was a younger guy, so I asked him what he recommended a stranger in Boise do to ring in the new year.

"Tell you what," the guy said to me after I explained my situation. "Book your room for tonight and tell the front desk I said I'd take you downtown. They'll page me and I'll come pick you up."

I trusted this Cory Feldman-type character was as good a person to trust as any in Boise, Idaho's largest city, so I obliged. He picked me up in the shuttle around 10:45pm and we headed towards downtown.

Cory explained to me my options: there was a strip of bars on the main drag, and for a cover fee of something like $25, you could get into all of them if you wanted. I told him I wanted free. He told me my best option was a place called Mulligans, on Main between 9th and 10th street.

Having just left Grand Rapids, Michigan, which happens to have a doppelgänger business called Mulligan's, I figured I couldn't go wrong.

I showed up to find a packed bar, your typical college town bar, with televisions showing Rihanna singing her latest single. After a few minutes, I made my way through the crowd and grabbed a drink at the bar.

Standing in line at Mulligans, a bar 170 miles from where I lived, I figured I had two options. The first was to finish my beer just after midnight, let out a small yelp as the ball dropped, and grab a cab a few minutes later to sleep before my three-hour trip home the next day, New Year's Day.

The second option, and the more unlikely and unappealing one, was to lower my inhibitions and make some new friends. Sort of like cold calling for jobs in the phone book, I figured now was as good a time as any to meet some new people in a "faraway" town.

While grabbing beer, I noticed a particularly cheerful-looking group of people at a table near the bar. Some of them reminded me of the people I had left behind in Michigan. What was the worst that could happen? Was New Year's Eve, with Carson Daly on TV, the night I was most likely to be accosted or murdered by some strangers in downtown Boise?

Of course not.

So, after grabbing my pint of Moose Drool, I moseyed over to this table of twentysomethings and sort of stood there like some lame-o until the conversation dwindled to a din.

And this is what I said (really).

"Hi. My name is Mike. I'm from Oregon and I'm stuck in Boise tonight for New Year's Eve because my planes were delayed and I-84 is in crappy condition. Can I be your friend for tonight?"

As pathetic and ridiculous as that sounds, and as it sounded then, since I fully expected them to laugh at me simply because of how stupid and out of place I looked, there was a resounding "SURE!" from the table.

It was so silly it felt like I was in the middle of some Richard Curtis movie. I had the most absurdly fun New Year's of my life, simply because I had no idea who any of the people I was with were.

There was something really special about spending such a celebratory evening with complete strangers.

I sit here now, with this party about to start, and every New Year's Eve I think about the people whose names I can't remember who might be at Mulligans tonight, or any night for that matter. I don't care what they're up to; I only hope they're doing well.

So much of my life recently has been about strangers. This past summer's photo project  was entirely dependent upon strangers. How that project mirrored my evening with strangers in Boise in 2009 isn't lost on me as I write this. If people who are strangers weren't, at their cores, nice people, then the photo project and my night in Boise would have been complete letdowns.

And every day I interact with people that I've never met. And those that I've met, whether it's through where I live, what I do, or the work I've made, I barely know. Even moving to a new neighborhood has brought new people into my life.

That's what I reflect upon as we all enter 2012. New Year's Eve can be a great time whether you're with strangers or those closest to you. And I hope to have a bit of both tonight as 2011 draws to a close.

wazzoo & Danner - 3/20/11

Oh, it was so long ago....

It's been almost nine months since I ventured into the greater Seattle area to begin the UFCK photo project. And it's been too long since posting about anything on this blog. And with applications in for both funding to continue the project and a potential exhibition of this work, it's high time I start recounting the stories that accompany these images. Both of these shots took place on the same day during spring break.

I met up with wazzoo (top photo) at his home. My notes describe the house as "a box house." I nearly died making a left turn onto a nearby street, as I had to venture into one of Seattle's hillier areas. (It was an almost completely blind left turn.)

Wazzoo was very quiet and subdued. No music. No noises. I set up my equipment and we made very basic small talk: studies in college, job-related stuff, the photo project.

It wasn't until I - for one reason or another - brought up basketball that wazzoo really piped up. Huge Seattle Sonics fan. Like many people from the area, wazzoo's sentimental streak nearly begins and ends with the loss of the Sonics and their move to Oklahoma City.

From there, the conversation moved to the city and what I had done since I arrived. Wazzoo was full of recommendations for places to visit, from good dinners to nightlife hotspots, which, admittedly, I never followed through on because my quick trip (4 photo shoots) was enough to wear me out by the end of each day.

After a quick late lunch it was out to Woodinville, a suburb in the Seattle/Redmond area. Danner (left) came out onto his balcony to welcome me. After offering me a beer - Danner is a bit of a beer nut - I set up my camera.

Danner was talkative and easily excited. He donned Liverpool gear and we chatted soccer for quite a bit. Liverpool FC is Danner's club of choice, and part of his extensive traveling résumé includes a trip to England to take in a match. UFCK's soccer thread is his sort of home away from home; we never really had crossed paths that often on the boards; his email regarding a potential photo shoot was the most surprising one I received.

Soccer and NCAA basketball were on the television as we talked quite a bit about Danner's journey to the Pacific Northwest. He interned in Dallas for the PGA Tour and has traveled to Spain, Liverpool (twice), and London. He showed a bit of interest in my 4x5 camera and recounted the story of losing his nearly-new Canon Rebel xSi on a plane to Chicago; he left it in the overhead bin and never heard about it again.

Sometimes stuff like that happens.

That long weekend in Seattle in March was the start of this whole project. It would be five months until I stepped behind the camera again for another UFCK photo shoot.

slipereypete - 3/19/11

Following the success of the photo shoot with Seattle-ite Kzoo, I ventured into unknown territory. Kzoo was the only boarder on ufck.org I had met whose photo I would take for this project. slipereypete was the second shoot on that day.

The northwest side of Seattle is highly residential, and very hilly. Lots of up and down in the car with photo equipment in the back. I found the place reasonably well - in that I only drove past it once - and made my way up.

The environment was something like an upscale bachelor pad: the olive green leather sofa, stack of art books, and intricately carved coffee table contrasted nicely with the giant flatscreen television and folding table stacked to the brim with records. We listened to Yellow Ostrich's The Mistress* as we chatted. NCAA tournament basketball and the Vancouver Whitecaps MLS debut game were switched between on the television.

slipereypete's apartment afforded great views of the city as well as great light. Our conversation was lively and insightful, and our best conversation points focused on the board and its structure and communal nature.

"Life is usually convex," slipereypete said towards the end of our meeting. "People tend to travel in different directions, doing different things, going to different places. UFCK is concave: people all collect in one place."

A large presence in ufck.org's soccer thread - and naturally a huge Sounders supporter - meeting slipereypete was a great shoot in the sense that it gave me consolation in knowing other people thought of the social experience of a website like ufck.org in the same way I was. There's something to it besides people all talking to one another.

"Everyone else on UFCK cares about all of the stuff you like that no one else gives a shit about," he said. That's the community that I had really plunged myself into.

But I never got around to asking him where his screen name came from.

* The lead singer behind Yellow Ostrich - Alex - also posts regularly on ufck.org. They're moving up in the world these days, opening shows for Ra Ra Riot and making appearances on NPR and the like. Unfortunately, Alex and his bandmates were on a very different travel schedule from mine during the project, and I wasn't able to line up a photo shoot with them. Check them out anyway and buy Yellow Mistress on super-cool yellow vinyl. 

Kzoo - 3/19/11

This is where it all started. The UFCK Photo Project got underway with one of only three boarders I had previously met. It was a cool, March Seattle day. I'm driving around residential neighborhoods with eighty pounds of photo equipment in the trunk of my car, my school has given me money to work on this project, and I have no idea how it's going to go.

I first met Kzoo back in November of 2009, when I was in Seattle for an SPE Northwest regional conference. I told him I was going to be in town, and we stopped somewhere in the Capital Hill district to grab a drink. He had a cold. He called me "Matt." It was a little weird. But our Michigan connection kept the awkward silences to a minimum.

I parked my car near Kzoo's place and he came out to the sidewalk and offered to help carry my gear.

The place was arranged in such a way as to make photographing anything with a view camera and lights a complicated mess. But I powered through. Even when I discovered that I had traveled five and a half hours from home without power cables for my lights, Kzoo found an extra computer cable that worked just fine.

The art on the walls was done by relatives of Kzoo's absent roommate. Kzoo moved the couch pillows "for a better look." He wore his narwhal shirt. He put on music: Magnolia Electric Company's self-titled final album. After the needle passed through side two, he threw on Neil Young's "Everyone Knows This is Nowhere."

Kzoo was personable and just talkative enough to not interfere with my setup. As it was my first shoot, the entire process took much longer than later shoots that happened in August.

Pictured here is an instant proof from the shoot. The exterior window behind him made the lighting awkward, though this far removed from March, the exact details of the shoot escape my memory. I know the strobe is somewhere off to the right, aimed through this translucent Japanese-style screen thing.

Kzoo is one of the guys from the board that would probably get along with anyone, whether they were invading his space to take his picture, or meeting up at Linda's* for a beer.

* This may not actually be the place we went. But it's close. 

[text] Project Website [/text]

Ok, finally.

There are some parts of this that aren't complete. I still have to write the essay I've been promising myself for the last six weeks. The webpages still show titles as "text" and nothing more. (Thanks, iWeb!) But I can't sit on the whole shebang when only small portions aren't fully realized.

So, here it is: the UFCK Photo Project website, in all its glory. Replete with photos. And links. And essays. Essays about life on the Internet. About being friends with strangers. About technological marvels. About getting drunk and passing out at a State Champion show. There's plenty missing, from the photo of the "SWEENEY" license plate I took while driving through Virginia to the slobber from the dog that tried to eat my tripod.

But when someone asks me what I was up to this summer, it was this. From a proposal for the project compiled last November to the first shots this past March, the circle has been large, interesting, and rewarding as it's come around again.

Proposals for exhibitions are now in the works. More later.

(And, if you didn't click on the link above, you can get to the site by following the link here.)

Realest Dream Ever

I've had dreams that felt real before. Many of them. Once, Bono acted like he was my friend and gave me a styrofoam cooler. Once I got that cooler loaded into the minivan I was driving, the whole thing blew up. Another time some woman I didn't even know converted me to Judaism on the side of a New York City subway platform just by touching me on the forehead.

Whether it was the allergy medication I was on, or the Ny-Quil I downed before bed to induce a good night's sleep (it didn't work, by the way; the allergies won out), last night's dream was easily the most serious and real I've had in a long while.

The exact details are a bit sketchy, but the gist of it goes like this: Matt Damon was my doctor. I must have been complaining about headaches or something, because I was in an exam room with Dr Damon and he was holding up x-rays of my head.

And in the most serious tone I've ever heard or seen from the Academy Award-winning actor, he says, "I wish I could say I have good news. What you've got is an inoperable brain tumor. I'd guess you've got about 10 more good years in you."

It hit me like a ton of bricks. There were other parts of the dream, like some random scene where members of my family (only they weren't my real family) were sorting through crystal glassware and deciding who gets it. (This may or may not have had anything to do with my terminal illness.)

But having to face my own mortality, even in the dream-addled haze of allergy medicine, was something else. It was, to say the least, quite the trip.

As far as I know - and apart from the allergies - I am in good health and should have more than "about 10 more good years" in me.

The Intro to the Project

Everyone has a story about how they came to the boards. I was in college, when Napster was booming and changing what most people thought about music, when I discovered the boards. In the time since, the boards have changed what I think about community and communication. Admittedly, I stumbled upon the boards because of being a fan of Dave Matthews Band(1), and perusing the boards allowed the opportunity to trade compact discs of live concerts. These days, Napster is gone, trading live shows through the mail is gone, and the board’s love of Dave Matthews Band is gone as well. 

The message board was a place for discussing specific and random topics, from current movies and television shows to what to grow in a backyard garden(2). There was a social element to the boards as well, with the casual participant picking up on circles of friends, people that knew each other from college or high school days(3).

My personal perception of what an Internet message board is changed in 2004. I was a college graduate and had to ride my bicycle to the local library for Internet access. I would casually participate on the boards, chiming in mostly in threads that dealt with the Detroit Tigers or philosophical arguments. I regularly visited two boards at that time: the flowery and hippie-ish amidreaming.org (aka AMI) and the harsher, cynical, harder-edged anyoneseenthebridge.com(4). I was posting regularly on the former and only reading on the latter. 

One day “The Bridge,” as it was called, disappeared. The site stopped working, and there was a small exodus of Bridge users to AMI. The story about the Bridge’s shutdown appeared in a thread on AMI.  The story involved two people who were romantically linked to each other and technologically linked to The Bridge. Once the two of them split up, petty arguments and the spread of incriminating digital photos led to The Bridge’s demise. It was a strange case of cross-pollination that shifted what I thought about that in which I was participating; the people involved became real. There was no longer that veil of anonymity that I assumed existed with any Internet website. The community abruptly closed for a short time(5).

Then The Bridge reopened under a new domain name. New people were put in charge, and in mid-2004, registration for new users at UFCK.org became public. I signed up in March of 2005. 

Now I approach UFCK (née The Bridge) from a different standpoint. My participation has increased from the days when I was only reading the thoughts of other people. I have developed my own online personality and have become “a voice” in the small community that loses members every month(6). My 10,000 posts over the course of the last six years(7) have covered everything from Tigers trades to this photography project. 

The project sprang from my interest in my board “colleagues” as well as growing notions that constructed personalities exist all over the Internet. Certainly, I know that I use different language and a different demeanor when I email my parents versus when I email an old college buddy. The same goes for in-person interactions. But there is something intriguing about the electronic barrier that is in place on a website like UFCK.org that permits people to speak as freely as they like about anything they like. 

In reality the interactions between boarders online and boarders offline is quite different. I have firsthand experience of that from the portrait sessions that have happened since. Cordial is not a nice enough word I use to express my gratitude towards the subjects in this project. I personally would have a hard time granting intimate access to someone I have never met just so they could take my picture(8).

Ultimately, what I am hoping to accomplish with this project is not to shed light on the physical appearances of people who possibly have remained secret on the Internet for a half decade or more(9). Instead, I hope the captured images will shed light instead on what it means to exist as a constructed personality both online and on film. Instead of illuminating viewers and exposing these UFCK subjects to the world, the photographs really perpetuate some of the mysteries behind the people with whom we interact with electronically everyday(10).

^{1. I will still admit to liking the DMB to this day. So don’t even start with the ridicule.}

^{2. There are also plenty of threads that exist solely to bash someone within the community. Sometimes, it’s deserved, and the forum will gang up on a member that has been nothing but mean to other people. Other times, it’s to poke fun of someone because they posted a photo of themselves wearing archaic church gowns on Facebook.}

^{3. See endnote number 2. It’s easier to get people together to make poke fun or harass another user when the person making the thread has several other friends that post regularly.}

^{4. Both silly website names are derived from lyrics of Dave Matthews Band songs.}

^{5. I was recently reminded by one of my photo subjects that there was a “crossover” board called Omeletteville. I had completely forgotten about that place, most likely because it required an invitation to register, and I didn't get one.}

^{6. As of my writing this, there are a few users championing a sort of “End of Days” for the board, which may take place at the end of this calendar year.} 

^{7. An average of 4.45 posts per day.}

^{8. This is a terrible position for a photographer to take or, even more so, admit. To try to alleviate this aversion to my own photograph and make some sort of peace with my other subjects, I shot a self-portrait for the project and it will appear as anonymously in context with the others as I can personally make it.} 

^{9. The web predecessor of both UFCK and The Bridge, DMBml, dates back to prior to 2001.} 

^{10. Pick me up, love.}

The (ongoing) UFCK Photo Project

I'm back in Oregon after a long trip to the east side of  the country. 2,300 miles later, I've come back with over 50 sheets of 4x5 film that need to be processed. In the meantime, and until I buy a dust mask capable of filtering out that much C-41 chemistry, I post here to give people some background and begin what is sure to be a complex journey through the photographs from the past two weeks.

Back in March, I posted images from shoots I did in Seattle. Those subjects were strangers who I only know from their presence on the Internet message board UFCK.org. (More on the board, its origins, and my place in the community coming later.) This community of posters includes people of all ages and backgrounds. 

Several of these wonderful souls agreed to be photographed, and so I took off on a ten-day trip that yielded many great experiences. I am forever in debt to the people that I got to meet and photograph. 

It will be a while until the images are developed, scanned, and printed. The entire project will take up the better part of the next year, when I hope to embark on a shorter trip along the west coast to gather more portraits and stories. Everything will culminate in a book, which I will be sure to post about here.

Until then, the gallery of instant proofs is available for viewing here. Enjoy.

I Love LA

I think it was last year that I entered a piece of mine into a show at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. It was something like a mail-in show or the like, where an artist sends a file and the gallery prints the work and hangs it all up on the wall, salon style.

LACDA's upcoming show, "Top 40," an international juried show, will feature forty pieces by artists using digital methods for creating their work. A recent piece of mine, Metal Bird (Bummer), will be among those included.

The show opens June 9th and runs through July 2nd. You can see the works of everyone selected for the show here.

Hallelujah: It All Comes Crashing Down Upon Us

Times are strange. Sometimes, events dictate the behavior of artists. Rarely, artists dictate the events. Unless those events are art-related.

I've never worked this way before. View camera, black and white, tilt/swing thingamajigs, drawings, constructed sets. Never done it. It was a trying experience, both in expression and execution.

The execution is that outlined above. Drawing and then piecing the parts together to create this surreal arena.

The expression is less definable and more sporadic as the reality of the situation for artists out here becomes clearer. Things happen. People might disappear. Every once in a while, the ones that disappear are supposed to disappear; they move on to bigger and better things. Usually, though, reality has a way of choosing its victims in this random way that makes eerily logical sense.

Times are strange. Let's move on.

New Project

This is how the conversation always starts when I have to talk about my newest photo project:

"There's this website..."

And then someone asks who these people are. And I say, "Well, I 'know' these people... from the Internet."

Which is sort of true. I do know these people. But not as friends. They're e-acquaintances. Some more than others. And that's kind of the point of the project.

The website in question is an Internet forum I discovered years ago as an undergrad. The original incarnation of the website centered on music discussion and tape trading in the days before FTP and widespread mp3 files.

The latest incarnation of the site is more general in nature. Topics of discussion still include music, but politics, television, pop culture, video games, and food are also more prominent in the mix.

This project will consist of portraits of posters from this website. With the help of a generous stipend from Eastern Oregon's Faculty Scholars program, I will travel the country this summer photographing my fellow Internet posters. The idea is to uncover the "real" person behind the Internet persona, though anonymity still overrides each image since most viewers will have no idea at whom they're looking.

With widespread digital interaction taking place every day, from Facebook to MySpace to Twitter to Internet message boards to online education, personalities are becoming more and more niched and fictional.

In the past, my work focused on fictional personalities that I had constructed and created to seem real. Now my work shifts focus to real people and their self-made fictional personalities. And with the added barrier of the portrait - which can be as fictional as a user's Internet identity - these subjects might just take on an even larger fictional role.

Photo Everywhere

The C-41 train keeps rolling, as another roll of 120 film came out successful. An image from the dentist's office is picture at left.

Last weekend was the SPE National Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference is always a great way to catch up with friends, see some great work, experience a new city, and take in some amazing presentations by nationally notable photographers.

SPE presentations included Brian Ulrich, Kelli Connell, Abe Morell, and Bea Nettles. There are too many other people to make mention of, but a great time was assumedly had by all.

This weekend marks the beginning of my latest project. I'll be traveling to Seattle and meeting with some people for portraits. The new group of images will address public/private/online personas, as well as what it means to interact with people you've never met. This link has something to do with the project, but is really just posted here for fun.

Jobos and C-41

What happens when you throw caution to the wind and buy a Jobo CPE-2 film processor on eBay?

You force yourself to learn what it actually takes to process color film on your own. No Rite-Aid, no Allied Photo, no bumbling photo department worker that doesn't know you can run 120 film through that processor that normally develops 35mm.

This new toy and its complicated chemistry that goes bad if you look at it the wrong way for five seconds has reinvigorated my interest in shooting film. After a semi-shady Craigslist deal in Portland last week, I have everything necessary to process 12 (TWELVE!) sheets of color 4x5 film on my own. It's terrifying and exciting.

This summer I'll embark on a University-supported travel/photography adventure that will either fail miserably or succeed in somewhat mediocre fashion. Either way, I'll be running that Jobo and the 4x5 as much as I can. More later.

Determination Pants: Origins

Because there was a bit of inquiry from fellow photographer Brian Steele, and because this story hasn't been recounted nearly enough times for it to have become annoying, I feel compelled to recount the origins of "determination pants." (When you haven't made new work in a couple weeks, you've got to get something out on the Internet, don't you?)

The story begins with a pair of sweatpants and ends on the streets of downtown Detroit.

I was a sophomore in college and had just gotten back to campus after a break. It might have been winter break. It might have been spring break. It might have just been a long weekend.

While I was away from campus, I had picked up a new pair of sweatpants. One of the glories of going to college, I had been told in high school, was that you could wake up and wear sweats to your classes. I hadn't found that to be true on a widespread level, but I still needed a new pair of sweats.

They came from Champs Sports. They were grey. And they had a navy blue and yellow stripe trim down the sides.

And the first time I tried them on, they didn't fit right. There was elastic at the bottom and it didn't sit comfortably around my ankles. I didn't like it at all.

It was that moment, and in realizing I could change those sweatpants, that my life took a turn. Up to that point, I had assumed a level of trust that the manufacturers of products had made products the way they were supposed to be. That is, if something was made a certain way, it was that way because it was supposed to be that way. You don't put stickers on your laptop. You don't repaint your guitar. That sort of thing.

It was because of those sweatpants that I realized I could do something about products that weren't perfectly suited to my tastes. I could change them. But only if I really felt the conviction to do so. Because, in my mind, to customize a product by altering it took a level of determination that I previously hadn't possessed. (I had even approached the notion of changing my computer desktop wallpaper with a bit of trepidation, for crying out loud.)

So I took action with those sweatpants. I took a pair of scissors and I cut off the elastic at the bottom of each leg. They subsequently became my determination pants.

There have been lots of "determination" products since then, from hats to shorts to my car because I replaced the spark plugs myself. But nothing has eclipsed those sweats and what they meant to my life.

Story postscript: I wore those sweats for the last time on October 23, 2005 when I ran the Detroit Marathon. They were part of my warmup outfit that came off just before the race started. All clothes left behind at the start of the race are collected and donated to locals in need. The original Determination Pants were dropped at the race's starting line near Comerica Park and haven't been seen since.

In Sickness and In Health...

The drawing bug reared its head again last night. I finished this bad boy up this morning.

If you've never had conjunctivitis, and would like to know what it's like to look like a werewolf when you teach Photojournalism students about Philip Jones Griffiths, come on over and I can give it to you.

(You can have my PJG Powerpoint presentation too, if you like.)

Coming in 2011

There's new work on the horizon. Coming soon in 2011 will be my newest group of images. Titled Make Your Own Home, the work will combine photographs and fairy tale illustrations. Is that trite? Maybe so. But, at this moment in time, I don't care.

The entire thing won't create a story, per se, but characters will show up more than once across the group of images. Jack, from Jack and the Beanstalk, and Snow White, with a few dwarves, I'm sure, will make appearances.

Here's a sneak peek at what things might look like, complete with something new: white text on black. All of the imagery is courtesy film strips once again.