Shopping Carts

Here's what happens in the summer when you're working on a ridiculously extensive* basement remodel: you struggle to find time to make work.

In the face of a stagnant summer in the studio (mostly because it's full of furniture and tchotchkes belonging to the portion of the basement under remodel), I discovered that I could come up with ideas and make work in the strangest of places and at the strangest of times.

Enter the shopping cart project.

Earlier this year, our local Safeway put number stickers on all of its shopping carts. Why? Perhaps it's a way of tracking their carts in case they are stolen by pesky college students. ("Dude, let's ride this thing!") Or perhaps it's how they identify carts that wind up in the Safeway cart repair garage. ("Cart 85 needs a lube job on its front passenger wheel.")

Whatever the reason, each time I went to Safeway, I pulled out my phone and photographed the labels of the carts I was using.

There's no rhyme or reason to the motivation for this "project." For the moment it means very little. But I happened to stockpile a couple dozen images from which to draw from or find inspiration. Or maybe I'll craft the project into something larger once the basement is complete.

Either way, the challenge of creating images within a busy schedule—not to mention creating interesting images from nearly the same compositional perspective in every shot—was a welcome, if temporary, replacement to the challenges encountered when rewiring, hanging drywall, or installing an egress window.

* By "ridiculously extensive," I mean it's a lot of work because you're going the cheap route and doing it all yourself. For the pros, this the whole thing would've been a six-day job.

Revamp

I started out 2013 with the goal of completing a piece of work every week. Life quickly took over, and I was teaching online, chairing a department, serving on a search committee, and dealing with my school's budget issues.

But I've had some artistic success this year despite the busy life. In April, I was lucky enough to show in curator TJ Norris' Off the Plain exhibition in Portland. Following that was a solo installation in the Portland Building downtownin August. And in September I received word that my work will be featured in an exhibition in Estonia next summer.

I'm in the process of updating my website, putting process images up on my new artist page on Facebook, and polishing up a new—in-progress—body of work for exhibition opportunities.

Stay tuned.

Saying Goodbye to John Hubbard

I had an idea for a project way back in 2007. I was approaching my final year of the MFA program at Kendall College of Art and Design, and I had an idea that was going to require effort beyond anything I had ever applied to a photography project.

I was going to fake images of a presidential campaign. Make it fit within the context of the real campaign, and try to make the whole thing look as real as possible.

I began with fake names, fake political parties, fictional stories about these characters who, as third party candidates, stood no chance at winning anything other than a few fringe supporters.

The first person I contacted was Gary Morrison. I found him through the networking settings on MySpace (area: theater, location: Grand Rapids, age: 50+) and emailed him about the project. We exchanged numbers, and it took one phone call for him to say, "I'm interested. I'll do it." At our first meeting, where I posed him in front of an American flag, I asked him why he was willing to help me out. "You've got an interesting project, and it sounds like you need someone to commit to it."

That's the kind of guy I discovered Gary was. He was dedicated. He became John Hubbard throughout 2008, meeting folks, handing out buttons, doing photo shoots, and giving speeches. Gary became a quasi-celebrity during that time in Grand Rapids, recognizable due to his physique (he was a world-record-holding bodybuilder at 65), high-ish pitched New Hampshire accent, and his proclivity to play darts with his wife at Founders on a regular basis.

After I moved to Oregon, Hubbard, of course, lived on in the work from Nobody Wins. I reconnected with Gary in early 2012 after the three year anniversary of the exhibition. Later that year, I found out Gary had cancer and I wrote to wish him the best. He wrote back, saying that it looked like I had staked out a good path in life. He had recently lost a friend who also had an MFA in photography. "It is a reminder to me," Gary wrote, "that for the most part we are in charge of our own destinies. Stay in charge." 

Gary lost his battle with lung cancer on Monday. He is part of the reason I am where I am, doing what I love to do. His dedication to my project helped me see it through to the end, and Gary was as determined with my work as he was with his own. 

Unlike John Hubbard, Gary was — and still is — very real to me when I look at his images and think about the time we spent together. He came to my going away party in Grand Rapids before I moved far away. He kept in touch. He continued to relish the thought that he had run for president, and when a friend asked him for one of his Hubbard lawn signs, he refused to give it up, keeping it at his home because "I consider it a national treasure."

The real treasure, for me, was being able to work with a guy like Gary. And everyone who got to know him through the Hubbard campaign will agree with me when I say he'll be dearly missed. 

SPE Northwest - Eugene, OR

For me, November means dropping everything for a weekend and heading to the Northwest Region of the Society for Photographic Education's annual conference. The various regions in the country hold annual conferences for artists, theorists, educators, and students to present their work and ideas, and there are opportunities to have portfolios reviewed, rub shoulders with the heavy hitters in photography, that sort of thing.

This year, the University of Oregon hosted the conference down in Eugene. Though the trip was a long one, it was well worth it. I presented the images and theories behind the UFCK photo project—which, after discussions with and encouragement from colleagues, I've decided to press on and continue—and the work was met with many positive questions and responses. It was a good feeling, especially in the face of the head cold I was getting over. 

This year's lineup of presenters and panels was the most solid since I started attending SPENW when I moved to Oregon in 2009. Amjad Faur addressed the current state of contemporary Arab photography, and Justyna Badach showcased her Bachelor Portraits series—and what stood out most to me was her process similar to the way in which I worked for the UFCK photos. Ted Hiebert spoke about the psychic photography of Ted Serios, and Hiebert works with his beginning photography students in psychic experimentation in order to address the tension between information and imagination within the medium. 

Southern Oregon University's Erik Palmer (follow him on Twitter! He commands it!) concentrated an entire talk on social networking and social media, and how these new avenues of connecting allow a photographer to reach a large audience much more easily in the past. He stressed that this is an important paradigm shift in how we teach students, and he also might have mentioned that everything we're doing now is probably not ideal, and we should completely overhaul how we teach photography curriculum. 

Mary Goodwin's presentation about Minor White was hilarious, frightening, and uplifting. If I could get just one student to stare at a photograph for a half hour before responding to it, it'd be an accomplishment no matter what the student said. And that's without incorporating anything having to to with Zen Buddhism. 

Other exceptional presentations included, but certainly weren't limited to: Lucas Foglia, "plain communities," and the "Frontcountry"; Allie Mount and her long-distance collaboration with Irish photographer Gary O'Neill; Christine Garceau and the Kodak Girl; and U of O grad student Ian Clark, who showcased five short films from up-and-coming filmmakers. The whole thing was capped by a quirky and moving presentation by Honored Educator Dan Powell, who overwhelmed me with his poignancy and poetic explanations of his photography and the slippage therein. 

The U of O campus was really a sight to see, even in the light rain that fell almost the entire trip. Eugene is kind of a strange little town—as little as a city of 150,000 can be, I suppose—but full of fantastic food and drink. The conference was held together by its volunteers, its presenters, and the U of O itself. Here's hoping that future conferences are as put-together as this one was, because it was certainly a great experience. 

Now go and vote or something, nerds. 

Deadline Extended: "Sick and Tired"

In 2007 or 2008, I became a teacher. I had accumulated enough experience through graduate school for them to trust me with a class of my own. I don't remember if I did a decent job or not with that Beginning Photography class, but I do know one thing about teaching that class:

If I set a deadline for students to meet with particular assignments, I stuck to it.

I had been through undergrad and had experienced professors who would extend deadlines for assignments all of the time. In the world of college, I was always under the impression that I was being prepped for "the real world," a world with deadlines, stress, and consequences. When a teacher took liberties with changing the deadlines for assignments (sometimes on the days when assignments were due), it left the students who had completed things on time with a strange taste in their mouth. There was a collective air of "dude, what gives?" in the classroom.

Because of that, I work through complications with students and never change deadlines the day assignments are due.

I bring all of this up because the same thing is happening in "the real world" now. If I were an accountant or lawyer, this would probably be different. But in the world of art and art exhibitions, it seems that extended deadlines are now par for the course.

The most recent deadline change I've experienced is that for Critical Mass 2012. Photolucida's annual juried competition is one of the biggest networking opportunities for exhibiting photographers.

And this year, I feel like I finally have the chops—and the courage—to enter. The past week was a flurry of Photoshop and scanning, of the spot healing brush and image resizing. I finished up my portfolio of ten images (now visible for the first time on my website. Don't be fooled; these are new versions of familiar photographs) and submitted. The deadline for the competition was noon today.

Twenty minutes after I submitted my work, I saw on Facebook that the deadline for Critical Mass had been extended.

It got me thinking. After a quick search of my photo email inbox, I found that since December of last year, I still had emails about extended deadlines from fourteen different competitions. Many of them are repeats from the same organizations. There are probably many others that I never hear about because I am not on particular mailing lists. The exhibitions and competitions with extended deadlines are listed at the end of this blog.

An extended deadline for an exhibition tells me two things:

1. "We haven't received enough entries for this exhibition, so please tell your friends to submit."
2. "Your work was received prior to the original deadline, and it's not good enough to be shown in our gallery."

While #2 is a big stretch in both logic and imagination, and is obviously not true, item #1 is almost a logistical slam dunk 100% of the time. Most arts organizations struggle to make ends meet, and they charge entry fees in order to recoup their costs. (Critical Mass actually has a section on their FAQ page that outlines where the entry fees go towards their overhead and other expenses.)

Submitting work to shows and being rejected shouldn't be taken personally. I'm getting more and more used to it every week. (A rejection letter came to my house today, actually.) Deadline extensions, however, feel like more of a slap in the face because it makes you call the work you put into submitting work on time into question. When you're given more time, you second guess yourself. At least I do.

It doesn't matter to me if a deadline to a show is extended and I'm rejected from the show. It's happened before. Or even if I get in. That's happened to me too, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that, like the professor who changes deadlines in the middle of a semester, making people work on something for a specific date only to extend it at the last minute is an insult to artists everywhere.

Pick a date and stick to it. If it doesn't work out this time, then set your new (extended) deadline accordingly when the call for entries goes up next year.

And to the artists who aren't submitting their work to these shows on time: get a move on. Or get a planner or something. This isn't undergrad.

*************

Onward Compe 2012 - December 2011
Midwest Center for Photography Juried Exhibition - December 2011
SPE Member Show at RayKo Gallery - December 2011
LACDA International Juried Competition - March 2012
Manifest Gallery INPHA 1 - April 2012
PDN Great Outdoors Contest - April 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Grow" exhibition - April 2012
PDN Faces Contest - May 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Vacate" exhibition - June 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Midwest Photo Emerge" - June 2012
LACDA Juried Competition - June 2012
PDN "The Look" competition - June 2012
Manifest Gallery Recent Paintings - July 2012
Critical Mass 2012 - July 2012

Steph - 8/25/11

"Don't make fun of my email address. I will be around August because where the shit else will I be."


Thus began my communication with Steph, ufck.org's resident sassypants and alpha female, one of only two women I would photograph during my east coast trip in August of 2011.


Even though ufck.org is usually a non-visual place–as in, many people who regularly participate never post photos of themselves–Steph is an exception for one distinct reason: her tattoos. In early 2011 (or late 2010), she had the face of John Goodman tattooed on her right leg. In the run-up to the project, a Michigan tattoo place ran a contest on Facebook to select a winner for $500 towards their next tattoo. Steph's entry was for another tattoo of her next-most adored celebrity: Sam Watterson, or District Attorney Jack McCoy, from NBC's Law and Order, from whom she happens to have named one of her dogs.


"[G]enerally it works best to have someone come in the backyard so I can let [the dogs] out one by one to meet and so I can tell you what to expect from each one of them. They are all cruelty cases, and three of them don't really need the intro, but one of my girls needs  a minute to warm up and my Dachshund cannot be touched. No one is dangerous, they will not bite, but my Dachshund will probably yap the entire time. I know this sounds neurotic, but such is my life."


Thus was my introduction to Steph and her dogs. I arrived with my photo gear, we shook hands, and then she led me to her backyard and proceeded to let each dog out one at a time in order to get accustomed to me. There were six, including the aforementioned Dachshund–who mysteriously didn't have a problem with me–and a much larger dog who was still a young pup and chewed on the legs of my tripod during the entire shoot. 


In my notes for this photo project, I have nothing written down from my visit with Steph. I don't remember what we talked about, except that in talking about the message board itself, she revealed to me on the boards there is a secret section that is only for women. Steph was watching "a murder show" and drinking a Coke. The dogs wandered around during the shoot, and various ones appear in different proofs and final films.  


Steph is a force in the Michigan thread, though she's only met a few people from ufck.org. She insists that she regularly invites people to hang out, but they always bail. Of all the people I met on the trip, she was the subject most similar to their online personality, most notably because of her lack of tact when it comes to addressing anything, whether it's hairstyles, Jersey Shore, dogs, tattoos, or the melange of characters in the Michigan thread. 


When I emailed her to tell her my schedule was more open than I originally intended, because several of the other Michigan folks had busy schedules or just backed out, she bluntly replied:


"Every one in Michigan is a dick except me."

Aram - 8/23/11

The Continuing Saga of the UFCK Photo Project: the Aram

With four or five or six photo shoots under my belt, the summer months of 2011 were a frenzy of logistical emails and postings. In the beginning of the year, when the project funding was announced, I made plans to travel during the early summer, around the fourth of July.

Then, I bought a house. It was a good step towards normal, adult, decorum, but that ordeal set me back several weeks, and before I knew it, the end of August, Labor Day, and the beginning of my academic year were all staring me in the face and I had to get on the road for the project.

More emails. More planning. More spreadsheets. I used maps and the Internet to try to figure out the best routes to take. I would be shipping my equipment to my parents' house in Michigan, fly out of Boise, pick up and go. By mid-August, I had a crude plan in place to follow a big loop from Michigan through Chicago, down to Tennessee, back up through the DC area to New York before heading home through Philadelphia.

Sorting through the schedules of almost two dozen people was one thing. Stepping off a plane and meeting someone you'd never met before was another. The first person on my list of subjects, and the main focus of the entire project from its inception, was Aram.

Let me tell you a little bit about Aram.

He's a character. A relatively normal character, but a character nonetheless. On ufck.org he is easily the the site's most recognizable members, both because of his appearance and his personality. His loves include the Beatles, vinyl records, the University of Michigan (and especially its Marching Band), Michigan beer, soul music, playing on a vintage baseball team, his Armenian heritage, and his academic studies, among others.

For whatever reason–most likely because Aram has been around ufck.org since its inception and the inception of its predecessors, which has resulted in a more extensive reputation than someone just joining the boards–Aram gets picked on. A lot. Oftentimes, it's in good fun, and he takes it in jest. It's schoolyard teasing among friends. Sometimes, though, it's, well, rougher than that. He's opinionated, sure, but his opinions resonate across this online community oftentimes like wildfire. He's different, and I knew that before I even met him in person. He's emotional, which rarely serves one well in an online forum as sarcastic and caustic as ufck.org can be. But his specific emotions somehow help him stay afloat and keep a level head through all of the derision and nitpicking.

His penchant for oddball comments, photogenic tendencies–which lend themselves quite well to an almost innumerable catalog of animated .gif images–and general demeanor and reputation as this sort of online forum celebrity were what initiated this project in the first place. In my eyes, he was this walking, living, breathing meme, and I had to investigate what it was that made Aram the Aram.

Because I had shipped my photographic equipment to my parents' house, it put the camera out of reach when I landed at Detroit Metro Airport. So I split my photo shoot with Aram into two parts: the first would be a sit-down visit where we talked about anything and everything pertaining to the message board. Then I would return the following day for the photo shoot once I had my gear with me.

This means that I spent the better part of a day traveling from Oregon to Detroit, picked up my luggage and my rental car, and was driving to a stranger's house to sit and chat about who-knows-what. For the first time in my photographic life, I was nervous, and it had nothing to do with standing in front of a classroom of strangers.

I had a notebook, a tape recorder, and a water bottle. No plan, no questions, no getaway plan if Aram turned homicidal and started throwing vintage 45's at me.

Aram answered the door in a Fat Possum Records t-shirt. If that doesn't say anything about what kind of guy Aram is, then this blog post–and maybe the entire photo project–is a giant waste of time.º

My conversation with Aram, and the photo shoot the next day, went almost too well to describe. He was jovial and welcoming and more than willing to talk. He had a hard time believing his life–or online life–was somehow worthy of interest from an artist, let alone photographic documentation. We met for over an hour and a half that first day, and I learned about Aram's fascination with the city of Detroit, how he managed to survive a year-long grad school program in Chicago (and what he was actually studying), and what he was doing back home in his parents' basement.

The following day we continued the conversation while shooting and over lunch. Aram recounted, as best he could remember, his hilarious and eventful night at his first State Champion concert, why he wanted to take a trip to Israel, and what the deal is with his giant beard.

It turns out that Aram is a normal guy like he insists all the time online. The difference between him and many of the other people who post at ufck.org is that he rarely holds back. He's truthful to his ideals in a way that sets off a lot of people. Hence, the poking fun, the comments.

Aram is probably the person that is most comfortable being himself when he's online. And it's strange, since this whole project started with him and how we're all different–we have to be, right?–online compared to our real lives. For Aram, there isn't really a line between those two worlds for him. He's a bit younger, he's been posting online since he was in high school. (I, for instance,  didn't discover the world of online message boards until I was a junior in college.)

While the story about Aram and our visit could go on and on (and will; see the footnote below), the fact that it was my first stop on a long photographic journey was, in retrospect, one of the best things about the entire project. Everyone who agreed to be photographed was more than cordial and welcoming, sure, but there was something about Aram's demeanorª–and the fact of knowing there are people like him out there–that makes me realize that this project has merit, whether or not the in-depth stories of the characters involved ever get told.

º Aram is by no means an indie music expert, but the fact that he was wearing a Fat Possum Records shirt–celebrating the small record label operating out of Water Valley (Oxford), Mississippi says loads about his personality.

ª He would be the first to comment: tl;dr

Photos from Long Ago

In October of 2011, the Art Center at the Old Library hosted its annual Grande Ronde Artists’ Studio Tour. I found myself in a “booth” at the Art Center itself with fellow artists Susan Murrell and Jaime Gustavson. The crowds were light and I wandered around the Art Center–an old Carnegie Foundation library–with my 4x5 camera and a couple of packages of Fuji Instant film.


I had sort of forgotten about the images until I opened a drawer in the desk and there they were. I had never gotten around to scanning them, so I thought I'd put them on a secret webpage for people to see. You can access that page by clicking here.

One Week In (And a Day Late)

With the new year, I've decided to add some regulation to my ever-increasing daily life.

After one week of cavalier behavior, and with the end of vacation, I've devised the following schedule that I hope to stick with as much as possible. The new schedule should increase my productivity as both an educator and artist as much of the regulation involves making stuff or getting stuff in order. Below is the schedule I've concocted, no doubt subject to change.

Saturdays - Blog posting. So consider this yesterday's blog post.*
Sundays - Art making. That basement studio gets lonely most of the time. (This also parallels with my book-a-day project from a few years ago.)
Mondays - Music. Haven't opened the guitar case in ages. (Halloween, to be exact.)
Tuesdays - School. All day. Prep work, meetings, paperwork, you name it.
Wednesdays - Catch-up day; whatever I've missed or let slip the previous days gets made up here.
Thursdays - A free day to relax
Fridays - Cleaning. Studio, house, office, classrooms, cars, laundry, self, etc.

I've also been using Twitter much more. And I'm always hoping more people I know will join the conversation. It's a great way to catch artist calls that pass by CAA, Facebook, and the other usual outlets. Twitter name is meisenhower.

* What a stupid blog post to start the year. Seriously. Please email your complaints to me instead of posting public comments here. 

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.)

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.

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.

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.)