I'll tell you a secret. I don't like going out to take photographs. I make myself. It is very difficult and exhausting. I have a photo/camera fetish, sure, like a lot of other people. You can go to the camera store and see people drooling over cameras. There is something alluring about them, something sensual. A camera is a beautiful machine. And there is a new one that I want. All night I longed for it. I have to have it. That is how it is.
But using a camera is another thing. Like everything else, the more you do it, the better you are at it. We do best what we do most. But it doesn't get easier. The summer I did my surfer series (link), every shoot wore me out. I would drive to the beach two or three days a week with my Holga and some film, and all the way there, I thought, "No, I can't do this today." And when I got there, I was sick with anxiety and dread. I would take my camera in hand and begin to walk still thinking, "I can't do this." Then I would tell myself I would just take the day off and lie on the beach. And then. . . .
The street photography is like that. I think that other people are not as noticeable as I. Yesterday, I forced myself to walk from one end of the Boulevard to the other and back. I will do that in the larger city again today.
But I don't look forward to it.
And still I want the camera. It is a Leica Q. I don't need it, maybe. But I want it. I took the photos you see here yesterday with the Ricoh GRii. It is a great camera, one you can slip into a pocket. The Leica Q is like the Ricoh on steroids, though. It is larger, but cooler. It is does the same thing but with a much better lens and a full frame sensor. They both have attached 28mm lenses. The camera and lens are one. And the Leica Q costs about seven times as much. Where will I get the money? Oh, there is that.
I am going to rent a Leica Q for a week before I decide. I want to make absolutely certain that I want it. If so, I have some things that I can sell.
This is how desire works. It is not rational. It is a thing of the heart. The head hasn't a chance. I've thought of all the reasons NOT to buy it. They are good reasons. The best reasons. And if I buy it, I will have to make myself take pictures every day. That is, I must experience the anxiety and the dread daily to make the purchase worthwhile.
For you see, I don't really like going out to take photographs. It is a difficult thing to do and almost always ends in failure. I know it is not very smart. But it isn't a thing of the head; it is a thing of the heart, and the heart often wants what is bad for us. Right? I should listen to my head. Yup.
But I wouldn't bet on it.
ReplyDeleteI really like the first photo. It says so much and yet - absolutely nothing
except a perfect capture of those girls at that very instant in time. Nice job. :)
Things have been - not so good here. Business has been SO_Slow. Slow enough that I have had to take a part time factory job. It's been okay though - being out in a different world - one in which I am simply a worker and do not have to think too much - just do what they tell me to do and shake my head yes.
They've sent me around Massachusetts to do some end of year factory things. I've had my own hotel room and a daily allotment of money for meals. Alcohol must be on my own and on a completely separate tab. It's ok. I've not been drinking very much.
I don't know what I want to do anymore. The thought of gearing up my own business again feels exhausting. But the absolute "no room for creativity" at the factory is stifling - yet it's lovely to punch out for the day, go to my hotel room and fall asleep in the middle of the day for hours on end not having to get up till the dinner engagements.
It's as difficult time of year to live dangling out in the ocean in the North east - mostly gray and cold. Tho the sun is out today and I went into the woods with the dogs. One of them even went for a swim - crazy thing.
Anyway. I've been my normal late winter depressed. And soon they'll fuck with our clocks.
I was going to leave you some Li Po. But instead I leave this - which just struck me today.
Magnificat
by Eleanor Wilner
When he had suckled there, he began
to grow: first, he was an infant in her arms,
but soon, drinking and drinking at the sweet
milk she could not keep from filling her,
from pouring into his ravenous mouth,
and filling again, miraculous pitcher, mercy
feeding its own extinction . . . soon he was
huge, towering above her, the landscape,
his shadow stealing the color from the fields,
even the flowers going gray. And they came
like ants, one behind the next, to worship
him—huge as he was, and hungry; it was
his hunger they admired most of all.
So they brought him slaughtered beasts:
goats, oxen, bulls, and finally, their own
kin whose hunger was a kind of shame
to them, a shrinkage; even as his was
beautiful to them, magnified, magnificent.
The day came when they had nothing left
to offer him, having denuded themselves
of all in order to enlarge him, in whose
shadow they dreamed of light: and that
is when the thought began to move, small
at first, a whisper, then a buzz, and finally,
it broke out into words, so loud they thought
it must be prophecy: they would kill him,
and all they had lost in his name would return,
renewed and fresh with the dew of morning.
Hope fed their rage, sharpened their weapons.
And who is she, hooded figure, mourner now
at the fate of what she fed? And the slow rain,
which never ends, who is the father of that?
And who are we who speak, as if the world
were our diorama—its little figures moved
by hidden gears, precious in miniature, tin soldiers,
spears the size of pins, perfect replicas, history
under glass, dusty, old fashioned, a curiosity
that no one any longer wants to see,
excited as they are by the new giant, who feeds
on air, grows daily on radio waves, in cyberspace,
who sows darkness like a desert storm,
who blows like a wind through the Boardrooms,
who touches the hills, and they smoke.
About the photo--yes, of course. It is a little glimpse into something very normal but so absolutely taboo. It is the sort of picture I should be taking all the time. It says everything about the nothing that we make so scary. They are terrifying, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI am living in light. I can't imagine living in the cold darkness now. The light is like fire and the land is verdant. It won't last, though. It will give way to heat and humidity. There will be storms. And you will be living in light.
That's a long poem. Who writes such long things? :)