Photos--$1!

I made a poster for my photo booth.  I'll print it on canvas and hang it outside my tent.  I'll surprise clients by giving them a dollar.  Then I'll give them the release form to sign.  I don't really need a release form unless I intended to sell the photo to a company that would use it to promote something.  To simply use it in a book or in a gallery show, though, I wouldn't.  

So maybe I wouldn't have them sign anything at all. 

But, you know. . . Safety First.

"What tent?  What?  What are you talking about?"

Have you been paying attention?  I want to set up a booth at pop up hipster venues and farmer's markets to make portraits in the manner of Mike Disfarmer.  

Don't you think that is a capital idea?  

"Why?  What's the point?  You want to spend your time and money taking photos of people you don't know?  I don't get it."

I know.  I understand it less and less myself.  When I say it out loud, it seems weird.  And when you say it, I lose the ambition to do it at all.  What's the point, indeed.  But have you ever looked at those Disfarmer photos?  Or August Sander's?  Sander's work is incredible, and that's just what remains.  The Nazis destroyed the majority of his work in 1936.  About 1,000 of his glass plate remain.  Can you imagine the rest?  

"Never heard of them."

Yea.  But you might be right.  It's a lot of effort.  Buy a tent, hall it around, set it up, bring out the big cameras, lights, etc, then after a few hours, break it all down and pack it up.  I don't even know if I am physically capable any longer.  It is something a younger person should do.  Maybe I'll just stay home, go to lunch. . . whatever.  

Yesterday I began scanning the film I developed on Sunday.  I am pleased with the test shots I made with the Hasselblad.  I think that maybe I could fall in love with it--for awhile.  It seems I can handhold the camera with the big ass telephoto lens steady enough.  I need to test it on a person now, and I need to cook up the images in Photoshop to see what I can do.  But that won't be happening today, I think. T is going to be in town, and we are going to lunch after the gym.  The cleaning crew comes in the early afternoon, and I have to take my mother to a 4:30 dental appointment.  And I think I caught what my mother had after partying with the church people. I'm feeling pretty lousy. 

Life in the fast lane. 

I wouldn't want to do those tent photos here in my own hometown.  I'd know too many people and feel too odd.  I'd have to go to Gotham or beyond.  It might be interesting to go to a small town market somewhere, but it could be dull as well.  I'd have to try it to see. 

I've still not eaten any sweet or sugary or processed snacks, but I think I'm falling back into that black hole.  I was happy for a minute.  Happy-ish.  But something feels broken inside.  I think I need a break desperately.  I need to go somewhere.  I just don't have a clue about how to manage that.  I honestly don't think I can go on like this much longer.  Hard times make hard people they say.  Sad times make sad people.  Desperate times make desperate people.  I've lost my sense of humor and my joy.  It is getting harder to write anything these mornings now.  I struggle to find something.  When I first started writing, my life seemed to take on a narrative form.  I couldn't wait to see the next chapter.  Now I'm living on Becket's stage. 

But it's possibly only some illness I've picked up from mother's church friends.  It is probably something going around.  As the older waiter in "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," says in the story's last line, "Many must have it."