Impatience.

It must be that I am an impatient person. I've gotten up early to sit at the computer and let caffeine soak in before I have to get on with my day. I schedule in this time to do nothing, and yet, when I surf across the American Book Review's 100 best first lines of novels, I think most of them lack a certain quality I need to stay interested. I'll call that quality "non-suckiness."

There are three first lines I agree with:

44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

53. It was a pleasure to burn. - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

80. Justice? - You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. - William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

The rest are crap.

The American Book Review must not read a lot of books, because even I, in my purely escapist, literature-hating ways, have read books with the following first lines, which are steeped in non-suckiness:

"The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years--if it ever did end--began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain." - Stephen King, It, 1985

"'Who is John Galt?'" - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1955

"Once upon a time when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith." - Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." - Stephen King, The Gunslinger (Can't remember the date because I haven't owned a copy of the book since I was sixteen. But I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I read that first line.)

It's my firm belief that non-suckiness is actually a result of impatience. So I ask you to hang on a little while longer. The SAD Project is coming back. Other things are on their way. And the more impatient you are, they less they will suck when they get here.

"Sandy . . .

. . . the fireworks are hailin' over Little Eden tonight,
forcing a light into all those stoned-out faces
left stranded on this Fourth of July."

--Bruce Springsteen, "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," accompanied on the accordion by the late, great "Phantom" Danny Federici

Every now and then

you see a photo and immediately smack yourself in the forehead because you didn't think of it first. Damn it.

Photos from Asheville's Tea Party, 4July09

Citizen-Times story here.






















(Stitched panorama to estimate crowd size; click for larger version.)

AshevilleHDR: New Work at the Asheville Airport!

My third exhibit in a month opens Friday afternoon at the Asheville Regional Airport. In a move sure to draw the ire of anonymous blog commentators everywhere, I'm hanging another seven images from the AshevilleHDR series, just in case you missed it at Phil Mechanic Studios.

You can see the images here, and the controversy over the work's legitimacy here.

See you Friday!

To See A Darkness finally opens!

To See A Darkness is now open, and will remain on display through August 1. Thanks to everyone who came out Friday night; the gallery was packed for three solid hours! Here are some photos . . .

Mixed media artist Ginger Huebner:



Ceramicist Cynthia Lee:



Shameless womanizer Mr. Pink (stay away from my lady):



My smoking hot and incredibly patient wife:



And Cpt. Destructo, who was moved to tears by my poignant photos:



Everyone seemed very impressed with my name on the front window, as if unaware of how famous I am. Maybe they were just being coy.



If you missed it, I posted the artist's statement, lots of back story, and a bunch of notes about the show's production. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday 12 p.m. to 5 p.m., so go check it out if you missed the opening!

To See a Darkness opens tonight!

It's tradition that I procrastinate and leave the writing of an artist's statement until the very last minute. Usually, this is at about 3 a.m. the morning before the show. I outdid myself this time; the show opens in about eight hours, and I've just finished figuring out what this work is about.

So I'm posting the statement. But first, let me tell you about these photos.

---

I grew up until age ten in upstate South Carolina. A mile from our house was a place where the granite bedrock broke through the topsoil in a great, flat expanse. Sledges of this granite were dragged from this place to build the church my father served, which sat across the highway from our house, and in whose churchyard a family of barred owls made their screeching calls at twilight.

As a nine-year-old, I went to this place accompanied by my neighbor and best friend, also nine. We were not exactly forbidden to explore Flatrock, but we never exactly asked permission, either. We walked down a dirt road, past a barn exploding with pent-up summer heat, down a steep incline, past an abandoned, flooded quarry. And there in a clearing was a vast field of stone surrounded on all sides by dense forest and scattered with rusted debris people had dumped there for generations.

As you can imagine, a nine-year-old could find nothing more interesting than that place; an anomaly of nature, isolated, dangerous, unguarded, and bearing irrefutable evidence that at one time people had been there. And then left.

As an adult, I took my wife back to Flatrock. It was almost exactly the same. If anything, it was even more haunting, as I gave much more credence to the rusted piles of metal, the snakes, and the quarry than I ever had as a kid.

On a patch of lichen midway through the granite field, my wife found a jawbone. It was laying by itself, with no other bones or signs of detritus, as if placed there. I took two pictures: One of her bending down to examine it, and another of the jawbone itself.

I was working as a newspaper reporter at the time. The film was developed at a drugstore with that week's news, the prints were fumbled through at a stoplight on the way home, and the negative sat in a shoebox for nine years until I found it this winter while working on the SAD Project.

---

In the spring of 2008 I was teaching photography at a high school in Haywood County. I hated the job, but loved the students. I felt, every minute I was there, that my students and I labored under the weight of those Ayn Rand calls "second-handers." Teaching wards of the state that art is an expression of their own will is bound to make every second a fight. And it was.

On a balmy morning I drove to work only to find that classes had been delayed two hours because of "snow." I had nothing to do. I picked a road and followed it. That's how I found the giant billboard that reads "Jesus Christ is Lord of Haywood County."

People see that photo as a document of the provincial, fundamental character in rural Appalachia. I saw it with gratitude. I cannot think of a more compelling way of refuting second-handers than declaring exactly where your allegiance lies.

---

On the night of a total lunar eclipse, I got up at four in the morning and drove to an overpass on I-26. I wanted a shot of the moon over the interstate, to send to the newspaper. The caption would be something cheesy like, "Early morning commuters travel under a lunar eclipse."

After I'd gotten the shot, I saw that a spider had built a web in the guardrail of the overpass. It was silhouetted by the tungsten lights and taillights of eastbound traffic, eclipsing the interstate's glow.

---

My friends and I lit a fire in the woods. We spent the evening fueling it with lighter fluid and jumping over the flames. I perched my K1000 on a tripod and left the shutter open for most of the night.

After they had gone, I was still wide awake. I made a torch from a tree branch and a sock, and photographed myself spinning it before I put the fire out for the night.

---

SMAN and I went to photograph the Baker's Creek Dam. As often happens when we are together, small plans turn into grand schemes. What began as a climb down the bank to see the entire structure ended with wading across the river and a barefoot climb into the dam's powerhouse. It was not our safest or smartest moment.

Far more athletic than I am, SMAN made it to the top first. But he waited for me, and I went in, set up the tripod, and photographed him coming through the doorway.

---

I was in college, and literally two thirds of my colleagues were photographing women in some stage of undress. I had little interest in studio nudes, but plenty of interest in making good photographs, and I wondered what I was missing by not following in the footsteps of Weston, or Adams, or the other godfathers who shot nudes when they weren't doing "serious" work.

One day I found myself eating lunch with Rex. It was a Monday. I remember that, because I had Ceramics classes on Monday, and I had already missed two classes. But Rex had just moved into a new house, and it was mostly empty.

I photographed her with a 28mm lens and HP5 pushed to 800 . . . meaning I basically opened the textbook to "nude portraiture" and broke every rule.

I made a C in Ceramics, and an A in Photography.

---

On a river I can't name, there is a place I can't tell you about, where I took a photograph I won't identify here. In itself, the photo gives nothing away, but I will err on the side of secrecy. I am bound by a promise I made to someone who probably doesn't remember it on a day I will never forget.

---

Bonnie Miller's story is here. It is wrong to say that I took a photo of a young girl's grave. I was given that photo, by virtue of the fact that I am alive. She is not.

---

My wife stood on the beach with the wind in her hair. It was October.







To See A Darkness: Artist's Statement

I’ve been a serious photographer for ten years. In that time, I’ve come to believe in certain things: There are absolutes, but between them is a vast darkness, pierced only by the most determined of wills. For the past decade, my work has sought to present evidence of that rare illumination.

Evidence requires a witness, and the photographs here are portraits of witnesses, images of people and creatures that exist—or have existed—in a dark topography.

With one exception, the photos here were accidents; after-thoughts, digressions, images captured on the way to a weightier destination. They are disjointed, spanning several years and photographic formats, and they are set apart from their contexts. Among all the days we live, sometimes we find moments that need no context.

The exception is the grave of Bonnie Miller, which I photographed with a determined purpose. She is buried on a mountain near the Nolichucky River, five miles from the nearest road, in the abandoned town of Lost Cove. It took great determination for me to make this photo, and an even greater one for a sixteen-year-old girl to live and die apart from the rest of the world, as isolated as Noah on his ark.

Inscribed beneath the dates of Bonnie Miller’s life is a verse from Matthew: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.” Like a spider building its web over an interstate, or a disciple painting a billboard, Bonnie Miller’s will was strong. It lit the purpose of her own short life, casting her light into the darkest of worlds. That light is now gone; I can only present evidence that it was once there.

But ten years of photography have taught me that Matthew is right: The things we see in life are gifts directly offered, and—if we do our part—directly illuminated by the strongest of wills.