SAD120: Fight For Your Right, Part I

SAD120 :: Pentax K1000 :: Pentax SMC 28mm/f2.8 :: HP5 pushed to 1600 :: Spring, 2005

Did I say "tomororow's post?" Because I meant Friday's post.

I had friends in low places and a hundred foot roll of HP5 to finish by the semester's end. I also had the firm belief, adapted from photojournalism, that the only thing worse than drunks is undocumented drunks.





I will never forget Chianti Will watching this photo turn up in the wash. "Dude," he said. "His hand. It's, like, on her ass!"

"Yeah, I know, Will. That's why I took the photo."

"Oh. Cause I thought he just had his hand on her ass."

"He does."

"Awesome."

I took it as a very high compliment.

SAD119

SAD119 :: Pentax K1000 :: Pentax SMC 28mm/f2.8 :: Delta 100 :: March, 2005

As part of Photo Eye II, Larry kept pushing me to experiment with slower film. Or even (gasp!) medium format. I wanted nothing to do with either. I liked the grain. My photos weren't meant to be pretty. Can you imagine that coptic cross by the railroad taken on slow film with a 4x5? Sure. It would look just like everyone else's night photography.

These photos were shot on the UNCA campus because I wanted to put as little effort as possible into shooting a few rolls of Delta 100. I printed them for the final, and one from this series now hangs in the chancellor's office.





I ended up liking Delta 100 quite a lot, though I found it nearly useless for night work. It's great for new, shiny buildings like those on a college campus, but look at the orbs of fine-grained mud around the streetlights here:



Not what I was looking for, but Larry was right that I should use my independent study to try as many options as I could. So I went the other direction. Instead of slow film and fine architecture, I pushed HP5 to 1600 and took pictures of hot girls kissing each other . . .






. . . and you'll see them in tomorrow's post.

SAD118

SAD118 :: Pentax K1000 :: Zenitar 16mm/f2.8 :: HP5 :: March, 2005

As soon as it got dark, we hit the woods.







The morning after:

DarkTopo Goes Prime Time

This going to come as a surprise to everyone, and many of you will say I sold out. You'll have to say it real loud, cause I'll be drinking margaritas on my yacht, and those big engines make a lot of noise.

A few months ago, I got a very nice email about how well put-together the blog is. The writer was particularly impressed with the cohesiveness of the story, and how it basically reads like a novel, with interlocking story-lines, well-rounded supporting characters, and intriguing sub-plots. He suggested I ought to write a memoir, so that when I "make it," I can get a book deal.

Since then, I have been secretly marketing the DarkTopo concept, complete with character abstracts and plot summations, to various media outlets. I had some astounding success, more so than I'd ever had marketing the photos themselves. Opportunity hides in the oddest places.

So, even though some of the details are still fuzzy, the contracts are signed, and I'm very excited to announce the arrival of a new procedural drama on the FOX Network:

SAD117

SAD117 :: Pentax K1000 :: Zenitar 16mm/f2.8 :: HP5 :: Spring, 2005

And then, along came a fisheye. I called Shane. Here he is, as we waited for the sun to go down.

SAD116: A Protest

SAD114 :: Nikon F100 :: Nikkor 28mm/f2.8 AF-D :: HP5 pushed to ISO800 :: February, 2006

My negatives are jumbled together, out of order, and poorly marked. I think this protest happened in 2006, because I was shooting with my F100, but the negatives are in the same binder as my Photo Eye II work. Whatever.

The UNCA Marxist-Leninists changed their name to the Socialist Unity League, or SUL for short. As in, "You can't spell 'sullen' without SUL." I presume they made this change to gain a little credibility, because they later changed it again to Students for a Democratic Society.

As the SUL, they were protesting the presence of National Guard recruiters at a UNCA job fair. I spoke with the organizers of the fair, and they had received no complaints, formal or informal, prior to the fair. I guess it's more fun to protest. And it's worth noting that the NC in UNCA stands for the same NC in NCNG.

Whatever. It was a protest on a college campus. Completely unremarkable, except that the SDS later ripped off my photos for their MySpace page, and I had to write them a nasty letter. They took the photos down. Again, whatever.

In a not quite so "whatever" turn of events, one of the recruiters threatened to "kick my ass" for taking his picture. I thought this was pretty funny, though I had no doubt he could kick my ass. I had attended a meeting of the UNCA M/L, during which I was given permission to photograph them as an independent photographer. I had not asked for permission, nor did I need it. And here I was photographing them, and the folks they were protesting were threatening me with bodily harm. Both sides, while claiming to fight for my rights, had changed their tune when the camera was pointed at them.

SAD115

SAD115 :: Unknown camera/lens :: Portra 160NC :: Spring, 2005

From a burned-out house in Pensacola.

SAD114: The Island, Part II

I could have waited for summer. I've been in the Toe many times in warmer months, and while it's pretty damn cold, you get used to it as soon as mild hypothermia sets in. March is a different story. I knew it was a bad idea, but I wanted to photograph the island in its barren state.

The first time I waded across the river, I almost went into shock. The water was very cold, very fast, and a lot deeper than it looked from the bank. Considering all the dangerous potentialities, I decided never to go back to the island without capable associates. Unable to find any, I took SMAN.


SAD114 :: Pentax K1000 :: Pentax SMC 28mm/f2.8 :: HP5 :: March, 2005



In all seriousness, it was pretty stupid. My waterproof boots had been lost in a bizarre accident, and SMAN never had any to begin with. Not that it mattered; I had greatly underestimated the water's depth, and instead of stepping from rock to rock in ankle-deep water, we plunged in up to our ribcages.

Luckily, we crossed the river with an entire change of clothes, and then spent the first ten minutes on the island pacing back and forth and cursing a lot.

In spite of all this, my pictures from the island weren't very good. First, they were in black and white, when there was actually a good bit of color there, even in March. Second, the light was terrible because we (understandably) went during the warmest parts of the day.

Later that spring, I somehow convinced Jes to go with me, and I got the best pictures with her, on an overcast day. Of course, they weren't actually photos of the island.

SAD113: The Island, Part I

SAD113 :: Pentax K1000 :: Pentax SMC 28mm/f2.8 :: HP5 :: March, 2005

There is an island in the Toe River. It's about a mile long, a stretch of wilderness surrounded by water, flanked by Hwy 197 and the Clinchfield line.

For the final crit in the Photographic Eye, I had wanted to present a comprehensive body of work capturing Yancey County. Five years later, this goal remains unaccomplished. So I was pretty frustrated, standing outside the darkroom with a wet print in a tray, and someone (probably Larry) suggested I focus on night work.

The longer I work as a photographer, the more I realize that a Dark Topography is very often not seen at night. The night work, originally titled after Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town, was a clear metaphor for what I was trying to say, but DarkTopo is the umbrella; night photography is one of the spokes.

Larry told me to focus. The crit for the Photographic Eye included 15 night shots, and was held at my house in a brutal four-hour affair in which Will Ketcham earned the nickname "Chianti Will."

The next semester I created an independent study called "Special Topics: Photographic Eye II," which was college-speak for continuing my work. I had seen the island from the highway. The photo above was taken with my dad driving, on the bridge at Green Mountain, on the day I scouted out a way to get across the frigid water.

The next week, I went back, and repelled down the bank into the coldest water I've ever felt, along with SMAN and Shane, in what would later be known as "the waders incident."









The text on this thing, whatever it was, reads "Empire."

I was interested in documenting the island from the same perspective I'd used to document trains and empty factories at night. It was an exploration in a contained environment, an effort to reconsider what is actually there. That's the best I can do at explaining it. A more thorough statement was offered by SMAN:

SAD112: Darkness B-sides, Part III

SAD112 :: Pentax K1000 :: Pentax SMC 28mm/f2.8 :: HP5 :: October, 2004

Flood Fine Art Center's New Library

What I like about working with Phil Mechanic Studios is the refreshing lack of conceit in the way the place is run. My essay in last summer's Everywhere Magazine--whose images led to The District exhibit--characterized Phil Mechanic and the Flood Fine Art Center as Asheville's unsung art Mecca; raw, gritty, and authentic.

A year later, I realize how incomplete that characterization was. There are slick galleries downtown where you can see the product of art, but the District is where you go to see art in practice. At Phil Mechanic, there is no hushed, hardwood-floored pretense or self-important artifice--there are just artists getting the job done.

A case in point is Flood's new library, on the top floor of the Phil Mechanic building (109 Roberts Street, Asheville's River District). Follow the stairwell up from the BioDiesel facility, pass two galleries and a hive of studios, and you're greeted with a room walled with books, staffed with busy interns, and dominated by a 30-foot paper dragon.



This is the library--lit with the District's pale glow filtered through industrial windows--complete with a thousand books on everything from marketing to Marxism. As you can imagine, the art and philosophy shelves are well populated, and I was happy to see that the art section actually includes photography books.

(It's also worth noting that there is at least one copy of Rand's Fountainhead in the library--because I donated it. In a rare display of unRandian philanthropy, I'm also donating my beloved, but never read, copy of Sontag's On Photography.)

Totally scooping all the other Asheville art bloggers, I scored an email interview with Jolene Mechanic, owner/curator of Phil Mechanic Studios and the driving force behind Flood:

MC: Tell me about the library.

JM: The library is open to the public from 10am to 4pm Tuesday through Saturday. Everyone is welcome to come in, get some coffee, and browse through the books. The library is wired for free internet, so you can bring your laptop and do some research. The literature section has works from writers like William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Emerson and Thoreau, Shakespeare, and anthologies from English and American Literature as well as Masterpieces of Drama and theatre, and so much more.



The philosophy section covers works by Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Augustine, Aquinas, John Locke, Rousseau, William James, and John Dewey, along with many, many others. This section of the library covers Philosophy from the Ancients through contemporary philosophy and transcendentalism. We have a poetry section containing works by Walt Whitman, Sylvia Plath, Robert Frost, e.e. cummings, Emily Dickenson, Poe, Emerson, Tenyson, and so many more. We have a section on the Humanities and Religion, on psychology and science. We have a kid's section with a huge variety of work, and a canonical section based on the Easton's Press's 100 Greatest Books that include work from Einstein, Marx, Homer, Dante, Chaucer, and Steinbeck. And then we have a section of art books. Photography, water color, oil painting, working with clay, tapestry, the work of Picasso, Rothko, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, and so on. We have a whole section dedicated also to the artists and writers that came out of Black Mountain College.

MC: How many books are available?

JM: Currently we have about a thousand books, and happily take donations from anyone who is looking to reduce their libraries.



MC: When will they be available for check-out?

JM: We have interns from the Literature department at UNC-A, that are working to get the books catalogued, and a Dewey decimal system in place. We hope to have this done by the fall.

MC: What made you want to start a library?

JM: Reading is a passion of mine. I've collected and read books since I was very, very young. I think reading offers experiences to people, experiences that many will never enjoy any other way. Exposing yourself to literature from other cultures and other time periods serves to broaden your mind and encourages a sense of compassion, justice and open mindedness that can allow us to develop as true world citizens.



MC: What's your favorite book in the library?

JM: That changes frequently. Right now, I'm all about Southern Fiction, and currently am running through all of William Faulkner's work. That man was an amazing writer!



MC: Anything else you'd like to add?

JM: Come join us. Come hang out in the building, enjoy some art, read some books, and enjoy the company of some of the best people Asheville has to offer.