SAD212

SAD212 :: Pentax ME :: Various lenses :: HP5+ :: 2007

It's strange how I group these pictures in my head. They have nothing to do with each other, but when I think of any of them I think "2007" and "Pentax ME."

I might have told this story before, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself. Before I went to Kure Beach I went to a pawn shop and bought a Pentax ME for $35 with a 50mm/f1.7. This made it the smallest camera and fastest lens I owned.

I bought it as a throw-away to shoot on the beach. And eventually, I did throw it away, after a year of hard use in which I'd grown very attached to it.

It's funny how you (ok, I) buy things because they are bulletproof and able to withstand hard use. But then, after you use them hard for several years, you have so many memories associated with them that you don't want to put them in harm's way anymore.

I bought an F100 to replace my K1000. I then bought the ME because the K1000 was too sentimental to jeopardize. Went the F100 went down due to electronics failure, the ME became my main camera. But then I bought an FM2n to hold my badass Nikkor glass until I could afford to get my F100 fixed, though the fact that the F100 broke to begin with made me very gun shy about using nice cameras in harsh environments, so the ME still saw the most use. Following all this?

The point is, when the ME finally locked up on Chimney Rock, I was sad.

Here are some hobos:

To See a Darkness, only three days left!

If you haven't made it to the gallery downtown, you've got till Saturday to see the group exhibit that includes To See A Darkness!

What: To See A Darkness, new photography by Max Cooper. Part of a group exhibit with Cynthia Lee, Ginger Huebner, and Jane Reeves.
Where: Asheville Area Arts Council's gallery, 11 Biltmore Avenue, downtown Asheville, NC, 28801
When: Show opens July 3, with a catered reception from 5:30-8:30, and continues through August 1. Free of charge!
Gallery hours and contact info here: www.ashevillearts.com

SAD211

SAD211 :: Minox GT :: HP5+ :: January, 2007

SAD210: Cpt. and Mrs. Destructo

SAD210 :: Nikon F100 :: Nikkor 28/f2.8 AF-D :: HP5+ :: Fall, 2007

SAD209

SAD209 :: Nikon F100 :: Zenitar 16/2.8 Fisheye :: HP5+ :: 2006

So SMAN calls me up one day and says, "Dude, you've got to come see what I've found."

This is never a good sign.

At the time, the whole city was whispering about the body that had been found in the River District. Several places in the District, actually. An arm here, a head there. Rather like Charlie Silver. Some guys at the range had heard from their Asheville Police Department buddies that there was a serial killer on the loose.

In any event, SMAN takes me to a site less than a hundred yards from the place where the arm was found. It was a burned-out, abandoned building, like many in the District. So we "gained access." And damn, did we find some creepy stuff.







In the end, what kept me from going to the cops was that (A) the cages couldn't really hold anyone who wasn't already half-dead, and (B) this is exactly the kind of thing I would do if I had the time and energy. And for exactly the same reason: What would people think when they found it?

I know what I thought. I thought it was time to get the hell out of there. But of course, I went back later, alone, and took more pictures. One of them actually ended up in The District.

SAD208: Foma film speed test

SAD202 :: Nikon F100 :: Nikkor 28/2.8 AF-D :: Fomapan 200 :: Fall, 2007

Images from the film speed test mentioned in this post. The story of the one and only apology I've ever received for being treated poorly as a photographer. Wish the images were better.

SAD207: The Tula Project

SAD204 :: Various cameras/lenses :: Various films :: 2007

SAD206: Antics

SAD206 :: Various cameras/lenses :: Various films :: 2006-2007

Malled.

Like any self-respecting Ashevillian, I stayed the hell away from Bele Chere tonight. Instead, I went to the mall. I was wearing camo pants and a polo shirt (it was laundry day). The moral of this story is that looking like an idiot is an unfortunate side effect of misanthropy. I need to get a sign that says "It's okay, I'm an artist."

So then I went to Barnes and Noble, where I sat for two hours with a 2009 Photographer's Market (like the 2008 edition, but more depressing) and copied interesting-looking publications into my cellphone's notepad, because not only did I look like an idiot, I actually was an idiot, and didn't bring anything to write my stolen information on.

So, hypothetically, let's just theorize for a bit. Imagine a late-twenties art photographer. Imagine that he is very, very tired of working for free. Imagine that he's sitting in a chain retail store that wouldn't hire him back in the day when he was down on his luck (we'll assume he was over-qualified).

Imagine he's reading PhotoMarket and flipping through all the magazines that won't even look at his work for one reason or another, copying down the few that might, and he comes across a certain phrase at the bottom of an entry. Let's just say the entry is for a literary magazine called "Muse of Vitality," and it reads something like this.

Biannual literary magazine, seeks edgy, avante garde, b&w photos of nudes, environment, multicultural, lifestyle, gay, ethnic, experimental, gritty, raw, hopelessness. Desperately seeking pictures of nude left buttocks. Pays in copies. Buys all rights.

Now imagine that through the calm yuppieness of Barnes and Noble comes the shrill cry of the tortured artist. "BUYS ALL RIGHTS?" shrieks the artist. "YOU WANT ME TO GIVE YOU THE RIGHTS TO MY PHOTOS FOR A COPY OF YOUR XEROXED BI-ANNUAL LEFT BUTTOCK? ARE YOU FREAKIN INSANE, YOU ARTSY-FARTSY SONS OF BITCHES??"

Customers scatter.

"Oh my God," a lady screams, "He's wearing camo pants!"

"Did you hear what he said?" quavers a balding man with a ponytail. "He said he hates literature and the human form! Call mall security!"

A crack team of mall ninjas busts in through the metal detectors, radios drawn. They waddle through the aisles in hot pursuit, following the artist's vague mumblings about dying unknown in the gutter.

"You can run, but you can't hide," yells one of the mall ninjas, pausing to shine his badge and straighten his mounty hat. But he's wrong. Dead wrong. The artist has disappeared. They look everywhere, even the Self-Help section, giving the weight loss books a wide berth, but not a trace is found.

"Oh no," says the head ninja, the one they call Sensei. "He's loose! Call the mayor! Call in the National Guard! We've got a camo-wearing, human-form-hating, literature-disrespecting nutjob on the loose during the largest street festival in the southeast even though it's a little smaller this year!"

Bele Chere is called off. Panic swells in the streets. Shirtless rednecks scurry to their trucks and hippie chicks bounce down the street in a blaze of tie-dye. Darcel Grimes breaks into a Mama's Family rerun to tell Ashevillians to stay indoors.

All for naught. FOX and CNN helicopters battle for airspace over the mall when it's discovered that a Barnes and Noble clerk named Suzy has found the artist hiding in the bathroom.

"The bathroom!" says the Sensei, awkwardly slapping his forehead through his mounty hat. "Who would have thought to look there?"

Thinking fast, Suzy rushes to the B&N Cafe and grabs $20 worth of cookies. She puts both of them just outside the bathroom door. It's only a matter of time before the artist makes his move, and the ninjas are ready to pounce. There is a flurry of non-lethal weaponry and squawking radios, and then the Sensei has the photographer right where he wants him.

"No," yells Suzy, "he can't be all bad!"

"It's too late for that, Miss," says the Sensei. Then, turning back to the cowering artist, he says: "That's it, buddy! You are PERMANENTLY BANNED from this mall! And you better not come back, either!"

The artist returns his copy of PhotoMarket to the shelf and is given a one way ride in the eco-friendly ninjamobile back to his vehicle. The next night, Suzy is on Larry King Live, recounting the harrowing tale.

"Well, I was upstairs in the men's room," she says, "checking to see if anyone wanted to sign up for a Barnes and Noble membership card, when I heard this sobbing from the last stall. And there he was, reading The Fountainhead and crying about some guy named Anvil Adams. Didn't he sing for Guns N' Roses?"

"I believe he did, Katie. I believe he did," Larry says meaningfully, and turns to the camera. "Next up, a famous botanical photographer wins a Pulitzer for his controversial left-buttock photo in Muse of Vitality! Stay tuned!"

SAD205: Kona, part IV

SAD204 :: Nikon F100 :: Nikkor 28 and 50mm :: Delta 100 :: 2006

For me, Kona is a town of regrets. As such, it's a fitting half-way point for the SAD Project. Why didn't I shoot in color? Why didn't I buy a damned digital camera and shoot ten times the photos? Why didn't I go back at dawn?

I hope that I've answered those questions in six months of posting old photos. I didn't do those things because I was poor and lazy and blinded by academia, where I learned that art was black and white and manual focus and film and film alone. The only color photos I shot of Kona were from the "absolute emergency" roll I kept in my bag, a cheap roll of drugstore Fuji film. Just in case aliens landed.

It took a year or two of frustration to realize the answer to these questions, and the proper response. There is a right way to do things, and it is important. Far, far more important is that you do them in the first place.

SAD204: Kona, part III

SAD204 :: Nikon F100 :: Nikkor 28 and 50mm :: Delta 100 :: 2006





The flood of 1977 wiped out the already ailing Yancey Railroad. The trestle that connected it to the Clinchfield line at Kona burned in 2000, and as of last year, had fallen away into the river. I don't know when the industry abandoned its facilities, but it has surely been decades.

So, much like Lost Cove, Kona is a railroad town that died. It is also where Frankie and Johnny Silver lived, and where Johnny, whose real name was Charles, was murdered and buried. In the song, Frankie shoots Johnny ("Frankie took aim with her forty-four, / Five times with a rooty-toot-toot.") but this is not how it happened. There was an ax involved. And in the end, Johnny Silver has three graves . . .







. . . because they found him in three different places. And Frankie became the first woman ever executed in North Carolina.