"So, for 2009: Eyes on the horizon, hands in the soil, clutching the roots."
--SAD Project Arist's Statement
Turns out the two aren't that far apart--at least half the horizon is made of soil. And are those roots twisted? You bet they are.
Today the SAD project ends. I can't say I'm not ready for it to be over. In fact, I can't say what I'm ready for at all. Over past twelve months I have asked myself where my work will go in 2010, and I don't have any answers.
Two significant things happened this year: I won the BlogAsheville award for best writing, and I hit the wall on writing about photography. Don't get upset; I'm not quitting. But verbose love letters are for couples stranded far apart from each other--when you're close, you just say what you mean. Or better yet, let your actions speak for you.
So, for 2010: Shoot first, ask questions later. If I find a better answer than that, rest assured I'll let you know.
31 December 2009
30 December 2009
29 December 2009
SAD363: Happy Birthday The Bard!
SAD363 - Pentacon 6 - Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 50mm/f2.8 - Ektar 100 - Summer, 2009
At a Smashathon in the Holler.
ps: Here's a slug--
SAD363a - Unknown Camera/Lens/Film - A long time ago
28 December 2009
SAD362: Strength
SAD362 - Pentacon 6 - Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 50mm/f2.8 - Ektar 100 - Summer, 2009
Looking back on this year, these are some of the best photos I took. I was in search of the final image for To See A Darkness. Never found it.
27 December 2009
26 December 2009
25 December 2009
24 December 2009
SAD358: Christmas Eves Past
SAD358 - Nikon F100/Pentax K1000 - Various Lenses - Delta 100 and HP5 - Christmas Eve, 2000something
23 December 2009
SAD357: Lines
SAD357 - Pentacon 6 - Carl Zeiss Jena Biometar 80mm/f2.8 - Ektar 100 - October, 2009
SAD357c - Leica M2 - Voigtlander Color-Skopar 35mm/f2.8 - Ektar 100 - October, 2009
22 December 2009
21 December 2009
20 December 2009
19 December 2009
Snowed in.
No power in the DarkTopo bunker. Retreated to the Bardcave. Will be back online in a day or so (I hope).
18 December 2009
SAD352: Stranded
17 December 2009
SAD351: Reason enough.
SAD351 - Nikon FM2n - Nikkor 50mm/f1.8 AF-D - Portra 160VC - November, 2009
SAD351a - Nikon FM2n - Zenitar 16mm/f2.8 Fisheye - Ektar 100 - November, 2009
16 December 2009
15 December 2009
14 December 2009
That Old-Time Religion (SAD348)
SAD348 - Pentacon 6 - Carl Zeiss Jena 80mm/f2.8 Biometar - Ektar 100 - October, 2009
False Lights
I went to a panel discussion at UNCA about the gallery scene. I know--snoozefest, right? But there was a moment when a local gallery director asked me what my work was about, and it's not so much that I drew a blank, but that I didn't feel up to the task of explaining everything in the middle of a snooty seminar in the art history room. That place is for sleeping and being sycophantic to your professors, and the time for both has passed. It has crossed my mind that my career would be farther along if I'd slept less and sycophanted more, but there's a very concise military adage to sum up how I feel about that. I won't repeat it here.
So I stuttered and stammered, and compared my work to the paintings of Scott Upton, which I'd seen in this director's gallery and liked a great deal. I'm pretty sure, though, that I see things in Upton's work that weren't intended. I look at those paintings and see landscapes. But whatever. The point is that I couldn't explain my work because I was so pissed off that it's three and a half years later and suddenly the University has the bright idea to coach its art students on approaching galleries.
I'm considering listing "MFA, School of Hard Knocks" under the education section of my CV. Seriously. The ideas of art I was taught in academia have about as much relevance to what I'm doing as the Pentathalon does to combat--they are safe, stylized, pretty to look at, impossible to achieve, and dead useless. Every time I walk through that place, I'm incensed that there are still students forced to draw naked women on model stands and mold clay in to vegetable shapes because that's the best the academics can do at describing art.
So I gave a half-hearted answer, and then immediately regretted it. It's not that I particularly wanted to impress anyone--these days I find myself less concerned with the gallery scene than ever--but that I didn't want to misrepresent my photography. I find nothing more telling than artists who can't explain their work. So I asked myself: What would Howard Roark do?
Howard Roark would not let the gallery director walk away without better characterizing his vision. So afterwards I caught the guy in the hall and spilled my guts: Topographic, landscape, populated with characters, the conflict of opposing absolutes, et cetera. To a gallery director I imagine it sounded as vague and unformed as every other artist's rushed attempt at self explanation. I wish I could have just showed him the pictures from Brick Church.
Brick Church
The Salem Black River Presbyterian Church is 250 years old. It stands off a highway in Sumter County, SC, where the roads are as straight as a satellite's flight across the sky. Some graves in the cemetery predate the American revolution. As near as I can tell, there is nothing of consequence for ten miles in any direction, except for the Goodwill Presbyterian Church, a daughter of Salem Church formed by freed slaves after the Civil War.
I learned of the 250th anniversary celebration a year in advance, and pitched story ideas to both The Item and the Post & Courier, neither of which gave me the time of day. I can understand that. Surely the editors must have wondered why some art photog from the mountains would presume to be able to render better coverage than their staff reporters. Well, why, indeed?
Let's just say I have connections.
The earliest memory I have of Brick Church (so-called because of the red bricks used to build it, fired in a kiln right there on the grounds two decades before Robert E. Lee surrendered) is a near miss: One evening my dad drove me out into the country to watch the space shuttle fly over. A topographic contour map of that landscape would be as unlined as a child's forehead--there is no spot from which you cannot see an open view of the sky--but for some reason we stopped where County Road 57 intersects with Highway 527. This would have been before the Challenger explosion, which means I was no older than four.
But even then, as I watched that bright light fall silently across the sky, I was aware that we were near Brick Church. People say America is a young country: To me, this church built halfway into our history is as old as the sky, and just as familiar.
So in the end, I was glad that I wasn't covering the event professionally. For me, professional coverage means hiding the fact that truthful journalism is little more than a well-written diary. You have to shoot it as you see it, and let the truth be the prejudice.
None of that makes the pictures good. They are all here, and they are not my best work, but they are the best I could do, and I'm glad I wasn't getting paid, so that I don't have to cut the bad ones.
So how would these photos explain a Dark Topography to a gallery director? Think of the life of Moses, who was witness to the light of God Himself. The burning bush, the pillar of fire, the terrible lightning in the smoke on the mountain. At those times, it must have been pretty clear what course to take. But when the Light faded, imagine how dark the landscape must have seemed in contrast.
Now think of that old cliché: A month of Sundays. Imagine 250 years of Sundays. The history of Brick church is well documented, but consider what must be left out: The sermons, the whispered conversations, the baby's wails during prayers, the widows' weeping during funerals, the wooden floors that had to be swept of that sandy dirt, the struggle of living through every new stage of humanity's progress over two and a half centuries. The historic moments we talk about are illuminated--the rest of the landscape is dark.
History is interesting, but in spite of all our record keeping and journaling, who among us has made history for its own sake? Before we can consider what will be remembered, we must deal with what is. That's how the people of Brick Church got from one historical point to the next. We proceed in darkness, on faith alone, and those who follow false lights will wander a long time indeed.
Ghosts
On Sunday morning I got to the church at dawn, alone. I have been in some creepy places in my time, but let me tell you, I had a hard time passing through this gate:
SAD348b - Leica M2 - Canon Serenar 50/1 - Tri-X @ 1600
On the way back to the hotel, the attendant at a gas station asks what brings me to town. "The old Brick Church?" he asks, when I tell him where I've been. "You went there before the sun was up? But it's haunted!"
I tell him I don't believe in ghosts, neglecting to add that, in a dark topography, if there is a ghost in front of you, it doesn't matter if you believe in it or not.
"When I was in high school we'd drive out there and dare each other to go up to the church at night. I never did. But my sister took a picture of that gate, and I swear to God, you can see people sitting in the trees."
Photography is a beautiful thing. It doesn't sell well here in Asheville, according to the gallery director. This market favors paintings, maybe of the mountains, or nature. People come here to vacation, to get away from their reality. Asheville, in that way, is kind of like art.
And that's fine. When you're sitting in a church open to the October air, as it was when my great-great-great-grandfather delivered sermons from the pulpit, and a choir is making a slow, lazy stroll of "That Old-Time Religion," the last thing you worry about is whether or not your photo will sell.
Rev. Bill Holmes speaks briefly Sunday afternoon. "This is the 250th anniversary," he says. "Who among us will be here for the 300th?"
In that way, seeing the people here is like seeing ghosts--they are there in front of us, as they have been since before our time, and will continue to be after we are gone. But they are also fleeting and mysterious, and sometimes the best you can do is capture an image.
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