This Just In: Halloween Night, 2012

Last Halloween, 10/2011

Occupy Anonymous, Eli Archibald, 10 / 2011 

Flying Deatheater & Feral Cat, 10/2012

Above: Flying Deatheather With Wand, Wilson Archibald 10/2012
Below: I Am A Feral Cat, Elijah Archibald 10/2012

Haunted Air In My Backyard

 

 

Now that I put the pieces together, I think that whole book Haunted Air, and the way it came into my hands had to do with this image I shot last Halloween in our neighborhood.
 

I loved it when I took it: loose and blurry and almost chaos...but I think it holds together just barely. I immediately blew it up to 30 x 30 and even then was still in love with it. And here in my office it hangs twice: once behind my monitor and then the big print at the entrance. Why this? What's the big deal?

 

I think that over the years I've had images that just were given to me, images that I didn't work hard to create. But when I saw them...wow...I immediately wanted to recreate them. And these attempts very rarely work out to anyone's satisfaction.

 

Then there is the idea that these special images can serve as a map for us. They can point to where our work is headed...what it's opening up to, what it may look like in the future if we follow it. Was this image that? Well...not yet. It's been a year and I still haven't found a way to channel the qualities of this image with intention. But though some things move fast in photography these days, other things move a glacial speed. And here, a year later, I'll admit I'm optimistic that I'll see this stuff surface again.

 

 



Haunted Air by Ossian Brown

For no real reason...maybe it was a birthday present, maybe it was a belated Xmas gift? My friend forever Lisa Mitchell found Haunted Air by Ossian Brown, tracked it down from England or somewhere far away, and it arrived in the mail not near Halloween at all. Right away I loved it.

How to describe it?  It's simply a collection of vernacular photographs of Halloween Americana between 1875 and 1955. David Lynch wrote the introduction and Geoff Cox the afterword, but really the words don't do justice to anything here...they just aren't necessary.

This is photography you can simply take in, enjoy, and not get distracted by the photographers' intentions or motivations. They simply are. They smell like Fall. And they really are beautiful.

Buy Haunted Air HERE.

Jack Dorsey / Forbes Magazine

I was in Donut Farm one rainy day last year with my kids. It came time to pay and the woman brings an Ipad over to us with a square insert sticking out of the top. Eli fixates on this thing and seems to take some mental notes. Later that day he's found the company "Square" on the web and has ordered a free product that allows any iPhone, iPad, iPod to now take credit cards. It arrived, he messed around with his bank account and now, simply as that, he recieved his allowance via Square. He subsequently discovered that Square and Twitter were created by a guy named Jack Dorsey.

Here I am at the Square cafeteria, making small talk with the p.r. director of Square who has arranged the shoot. Busy crazy week for her, but the pieces are coming together and for a moment she shares the kind of chunk of knowledge you are always looking for:

Jack really blends into the population here. He won't command attention when he walks into a room. You really wouldn't notice him at all unless someone points him out to you...he's just not that guy. But in a one-on-one, there is something in his eyes. If you can get that in your photo...you may have something.

Read the Forbes story about Jack Dorsey written by Eric Savitz HERE.



Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth, 1948

I was going for a hike with photographer Mark Richards and his dog.

We came to this empty field and he said "Hey, if you lay down there it'll look like Christina's World."

I did. It did.

History Of Photography Road Trip, #1

 

 

I've lived here so long at this point that I forget I'm not a local. Found myself driving thru Hayward, CA and realize I certainly must visit Buffalo Bill's Brewery.

Photographer Bill Owens' published SUBURBIA in 1973. He got a Guggenheim in 1976 and opened Buffalo Bill's Brewery in 1983.

 

I fully enjoyed Orange Blossom Cream Ale, but in the mid 90's, SUBURBIA changed everything for me. My original photography teacher always shared Owens' work with the students, but as a young photographer, I didn't grasp it. As I got older and found myself a dweller in the suburbs of Phoenix, I finally got it.

While working on Sex Machines : Photographs and Interviews, I kept a copy of SUBURBIA with me on the trips. The warmth and humor that he looked at the people and the places in that book was something I wanted to emulate and borrow. Of course the publishers and I begged Bill to write an introduction to the book. Bill declined, wisely I'm sure, but made it a point to come to a book reading party in SF. He was known and respected by everyone in the audience. The picture above is Bill at the party in 2005.

Originally I was dis-illusioned to hear about Owen's exit from photography and entrance into brewing. From where I am now, I see it as wise: he could do photography as he wanted to, and use another part of his brain as well.

 

Time changes the way we look at photographs, as well as the way we look at life decisions. And on this day, it struck me as a two great contributions.

Real Simple / ECHOLILIA

Real Simple magazine approached us about tapping into the imagery from ECHOLILIA to illustrate a first person story written by Alysia Abbott about her life with her son for the story I Don't Know How To Love You. Dig into that HERE.

Photo editor Kelly Clark also had the inspired idea to run an ECHOLILIA book excerpt on the Real Simple online site. A perfect parrellel with synergistic energy running between the two stories. See the RS / ECHOLILIA excerpt HERE.

And of course...buy ECHOLILIA / Sometimes I wonder HERE.

Barack Obama & Mitt Romney, 10/2012





 



Little Victories / R.O.B. Magazine

 























It's all about the table of contents for me here.

The past few years I've been working on Stereoscopy Photographs, a personal project that has gotten some attention, been met with silence and confusion, as well as some curiosity. All good, really...it's a personal project...meaning it's for me, right?

Nice to address the Exit Interview with retired Olympian Clara Hughes for R.O.B. Magazine last month. Clara's interview and her blog frankly addressed what it's like to end something that's essentially been her life for as long as she can remember. Great interview with unexpected candor. And these shifting roles in our lives has always been a topic I felt Stereoscopy Photographs has been poking at.

Happy to find photo editor Clare Jordan embrace this "Stereoscopy-esque" approach to telling Clara's story. It found it's place on the table of contents, rather than the story proper, but it's really the little victories that stick with you. This one did stick.