Stereoscopy Goes Home

I had this theory that when I had kids, my role changed: I went from being my parents’ kid to being the dad of my own family.

For the past decade, my time spent with my parents was about managing my kids…not really being the kid of my parents.

See the project evolve HERE.

Valentines 2012



My two kids each made a Valentine for their Mom yesterday.
Wilson made the top one, Eli made the bottom one.
Art will tell you things about the creator, whether you want it to or not!

Little Brown Mushroom : On Marrying A Photographer

Great dialogue...priceless really, on the complexities of being married to a photographer over on Little Brown Mushroom. It's all good, it's all required reading no matter what role you are in. Here is a well thought out glimpse into the life from Alec Soth's wife Rachel:
I knew that I wanted to leave a comment on this post (first time ever leaving a comment on the blog), but it has been really difficult figuring out what to write. Being in a relationship with a photographer can be a wild ride no matter your gender.
When things are going well it is fantastic! The creative juju is flowing, work is being made, and praises are being sung. We have been lucky enough to go on adventures to amazing places, and see wonderful things.
For those of us in relationships with artists, and for those familiar with the creative process, we know that there are times when it doesn’t go well. There are times when the juju stops, and work becomes really difficult to make. This may happen for a variety of reasons, but when it does, it is not a happy time.
It has been hard for me to accept that for Alec to make photographs, he has to go out and become engaged in the world without me, sometimes for long periods of time. If he didn’t go out on his wanderings and look at things, he would be miserable. I would be miserable, because Alec would not be Alec. Having said this, it is lonely sometimes.
It’s easy to lose yourself, especially when your partner is successful. I think the goal is to be passionate about something, keep your life rich, fill up on things that make you feel good and are meaningful to you. Ask for what you need. It has taken me a while to understand this.
Marriage is a puzzle. This life is crazy and unpredictable, but so is everyone’s! We are not different or special. We are all just figuring it out as we go along.
I have become a stronger woman. Our marriage is well rooted, and still growing. We have two beautiful children. I am married to a complicated, amazing man that I love. I am grateful for this wild ride we share.

-Rachel Cartee Soth

Soth ( Alec) has always been interested in the balance between family and the creative path. He acknowledged it a bit in a brief entry on the time I went to his class as I was wrestling with what became ECHO, and hit it solidly in this post about fatherhood. This is the stuff that people really have ignored discussing for so long, its great to see the dialogue opening up.

Read it all HERE.

JUXTAPOZ

Back when this project came out the publishers and I had hoped and kind of expected some type of blessing from the powers that be at JUXTAPOZ. Then it was not meant to be.

I was happily surprised to see this on their site Friday nite. Sometimes things take time.

See it HERE. Buy Sex Machines : Photographs and Interviews HERE.

Wilson Archibald : born 12/11/2004

The boy with the spirit of adventure deep within him.

The one who teaches us all how to chase and catch a cat.

Happy Birthday Wilson Archibald, age 7!

Elijah Archibald : born 12/3/2001

You never know who will teach you the big lessons, do you?

You never know who is going to be on your path with you either.

Happy Birthday to Eli!

Ten years old tomorrow.

Seasonal Favorites

There is the peppermint stick ice cream, the pumpkin pie ice cream, the harvest ale, the yams with marshmellows...you know, the seasonal favorites? Only for a limited time?

I shot these images last year, put them in the freezer, and am bringing them out for a month only.

See the Seasonal Favorites HERE.

Beautiful Boy, 11/2011

My son Wilson with spray color in his hair...

Atlanta : Immediate Family

I find myself crammed into the back seat of a Lexus sedan.

Driving is Mary Catherine Johnson from the Emory Visual Arts Department, Brian McGrath Davis, the show's curator and brain behind this experiment. To my left is photographer Sandra-Lee Phipps, to my right is Jefferson Holt, a man of all sorts of artistic endevors. On my lap, all 105 pounds of him, is my son Elijah Archibald. As often occurs in the worlds of art, we all seem to form immediate family. We are here to discuss ECHOLILIA.

The idea was essentially to create a series of lectures that put ECHOLILIA in front of a variety of disciplines....the least important of which was photographers. Eli and I busted out the slide show and fielded questions for The Department of Ethics, The ILA Colloquium, The School of Medicine, The Visual Arts Department, and then a public lecture as part of Atlanta Celebrates Photography, all based around an elegant exhibition in the Emory School of Medicine. Rather than any insights from me at this point, I thought I'd run this story written by Alfred Artis for The Emory Wheel:

Echolilia by Timothy Archibald. The exhibit is displayed in the Emory Medical School lobby until Nov. 30.  The pictures, featuring Eli Archibald, the photographer’s son with Asperger’s, focus on what he deems the dreamy aspects of the autistic mind, while alluding to the relationship between father and son and artist and subject.

The photographer and subject are even more engaging than the photos. In a series of six lectures culminating with a talk at the Emory Medical School, the Archibalds brought wit, personality and whimsy to an otherwise fantastical and captivating exhibit.

“At first I asked why Emory wanted me to bring [Eli],” Archibald said. “Now I couldn’t imagine it any other way.”

Eli’s presence brought to life aspects of autism that film could not capture. He was given a laser pointer, which he shot at audience members and shined in the eyes of the sign language interpreter during the lecture. The interpreter ignored it, but audience members winced. These distractions occurred during the first part of the lecture when the elder Archibald discussed previous work.

Archibald explained his philosophy, found in a newspaper clipping, reading, “If it doesn’t seem like an interesting story, that’s the failure of the listener. I was fascinated with the idea of using the intimacy of photography [to listen to stories],” Archibald explained. “And there was a story in my own home, and I just had to listen.”

Enter Eli, subject and co-creator of the exhibit. He sat on a stool and faced the wall. His father asked him to face the audience. He tapped his microphone to see if it was working. He asked, “Is this thing on?” It was. But with startling aplomb, he said, “Boy, I’ve done this a hundred times.”


The effect of seeing the subject of the pictures candidly discussing himself brought a new dimension to the work. The exhibit features a maze with no ending that Eli drew. Eli, aware of the flaw, pointed out that “It’s a weird maze because it doesn’t have an ending.” He claims, “I just drew it because I was bored.”

His father, seeing a metaphor, scanned the image. This maze exemplifies their creative process. Eli would do something, whether drawing an endless maze or picking up a stick that looked like a gun, and his father would see a deeper meaning or a good picture and photograph it.

But not every image is spontaneous. Referring to a portrait of an early morning scene Eli said, “My dad didn’t just wake up with the camera on him. He made me recreate it.”

Subtle frustration is present, but it is not the focus, “[just as] it isn’t the focus of any parent-child relationship,” Archibald said. A scanned note reading “I dote like you” and “I hATE you,” written by Eli, captures the tension present in any family, stated in the unpolished voice of a little kid who, due to age, cannot grasp the gravity of his words.

In another picture of Eli, clad in a white oxford shirt, no pants, bending over, face obscured, arm inside a cardboard cylinder propping him up, one sees the surreal that is Archibald’s daily life. The camera’s lens not only shows Eli, but it indirectly shows the father, who was captivated by this pose. In knowing the father is the photographer, the image challenges the viewer to look not only at the picture, but back through the lens at the photographer.

This relationship gives the real weight to the pictures. These are not just slick, fascinating photos, they are a strained view into a dreamy landscape, that, like the father-photographer, the viewer cannot enter but only see through a lens.

Their chemistry displayed this connection. During the lecture, Eli leaned his torso over a stool while talking, unaware of his body, making an L shape. His father, watching off to the side, leaned his torso over the podium, making the same shape.

Their mirrored body language echoed the relationship shown in the pictures. More than any words, this pose brought to life their bond forged with photographs.

-Alfred Artis, The Emory Wheel, October 31, 2011

Halloween 2011

Anonymous Computer Hacker & Ninja, 2011

Back from all of our ACP/Emory events of the week in Atlanta on Saturday night. As we rode the BART train home from the airport we realized that Halloween was waiting for us upon our return.

More on ATL later this week, but needed to share the splendor and curiosity of these wonderful costumes our kids dreamed up: Wilson is a vicious Ninja, and Eli is a member of Anonymous, the computer hacking entity / civil dis-obedience entity that took over SF a few months back.

Any questions?

ATL / ECHO Day One

There Was A Moment

I'm reading a book about songwriter Warren Zevon. At a challenging point in his life, he joked "My career has all the promise of a Civil War leg wound." I loved that phrase with all of it's honesty and irony. With photography, as everyone knows, there are times when really no one wants to hear about you...no matter what you do, you are invisible. And there are other times when you are a magnet. The key to survival is not to invest too much brain space / heart space in the highs or in the lows.

Here I am in a stylized black and white room, the penthouse bar of a SF ad agency. The namesake of the company comes up to me, he is wearing a lucha libre mask. He greets me as if he knows me, explaining to me that he owns a copy of my first book, his voice semi muffled by the mask. I'm stunned and excited. The book he is referencing sold terribly...I thought it was long forgotten. I'm embarrased and flattered by this mix of art and commerce. It leaves me feeling very good.

Someone catches my attention and asks me what I'm working on. I immediately cringe. I'm working on nothing really...I hate when people ask me that...I'm always so dead, but catch myself and realize the truth, for this moment, and speak it. The words surprise me as they come out of my mouth : Oh...in LA to photograph Frank Gehry on Monday, then grabbing my son and flying to Atlanta for our opening and lecture for the book we did together. The project is also in National Geographic...I just picked it up at the supermarket, want to see it...?

I'm shocked at how together this all sounds...as if I actually have a plan. But everyone will have a moment...even for 30 seconds...where they seem to have become everything they always felt they were meant to become. I had that moment there...I think it lasted 20 seconds really. I sounded like a player! Art and commerce, the elusive mix we all hunger for...it's all working there for a moment!

And I do appreciate it, and am so thankful for it, cuz those seconds tick away. But there, above, is a copy of this month's National Geographic, laying on the supermarket parkinglot.

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This week at Emory University in Atlanta:

A Conversation with Timothy Archibald
Thursday, October 27th at 6:00pm / Center for Ethics Commons, Room 102
Moderated by Dr. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, with introductory remarks by Dr. Paul Root Wolpe, Director of Center for Ethics and Dr. Ami Klin, Director of Marcus Autism Center.

Timothy Archibald / ECHOLILIA
Friday, October 28th at 7:00pm / Emory University School of Medicine, Room 110
Exhibit Opening, Artist Talk, and Reception

Read more about the event HERE.

Aiming At The Spider

National Geographic / November 2011

Sarah Leen, Senior Photography Editor at National Geographic approached me about doing a story on the feelings and ideas behind ECHOLILIA earlier last year. I really never thought it would see the light of day...I couldn't envision this kind of curious personal story about my life and my son, all shot in our home, to fit in with the global vision of National Geographic. In April I got a chance to visit Sarah and see everything she was up to at the magazine: great stories with a contemporary sensibility, interesting features by unexpected photographers, humor and irony and all of these curve balls thrown in amidst all that is classically National Geographic. I left there inspired by what photography in the mass media could really be.

So happy to have ECHOLILIA celebrated so elegantly in the pages of the November issue of the magazine. I haven't got my hands on it yet, but saw a sneak peek of the production online last night. You all can see it HERE.

It Is So October



It is so so October.

The leaves are decomposing in the backyard and we smell them.

The moon is giant. The sun is low.

We watched a deer walk down the center of the street yesterday.

A Dollar Store Rat?

We found this giant spider at night.

Tidepool's Embrace Essay

After R.M. 1989

Tidepool Reps asked all of their photographers to introspect a bit and try to find something, from way back, that connected their early way of working to what they are up to now. The Tidepool blog has been featuring these over past month, starting with a great essay by photographer Bill Cash.  Mine is out today, and copied here as well. See it all on the Tidepool Blog HERE.

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When I went to college, I somehow convinced my parents to allow me to be an art major. I never liked art classes in high school….I never really liked art at all. I had a long relationship with photography and my camera, but art was kind of a mystery. The art department at Penn State had no interest in commercial concerns…it was all about teaching the students expression, teaching the the history of art, the history of photography, and giving the students an awareness of the depth of their medium. No internships, nothing commercial was ever brought up. It was all about keeping expression pure, and learning how to tap into where that all came from.

At the same time I started working at the school newspaper. That group of people laughed at the art department…they couldn’t understand the esoteric concerns of that little subculture. They were all about communicating, the craft of photojournalism, and all the students had jobs at big papers lined up for their summer vacation. These folks were into the functional form of art…as functional as it ever really could be.

I was giving a talk to a bunch of students last month and they asked me about my education. I told them about the two sides of my backround, and confessed to them that I really didn’t think my formal education in photography amounted to much….I felt I learned more on the job than any where else. One of the students pointed out that the model I explained to them, this idea of having one foot in something esoteric and dada-ist, and the other foot in a world very funtional and logical, seemed to be a model I have followed throughout my career…even to this day! Looking at the patterns of my career, that observation really has held true: personal projects such as “Sex Machines” and “Echolilia” have been nurtured and blossomed with no commercial concerns whatsoever, while my efforts for hammering out a career with commercial photography were being nurtured with a similar amount of dedication and attention…all going on at the same time.

The happy news here is that the dynamic has shifted…the commercial clients don’t laugh at the art personal projects, they actually have started to embrace them.

Tethered, 2011

Hansel & Gretel, 10/1/2011

2 Things On A Friday

Above is a painting of a cat my son Wilson just did this morning after breakfast. I drew the cat and he did the stain glass painting treatment. Kinda looks like cubism to me.

Busy week this week culminating in the neat experience of having my AA grad student Emily Sevin accompany Sz and I on a very make-shift portrait shoot we tried to pull off in the early hours of San Francisco's bustling financial district. SF is not LA, thus you can try to pull off guerilla style photo shoots in various knooks and crannies and alleys and foreclosed storefronts and business facades...really now more than ever. The snap below is from our class / shoot. Grecian columns appreciated by all.

October has lots of big stuff going on...so we are getting ready for that and thankful and amused by every assignment we are getting to do as well.

Peace.

Autobiography / Fourth Grade

My son had to write an autobiography for fourth grade. He had weeks to complete it. I sat down to help him get organized and we realized it was due the following day.

Don't worry. I think I know what I want to say.

It couldn't be easier.

I'm just writing about me. I'll just sit down and type it.