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.

Jonathan Saunders by Alison McCreary

These 7 Days, These 7 Nights, In This Order Of Things from Jonathan Saunders on Vimeo.

I was in NYC for a very simple photography story I was sent there to work on. Sitting in a booth at the Howard Johnson's in Times Square, I stand to shake hands with Jonathan Saunders, meeting him for the first time. The evening ends at The Carousel Club, and I then walk back to my hotel when that place closes.  I still have some money left...I'm going to stay out a while, he says as we say goodbye.

Jonathan moves to Texas and I try to interview him for my blog. The results are unpublish-able. Too personal, too complex, nothing that really seemed to fit into some idea I had of getting into his head about the move. Too many thoughts and ideas and I wanted like...the elevator pitch, the sound bite.

Allison McCreary reaches out to Jonathan for Photographers On Photography and really does what I could not: gets into his head and heart and deep into the creative process. I think it took them a year.

A year well spent. Read it all...every last word... 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.