godshomemovies

Moved.

2010-06-25T07:27:00.001-04:00

Hey y'all!

I've officially moved this blog over to godshomemovies.org. Check it out! It's got a better layout and a nicer typeface.

Excavating the Space We've Left Behind.

2010-05-09T12:10:00.001-04:00

2088, Swing.
With heavy clouds and muddy soil, I go home. When I pull into the driveway, off of Route 890, there are tires over gravel, there is me and there are the cars whispering as they drive by. Here is the house my mother grew up in, here is the house my aunt still lives in. Here lives parts of me as a child in another lifetime, here lives bits and pieces of my family's history.

Backyard.
I have wanted to photograph my aunt Cecelia's, my mom's second oldest sister, house for a long time, since I started making pictures.

See, my mom's mom died was my mom was 20 of a heart attack. The details are vague to me, something involving elevator doors opening and closing and one minute being alive and the next not. I have never met my grandmother but the weight of her life and her death have been increasingly apparent to me. My mother marks time with the death of hers; the months before that day in 1978 and the 2-5-10 years after that compose the time line of her life.

Dining Room, Bathroom.
In this house, she, her husband, and her 5 children lived and worked in a space no larger than 900 square feet. My grandfather a dairy farmer, she ran a country store and gas station out of the basement, which still exists in the heavy oak cabinets that now are home to photo albums, Christmas decorations, clothing.

The presence of my family's history is so pervasive in this house that, at times, when I was there on a Sunday in April, I had to close my eyes a few times in order to push it out. Between being offered food ("Are you sure you aren't hungry? We have soup! What about a sandwich? Are you thirsty? Have some iced tea.") and talking about life's details, I took in all of the things that changed since I was young and all of the things that have changed from when my mom was young. The ironing board still comes out of the wall. The bathroom still has that wallpaper in it. The carpet is new, the metal cabinets replaced with a blond wood.

Basement Details.
At six, eight, ten, I was terrified of her basement. It was dark, filled with boxes of stuff and felt seemingly unending. There were doors and hallways to places that I had never been in and the majority of it was lit by one single light bulb, turned on by the pulling of a string.

It hasn't really changed much, except it is notably less terrifying than I thought it to be. It packed full of stuff, more stuff then I remembered. Several lifetimes full of stuff stacked to the ceiling, piled on shelves and arranged haphazardly in those oak cabinets.

Laundry Room.
The weight of home, of history, of time passing, of silence. I think about the details of my family's life, especially it's women, that I am now just learning, have just learned in the past few months and I am overwhelmed with questions. Who I am, who they were, who they are are intrinsically linked together with laughter and bitterness, in the spaces we keep, in the food we eat, in the shape of our bodies.

Lookit!

2010-04-19T17:38:00.002-04:00

The totally awesome Jaime K. of Save the Kales and Heart of SteelCity featured me and my work on Heart of SteelCity today.

Check it out!

Tying Faith Between Our Teeth.

2010-04-15T23:48:00.003-04:00

Tide, Ocean Grove NJ.
With the air warm and thick like its been, I itch to move around, to drive, to explore, to see. The mercury hit 70 one day and the only thing I wanted, needed to do was run to the Atlantic and wiggle my toes in it's bitter, cold waters.

Pier, Ocean Grove NJ.
Let my eyes fill with sunshine and let my skin redden. Let me find that teenage feeling, just one more time. Let the salt stick in my hair. Let it be July.

Interior.

2010-02-18T08:30:00.000-05:00

Control Panel, Hardhats. Meadowbrook Coal Company, Lykens Pa. 2006.

Strange.

2010-02-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

Pro-Life. Route 309, Outside of Tamaqua Pa. 2007.

While Santorum still held office and wasn't quite a laughing stock* yet, these signs popped up along highways, scattered around north eastern and central Pa, as I had seen a few on my drives through the area and near the town I grew up in. I have no idea of their maker or purpose and I found them to be really bizarre and random. They were well made, obviously constructed with care, and relatively large, as they could be read from the highway. Why the white cross? The flower? Why the text?

I have always been fascinated by the signage along highways. My interest lies not in the billboards, not in the messages and images that want to convince me to spend money, but in the signage that has been put up by individuals. I am perpetually boggled at the maker of such text and signs. What's the intent? Why put something so nonsensical in such a visible place? What need does placing the sign fulfill?

*Depending on who you ask, I suppose.

Sometimes, I Like to Pretend I am Alec Soth.

2010-02-16T08:30:00.000-05:00

Sleeping by the Strippings. Williamstown, PA.

What? Like you've never done it.

Highways.

2010-02-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

Routes 61 & 81. Frackville Pa. 2006.
For whatever reason, I have always really loved this photograph. The original chrome, however, was not well exposed (it was probably over about 1.5 stops) and when I first scanned it, it was hard to do much with it and get it to look the way I wanted it to. My photo editing skills have increased ten fold since I made the picture and I was thrilled to be able to clean it up and make the picture look like it should. The sky isn't quite what it needs to be but for now, I can live with that.

Terry.

2010-02-14T12:30:00.000-05:00

Meadowbrook Coal Company. Lykens, PA

I was always really hesitant to use the handful of photographs I took of people while I was photographing. The portraits I made, I always felt, weren't right, weren't quite good enough, didn't fit in with the images I was working with. To this day, I look at this picture and I go "I took that?!".

Reclaim.

2010-02-13T09:30:00.000-05:00

Coal Reclaim Operation. Meadowbrook Coal Company, Lykens PA. 2007.

On Recent and Not-so-Recent Personal History.

2010-02-12T23:47:00.000-05:00

Jer 29, Outside of Hometown, PA. 2007.
When I wake up in the morning, it is easy for me to forget about the time that I spent frantically, obsessively, and joyously making photographs for an audience. Then, I could hardly wait 7 whole days before coming home to photograph, to leave behind grades and work and school and bills and do nothing but make the photographs I wanted to make. Now, I swim, I shower, I eat breakfast, I drive to work, I work, I come home, I eat, and I go to bed. Somewhere in there, I spend time with my girlfriend, read books about things that matter to me, go to the library, do volunteer work and somehow, find meaning in who I am and what I am doing. I rarely spend time making new work and go months between picking up a camera to make new images. Then, the meaning that I need to have in my life was so ever present on a daily and on-going basis, I had little time to breathe, to think, to just exist. Now, I force myself to find it and the time between making pictures is long and punctuated. Moving forward (as I seem to need to always do), I hope to somehow find a balance between the two.

Jack O' Lantern. Pottsville, Pa. 2006.
Before stepping forward, however, I have wanted to turn my eye towards the past, towards the family I came from, the person I was and photographs I made when I was that person in order to figure out who I am today, who I am working towards becoming. There are gaps for me, in my personal past, that I cannot recall. There are months from college and the year that followed that I can't conjure up no matter how I try; I am missing pieces of my memory as it has been erased by anxiety, truncated by depression.

I have spent the last month scanning, cleaning up and correcting images that I had made during my time photographing in the coal region. My neg binder from that time period is overstuffed with chromes of varying degrees of exposure (good, bad, in between) and images that I had long forgotten about. Editing them and paring them down so quickly in school did not allow me time to live with many of them, to think about them. I made the decisions about those images so quickly that the edit became the entirety of the project and the other images that were taken with them had been forgotten about until recently.

Landscaping. Hometown, PA. 2007.
Going through the images and seeing them again for the first time in well over 3 years brought me back to those places. Those moments in and around the shutter opening and closing were present for me so suddenly and vividly. It conjured up all of the thoughts and sensory input that are linked to those places and I remembered why I started making those images, started exploring that place to begin with.

...

2010-01-13T20:44:00.002-05:00

Little Round Top, Looking Towards Bloody Run. Gettysburg PA.

Show.

2010-01-08T09:00:00.002-05:00

Three of my photographs from the Confessions of an Obsessive Compulsive series will be hanging at climate/gallery's Focal_Resolution-1 show in Long Island City, NY. It opens January 9th. If you are in the area, go and tell me how they look, please.

Sacred Spaces.

2010-01-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

Labyrinth Path, Offerings. Columcille Megalith Park, Bangor PA.
Columcille Megalith Park is a beautiful, spiritual place up the road about an hour or so in Bangor. Nestled along a local, tared and chipped road, it is a place of mediation and silence. That fall day when A. and I visited was warm and sunny, the air sharp. I was taken with it's meandering paths along the woods and the texture of stones. My favorite part of the park was the labyrinth and it's center. There, when you reached the inside of it, was a rock covered with bits and pieces visitors had left behind as an offering, a thank you.

Split Stone, LR+SC

I long for the warmth and the sun from that day. January's thin air and heavy cold has settled into the earth and I am perpetually chasing the chill away with thick socks, sweatshirts, and big cups of tea.

Transformative.

2010-01-05T01:24:00.000-05:00

Freshly Fixed Tin Type, R.J. Gibson's Photography Studio. Gettysburg PA.

The medium of photgraphy is so intrinsically linked to the transformation of subject and the manipulation of reality. I have spent my adult life clinging to a camera, my eye searching and searching for photographs of places and other people that I rarely allow myself to step in front of the camera, to allow myself to be seen in any other way besides what is represented to me in my head. I fear cameras and their steady gaze in the hands of the untrained for fear of seeing myself as I really am, physically.

In November, I had the pleasure of sitting for R.J. Gibson, a photographer working in the tradition of the wet plate process. I knew when I went to his studio I wasn't interested in being photographed as a typical female of the 19th century, not in ballgown nor in day dress. I definately knew that I wanted to be dressed as a male character; originally I figure I would be dressed as a Confederate infantry soldier.

While I know that "reenactment" photographs can conjure up unpleasant associations for a lot of people, Gibson's process of making the photograph for the subject was really incredible to witness. The final portrait is very much a collaborative work. In talking to him, he figured out a way to photograph me as my 19th century alter in a way that was both fun and thoughtful. After telling him that I was a photographer, he felt it would be better to dress me up as a photographer from the 1800's. I got to pose next to a gorgeous piece of photographic history, an 8x10 wooden view camera with original lenses, constructed around 1865. The photograph it's self had an exposure of about 14 seconds. I could blink and breathe but my eyes could not move. It was strange to stand in front of a camera lens and be photographed for a full 14 seconds. While my mind was totally blank while standing in front of the camera, I couldn't help but wonder if, somehow, 14 seconds could somehow capture something more than 1/30 of a second could.

On Light.

2009-11-26T08:30:00.001-05:00

Puget Sound. Seattle WA.

I had a conversation with A. about the properties of light in different geographic locations. She talked of Venice, I talked of the South. It led me to dreaming about the light out on the west coast, before I set foot on the damp earth there. Here, in Pennsylvania the daylight has a density to it that I can't describe. It is a thick daylight, heavy and long limbed.

Seattle's light was crisp and bright, defining the edges of the landscape with clarity. I was a little dumb founded when I stepped out the plane and was surrounded by the grey, sharp light of the 6 o'clock hour on the west coast. It felt like someone had focused my eyes.

Aw, Shucked.

2009-11-25T09:10:00.001-05:00

Last of the Sweet Corn. October.

An Unintentional Beast.

2009-10-15T08:00:00.002-04:00

The act of putting something in a jar is about preservation, is about keeping that object around as it is for a long time. I have a collection of glass containers and inside that collection are objects that have been picked up and kept out of sentiment, value, or interest.

Last year, I went to Alvira PA with my aunt and picked up a groundhog skeleton. Between then and now, my attempt at curing the bones failed and it began to grow some very neat looking mold which attached it's self to a bird's nest. The bulbs were from the backyard of my old apartment. While gross in formation, I found the results to be gorgeous.

Texture.

2009-10-14T18:10:00.001-04:00

Pike Place Market Parking. Seattle WA.

Puget Sound Shore.

2009-10-13T23:42:00.004-04:00

Rose Petal Filled with Rain Water, Gravel. Seattle WA.

Lately, I have been really interested in being very close to things when I photograph them, flattening the space and leaving only a few hints of depth in the images. I have spent so much time in my photographic life taking two or three steps back and to the right. I think being as close as possible to my subject creates new possibilities for images and enables me to explore both new and old places with ideas that I have yet to mull over. I force myself to look closer.

August.

2009-10-03T10:35:00.000-04:00

Nadine's Front Porch, Drums PA.

Photographs.

2009-10-02T09:02:00.000-04:00

Photobooth, originally located at the Palace Arcarde. Asbury Park NJ.

Me, I Just Got Tired of Hanging in Them Dirty Arcades Banging Them Pleasure Machines.

2009-09-30T23:32:00.007-04:00

Madame Marie's, Asbury Park NJ.

"Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie for telling fortunes better than they do."

Viewer, Ocean Grove.

"This boardwalk life for me is through, you know you ought to quit this scene too."
Sometimes, most of the time, particularly in the dead of winter or right before spring's wild explosion of life and green, I am seeking out what summer feels like. Stifling heat brings a sense of wide open youth, playful desire, endless twilight and wonderment to the world. I want a perpetual summer. I perpetually want sand in my hair and around my toes, I perpetually want sun-licked skin and sticky sweet ice cream and a light heart to make life brighter, easier to bear.

Sea View Avenue, Beachside Jesus.

"Sandy the aurora's rising behind us, the pier lights our carnival life forever."
So, during a phone conversation I impulsively suggested to A. that we go to Ocean Grove, New Jersey for a long weekend by ourselves. Admittedly, I wanted to be close to Asbury Park, enchanted as I am by the mythology that is Springsteen. I wanted to explore the place more, intrigued as I was by what I saw the last time I was there. I loved Ocean Grove's obvious preoccupation for it's past but it's attention for it's present and longing for it's future. Ocean Grove, tucked away from the interstate, sleepy-eyed and quiet seemed like the best place for us to spend our short but much-need time away.

The Boss, Pleasure Island Pinball Game.
My hunt for the elusive light, playful essence of summertime completed it's self on the Jersey shore, in a second floor room of a historical B&B, along the stretch of Asbury Park's boardwalk. I fell hard for both A. and Ocean Grove. That sandy strip of beach and the town's narrow streets lined with quaint Victorian houses and the soft skin of her palm in mine gave me that feeling of summer that I hadn't felt since I was young. Enormous, weightless, in love.

Asbury's Waterpark.

"Love me tonight and I promise that I'll love you forever."

Roberts' 100th Reunion.

2009-09-25T08:18:00.004-04:00

Gathering for the Big Group Photo, Roberts' Reunion. Drums PA.
The first Sunday of every August, since 1909, the relatives and (now, since there isn't anyone actually named Roberts there) decedents of the Roberts family gather in Drums, PA to "reunite" with one another. August is not August unless the first Sunday is spent eating food, chatting with people who's names I can only sometimes recall, drinking birch beer from the tap jutting from the side of the green refrigerator, and gazing out across the pond/lake.

At the Pond
It is like any place I go that is populated by my former selves, by my family's history. There are photo albums containing the group photographs from the time I was born until present day and all 25 of us, all different incarnations of me linger there in the cat-o-nine tails and the swampy ground, around the stream that feeds the lake, with mud-caked feet and a full belly. See, every year each cluster of families is photographed together and those photographs stretch all the way back to the mid 30's.

Potluck.
Like it's very existence, the reunion is punctuated by ritual. The potluck lunch is at noon sharp, preceded by a brief thanks given to the Lord for the bounty and nourishment that he's provided. There is the 50-50 drawing, the meeting to discuss affairs regarding the fiances and future of the reunion, the Chinese auction where my uncle always wins my aunt's quilt. There are the photo of the families and then there is corn, which has been steaming quietly over fire and under wet burlap sacks the majority of the afternoon.

Gaby Takes Charge of the 50/50 Tickets, Steaming Corn.

This year had little to no variation on these themes. Inhaling the sweet, damp air, eating my aunt's macaroni and cheese, flipping through the albums filled with photographs, and wondering around the lake was like most years before. The sensory input at the reunion, forever unchanging, fulfills and marks the beginning of August, to mark the beginning of the end of summer.

Behind but Still Here.

2009-09-22T21:12:00.002-04:00

Steaming Corn, Roberts' 100th Family Reunion. Drums PA

The Narrows, Sunbury, Pa.

2009-07-27T00:27:00.002-04:00

Speaking of home, timauman over at Flickr has uploaded a bunch of scans of old postcards and photos from Sunbury (and surrounding towns) and they are fantastic.

I wanted to share this one, a particular favorite of mine. It is strange and wonderful to see a place so familiar depicted in such a picturesque way. The way those towns look now is so enormously different than what is depicted in the images. The Opera House and The Trolley in Northumberland are absolutely amazing.

So, I Visit.

2009-07-19T11:28:00.004-04:00

Center Road.
I can trace the way back to my birthplace over the worn asphalt roads with my eyes closed. Finding my way through the stretch of Pennsylvania that separates me from there is a second nature, like breathing or sleeping, now in my 24th year. I inhale the warm air pushing through wide open car windows, blink against the sunlight and listen to the groaning hum of my car's engine in it's impaired state, later to be found out as a misfiring 3rd cylinder. The language of traveling here is laden with numbers and sharp turns in small towns; the long left off of 309 to 54, the sharp right off of 54 to 61, the steep hill where 42 begins it's long journey over the Blue Ridge and down into Catawissa. This is what I love, what I am, who I am, what I look for in other places around the country as beauty, as home.

Stacked Wood, Clothes Line.
I have said this time and time again but the landscape of central Pennsylvania is who I am. My heart is the rise and fall of the smooth Appalachian mountains, my veins the neglected back roads, my skin the fields. I cannot talk of myself without speaking, conflicted, about this place.

Front Porch at Amy's.
Yet, when I am here, I am an outsider, a foreigner. I know better than to think, to pretend that I belong here. I see the short comings of small-town life and the darkness of my personal history stings like a fresh cut. The memories of growing up here rise out of the back of the mind without much evocation; the corner at 8th and Orange, the building where I went to elementary and middle school, the long hill up to the development I played in. They are there, thick and real and vivid and living. I could not live among those ghosts, those formative years as a person in the present.

Garage, Kitchen Window.
So, I visit. I drive down Market Street in Sunbury and stop at the local hippie shop for moccasins, visit my grandmother on Orange Street in Northumberland for conversation, meander around the life I lived here in my Volkswagen and head out to Amy's house for laughter, beer, food, and dusk.

Amy & Dan's, at Dusk.
Dusk at Amy's, my aunt, has the type of long light that I have trouble finding where I live now. The shadows get long and parody the objects that they are and the light turns purple and flat as the sun disappears slowly over edge of the soy bean field. Here, in the garage or the warm kitchen or the softly lit living room, I like to watch the sun's light diminish and listen to the sounds of night come up. Here, the fireflies blink randomly in numbers than border the thousands and the quiet is expansive.

Locust Tree.
I am always reluctant to leave. The force that it takes to get me into my car and drive away is all that I can muster against my will to stay.

Meltdown/Rebuild.

2009-07-19T11:25:00.002-04:00

Unsurprisingly, I have been watching, like everyone else, the slope the American economy has been sliding down the last year or so. I am disheartened and worried and cynical and terrified about what the future holds for this country; I fret about my money as well as my future on a regular basis, even though I am relatively gainfully employed. I have seen and benefited greatly from, in my brief 24 years on this planet, a hugely prosperous upswing in the economy and watched, wide-eyed and stupid, as the foundation of the American way of life in late 20th and early 21st century fell out from underneath everyone. It is obvious to cite the 65 banks that have closed since 2008, note the bankruptcy and failures of GM and Chrysler as well as Ford's shortcomings, the deflation of the housing market and the joblessness that is reported back to me everyday.

It's all beating a dead horse, really. I can't say anything about the economic situation of the last 2 years that hasn't already been articulated and explored better than I can.

What I see in times of seemingly endless struggle, however, is re-examining the way Americans have been living the last 50 years. We have been ever-expanding outward; bigger, better, faster, newer without considering the consequences of the precious land and the vast, gorgeous history that has been sacrificed for our culture of empty, mindless buying and the inherently American need to own a piece of that land for ourselves.

I see the shift when I work out at the Rodale Institute, watching the expanding interest in organic, sustainable and local food. I hear about it when wind and solar energy is slowly starting to be the new go-to for powering our country, as opposed to fossil fuels.

So, when I read about Flint, Michigan's plans to shrink itself in order to save it, I was amazed. It sounds so counter-intuitive to what Americans think of as a means of prosperity and yet, by making a town (especially that has struggled so notoriously as Flint has) smaller makes so much sense. By bringing the town back to a center and making it more concentrated around that center, it becomes more sustainable, accessible and and economically viable. While I am not saying that decision to give up the house that one has worked so hard to make home is an easy one, to let go of the idea that "This is mine and it will always be mine" for the larger good of a failing community seems like a strange and refreshingly good idea.

Big Box Reuse is a photography project by Julia Christensen about the ways in which people and organizations have taken closed Big Box stores and re-imagined them into places of worship, art, community, health and learning. It is well known that the construction and openings of such places as Wal-mart and Home Depot kills local economies and businesses and to see the space that such places of huge consumerism once occupied reused and remade into a places of purpose is refreshing and inspiring.

North Carolina: Of Comfort.

2009-06-09T20:37:00.004-04:00

K.'s Garden Plot. Winston-Salem.

com⋅fort [kuhm-fert]

–verb (used with object)
1. to soothe, console, or reassure; bring cheer to: They tried to comfort her after her loss.
2. to make physically comfortable.

–noun
4. relief in affliction; consolation; solace: Her presence was a comfort to him.
5. a feeling of relief or consolation: Her forgiveness afforded him great comfort.
6. a person or thing that gives consolation: She was a great comfort to him.
7. a cause or matter of relief or satisfaction: The patient's recovery was a comfort to the doctor.
8. a state of ease and satisfaction of bodily wants, with freedom from pain and anxiety: He is a man who enjoys his comfort.
9. something that promotes such a state: His wealth allows him to enjoy a high degree of comfort.
10. Chiefly Midland and Southern U.S. a comforter or quilt.

Living Room.
That Friday, I woke up in the house of someone who I love and who's absence in my life is felt in small but enormous ways every day. We came together like interlacing fingers, as hands folded in prayer, our words slow but flowing, like the 9 months that has passed hadn't changed anything. When we ran out of words, we just enjoyed the shared silence, the sunlight, the hum of the truck's engine, the birds, the heat.

Bookshelves.
K., in one of those long, layered conversations about life, mentioned that North Carolina is all around comfort for her. She lives in a house she grew up in and so I can imagine that it feels like a big hug or hand on the small of the back. Her personal aesthetics fit so perfectly into the house and I felt instantly calm and let go of whatever had been weighing on me from my everyday life. It was like walking into the house of a family member, an aunt, a cousin. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the small, strange histories that live in the rooms and the yard.

Former Tree House and Back Porch, with Basti.

Is home that of a real, physical space or does it come out of something else? Does it offer comfort solely from it's mere existence as a place to return to after a long day, a space to decorate and store or is it greater than an apartment, a house? Is it the people that are within it, that lets the nerves relax and brings the calm? How does one create the comfort of home? Does it take patience and time or paint and curtains? Is the combination there of?

I Can Grow Things.

2009-06-02T22:59:00.004-04:00

Golden Arrow Lettuce.
Being able to grow my own food is something I have become really invested in the last few months. Through research and hands-on experience, I have found a sense of pride through watching seeds sprout and grow into real looking plants. I can't imagine how excited I will be when I can pull plump tomatoes off the vine and grill my own squash.

Pea Vines and Black Cherry Tomato Blossoms.
While I don't know if my plants will really yield all that much, since there aren't very many of them, I like the idea of starting to grow things and become part of the growing and harvesting cycle, even if only to provide small amounts of food for myself. I like the thought of a big, green garden. I like to dream of a cellar full of beautiful canned tomatoes, fruit jams and gorgeous potatoes.

Yellow Crook Neck Squash

Crack of the Bat.

2009-05-29T14:04:00.003-04:00

Thunderhead Over the Bottom of the 5th.
Iron Pigs' Game at Coca-Cola Park. Allentown PA.

Baseball has become the only reason I turn on the TV lately. Everything that makes baseball, baseball makes me inexplicably happy. The chatters, the field, the ritual, the sounds, the idle time between plays.

Of Making Pictures: Then, Now, Here, There.

2009-05-16T12:57:00.004-04:00

Old Salem Cemetery. Winston-Salem NC.

My thoughts on picture-making have shifted greatly over the last 12 months or so. School taught me to think about picture-making as a means to communicate some greater truth about your subject and relate to greater social issues. Coming home and working in a environment that is about picture making in another way, a way born solely out of aesthetic has made me re-evaluate what it means to pick up a camera. I work among those* who's main purpose in making pictures is to make them fit into a mold of what pictures are "supposed" to be. It's rare that I see a picture come through the lab that isn't a take on some other example of what good photography is suppose to be. Macro shots of flowers, pseudo fashion shots, moody pictures of architectural and industrial decay, highly edited wedding shots are all common in my workplace and it's hard, sometimes, to not roll my eyes while adding two points of density and hitting enter to move on to the next order.

And it's not that either camp is particularly bad (although I do have trouble letting go of the high-art/important notions I learned in school, as in I try not to scoff at fluffy pictures of flowers and babies), but both camps have their place and merit.

Personally, I struggle with both of them. The high art camp takes things too seriously and thinks too much; the suppose-to camp doesn't think enough. I'd like to straddle the line between the two, making photos that are highly pleasing to the eyeball (trying to, at least) and making photos that are compelling to think about. Though, making work at all is challenge for me lately.

The camera I shot with in North Carolina was a beast of a high end DSLR that was as satisfying to shoot with as a Hasselblad.** The body substantial and the lens crisp, the photos I took there are gorgeous but without much brains. I chalk this up to the novelty of the camera and the lens, because it's hard for the novelty of a 14mm lens to wear off. I'd like to be able to reconcile this at a later date and blend the two ideas together.

I have also been more concerned with documenting my experience of life, no matter how minuscule. More than anything, pictures of my friends, family, and the beauty I see in the mundane details of living seem much more important and precedent than discussing some universal truth through photographs. I think that I am getting back to the reasons I picked up a camera and fell in love with picture-making in the first place.

*Though I am not saying they are bad at what they do, because they aren't. I just can't do photography that way. Also, most of them are making money from their work and I am not. In fact, none of my work has been even seen all that much with exception of here and my website.

** Film cameras. Sigh.

North Carolina: Magnolias.

2009-05-03T13:33:00.003-04:00

On my drive down, I couldn't help but noticed the abundance of fantastic looking trees that populated the highway sides. My mouth slightly ajar, my foot heavy on the gas pedal my stomach empty and my bladder full, I wasn't really up for doing sight seeing or slowing down to look at stuff. So I pushed on, well above the speed limit to get to my destination in a timely manner.

Magnolia Tree, Reynolda, R.J. Reynolds' Estate, Winston-Salem NC.

That is, until I saw a magnolia tree. I unfortunately missed the blossoming of the trees probably by about 2 weeks (too early) but until I went to North Carolina, I had never seen a fully matured one in person. I am perpetually dumbfounded by these ancient trees when I ever I see them. Their leaves are fat and waxy and the branches are elegant. I felt this stupid sense of wonder when I zoomed by one on the highway, my breath sharp in the back of my throat. I probably would've about died if they were in bloom when I was down there.

This particular magnolia tree was in the front yard of Reynolda, R.J. Reynolds' Estate. I wanted to stay underneath the big, winding branches and the fat leaves and read and stay cool. I wanted to give that massive trunk a hug just because it existed and I couldn't get my arms around it if I tried. I collected about a dozen of their seed pods to bring home with me.

Magnolia. Such a lovely word, too. I'd like one day to have a magnolia tree in my front yard.

North Carolina: The Drive.

2009-05-01T09:03:00.005-04:00

Secretly, I have always wanted to be a Southerner, one who is born from the South. Sadly, I was born above the Mason-Dixon line and don't get to have such an honor but I figure I can always visit. Or live there as my stupid hopeful plans go for the next year or so. When I set out last Thursday for a 8 hour drive to Winston-Salem North Carolina, the sun was bright and the weather forecast was promising for the trip: 85 degree weather with clear skies. Car packed, lunch waiting for 1pm, plenty of liquids and music, I headed west on I-78 over dry asphalt and then south on I-81.

The camera I brought with me was a rental from a work, a Nikon D3 with a massive 14-24mm lens. It is a bulky and heavy set-up and though I was tempted to shoot on the way down through my car window, careening into the side of one of the many tractor trailers that I was traveling with wasn't exactly appealing. Which is why there are no photographs until I actually got to North Carolina.

That said, crossing the Mason-Dixon line was strange and anti-climatic. It is marked mostly by the Mason-Dixon Auto Auction, the Mason-Dixon Road and a rectangular green sign, posted on either sides of the highway. While I have been south before in my life, I was less cognizant of the impact of that line and when I did finally cross it for the first time in my adult life, the impact was underwhelming. The changes in the land didn't come until I was well into West Virigina and even then they were subtle; from the change in land use by the sides of the highway (rolling, wide fields versus rocky, steep pastures) to the blue highway signs advertising fast food (Wendys' versus Bo'jangles) were the only indicators that I was below the line of demarcation between North and South.

Housekeeping.

2009-04-18T11:36:00.002-04:00

I find comfort in the menial tasks of domesticity, where my life floats beautiful around the mundane. In small housekeeping based tasks, I find satisfaction in keeping a clean space, a clean house, meticulously organized and put together. It is no surprise that upon coming home, I have found myself more willing to put up with and maintain my mother's expectation of order that has been established long before I was born, long before she was even born. In washing dishes, I find time to mediate. In making my bed every morning, I find a routine that keeps me grounded. In dusting, I am comforted by the way the rag clears the pale floatsom from tabletops, from nooks and crannies in furniture.

Admittedly, it's akin to a nervous tick.

When I am worried, I straighten. When I am listless, I dig into the world that is my stuff and discard the unneeded, the extraneous, the superfluous. When I am sad, I find myself scrubbing a bathroom from top to bottom. When I am alone, as I often am, I find myself deep in the silence of cleaning a floor by hand, on my hands and knees. Often, as extra income, I find myself in other people's houses, polishing their hardwood staircases with hot water and Murphy's oil soap, hands wrung dry and knees bruised. I find a calm in not only cleaning my living space, but other's as well. The world is a better place when I can organize and put things where they belong.

Housekeeping, in a way, is a representation of moral character. The matriarchal family in which I was born into has taught me the responsibility and need to maintain a clean living space in an intense, obsessive manner. Before I moved out, away from the life I lived under the gaze of my parents, my room was a place of chaos, of collaged walls, of piles of clothes, of stuff. I clung to disorder as a means of rebellion, to not only irritate my mother, as all good teenagers do, but push against all that I was brought up to believe, what I should be. I tried to ignore the uneasy feeling I got when I went into homes that were less clean than the one I lived in, whose blatant filth forced me to be careful about touching things, about stepping lightly. I tried so very hard to ignore the dust on the baseboards, the dirty kitchen floor but I could not.

So, when I moved out, when I got to fill an apartment with my things, my tendency and my need to keep house crept up on me and the one day smacked me across the back of the head. I dreaded using the dirty bathroom so I cleaned it. I hated walking barefoot across the dirt-speckled wood floors so I vaccumed. The disorganization of the kitchen made me nervous so I straightened. By the time I moved into my third apartment in 2 years, I was willingly and happily scrubbing the dingy linoleum kitchen floor back to it's former white glory once a month while my roommate was out. I swept the back porch in the summer time, pulled weeds from the sad patch of dirt in front of the house, wiped out windowsills after rainstorms.

I often think of not keeping house a sign of something amiss. I have noticed, as I go back through the short stories I have written, that when ever something is wrong, the house is a mess, the dishes aren't washed, there are no clean clothes, the floors are dirty. Despair is eating in bed, leaving the dishes on the nightstand. When the future is bright, the characters (or myself, since I think it's hard to write something about someone else without you in it) live in a world of order and immaculate baseboards. Love is washing dishes together. I see the decay of personal space as internal conflict in other people's writing too; off the top of my head, Housekeeping by Marylynne Robinson is one, We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates is another.

Today, while I am alone in a big quiet house, I am listing the things off in my head that I need to do in order to maintain that moral character. There is a vacuum to be run, a kitchen floor to be cleaned, counters to be bleached, laundry to be folded and put away, and as an extension of personal space, a car to be cleaned out. Granted there are other things I need to do but before I leave the house, before I even bother getting dressed, the housekeeping comes first. It is only after I do these things, only after I have made my world a better place, can I deal with the world outside, in all it's dirt and disorganization.

A Visual Assault of Sorts.

2009-03-21T09:07:00.004-04:00

Waxing.

2009-03-17T21:28:00.002-04:00

It's 4.30 on a Sunday in mid-March and right now, I can't think of a better time to be breathing in the crisp, mud-scented air than this moment. I listen to six cylinders and gravel crunch under the wheels and my brain is rapid-firing at me with thoughts about what the fuck I am doing and who the fuck I am. I downshift for the stop sign and brake. Here, now my head and heart is full of wanting of direction and an idea of what I will be in 5 10 15 years and the only thing I can see is brown, tilled fields and leafless tree lines.

Picking up a camera to attempt to make an image that is interesting and smart and subtle has seemed like too much of an effort lately and I find myself going "but what's the point of photographing here? What important thing are you trying to said that already hasn't been said about the loss of rural life in the United States? You are beating a dead horse. Put the camera down" when my eye is pressed to the view finder. It doesn't seem like such a great thing to plot a future around but neither do any of the other ideas that I've come up within the past year or so (welder, librarian, intellect, part of the NPR braintrust, farmer, photographer, etc.). I want to know as much as I can, see as much as I can see. I want to shove as much stuff into my brain and figure out what to do from there.

I want to be everything. I want to be everywhere.

Family Fun Center.

2009-03-12T22:23:00.004-04:00

Merchants' Square, Allentown PA.

It's a really beautiful moment when, amidst feelings of detachment, confusion and alienation, the world hands a picture to you with a smirk on it's face and whispers "Here. This one is for you."

More on Merchants' Square in the coming days. The world is warming, slowly, and this weekend I am headed back to the place that birthed me.

Instamatic, LIFE.

2009-03-01T19:17:00.003-05:00

Two things, which are shining examples of those things from the past coming back to impact the future.

Polaroid film. Instant, with those strange colors, is one object in photo-making who's manufacturing life has met it's end. The need for the instamatic camera and the one and only it spits out has radically diminished with the massive take-over of digital cameras. It is a niche market now, an object of the past that technology has eradicated.

Which is why I want to see The Impossible Project succeed this year. I am rooting for them.

Google's archives of LIFE magazine. This article published this week by the New York Times Magazine discusses the problem with Google's recently digitized LIFE photographic archive and it's lack of contextualizing details. In it, Heffernan explains why this lack of contextualizing evidence simplifies and softens the subject matter, how it doesn't explain the obsession with the Kennedy's and is sorely lacking the way the images were categorized. Imagine my delight at the job she is proposing for the particular photography lovers and aspiring librarians everywhere:

"If Google intends to get into the business of displaying photography, it needs to either encourage wiki curation or, more feasibly, to hire a team of people who understand photography to make the most of the raw material here. It’s a good time for it: many first-rate content providers who made their careers in old media (some who even understand the significance of Life photography) would be happy, one of these days, to get a call from Google."

I won't lie: my toes curled.

.org

2009-02-09T20:39:00.003-05:00

After much hemming and hawing and dragging my feet, I finally managed to sit down and redesign the .org. I think it's a little sleeker, maybe. It's got new work up! With a new babbling artist statement! Tell me what you think: godshomemovies.org.

The world is slowly starting to thaw. New pictures lurk where snow once lay.

Yelp!

2009-01-25T11:06:00.002-05:00

Y'all, when I was living in the great white New England, one of my favorite websites to peruse was Yelp. I found all sorts of new places to shop and to hang out that soon became some of my favorites. I was sad when I had to leave all the user-generated reviews behind and come back to searching google for stuff in the Lehigh Valley.

Well, imagine my delight when I was searching for my favorite health food store's hours today and came across their Yelp page. I was filled with e-joy. So, without much further ado, The Lehigh Valley's Very Own Yelp Page. Lehigh Valley-ites and readers, Go! Find things to do! Review your brains out! Tell people about your favorite car wash or dry cleaner, your favorite used bookstore and thrift store. The citizen's of the LV will be happier and well-informed because of it.

About One of The Most Beautiful Songs Ever Written.

2009-01-16T21:43:00.005-05:00

During a long, cold drive home from Boston this past weekend, I zoned out on the rhythm and sounds of the road when the familiar opening lines of Springsteen's cover of This Land is Your Land woke me up from my road-induced stooper. I reached down to turn it up and started thinking about the lyrics, about the land I was driving through.

Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land makes me well up with tears. I try not to get sentimental or patriotic, since my relationship with the United States is both overtly romantic and terribly cynical, but when I hear the first opening chords to This Land, I get goose bumps. I get a big, stupid lump in my throat. I have an intense emotional reaction to singing along with it. The lyrics, simple but perfect, catch me and make me sit up straight every single time. I can remember singing it way back in elementary school (like most kids that went to school in the U.S. from 1960 onward) and not being all that impressed. Now, now that I have read about Guthrie, have learned about his life, his art and his legacy, I can't help myself. There is no other piece of liteature, song or art that so amazingly describes what I see in the landscape, physical and otherwise, of the country in which I was born.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
While all around me a voice was sounding
Saying this land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
A voice was chanting, As the fog was lifting,
This land was made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

Guthrie wrote the song in reaction to Irving Berlin's God Bless America, as an angry response to Berlin's fluffy and vague lyrics. In the context of the time in which is was written (1941) and by whom (Guthrie was well associated with the Communist Party in 30's and 40's during the Great Depression and into WWII), the song is a gorgeous tribute to the vast, plentiful land in which the Unites States was born from. He evokes that enormous landscape not only to remind the listener to really think about the land they're standing on but also to talk about the ideals of democracy in a very subtle way that is absolutely brilliant. What is also fascinating about the song is the way that other countries have adopted the lyrics to describe their own landscape. The wikipedia page mentions several different versions for Canada, Ireland, Sweden and India. I can't help but wonder why the song has so much pull for other countries as well.

I can't mention Woody Guthrie without mentioning Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life, a book that should be required reading for anyone remotely interested in American history, is a remarkable and heart-breaking account of Guthrie's life, death and legacy. As his own American myth, Guthrie's life is fascinating and his character unlike anyone I've read about. While daunting in size and detail, it gives insight into Guthrie as a person without glorifying or demeaning him.

Often, when I am passing through a particularly beautiful piece of land or driving through a particularly depressing part of the U.S., I find myself humming This Lands is Your Land to myself quietly, without irony, just with a sense of wonder and sadness for the land that I am surrounded by.

Paulsen Wire Rope.

2009-01-03T21:51:00.000-05:00

Former Location, South Third Street, Sunbury

Paulsen Wire Rope manufactured heavy steel cables for bridges and cranes and other industrial uses for many, many years. I know that, according to local lore, their rope suspends the Brooklyn Bridge and other suspension bridges around the country.

Paulsen was bought out by Williamsport Wirerope Works in 2002 due bankruptcy. As much as I can find, WWW was bought out in 2004 and was reformed into Wirerope Works Inc. Anything after this, I can't seem to locate. Between then and now, the building was razed. It had been at least seven years since I was on this part of South Third Street so imagine the expletive that came from my mouth when I drove by. I had to double and triple check with family members about the building; "Wasn't there something there? What happened?"

A cousin used to live across the street and at night, when the rest of the world was sleeping, the windows at Paulsen Wire Rope were aglow and a slow, steady pounding noise would seep into the night air. On summer nights, the air smelled like metal and electricity.

I think this edit is too dark. Sometimes, I am a bit heavy-handed with my curves.

Sunday Morning Coming Down.

2008-12-31T16:55:00.007-05:00

It is just barely 8.30 AM on a late December Sunday and I am crunching over snow in damp leather boots, wearing the same clothes from the night before. Here, in quiet rolling rural Pennsylvania, the snow and the ice and the silence and the cold have settled into the land and the air. However, today it has started to warm up, in a freak accident of winter, and the fields and the horizon are thick with white fog. Black trees divide fallow fields into loose grids and here, the fog floats at knee level as the snow and the ice dissipate into the atmosphere. My camera is ten miles away, nestled in it's bag on a chair, and I am cursing myself as I head toward 147 at 40mph.

Oh, this this this and that would be such a good picture. Oh god look at the color and the lines. I need to photograph out here. Over and over again, until the NPR station I have blaring* fades into nothing but static as a I get closer to town, which I find strange.

Everything is slick and wet and car tires make that noise, that amazing noise that car tires make over wet, smooth asphalt on highways. The rolling hills are white and patchy and that fog floats at the perfect height so that one can see the top and the bottom of whatever is in sight: mountains, houses, cows, cars.

I absorb the bits and pieces of what I see, watching the way the angles of the landscape change as my car moves forward. Steadily, slowly I am thinking "I love this place I love this place I love this place This place is who I am This place is who I am" over and over until the words loose meaning.

I often neglect to talk about moments here when they aren't punctuated or illustrated with photographs. That recent Sunday morning was a moment I remembered that I love talking and writing about landscape and memory and place as much as I love to photograph it. It was reminder that just because I don't have images to share doesn't mean I don't have anything to bring to you, Gentle Reader.

* I am that person that listens to NPR so loudly you can hear it with my car doors closed.

Texture of Place.

2008-12-26T21:15:00.002-05:00

I really like taking photographs like this and it's been awhile since I have. That middle and the werewolf, oh, they get me good.

I'm Wandering, A Loser Down these Tracks.

2008-12-15T07:43:00.002-05:00

Former Right of Way, South Second Street, Sunbury
I've been thinking, as much as I can think about non-work related...things, about the railroad. The steel rails that criss-cross this country have worked their way into my perception of space, understanding of transportation and the movement of freight. At night, I can hear the low, haunting whine of freight trains that rumble through the industrial park half a mile from where I lay my head. As I've mentioned before, I have really started to pay attention to the space that they occupy and the place that the right of way passes through. I find the terminology related to railroading to be quite interesting.

I had these ideas in the back of my head as I circled downtown Sunbury on Thanksgiving morning. As I've written about before, the train tracks in Sunbury run through town, slicing the town into two uneven parts. It was quiet and cold with the sun perpetually disappearing behind the clouds.

After I circled around town a few times, I parked my car next to the former Augusta House restaurant and started to walk.

Judy's Cafe
I have a loose rule about photographing in towns, which I like to think allows me to see a bit more than driving around aimlessly. I walk 2 to 3 blocks away from my car, 2-3 blocks over and then walk back, forming a square or rectangle. I allow myself to wonder around and within that blocked off area, as a way to get a taste of the place I am. This way, I can return to a town again and again and in theory, I have a way to see the whole thing in bits and pieces. A place seems less daunting in blocks and numbers.

The south side of Sunbury is scarred with the past. The greying South Second Street leads out of town but not before passing silent school houses, worn houses, and remnants of industry. The train tracks run along on South Center Street, which is where I found myself towards the end of my exploratory morning. Taking long steps across the ties, I passed houses so close to the tracks that their front yards were thick gravel.

Hiding on South Center Street
I hadn't ever really seen this space before and I was struck by the staggered and strange juxtaposition of the houses on the left side of the tracks versus the right. Respectively, one side was dilapidated, with chipped paint and neglect while the other was well-kept and lawn-ornamented. I walked along the ties with the same strange step until I came to the last cross street in town. Here, the tracks passes behind the Weis Distribution center and in front of a groomed cemetery.

Wrong Side of the Tracks, South Center Street.

Here, that cross street marks the elusive edge of town. There are buildings, some houses, and a gas station beyond this point but the tracks follow the Susquehanna and then head out into farm land and mountains thick with trees. Edge of town: this demarcation seems loaded, heavy with potential and well, to be Springsteenian about it, darkness.

I didn't get very far beyond the cross street. I crossed it but didn't get much further, though I wanted to keep walking. I had been gone for much longer than I anticipated and hot mashed potatoes and gravy were waiting back at the house. As always, I made a mental note to return for another day.

From Coal Hunkie.

2008-12-12T07:59:00.001-05:00

Trinity Lutheran Evangelical Church, Shamokin PA. 2007.

Food & Books.

2008-12-01T21:37:00.005-05:00

Traveler's Restaurant, near the CT/MA border on I-84.
Holiday tradition, since 2006 has involved driving from Boston, MA to Allentown, PA. The six hour drive was punctuated by all of the familiar landmarks and stops. It got to the point that from any given place along the route that I traveled, I knew approximately how long it would be until I got home, within ten minutes or so.

This year, that holiday tradition was (thankfully) broken, as I've moved back to the place I really call home. It felt weird not to set off Wednesday morning from the outskirts of Boston, pointed southwest, my car's wheels coasting over the cold asphalt at 70mph. Thanksgiving this year was a mere hour drive, along curving back roads with high beams guiding my way.

I found this one on my harddrive, along with some other ignored goodies, and I really like it. The repeating pastoral scene on the wallpaper border is something full of brilliance, given the landscape is punctuated with John Deere tractors. I took it on a trip to Lebanon, CT with A. Kilton and her polaroid in tow, for Easter dinner at her aunt's house. That trip is yet another series of directions and sights and smells and experiences that composed a holiday tradition that became my own. It will be broken this year; after all, I moved home and back into traditions that were only ever partially mine to begin with.

Linkage, for Lack of Real Content.

2008-11-09T11:22:00.004-05:00

Between working 40+ hours a week, making new friends and sleeping, I haven't had much time for picture making. This weekend and Thanksgiving, hopefully, will change that. I am determined to make new images, dammit.

In the mean time, here's a few random links that I am really into right now.

First, if you haven't heard by now, Women in Photography shows amazing work done by, well, women. The put up new work every other Tuesday. I get so excited when I see it's title bolded in my Google Reader.

I also love image archives or any archive, really. I find myself hugely inspired by Documenting America and get lost in it's e-pages often. Imagine my chagrin when I read Google has joined up with LIFE to put up an archive of images from the magazine. Check it out and marvel at all the LIFE-photo goodness.

Totally unrelated to photography but directly related to art and design is Amy Lau's Dexter-inspired blood spattered dining room. Given my love of the show (and Michael C. Hall, thanks), I burst out laughing at the blood spattered plates and the dismembered silverware. If you have the cash, you can buy chairs, glasses and the a fore mentioned silverware at spring3d.net. What I wouldn't give for a chair. Or several. Or the wine glasses!

Dear United States of America

2008-11-04T23:31:00.005-05:00

This is a beautiful fucking moment. I am happy to be witnessing a milestone in the history of the country that I have always had a deep, quiet burning love for.

I cried like a child last election, too. That was out of fear; this is out of joy and disbelief.

Thank you.

Love,

Shelby

Outside Lies Magic.

2008-10-28T20:18:00.009-04:00

Waiting Corn Stalks, Ruppsville Road.
A few weeks ago, I finished reading John Stilgoe's Outside Lies Magic, book that encourages exploration of the everyday landscape to find the beauty and history that lies mostly ignored next to shopping malls, beyond the interstate and buried deep in the woods. I love Stilgoe's writing. I hold a deep wonder at the everyday, seemingly mundane world around me and to read someone else's thoughts and ideas, which have been thoroughly researched, is so exciting and inspires me to no end. I have been fingering and turning over the ideas he presents in Outside since I finished reading it at the beginning of the month, pondering over electrical lines and smiling to myself about the rails that crisscross and snake through the area around my house.

Stilgoe points to Sundays, the day of rest, as a good day for exploration. I woke up this past Sunday from a nap after a exciting weekend, filled with visits from much-loved people in my life, around 5.30pm. The air was brisk despite the warm weather. It was filled with the sharpness of autumn, with wood smoke. I glanced around the suburban neighborhood that I live in, listening to the quiet with the interstate out in the distance. That sound, that lovely sounds of dried leaves blowing, scraping along asphalt came with the stir of the breeze. I walked out past the neat houses, past the planned, curving roads to an intersection I know well. I caught the bus there my first two years of high school. When I first started the type of exploration that colors my life, there was a barn across the wide rural road. It sat behind a large oak tree. I often found myself inside this barn, walking along the cross beams, since the second floor had fallen in. The photographs I took on a particular, gorgeous snowy day hang in my parents' house now, the only records I have of the space.

Ruppsville Road, West Allentown.
The land was cleared for a development that was never built my senior year of high school. The land still stands empty and is currently used as a place for growing trees by a local nursery. I've watched 10 year old tress being pulled out of the ground, like an infected molar, from this field. On this day, however, there was no witness save for a fox, bounding across the road, pausing to watch me before disappearing into dead stalks of corn.

The houses along this stretch of road are, for the most part, older. Their history stretches back to when the area was wide, open cornfields and farms. They have witnessed the selling off of the land, to massive companies who put distribution centers that are miles long. Lightening rods extend just beyond the chimneys.

I Love These Houses.
The houses and their arrangement are the opposite of the place that I live in, less than a mile away. They sit close to the road. They are worn and small. I like to picture myself living in house like those that dot Ruppsville Road, tending a garden in the summer and holed up against the cold in winter. The cold that I am quietly excited for, as it means big sweaters and boots and the way snow makes the world still. For now I watch the leaves fall from trees and pull warm socks up to my knees.

The light was fading, disappearing behind the lip of the earth. Walking along the white line that marks the road, I lingered at corners, meandered onto the grass that lines the side of the road. I took everything in, letting the details settle into my head. A dog barked as I started off the road, toward the bright empty parking lot of one of those enormous distribution centers.

I was dumbfounded by the immense, dead space and the "nothingness" of the building, sitting so close to so many places with personal, quiet history. The massive structure was impersonal and so boring compared to the places I had just been admiring. So, I walked away and onward, eying the shining rails across the street.

Turnout.

I started really seeing railroads and the space around them after I watched The Station Agent, a gorgeous movie that follows a train-enthusiast and his story of moving to a small rural New Jersey town to live in an old train station. I started thinking about them because of Mr. Stilgoe, who has done quite a bit of work on them. I also started seeing them because of the surprisingly large amount of train enthusiasts who's photographs I print at work; their passion and consistency in which they obsessively photograph trains warms my picture-making, exploring heart. I find myself thinking about the rails after I bump over them in my car. As I scrambled up the fat gravel and stepped over the rails, I looked down the tracks in both directions, coming and going. I couldn't stop thinking about the small bits and pieces of railroad history that I've retained. The rails gleamed in the dying light as walked in step across the ties.

I headed home in the dark, my pace quickening. I stopped looking around and started moving quickly along the side of the road, glancing behind to watch for cars, since I stupidly wore a dark sweatshirt. Racing across the street to the development, I pondered dinner and Monday morning.

Celtic Classic 2008 II.

2008-10-14T18:33:00.003-04:00

Scythian, Sunday Afternoon, Celtic Classic 2008.

These guys are amazing. Despite the miserable weather, they played a high-energy and fun set. Also, I dig fiddle players.

The Town Pants.

2008-10-11T08:40:00.005-04:00

The Town Pants at the Grand Pavilion. Saturday, Celtic Classic 2008.

Two weekends ago (I know, my ass is dragging), I photographed at Celticfest, a three day festival of all things, well, Celtic. Given my disinterest in photographing people I don't know, I spent most of my time photographing the two bands I really dug, one of which is The Town Pants.

While I am not one for band photography, since I find most of it is pretty standard issue, with shutter drag, I feel sort of weird posting these. I think they're alright shots.

I also am, apparently, pretty enamored with the fiddler player.

Deliciously Disposable Earth.

2008-10-06T22:10:00.004-04:00

Way back in January, 10 images from my portfolio Coal Hunkie and a large lump of anthracite coal were selected to be featured in a collection of work that deals with the effects of mining in contemporary life. In March, funding was provided to put together a catalogue of the show. I was honored to find out that my first show was going to published in a catalogue. I am excited to finally get some pages up here, considering I got the books way back in July.

Working in a Coal Mine.

2008-09-28T13:05:00.003-04:00

Mining the Mammoth Vein, Girard Coal Company, Girardville PA.

Reclaimed Strip Mine, Girard Coal Company, Girardville PA.

2007.

2008-09-27T09:21:00.003-04:00

In and Around Port Clyde Maine.
My brief time spent in Maine last summer affected my senses so deeply that I find myself longing to go back more often than I expected. I loved the smell of the air and the great rocky beaches and the lobster boats bobbing in the harbors and the way the pine trees hung over the cliffs into the ocean. I, apparently, was pretty consumed with the textures and surfaces of the place.

Public Art?

2008-09-26T13:26:00.001-04:00

The Clairon Bar & Hotel, St. Clair PA.

Across the Street, St. Clair PA.

I Dream a Highway Back to You.

2008-09-25T20:37:00.001-04:00

Thunderbird on Main Street, Shamokin PA.

2006.

2008-09-22T07:53:00.002-04:00

Our Lady of the Presentation, Brighton Ma.

Mid 70's Pontiac, Brighton Ma.

2005.

2008-09-21T16:19:00.005-04:00

Gymnasium/Auditorium at CW Rice Middle School, Northumberland PA from We Are What We Are.

I can tell you how sneakers sounded on that gym floor, what the smell of the stage was under the lights. I could tell you stories about chipped front teeth, humiliating gym classes, and awkward middle school dances. But you, dear reader, can fill in the details for yourself.

The next couple of days will be dedicated to some older work that's been floating around on my harddrive and stuff from Coal Hunkie that I'd like to get posted. It's stuff that I love and still go "Oh shit! I totally made that photo" when I look at it.

The Lone Ranger?

2008-09-21T09:00:00.003-04:00

Apparently, there's a road in California that has grooves in it, carved by Honda, to reproduce the Lone Ranger theme song when driven on at 55mph.

Genius.

From Last Summer.

2008-09-20T17:15:00.004-04:00

Lobster Rolls for Sale, Over 25 Served. Port Clyde, Maine.

Lost but Not Forgotten, from the Dark Heart of a Dream.

2008-09-18T21:56:00.011-04:00

Front Room and Kitchen of 200 Broadway, Sunbury.
Estate sales are strange. The act of dragging out a deceased relatives belongings onto the lawn and letting perfect strangers bid on objects that someone lived their entire lives with and, in some ways, through is a weird thing to witness.

Backyard of 200 Broadway, Sunbury.
My aunt's (technically my mom's cousin but it's a minor detail of being from a small town) father passed away last month and they had a houseful of a two lives fully lived in one place to take care of. After taking what they (her herself and her sisters) wanted from the house, they called in an auction company to organize and clean out everything that was left.

Driveway of 200 Broadway, Sunbury.
I pointed myself and my car north and westward on Saturday morning and arrived in Sunbury at 11.15 or so. My main goal of the morning was to bid on a silver 50's dinette set in immaculate condition with all 6 chairs, which was successful. I spent the late morning and early afternoon chatting with people I haven't seen since I was 9 or so, eating hot dogs from a church vendor and listening to the chatter of the auctioneer.

Front Door of 200 Broadway, Sunbury PA.
I hadn't been in the house since I was probably 4 and I have only small, vague memories of it. While I've been in houses that are totally empty before, I was struck by how vacant the spaces felt. The carpet in the living room was faded around where furniture sat, the floor worn was down in the upstairs hallway. Closet doors hung open, pillows and clothes lay in corners. Dust shone in the sunlight and despite the backyard being full of people, the upstairs was silent.

Front Bedroom, Upstairs Hallway of 200 Broadway, Sunbury PA.

These photographs ended up being edited as darker than I expected, especially since they are digital. I always find myself making all of my photos darker than I shot them (even though I underexpose them by 1/2 a stop), especially interiors, because I like how aggressive the colors become. I especially enjoy it when the little bit of light in the interiors glows.

On Vernacular Photography, Mostly.

2008-09-17T19:29:00.004-04:00

Recently, I started working at a large photo lab here in L.V. Through the tedious and unending process of scanning film and eventually printing pictures (I'm still in training alright?), I see a large number of photographs that normally I wouldn't even bother thinking about. I get an odd excitement when I get to make reprints or when I pull film out of the C-41 machine. I find it extremely interesting to get to look at photos, be they good or mediocre. It's getting to see into a life that isn't yours.

I've been pondering ideas and thoughts about the snapshot, it's place in society and our hearts. I wonder why people choose to take photos that they've taken, what makes them press the button at that moment. I am perpetually surprised at the more-often-than-one-would-think great shot that comes out of the average picture taker. I've seen a lot of really bad pictures. I've grown to hate disposable cameras, given my propensity to stab myself with the flathead screwdriver that we use to pry them open with (high tech, I know).

In the few short weeks I've been working there, I've gone, through the magic of the snapshot, to at least 20 weddings (mostly all of which were shot on shitty disposable cameras but that's another post for another day), to the Carribean, to Alaska about 6 or 7 times, to Nevada, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Boston (aw.), Texas, and a Redwood forest. I've been at lots of 1st birthdays and Christmas mornings. I went to Disney World in 1994 (albeit underexposed and heat fogged, but still). I get to see stuff that I generally wouldn't get to see were it not for the inherent need to capture the same moments in time for a lot of us. It's like watching the good, important moments of your life happen to other people you don't know. You get to witness the trips and moments you missed out on. It's strange.

As I see it, all of the pictures that come into and go out of the lab are an endless look into what we love, hate, desire, and hope for. Collectively, it's a window into (and I hesitate to say the word, since I harp on it a lot) American life. Thousands of photographs by mostly anonymous picture-takers is a "universal" glimpse and a catalog fleeting moments that are held near and dear. The snapshot camera gives a way to hold onto them, even if we just let them sit in albums or on a harddrive.

I am sure that by next month I will get good and jaded at look at pictures. I will get really sick of Disneyworld and Alaska. But right now, this is a novelty.

Welcome to the Neighborhood.

2008-09-10T20:06:00.004-04:00

Tecumseh Trail, West Allentown.

It's Been Awhile.

2008-09-08T20:52:00.004-04:00

Old Country Buffet, Watertown MA.
Tonight was the first night I could manage to sit down and upload some new photos. These two photos are only related in the fact that they both represent how I spent my last few days in Boston: eating with company.

I'm home and moved in. Work is kicking my ass. I have a crush.

Neighborhood Restaurant, Union Square, Somerville MA.

The American Pastime.

2008-07-26T12:04:00.002-04:00

Lebanon Middle School, Lebanon CT.
I am not particularly emotionally invested in baseball. I grew up only vaguely aware of the Philadelphia Phillies perpetual defeat. Football was the staple sport in my house and in my family; rarely was there a weekend when someone wasn't going to a Penn State football game. Football blared from the TV from late August until January, when the Superbowl's last seconds ticked down in the corner of the screen. Sure, I've been to baseball games (The Former Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Red Barons) and I understand the basic premise of the game. I won't ever ask what quarter the game is in, I vaguely understand stats, and occasionally I listen to a game on the radio if I happen to catch one. It was only recently I admitted my love of football to the outside world, as sports were a symbol and part of dominate culture in the U.S. that was really alienating to me. They still are part of that culture, but more recently I've found myself able to relax and enjoy them. Games are better digested live, instead of through a TV screen. I look forward to going to IronPigs' and Penn State games when I move home.

But I don't love baseball. I feel like I should love baseball, given it is America's Pastime and everyone knows that I like to be a good American . There is something about it that is closely linked to early 20th century history, the rise of leisure and the middle class. It's kind of romantic, in the context of history. I don't really know anyone who doesn't know who the Babe or Jackie Robinson is or why they're Important. Honestly, I'm totally winging this from my impression of baseball in America but it seems so closely tied to democracy in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. I also suspect that it's tied to the American dream. Movies like The Sandlot and Field of Dreams are gleaming examples of this; work hard and you, too, can have success and fame and prosperity, despite whatever obstacles of class and race you will have to overcome!

Mount Carmel Little League Baseball Field, Mount Carmel PA.
Baseball diamonds dot the American landscape. Rarely can you drive through a small town that doesn't have something resembling a baseball field, be it overgrown or perfectly manicured. It is something huge when a new stadium goes up or an old one comes down. There is something strangely magical about standing at home plate or on the pitcher's mound of ANY baseball field, be it Fenway Park or the field down the street with no lights or bases. One can't help but feel connected to something bigger than themselves, as the baseball diamond is so pressed and adhered to the collective memory of the U.S.

Pitchers' Mound, Framingham, Ma.
Over the past year or so, I've taken notice to baseball fields, photographing them if I get the chance to. I love the way dilapidated or DIY'd backstops look. I like the freshly combed dirt, the overgrown outfield, and the geometry of the diamond from the corners of my eyes when I'm standing at home plate or on the pitchers' mound. While baseball diamonds are designed to function the same way and hold a specific sport, it is endlessly fascinating to me their immense variation, which is tied to location, class and level of skill of the teams that play on them. I find them to be really amazing things to photograph and awesome spaces to occupy. I recently started a flickr set, Playing Fields, where I'll put any and all future developments in this strange, totally-out-of-context interest of mine.

Build it and they will come, right?

Of Making Pictures.

2008-07-15T11:15:00.005-04:00

A Huge, Old Lincoln. Revere, Ma.
Photographing has always been an escape from my day-to-day life. I have considerable trouble making photographs in my every day observance of the world because, I suppose, photography is about escapism for me. I find the act of making a photograph is about seeking and exploration; I rarely let them wonder into my life unexpectedly. It’s not as if every single photograph I make is premeditated or I knew exactly what I wanted. It’s more like I set my sights on a place or an idea or even at the suggestion of history and then those pictures can come to me.

A Virgin, Condemned. Somerville, Ma.
I often ponder over missed photographs that are worthy images but don’t find their way into my camera because I’m not paying attention with my photo-brain or I hadn’t gone out that on particular instance to make photographs. I’ve tried to do that romantic “always have a camera with you” notion in the past to find myself lugging around a camera that I am not paying attention to.

I have an on-going list of specific places that I want to go out and make pictures of. They aren’t limited to one particular thing or place or state or town. That list extends in all different directions, from mere ideas to specific places that are linked my personal history, to fleeting objects and places that I see in my day-to-day life. The list is vaguely organized by place and also happens to be a 2 paged double columned Word document.

All the Radiators One Could Ever Want. Somerville, Ma.
I always think about pictures when I am moving about the world. The act of photography, for me, is a deliberate and focused action that requires some traveling, serious concentration and dedicated time. I can’t just hold up a camera to my eye during my life and make the pictures. It seems that the act of making photographs is less immediate and more about meditation, slipping into a place of intense observation of the world where I am mostly watching and only sort of participating.

MOO!

2008-07-07T23:17:00.005-04:00

I always find myself blabbering to people I don't know about my work. Sometimes, I suspect that it makes me seem interesting and it gives me something to talk about to people at parties, bars, laundromats, and other such public places when I am (as always) feeling awkward and misplaced. They, in turn, ask me if I have a website. This results in brief confusion over the website name and a "Oh, I'll totally remember that", knowing I missed out on an opportunity to get someone, anyone to look at my photographs, even if they are just my parents' friends with ties to art foundations in the L.V. or a family friend with links and access to the coal region.

I had 500 postcards printed up last spring for my senior show but carrying around 6x6 postcards all the time "just in case" is a huge pain in the ass. So, I said "Self, let's get some MOO cards so that when the conversation arises next time you have something to hand out!"

I personally think Flickr (if you don't know by now...) is one of coolest ways to catalog, share, print and use photos. God bless their little hearts for hooking up with companies like MOO and Blurb to make self publishing not only accessible and affordable but top quality.

I got my first set of MOO cards in the mail today and they are so awesome; they're like this little package of one hundred "Wee!"s. The color is pretty good, with virtually no color shift. They are, however, a little dense but they're not that far off from what I would want them to be. I had ten of my favorite Coal Hunkie shots cropped and made into cards. They're so adorable. I absolutely cannot wait until I get to hand them to people and to make another set with the stitched photos I've been working on. I also plan on taking advantage of Blurb at some point; it has the potential to serve up something awesome. Say, a book of this here blog, perhaps.

Greetings from Asbury Park.

2008-07-02T20:32:00.010-04:00

The Paramount, Asbury Park.
Tuesday morning, around 10.30, I filled my gas tank at the WaWa out on 100, punched in Asbury Park, New Jersey into a borrowed Garmin*, and pointed my car east on I-78. I've spent little time in Jersey, with the exception of a vacation here and a bus trip to NYC there, my life generally has been spent ignoring the eastern neighbor of Pennsylvania.

My interest in Asbury Park, admittedly, was sparked by my intense love of Bruce Springsteen. His first 4 albums invoke imagery of a gritty seaside town and it's former glory as a place of summer play. Around the time I fell in love with The Wild, the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, I read Fourth of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land by Daniel Wolfe. Fourth of July is a detailed look at the strange, strained history of Asbury Park. Founded by James A. Bradley (our headless statue below) in 1871, it was originally billed as a place for the moral to come and be rejuvenated by the healing waters of the Atlantic, as well as to worship in the Methodist tradition.

James A. Bradley
The history of Asbury Park is outlined and colored by the religion's strong hold on the city's progress, intense racial divide and by Springsteen's lyrics. I thought about this as I rolled through the town's wide flat streets and gazed across lots of raised buildings along the famed Kingsley Street, the town's main drag that runs parallel to the boardwalk and to the Atlantic.

I didn't really know what to expect when I decided to make the trip. I knew that a lot of the iconic buildings had been knocked over or left to decay. I didn't really expect new businesses going in along the boardwalk or the open spaces or the strangeness of the old seaside hotels being used as places of residency. New condos stuck out among dilapidated two-story hotels and the flat space the defined the beachfront.

The Casino.
The boardwalk is anchored on one side by the iconic decayed facade of the Casino, which is currently undergoing construction. At the other end, is the newly revived Paramount theater, it's gorgeous detailing brightly re-painted. Most of the old buildings along the boardwalk have been re-faced or raised in favor of new development. I was surprised to see the incredible amount of empty lots and open spaces, waiting for developers to come in and revive Asbury Park to it's pre-car glory.

Sunset Avenue Pavilion.
I parked close to The Stone Pony and spent the day dragging my sandaled feet along the boardwalk. I ended up at the Ocean Grove Pier, looking up and down the Jersey coast. It was a comfortable day and the sun was high and bright above me for the two hours I poked around. By the time I was finished with photographing the boardwalk, I had acquired a nasty sunburn. I took to driving around the town and debating taking a swim in the Atlantic for five bucks. My skin, in protest, throbbed, even with the air conditioning blasting. I decided to head home, despite wanting an ice cream and a dip in the ocean and more photographs. The drive home to PA was uneventful and I made notes of the names of places in New Jersey I should explore while I'm living at home.

The Stone Pony.

* I generally avoid using GPS-thingies but I wasn't up for getting seriously and painfully lost in New Jersey. The cliche of "What exit are you from?" is acurate; the interstate system is windy, difficult to navigate and fucking enormous.

Pulpish Genre of Books About the Fallen Coal Industry in PA.

2008-06-23T20:55:00.009-04:00

I've read three books, 2 fiction, one non-fiction, in the last month (take a bit) about Pennsylvania's Anthracite Coal Region and I've been thinking a lot about the way former coal mining communities are represented in literature.

First, the non-fiction book was Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire by David DeKok. DeKok was a reporter for The News-Item in Shamokin and spent 8 years covering the complicated, convuluted story of Centralia. The book is intense, extensive and seriously engaging. DeKok lays out the 25 year struggle with the mine fire and the push and pull between the divided town and the state and federal governments. Even though the fire started in 1962, it wasn't really taken all that seriously until early '80s, when the mine fire gases were appearing in large quantities in people's homes and basements. To say the least, the Centralia mine fire was a messy, fucked up situation that really didn't have a good solution to it. DeKok does an excellent job of taking a very twisted situation and making it understandable. In doing this, one can't but help utterly baffled at the bullshit that the town of Centralia had to put up with before the government got around to doing something.

I mention the non-fiction book first, because it's, well, non-fiction. Nothing is embellished for the sake of entertainment or enjoyment for the reader. It is a straight forward account of the Centralia mine fire and not only is it baffling, it is a really good read.

The two fiction books I've finished recently were Now You See It: Stories from Cokesville, Pennsylvania by Bathseeba Monk and Coal Run by Tawni O'Dell.

Monk's book was okay and of the three books, by far my least favorite. I liked the format, since I often use it myself (short stories that tell a larger story about place), her writing and quite a few of the characters. I wasn't so taken with the end, since it seemed sort of tacked on to the rest of the stories. I hate the bit about the town exploding (see below). Generally, I was entertained by the book but felt sort of "whatever" about it once I finished it.

O'Dell's book, which I finished in three days, had me by the figurative balls 2 pages in. Her writing is eloquent and sucks one into the story so intensely that you absolutely cannot stop reading. I fell in love, intensely, (this is probably a personal thing too) with the narrator, the great Ivan Z., the town's fallen football star and current alcoholic deputy. The story unfolds in delicious little pieces and, as I said before, sucks you until you absolutely must finish the damn book TONIGHT. I really liked the characters, all of them, even the "bad guys". Part of me wishes I wrote the book.

That said, I've noticed something really amusing about these town books and a short story that I've been working on that is set in a PA coal town. There are a few things that a story set in a Pennsylvania coal town must have in order to make the story work and to contextualize the place. I swear to god, anyone that's written about a PA coal town must mention these things. I know this, because that story of mine is hinged on these things. They are as followed:

1. You must mention a mine fire that wiped out a town and it must cling to a handful of truth, which varies from story to story. In Coal Run, the main character's hometown is evacuated and leveled like Centralia. In Now You See It, Cokesville's ultimate demise was when the mine fire that burned in the culm dumps out side of town reached a natural gas pipe line, exploded (there was natural gas pipeline that ran along one of the coal veins that the mine fire was in) and destroyed the entire town. In the fiction story I've been working on, the characters pass by a place that is suggested to be Centralia while coming home from a funeral. Which leads me to my next point.

2. Someone must die in an occupational accident, since they are coal miners. It can be more than one person but someone always has to die in a coal mining accident. Coal Run starts with a massive explosion that shakes the entire town, starts the stated mine fire and kills 100 of the men. In Now You See It, the narrator's father dives/falls into a vat of molten steel (okay okay not coal but occupationally related, so close enough) and get delivered to the funeral home as a 150 pound steel ingot. In the story that I've been working on, the narrator's husband's best friend is killed in a mine explosion.

3. There is always football. Coal Run's narrator is a fallen star football player, who's life is changed by a freak accident a coal breaker. Football isn't just a sport in that place, it's a way of life. Bonus points for mention of local high school football. A serious nod if you can work in JoePa and Penn State; even better if you can get in a state professional team.

4. There is always excessive drinking. Beer, whiskey and sometimes vodka.

5. Because of this excessive drinking, there is stupidity fueled violence.

6. There are always big trucks and cars.

7. The women are as tough as the men.

There are a few other small things that link the two books I just finished reading together with the short story I've been working on but those are the major points that let someone know what place they are in when they are reading. Part of me wonders if it's cliche or if it's something that is needed to explain that place. It's like they belong to this weird world of close-to-truth, pulpish genre of books about the fallen coal industry in PA. It makes that type of place really sexy in a way that is both far from the truth. While they all explore the complexities of class, they romanticize the life that comes with living in such a place.

Which is why I am glad that I sandwiched DeKok's book with Monk and O'Dells'. He narrates the seriously harsh reality of living in such conditions and while the other books mean to point out to the reader the ugliness, no one really wants the characters in a fiction book to have face the type of nasty bureaucracy that Centralia faced. They want everything wrapped up in a sexy, coal dust covered package with a nice cover design, in order to entertain themselves for a few hours. Truth in a fiction book, like in most of the arts, is a really relative term.

Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed at my story's reliance on those points above to explain the complexities of living with coal mining. I was rolling around the idea of posting it here, since it's been pretty time consuming and I kinda liked it and now I think I might be too embarrassed about my reliance on the points above to really want anyone else to read it.

There was also something else I noticed as I read O'Dell's and Monk's bios on the back flap of their books. They both, after moving far and away from Pennsylvania, came back to it, to the place they clearly were much more interested in escaping. Characters in their books do the same. What is it about some Pennsylvanians that they just can't stay the fuck away from the place they were raised? It is obvious that I feel it too and I want to know what that means, what's the pull back to such a place mean?

Be Fierce! Be a Warrior!

2008-06-18T19:19:00.003-04:00

Dear Ira,

If you didn't know already...

...I fucking love you.

xoxo

s.

NYTimes Article: Coal Country Looks to Natural Gas

2008-06-09T19:22:00.002-04:00

I get excited* when things that I know and love get mentioned in a national and international newspaper.

I get even more excited when it's a place that I know like the back of my hand.

The article is actually a depressing, quick look at the ever-declining anthracite coal industry and local government buildings looking to switch to natural gas (cheaper) to heat them. This means I probably shouldn't be so excited to see it on the "front page" of the NYtimes this evening but it points towards the main issue that I am/was interested in when I was making Coal Hunkie and the things I still think about and pay attention to when I go back there.

*It's more of a "Hey lookit! Someone's paying attention!" excited than a glee-filled excitement.

Finally.

2008-06-03T23:23:00.007-04:00

I nearly burst into tears when I heard he claimed the nomination.

While I know November is a long way off, here's to the next 4-8 years of change. Here's to a post-Bush United States. Here's to hope.

"America reinvented that paradise, described so briefly and vauely in the book of Genesis, called it Suburbia and put it up for sale."

2008-05-31T20:07:00.012-04:00

Target Practice (Look Hard for it!), Wedgewood Drive, West Allentown.

Despite being all over the place about making work the last few months, I've been thinking about three key motivating factors for making a sprawling, semi-coherent body of work about what it means to live, work and die in a landscape that has no here and therefore, has no there.

Or, in other words, what it means to live in the generic, consumer-driven, suburban, car-centric United States.

One: I recently finished James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere.

Two: I'm moving home, to Allentown, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

Three: I drive everyday, for one hour (if traffic is good) on a major interstate, I-93.

I am tentatively calling it "This American Landscape" in private but it probably can't be called that. So I'll go with "Nowhere Places and Nothing Towns".

Green Green Grass that Grows Unnaturally All Around, Wedgewood Drive, West Allentown.

Although it was written 15 years ago, The Geography of Nowhere is, among many other things, a very precise, scathing commentary on the history, evolution and proliferation of Suburbia in the United States. It examines the landscape it produces, the physical, and psychological, and predicts the probable outcome of living in an unsustainable lifestyle that has been constructed around the car. Most importantly, in my case, it gave me a barrage of ideas to roll around in my head, to apply to my personal experience and to observe in real life.

I think of place as Lucy Lippard says in Lure of the Local: "Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person’s life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there." I can feel the subtleties of places when I go somewhere that has those layers. I can feel the distinction of Here or There. But my body, heart and brain also know when I am in no place, where the layers of human interaction and connections is virtually non-existent. I think that lack makes a place Nowhere.

So, I've been thinking a lot about Nowhere.

See, I grew up in a place that is very much There. It is a definable town, not only by it's borders but by the way it functions in it's layout. There are local, community supported businesses in it's downtown area, it's mostly walkable and it's got a very distinct, albeit quiet, history. It is very much a Here place that is distinct because it is Northumberland, Pennsylvania. It obviously has no interest in doing away with the notions that make it "Small Town America". It is also about 15 miles from the nearest interstate, which I will get to in a bit.

At 13, my parents and I moved to Allentown, Pa. More specifically, a housing development built by Field Stone Associates L.P. in Upper Macungie Township. Old Towne, which is neither Olde nor anything like a Town, is a planned community of wide, curving streets, small lush lots and houses of 23-2500 square feet with nearly identical floor plans. It is vast. It is also indistinguishable from most of the other housing developments that have sprung up in the Lehigh Valley and probably elsewhere in the U.S. Disconnected from places of commerce or culture, save a strip mall at the main entrance to the development, one can't really get anywhere outside of Olde Town without getting in a car and driving there.

Surprise.

It is no wonder I spent most of high school disoriented, stressed and saddened. Without four wheels and six cylinders, I was pretty much stuck. I couldn't take a mischievous walk around town with friends (I didn't have any in the neighborhood), get a piece of pizza, or spend time in communal areas which were, in summer, front porches and big yards. The front porch of the houses were merely a decoration, a gesture of Olde-ness instead of an extension of living space. The yards were a face to passer-bys to say "Look at how lovely my yard is." It had no history except the time frame of it's development. I was living in a place that was, for all intensive purposes, Nowhere and I was freaked the fuck out.

And then I forgot about how weird it was until I determined that my next course of action in life was to move home, get a job, pay off some debt and figure out what's next. Now that I know that I'll be living in that same nowhere place, I am distressed and conflicted. I became even more distressed and conflicted after finishing Kunstler's book two days before I was to go home for Memorial Day weekend. Driving the streets I learned to drive on, I had a feeling I've felt only a handful of times prior. It shows up in my stomach, a disorienting feeling of being somewhere geographically but being nowhere at the same exact time. It happens to me when I drive on big vast interstates that I've never been on before. It happens when I drive on new roads that cut across the old roads that I know like the back of my hand.

Exit/On Ramp 32, I-93, Medford, Ma

It also happened to me the first time that I drove to and from my (temporary) job in Methuen, Ma. It is 25 miles from Medford and is a straight shot on I-93 Northbound. I drive in the opposite direction of the traffic (thank the Good Lord) that's coming into Boston in rush hour. While I've sat in really bad traffic on the Masspike numerous times, I was awed by the sheer amount of cars barely creeping along in the southbound lanes. I was also awed by how far away the traffic into Boston stretched. I was dumbfounded by the mere thought of having to do that every single day.

I also got that creeping feeling of being Nowhere with a bunch of other people who were headed to Nowhere to work and to live. As Kunstler says "There is little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like noplace in particular." The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, all 46,837 miles of it, is utterly Nowhere. You can get to a Here or a There but while traveling, you are Nowhere. You can travel through or around a place, like Toledo, Ohio or Hartford, CT but one doesn't really experience anything about that place at all; no local culture or cuisine, no people, nothing. One just passes right on by, onward to the next exit.

Mystic Avenue, Medford, Ma.

Since I moved to Medford, I-93 permeates my life. I have to drive on, around or under it when I want to go anywhere. I can watch the traffic from my bedroom window. I can hear the rush of cars in my apartment with the windows open. I've never thought of and been so aware of a road in my entire life like the way I've become aware of I-93 in the past few months. Growing up, the interstate was a far away, rarely thought of unless there was a vacation to be had. The concrete and asphalt of such a road rarely entered my vision.

And now, it's sort of all I can see. It is very much in my day-to-day routine. What I'm having trouble with is how something that is Nowhere has become such an integral part of my life. How does one live with and in Nowhere and be okay with that? Is there detachment? What does that do to one's sense of self and place? What about history? What about the present? What about the future?

I do what most Americans do when they live in Nowhere: I travel to a Here or a There in order to reconnect with place so that I can feel like things are normal, that this lifestyle of Nowhere is normal.

Aerodynamic! Moreland Street, Medford, Ma.

I, unfortunately, don't have such styling digs in which to escape.

That said, all of that above is a lot to think about. It is a lot to photograph. There is a lot that I am missing or haven't had the chance to think about. Scratching the surface, putting the ideas down, framed by pictures, is one way I can start to make sense of all of it. It is also the way that I will be able to live, temporarily, Nowhere and be able to cope with it.

I listen to the cars up on the interstate from my kitchen and wonder about the exits that those cars are barreling towards with such speed. I think about their passengers, their houses, their lives. Are they headed towards Nowhere? Or are they headed towards a There?

Which Side Are You On?

2008-05-12T20:10:00.003-04:00

A few Mondays ago, I watched Harlan County U.S.A., a documentary directed by Barbara Kopple. Released in 1978 and filmed between 1973 and 76, it is a powerful chronicle of a coal miner's strike in Kentucky. 180 miners fought against Duke Power Company for about a year to obtain rights like health benefits, sick days, running water and toilets in their company owned homes and better pay. Kopple lets the people tell their story of the strike, through their actions and words and also uses the music of the area, bluegrass and country, to convey their lives.

It's a really powerful and moving film. The story that's told is complex but the film does a good job of telling it. It is strange to sit and watch and to remind one's self that what the miners and their families were being put through weren't eradicated by contemporary life or the massive boom in the economy post WWII. I had to constantly remind myself that it was filmed in 1973, not 1930. Kopple makes sure that you side with the miners

That said, I keep up with "local" news from where I grew up and where my family still resides. In 2006, a miner was killed at R&D Coal Mine outside of Tremont, PA. There have been articles in all three local newssources about the owner, mine supervisor and another miner being charged with involuntary man slaughter in the death of the miner, which is rare for anyone to be charged with anything following a mining accident.

Interesting.

"But in a Larger Sense We Cannot Dedicate, We Cannot Consecrate, We Cannot Hollow This Ground."

2008-05-03T12:31:00.007-04:00

Audio Stop Number Three: From Eternal Light Memorial Looking Towards McPhearson's Ridge.

Last weekend, A. Kilton and I headed to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for a nerdy weekend full of Civil War History. Pointing the car further west into the state, we took route 222 to route 30 (the Lincoln Highway, appropriately), which takes one through the southeastern region of PA, through the heart of Amish country and over one of the widest parts of the Susquehanna River. It felt like August on Saturday, a haze hung on the horizon line as mid-day temperatures reached nearly 85 degrees. After a brief stop over at a Sonic Drive-In and a nice long winding trip to the center of Gettysburg, we rolled into the newly built visitors' center around 1. We drug our feet through the center and the gift shop, gawking at the embroidered pillows, Lincoln Attired Boyd's Bears, and other tasteless overpriced items that gift shops offer up to consumers in the guise of "cute" and "historic". We purchased The Travelbrains' Gettysburg Expedition Guide, some much needed soda and headed out to start the tour.

I should probably also note that, no matter what we do, no matter how fast we do or do not travel, no matter the determined departure or destination time, we stretch seemingly short trips into hours. 2 hour trips become 4. A cross-country trip would probably take us years. This is why it took us nearly 6 hours to complete a 3 hour audio tour. We split it up over the two days we were there so it wasn't as long but by the time we got to the site of Pickett's Charge on Sunday, I was more than content to buy my Union kepi, type in the directions for a return stop to the Sonic into the Garmin and get the hell out of Dodge.

While trying to find the first stop on the tour (the writers and producers of the CD clearly assume that you know what you're doing and how to navigate the roads of an otherwise generic small town in Pennsylvania, making things more difficult than they need to be), it took me very little time to figure out that I wanted to photograph the strange transparency of a place like Gettysburg. I wanted the photographs to talk about the beauty of the landscape and how it intersected with this Really Important History as well as a booming tourist industry. I wanted to talk about the strange experience of coasting at 35 miles an hour through rolling hills and grassy fields with about 100 other cars and buses, witnessing the same view of history, trying to picture the immensity of the three day battle at Gettysburg that changed the course of the Civil War.

Audio Tour Stop Number Two: Oak Ridge.

I say "I wanted to" because I didn't go with my gut instinct when I left my apartment on Friday morning saying "You forgot something" and managed to neglect checking the battery in my camera and leaving my battery charger tucked away in my desk. Nikon being the company they are, decided to manufacture no two camera battery chargers the same and thus, my camera died about 10 minutes into the second day.

Anyways, it had been a long time since I'd been to Gettysburg. My twelve year old brain didn't remember the immense amount of space or the beauty of the landscape. It also didn't recall what a strange point of intersection that Gettysburg is. History, tourism, reenactment, landscape attract a strange, wide-ranging group of people. Families with bored teenagers, Union and Confederate reenactors in full costume, bikers bedecked in their finest leather jackets (PA's state roads are long and smooth, with uninterrupted views), older couples and newly weds (or at least newly-in-love), ghost hunters, history buffs, the curious and the greyhounds.

Audio Tour Stop Number One: McPhearson's Ridge

Without a camera to pressed to my eye, I had problems processing what I was witnessing; without a frame to, well, frame things, my brain went to other places. I spent the time while A. Kilton was out wondering around at every other stop, stretching my legs and groaning over my sunburn, thinking about what it means to be in a place with a "living history", debating the pros and cons of being a Civil War reenactor, considering my next path of research obsession, going over a list of things to take photographs of next time I'm there. I also spent a large majority of the time contemplating just what exactly I wanted to get from a trip to a Civil War battlefield, besides a sweet coffee mug with the Gettysburg address printed on it, a nasty sunburn and a nice new hat.

I wanted to experience the feeling of Something Huge Happened Here in 1863 while shifting into 4th gear in 2008. I wanted to feel that so-called living history that is touted in tourist brochures and on billboards. I won't say that I didn't have really amazing time, because I did, I just didn't get that overwhelming Important feeling that I had hoped for. And I won't say that I'm not interested in going back, because I definately am. I want to go to the reenactments this summer. I would love to expand my Civil War battlefield tours to Antietam and Vicksburg. Hell, I'd love to do a Civil War road trip, marking off each important battle with a stop over for meandering, picture taking and thinking about History. I just had expected to feel something bigger than me, bigger than now but it fell short. Or maybe I did.

Looking out across the view from Devil's Den from Little Round Top, watching small figures get in and out of their cars, I thought about the manufactured sounds of cannon and rifle fire on the guide CD and tried to picture what this place would be like without roads and tour stops. Like A. said "I want a history filter so I can actually see what it would look like then, without all of these people and cars and paved roads everywhere. I think I'd actually get it then." Experiencing history in a car with a CD makes it just that much more difficult to understand. It removes the sense of place from that place so much that the only thing you can hear is fake cannon fire and the occasional slam of a car door, not that quiet suggestion of Important that I usually get from a place so heavy with past. The 19th century battlefield is just a blur along the 21st century landscape witnessed like everything else: from a car, filed away with vacation photographs and fake parchment copies of the Gettysburg address.

That said, I am glad that Gettysburg has this weird, esoterric culture surrounding it and it's past. I'm really glad it didn't go the way most places of the Civil War went, as examined in Killing Ground: The Civil War and The Changing American Landscape. I actually love that an otherwise po-dunk Pennsylvanian town has a bright spot in the history of the U.S. I love the giftshops and reenactors*, the kitsch and the strange intersection of now and then that goes on there. I'm just not entirely sure it brought me closer to a better understanding of the United States and the world in 1863.

Audio Tour Stop Number Six: Virgina Memorial.

*A. Kilton and I actually had a conversation at one point in the car about the merits of dating a war reenactor. Could you really date someone that was a Confederate? What about a British soldier? Does that say something about them?

Although, given my propensity for rejection of gender roles, I've been pondering the strange possibility of becoming a Union Infantrymen or if I could ever ride a horse, a member of the calvary, since they have better jackets. It's an expensive hobby to get into but also strange and wonderful. I've since added it to my List of Things to Do When I am Independently Wealthy.

Nature?

2008-04-17T18:23:00.002-04:00

Tree Sprung from Asphalt.

Behind the Medford Municipal Garage.

That Tree Wants that Telephone Pole Something Fierce.

A Little Slice of Green.

This post probably reads as a bit of a tribute to Nature Walk Boston. That's a pretty correct assumption, considering the author of Nature Walk and I talked about these photos Monday evening.

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.'

2008-04-14T13:19:00.007-04:00

Shepard Fairy is one of my favorite artists, hands down. Obey Giant is one the most interesting, widespread street art projects that has come to fruition. It slowly exploded to include a magazine, really expensive clothes, movie posters and a very profitable design company. I am enamored by Fairy's use of propaganda-like imagery to create a body of work that comments on popular culture, government control, big brother, war, money and just about everything else in the modern, contemporary world. Heavy, bold design? Tri-color silk screens? Appropriating Soviet Union communist propaganda? Punk rock? Hip Hop? Squish them all together? That's genius.

I also love it's ever-present, omnipotent original Andre the Giant logo and strange ambiguity of the images that have been created under the Giant campaign.

It's only appropriate that he did the redesign of 1984 by George Orwell, as well as the one for Animal Farm. Maybe this time, since it's got a really well-designed cover by one of my favorite working artists, I'll actually read them. Read the post about redesigning book covers for classics at The Penguin Blog, read the whole story of Obey Giant in Supply & Demand and get excited for E Pluribus Venom which gets released at the end of July.

More of The Steel

2008-04-11T11:52:00.004-04:00

The High House.

During World War II, large guns for battleships were produced at Bethlehem Steel and then heat treated in this building. They would stand the guns end on end and either heat them up and quench them with water or chemically treat them. The building is so strange to look at, given it's scale and mass. Driving across the bridge behind it, you can damn near see in the windows.

Eventually, the parking lot for the casino and a hotel will sit where I was standing to take this photo.

On the right is the Iron Ore Bridge and the faint skeletal structure of the casino it's self.

Boy of Blue Industries

2008-04-08T17:28:00.008-04:00

I, when it comes to making photos, am of the camp of a photo is a photo is a photo no matter what camera it was taken with, captured with a digital censor or a film plane, or printed from a computer or in a dark room. A good, smart photograph, however it's made, is a good smart photograph, accidental or not. "Good" is a subjective word, which I'll tackle at a later day.

Wayne Martin Belger's work falls far from that idea. Belger constructs gorgeous pinhole cameras with the intent of capturing a specific subject with each camera. They are alter-like, a tribute to each of the subject he plans to photograph with the camera. I am most awed and intrigued by the HIV, Heart, and Altar cameras.

Blast Furnace Profile

2008-04-04T11:52:00.003-04:00

Bethlehem Steel. It's better and more informative in it's full version here.

Alvira, PA.

2008-04-02T11:25:00.002-04:00

Munitions Bunkers 1 & 2, Alvira PA.

A few Sundays ago, my aunt, cousin and I took 44 to the ghost town of Alvira. We'd been sitting around, sipping Coke and chatting about the quiet deserted places in PA. My aunt brought up Alvira, a town mentioned in Pennsylvania Ghost Towns: Uncovering the Hidden Past. As it's about 20 minutes (give or take) from her house, the three of use headed out there.

Alvira, a curious place, sits inside PA State Game Lands 252. A sharp right off of 44 onto Mill Road takes you to a stop sign. Make a right and you find yourself bumping and heaving down a gently maintained road for about a quarter of a mile. We parked between a beat-up black Chevy truck and a grey Aerostar and listened to the car doors shut against a strange, wide quiet.

Founded in 1825 as a farming community, Alvira was a small town of about 400 people. In 1942, the U.S. Government took over about 8,500 acres of land in the area to house a TNT factory and storage facilities. The town was evacuated by eminent domain and the residents were promised that they would be able to buy back their land after WWII was over. Turns out, that was a lie. The government over-estimated the need for TNT and eventually the factory closed, long before the war ended. The land was divided up and sold to different owners; one for a golf course, the other for a prison. The factory it's self now sits behind the walls of the Allenwood Prison and houses minimum security prisoners.

Bunkers 3 & 4.

Two cemeteries, church and house foundations, many of the 149 storage bunkers and the grid of the town remains. The cemetaries are extremely well-maintained, considering their age and place. There were a few newer headstones; my cousin spotted one that was from 2000 or so.

The bunkers are igloo shaped, built to withstand an accidental blast. Of the four we came across, one was open and unlocked; the others were not only locked but welded shut. The open one, which I assume was number 4, is clearly used as a party spot. There were empty beer cans and shot gun shells scattered near the opening and the remnants of a fire inside. The walls were covered in graffiti of the "Cindy is a slut" and "John has a small dick" variety. As the walls are solid concrete and dome-shaped, everything echoed intensely. My footsteps against the dirty floor hung and vibrated in the air for 5-7 seconds after they were taken.

New Part of the Washington Presbyterian Church Cemetery

We wondered around for about an hour and half. There were a few other people there but they disappeared as soon as they appeared. Mostly, it was just quiet with very little sounds from animals or the highway. We attempted to trek down to where the majority of the house foundations remain but the field was soaked and muddy. My aunt found (what we assume is) a groundhog skeleton; she took the skull and I took the vertebrae and pelvis bone.

Muddy with aching feet, we headed back to her house in silence, me making mental notes of photographs that I need to take along routes 15 and 44. At her house, she made meatloaf, while the race played on TV and the two of us talked about music, life, the internet, whatever came up. I left around 4.30 and stopped in Northumberland for hoagies at Amato's.

Blast Furnace B

2008-03-30T20:57:00.005-04:00

I'm really, super excited about the experience of photographing Bethlehem Steel. It was fantastic and interesting and overwhelming. I want to talk about it more in detail but I wanted to post this because I think I'm in love with it. I have two others that I like and plan on sharing in the nearish future but I think this one is going in the steel frame for class.

I'd really really love to continue photographing there and examining the space as it changes and morphs into it's future. I think documenting that process is probably as important as photographing it as it was. To document as the site steps out of it's former self is really interesting. I am excited to do something with that idea, to make it into pictures.

Also, since I shot square for so long, my mind is blown at the way a panoramic can convey space, obviously. I feel like this format can (and probably will) be used to inform and expand Coal Hunkie even further, since I feel it was one of the things missing from the project. There's probably a thin line with the format between really interesting and hokey. I'd like to think I have a better eye than to make it hokey.

My Yearly Easter Time Trek to Connecticut.

2008-03-27T20:08:00.004-04:00

Bob's Big Boy with a Christmas light necklace, Windham CT.

And it went a little something like this.

Kevin & Corey Get Their Drink On. Somewhere in CT.

Go Fly a Fucking Kite.

El Gato.

Set Table for Easter Dinner.

Oh! Lookit!

2008-03-26T12:43:00.004-04:00

I've been throughly distracted trying to find a good panoramic stitching program that's not going to cost me any money (read: stolen) and working on packets to send out to galleries. I've got 3 lengthy posts up my sleeve (Alvira! Bethlehem Steel! Connecticut!) but until then, I've got The Town That Was to share. I really really want to see it but unfortunately, It doesn't seem to have distribution so Netflix will not help me.

And I Walk the Same Dirty Streets Where I Was Born.

2008-03-21T09:14:00.008-04:00

Store Front, Market Street, Sunbury PA. See the others here.

I went back to where I came from, back to the mountains of Central Pennsylvania to be reminded of the subtleties of place. I made my usual stops at Jasminaire boutique, the local head shop for incense and moccasins and at the Squeeze-In for a hot dog with everything.

I parked my car on a Sunday morning (the hot dog and head shop was taken care of the night before on my way to my aunt's, who lives outside of town) while everyone was in church and walked the streets of downtown. There are small changes in buildings, their occupants and ownership changing hands only a bit since I last called it home. There are more vacancies, signs in the windows reading "Available for Rent"; the store windows soaped or covered in newspaper.

Train tracks run through Sunbury, parallel to the Susquehanna River and the flood wall along Front street, like two scars along the back of a hand. Stand on the tracks there, that run along Third street and you can see from one end of town to the other.

I had forgotten about the trains, about the long pauses in traffic as they chug through town at 30 miles an hour. Walking along the tracks, I could hear the whistle as the train came to cross streets, long and steady. when it met up with me between Woodlawn and Market, the whistle was so loud I could feel it my feet and in my chest as my brain rattled at the noise. I watched the cars slip by me, listening to the rhythm of the wheels on the rails. I had forgotten about this mostly daily occurrence, of the sound of a train headed into town and then back out again.

The Union Forever?

2008-03-19T13:22:00.008-04:00

MassArt Metal Shop, March 5th.

I spent 2 hours last night at the forge. There is something ridiculously satisfying in heating up a piece of metal and banging the shit out of it to make an object. I spent an hour bent over a table with a TIG welding gun in one hand and filler wire in the other, running beads over 1/16" pieces of steel. I didn't really make anything interesting or nice to look at but I made metal stick together, I shaped steel into a spiral. Making photographic prints seemingly pales in comparison to bending steel, to moving a puddle of liquid metal along a seam to bond them. Perhaps because I haven't made prints of my own photographs for a long time or perhaps because welding is a shitload of fun.

Since I've found I am not absolutely terrible at arc welding, I've been kicking around the idea of actually going to welding school and/or becoming an apprentice. I like the idea of being a highly skilled trade worker, of being in a union, of working with metal. I want to be able to walk away from a day of work, having made something, having a physical object to show that I did something that day. I am less confident in my art schooling and my skills in networking as a means to get a job or make money; I suspect the only reason I went was to learn how to think. I love to make photographs, I love to think and talk but as someone who comes from a working class background, it feels absurd to think that I can do something so rife with privilege, that requires the type of money that I doubt that I will ever see.

That said, I've been considering this the way I consider most things: doing lots of research and thinking. Excited by possibility, I launched into a week-long research project about welding, what you can do with it, where you can go to learn and so on and so forth. There is an organization out of Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood of Boston, called Women in the Building Trades. WIBT is an organization that is "devoted to helping women pursue careers in the skilled trades". They have a introduction to the trades class for women and offer a pre-apprenticeship class that includes such things as math for construction, strength training and hands-on projects. In a similar vein, Tradeswomen Now and Tomorrow is a national coalition of tradeswomen's organizations and advocates and is a fabulous resource. There is also a welding school in the Lehigh Valley, PA, Welder Training and Testing Institute where one can obtain welding skills and certificates.

What I am caught up on, what I trip over is of having a non-traditional career for a female. It's daunting to think about being in a primarily male-dominated job place and all of the shit that comes along with that. I like the idea of not having to put on female-ness in the morning in the form of clothes and make up, of getting to wear boots and a hard hat. It is one part empowering and one part nerve wracking.

POSSESSED

2008-03-11T10:56:00.003-04:00

Possessed is a short documentary film about 3 different horders in England. It's quite touching. Check it out here.

November 5th 2005

2008-03-07T09:37:00.002-05:00

Pottsgrove, PA. Aunt Amy's Driveway. From we are what we are.

I'm headed home on Wednesday and I am excited.

They Don't Rule the Blood; The Blood Rules Them.

2008-03-06T10:19:00.006-05:00

Subconsciously, I have been steeping myself in a wide range of representations of the South for as long as I can remember. Recently, I've become aware of the progression between the Old and the New South and how they exist and intermingle today. Two weeks ago, I watched A Street Car Named Desire and then obsessively gathered information about the play, the movie and Tennessee Williams. It lead me back in time to Gone with the Wind which, despite it's epic running time of 238 minutes, was a gorgeous trip into Hollywood's Antebellum South. I realize Hollywood isn't the best way to absorb and learn about history but the best fiction is most always based on fact.

In the vein of the both of the films mentioned above, Monday evening, I had the pleasure of viewing Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Released in 2003, it is a road trip guided by Jim White and a 1970 Chevy Impalla. It is part documentary, part music video, part loosely constructed narrative about the elusive and fascinating culture of the South. We meet the writer Harry Crews along a dirt road and he leans into the back the Impalla, his head hovering right inside the car. I wouldn't call it a documentary movie, per say. It's more like a guided tour.

There aren't enough words for me to express my awe and adoration of this film. Visually, it knocked me off my feet. The photography and direction in this movie is precise and beautiful; it sucks you further into the landscape, into the story that's being told so quietly you don't notice until the movie is over that you're sitting on a couch in New England.

Musically, it features an extremely talented spattering of musicians. I'm just going to suggest that one should definately peruse the music section of the website. I've had it on repeat since I downloaded the soundtrack the same night I watched the movie.

Conceptually, it is smart. It doesn't point any one thing to define the "Southern experience" or try to explain what it means to be "Southern". Jim and the cameras take you to a junkyard, a coal mine, a juke joint on a Saturday night, a passionate Pentecostal Sunday church service, a restaurant that serves fried catfish and redemption and a mountain gospel church. In every place that you're introduced to, the movie goes "look at this. look at these people and listen to what they have to say." The film not only examines the South but also honors it. While there are some stereotypes represented in the film, it feels more of a way to acknowledge them as real people and not the nasty, classist representations that are normally seen of them.

I know the reasons that I am drawn to this film are because it is a perfect demonstration of what I want to do with my work. It examines a place that is unique and rich in culture, despite the world-at-large saying "what you experience and your life and your art and your music isn't culture". It is both dark and beautiful, ugly and fascinating.

I Like It Even More When the Bathtubs are Empty or Have Been Repurposed.

2008-03-05T23:00:00.005-05:00

medford.

Maybe this digital thing isn't so bad.

I've Got Those "I Don't Know What the Fuck I'm Doing" Blues.

2008-03-03T21:40:00.007-05:00

So, I've been trying to make myself go out and take some real photographs with my digital camera. These few are, unsurprisingly, vertical and have a relatively similar composition. Upon closer inspection, they'd be really great cropped into a square but I feel dirty trying to make them into something they aren't. I've also been trying to figure out the color; a digital photograph will never replicate the intensity of chrome film. I'm trying to figure out how I want the color of these to look, as right now they're leaning towards pretty generic. With film, I worked at establishing a color palate that I really like and was also used to working with, as far as processing and printing goes. More, less saturated?

I think I need to avoid using the lens at 18mm. It makes everything feel tiny and I am not a big fan of the vignetting.

In other digital picture news, I ordered one a Panosaurus Tripod Head for experimentation. My problem with shooting digital is that it's so immediate and instant that it doesn't feel like it takes a lot of work. I know, that at the end of the day, I'm still using the same eye and sense of composition to make the pictures, regardless of the camera. I want to sort of challenge that expectation and work on using the medium to stretch not only it but the way I work.

In so many words, I'm starting all over again because I'm using an entirely different camera and thus medium. It's a bit like stumbling around in the dark in a room that you're not familiar with and stubbing your toe on the leg of a table. That said, I still think these feel very much like "my" pictures.

Six Links for Saturday.

2008-02-12T10:18:00.007-05:00

These posts are no more than a glorified link dump. There will be six new ones every week. There is no logical order nor coherency.

01. Vanishing of the Bees. A film about the decline in the bee population. see also Allison Wallace's A Keeper of Bees.

02. Apophenia. A blog about e-life and it's impact on society. Interesting! Smart!

03. No Depression. A magazine that surveys the past, present and future of American music.

04. Switch Back Gravity Railroad. An effort to get the Switch Back up and running again. When I grow up, I will belong to a historical society.

05. A NYtimes story about Deer Hunting for Population Control in New Jersey. Interesting.

06. Laster's Art Shack. The Laster's are a family of three from Kentucky that produce phenomenal folk/outsider art. They are great artists and Ruby Elvis Rose is about the cutest thing you could ever imagine. Someday, I will have the pleasure to own one of their pieces or travel to see their homestead.

(Okay, Okay. It's not quite Saturday but I'm sleepy.)

Blinded By the Light.

2008-02-12T08:54:00.010-05:00

Image Drawing Faithful to Minersville.

In mid August, an image of what some described as the Virgin Mary appeared on a garage door on Lewis street, a narrow cracked alley way, in Minersville, PA. Hundreds of people came to see her, pray and bless various religious objects.

I drove to Minersville on August 29th and photographed the entire time she was "there", about 45 minutes. She slowly moved up the garage door as the sun set.

Before she arrived, the crowd of about 150 people buzzed and chatted quietly. One woman standing close to me passed around digital prints from the Rite-Aid up the street, noting the "supernatural" fog in the photos. Of it, she said "Digital cameras capture the energy around her better than film. I don't know what it is but they do." I glanced over her shoulder to notice the way the dirt on her camera lens was rendered in the photos. In the midst of the crowd whispering and snapping photos, I turned to the house across the street, noticed a large, shiny statue of the Blessed Mother in the second floor window and noted how the sunlight hit her just perfectly. I smiled to myself as I turned my eyes back to the crowd and to my ground glass.

Minor Bird, Jazz Saxaphonist, Framingham MA.

2008-02-12T08:38:00.002-05:00

I had a chance with meeting with Minor Bird. I went to photograph a baseball diamond and a set of old bleachers that caught my eye. It was rainy and gray and cool for July. While I was approaching the park I heard jazz music, which seemed to be emanating from the trees. We eyeballed each other for the 15 or so minutes I was there until I walked up to him and said "What's up?"

Formal Living Room, Atlas PA.

2008-02-12T08:35:00.003-05:00

Good god, I love this photo.

Little/Big Steel: Bethlehem

2008-02-11T09:02:00.003-05:00

Photo Credit: Jeremy Blakeslee

Since I started a welding class three weeks ago, I've been thinking a lot about metal, about steel. I've found myself suddenly inspired by the noisy metal shop at Mass Art, thinking about what I can make from sheets of steel, what sort of object can come from something so solid.

It led my brain directly to Bethlehem Steel, the company that provided the steel beams for Rockafeller Center, the Crystler and Empire State Buildings, as well as the Hoover and Grand Coole Dams and the Golden Gate Bridge. It was the second largest steel mill in the United States, just after U.S. Steel out in Pittsburgh.

I could go on and on about the finer details of Bethlehem Steel but instead, for a brief overview, I'll direct you to the wiki page.

The land and structures left at the Bethlehem Steel Complex along the river are at the center of local controversy since it was sold in 2003 and then purchased by Sands Bethworks in 2007. Right now, construction is underway for a massive casino, another push in the direction to "culturally" and economically revive Bethlehem and the Leigh Valley. The casino is sought to bring millions in the Valley, to the South Side of Bethlehem. It is a complicated matter, as the part of the revenue from the casino is to go back into preserving the historical landmark and the story of the company. Save Our Steel is a comprehensive website dedicated to making sure the history of Bethlehem is preserved.

I was both unsurprised and saddened when I heard of the plans to demolish a large part of the complex along the Lehigh River. I've been following the story as it unfolds, in bits and pieces, through The Morning Call, absorbing the whole process from the distance of my kitchen table/computer screen.

I want to see a lot of things happen for a place with such a mighty history. I want to see those towering, massive buildings preserved. I want to see them used to teach not only the local history but the rise and fall of industry in the American economy. For people to try and understand the hard work, space and time that was required to fabricate steel for some of the tallest buildings in North America.

What I don't want to see put there is a casino. What I don't want to see put there is a glorified sports bar and 600,000 dollar condos. To me, that seems like a back-handed compliment to the people who not only worked there, but lived and died by Bethlehem Steel. In a way, I am glad that it is at least headed for preservation and the whole thing wasn't wiped away from the surface of the earth for the sake of a strip mall or Wal-Mart. But, a casino? Really?

So, I've been thinking about steel a lot, thinking about it in relation to the work that I've done in the past. While I know it's been heavily photographed and documented, I feel like a small project of about 8-10 photographs could be the thing that I need to start making work again. I've been thinking about it a lot, mulling over ideas and books, absorbing information and asking questions. I haven't had the time nor the money nor the energy to expend to continue with Coal Hunkie. I've been looking for something to jump start my thinking and making process again.

On top of that, I also purchased a Nikon D-40 as a means to continue making pictures. I'm not all that interested in making straight pictures with a digital camera (it's far too direct, I think) but I am interested in compiling large photos from a batch of single photos. I want to avoid a panoramic format, because that seems really obvious. I want something in between a super-long panoramic and a 4x5 photograph. In due time I plan on fabricating a large steel shadow box frame for one of the photos.

I will be visiting the National Museum of Industrial History across and just up the street from the original office building when I am in the Valley. I will also be browsing the Moravian Book Store for some much needed reading material.

In some ways, I feel like "It's been done". In one way, I'm just looking to make pictures again. In another way, I want to join the dialog that's been humming all over the Valley for the last 10 years.

A few more links, for the interested:

Bethlehem Online: Steel. Includes a map of the complex.

Steel Workers' Archives. The Steelworkers' Archives was formed in 2001 to ensure that the legacy of the Steelworkers is preserved. The photographs and brief words of the workers here is fantastic.

Forging America: A History of Bethlehem Steel. From The Morning Call.

Design Breakdown: Big Steel. Photographs.

The Sinking of Bethlehem Steel. An article from Fortune Magazine.

Anthracite Railroading Blog. Entries about Bethlehem Steel and my other favorite part of PA: The Coal Region.

"Home is at Once More Initimate & More Isolated Than Place."

2008-02-10T13:02:00.004-05:00

Shikellamy State Park Overlook Panorama with the confluence on the West Branch (left) and North Branch (center) of the Susquehanna River, along with the boroughs of Northumberland and Sunbury, Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, USA. Shikellamy State Park Marina unit on Packer Island also visible.

I was writing something recently and had to fact check the population of the town I grew up in. Wikipedia, much to my unsurprise, offered me Northumberland, Pennsylvania's very own Wiki. I knew most of the sparse information on the page but it was this photo that sort of left-hooked me to the brain.

"Home", the actual geographic location, has been shifting and moving since I left Northumberland when I was 13. Even now, "home" refers to different places, depending on my geographic location. "Home" when I’m physically in Medford, refers to my parents' house, in Allentown. "Home", when I’m in Allentown, could mean either Northumberland or Medford, depending on the context of the conversation and whom it's with. For example, when my father asks me "how long are you going home for and when are you leaving?" he means home as Northumberland. If my grandmother asks, "when are you going back home?” she means Allentown. If my mother asks me the same question, she means Medford.

It’s also interesting I’ve stopped calling here, where I am now, Boston and prefer to call it Medford, even though I’ve only lived in the apartment for a few weeks. Is that a sign of content-ness with location? That specific place, its title seemingly so important. I get fixated on place names and fall in love with them easily but that's another post for another day.

Deviations aside, I look at that photograph and I know, without even thinking about it, what it feels like to cross that bridge in the foreground, where it goes, and how it gets me to the places that are so familiar to me. I know that the sewage treatment plant is to the right, that underpass is too low for some trucks that come through town and what the French fries used to taste like at the Front Street Station. I remember unspecific moments that took place at unspecific times with such detail, I get overwhelmed by recalling smalls, the temperature of the air and the exact location of the scar on my best friend's face. School hallways, cracked sidewalks, quiet, dimly lit stores: all of it so prevalent in my head that it seems like it just happened yesterday.

Sometimes, if I’m a passenger (rare) in a car and my eyes are closed, the road will turn and bump a certain way that feels like driving up to 428 Nottingham Drive, on Strawbridge road and I will think I am headed back to that white sided bi-level on the hill. It is strange and unsurprising how deeply embedded the streets of Northumberland are in my head and body. That place is the back of my hand, the landscape of Home. It is familiar and very present in my memory and yet so removed from my everyday life, I am shocked to know, to discover that it's still home in it's place in my head.

Watching that photograph load was surreal. My brain clicked and recognized it immediately but experiencing it so removed from that place physically, on a public webpage that anyone can see, wasn't something I was prepared for. While it's a public place populated by 3,800 people, it always felt more private, a little darker, laced with bitterness and so linked to those formative years. To see it laid out in facts disconnected memory and emotion from home and let me see it, objectively, for the first time, for a mere second since I left. A small town, buried in the mountains of Pennsylvania, occupying 1.6 square miles.

Unremarkable but still Home.

246 South Locust Avenue.

2008-02-07T14:41:00.003-05:00

I love this skinny, what-was-a-row house, on South Locust Avenue, in that elusive town of Centralia. When I drove by on Route 61, over Thanksgiving, it was gone. Which means that whom ever the house belonged to either passed away or moved out.

I went back in early January to re-take the photograph. There was absolutely nothing there to signify that a house had stood in that spot. The grass, even in the middle of the winter, had grown over the lumpy dirt where the foundation was ripped out. It was as if the earth wanted to forget it quickly and healed over as fast as it could, despite the cold, wet winter.

One of my favorite books about Centralia is Slow Burn: A Photodocument of Centralia, Pennsylvania by Renee Jacobs. Jacobs lived with a family in Centralia as the issues in the early and mid 80's started to develop. An intimate look into the lives of the former residents, it portrays the huge divide between those who wanted to stay and those who wanted to leave. The book documents the fight for and eventual loss of the community. It is powerful and well-written and stands as one of the few sources about the town of Centralia and what was lost to the fires.

David DeKok's Unseen Danger is currently sitting on my book shelf. It is an in-depth, text-only look at what really happened there and how the people of the town came together to secure a future that didn't involve gas alarms in their kitchens and bedrooms.

I still think that, in context to where Centralia is, the story is unsurprising. The weight of being in Centralia is no different than the weight of being in any other part of the Coal Region. It blends into the strip mines and culm piles, a mere blip on the screen of your windshield if you're not paying attention to road signs.

It is no secret that I am totally obsessed with the Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Region. I've posted about it before and talked about it at great length, but I thought this would be a good place to start this blog.