ok i gave up at the end there.

i have taken over 400o pictures in the past month and a half. this has given my computer indigestion, most of my graduate committee the french fits, and _________ ____ ______. for those that don’t know, i had a bit of an artistic breakdown, where i realized that i couldnt really embrace the future, kinda thought new media was bogus, and ran off to vermont to mourn the loss of a concept.

poultney river, waist deep in 50 degree water

 

I think the spiritual journey paid off, although it was hell to go through. Being lonely in an intensly beautiful place is really depressing. Good news: when I came back, I negotiated to inhereit some land up there. So 7.8 acres of undevelopedish sugar maples, a small brook and two sugar houses awaits a spring and summer renovation, outhouse building, rain water gatherings, ect.

 

When I came about, I milled around for about a week then saw some grapes, rotting on the vine. I was generally depressed, and also thinking about the war, via a poem I heard on the Writer’s Almanac, called the campus in wartime. Here is a link, because I don’t want a copywrite case on my hands. You have to scroll down a bit, but its there, and it’s worth listening to, even if it means downloading realplayer to do it.

 

These first photos were no good, just a lame initial reaction to the concept I had been kicking around in my head: why doesn’t the media show dead Americans? I’m positive that part of the massive protests staged during Vietnam where caused by casualty photos. I feel like the media needs to bring the violence home, and whats more, contextualize it. Why are these people fighting us? They are not terrorists, but rather patriots. Would we not do the exact same thing? If we sat down and let invading forces run us through, we would be considered anti patriots, traitors, capitulators, cowards.

 

With this in mind I thought more about violence and death and decay. I thought about how photos from WWII, in their incredible terror, can also be poignantly gorgeous. I thought about the dicotomy that exists within all photographs, the seperation from reality that comes by looking through a mechanical eye and presenting the subject through mechanical means. Cameras show us what humans can not see.

 

Still, artistically I thought I was at a dead end. I walked home from class late one night. It was raining, and the streetlight revealed recently fallen leaves, smashed into the pavement. I kept that in my mind, a good idea that lasted through the night, as good ideas often do not.

I took my camera out the next morning, and pointed it straight down. I was capturing intensly local crime scenes, buried bones, fractured limbs, entropic portraits of leaves becoming the ground.

 

 

This spoke of a muted violence, a thing you happen across, and only understand through the lens of time. It was violence at a distance, still murky through the mists of beauty and perception.

 

I journeyed on, taking 400 pictures in a matter of days.

 

I pulled the grapes off of the vines, and lay them in the dirt lane. Vehicles did the fruit great violence. I shot the result.

 

 

Now I felt as if I was getting somewhere. I started to orchestrate scenes, and use my body to create the violence rather than using the passing cars.

 

 

I took the fight to my driveway.

 

and my lawn.

 

now the battle rages in the snow outside of my shed.

 

 

Last night I went out to take pictures of the fight in the dark.

 

Instead I ended up taking pictures of falling snow.

 

which is strangly reminecent of watching star trek.

 

I wandered back into my grape bushes, and tried the same trick.

 

 

other worldly photos ensued.

 

Somewhere in between, I went to Pittsburgh twice, and tried to capture violence, decay, industry, beauty and entropy.

 

 

 

 

I don’t really know where all of this is going, but I like the journey.