Bramblicious

January 17, 2005

I love lines. I especially love organic lines. Ergo, I love brambles and branches. I photograph them with an almost obsessive compulsion.

I photograph them with the Photo Phazer. I photograph them with the Lensbaby. I photography them with the D80, and I occasionally photograph them using the light meter.

I photograph them when I walk. I photograph them while I talk. I photograph them in a car. I photograph them wherever I are.

I think you get the point.

Otis

January 16, 2005

Otis College of Art and Design occupies the former IBM building in Los Angeles. It's an intriguing building and is in keeping with the architectural inclination of the 1960's toward stark cement cubes. The exterior facade is meant to be reminiscent of a punch card; which I suspect is lost on the majority of current Otis students who were undoubtedly born long after punch cards, or IBM for that matter, had much life left.

Image by Marc Meridith, OTIS Director of Admissions

Courtesy of Wikipedia and licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Naturally, the interior has been remodeled to match our stereotypical conception of the artist loft, but I think the greatest success of the building is not in the exterior view or the elaborate remodel. No, the greatest asset of OTIS is the views it frames of the outside world.

Inside this cold concrete block the dingy Southland sky seems to burst through the tiny rectangular windows and, in doing, is granted a liveliness and power that you cannot perceive from any other vantage point that I've discovered in LA. It is a simple matter of contrast— a living proof of that old photographic axiom that the finest silver gelatin prints always place their blackest black next to their lightest light tone. 

While I can't claim any advanced understanding of architectural principles I can claim many years of working with contrast, and furthermore, I have an appreciation for simple solutions that net profound results. For those who haven't called LA home, who haven't been able to see the city skyline from a hill top vantage only five miles away because of air pollution, it is undoubtedly difficult to understand the magnitude of being awakened to beauty in that chemical miasma. But for someone who, quite literally, grew up in a cloud of chemicals and particulate, I tell you that, until the day I visited OTIS, the only potential for the sublime that high noon smog ever held for me was in its unyielding repulsion.*

I'm of the opinion (and it is a rather plebeian opinion, I admit)** that cement cubes are generally not the best architectural solution for most projects or climates. In Southern California, where the heat is oppressive and banal boxy buildings are the majority, I suppose you can make a case for a cement cube on the grounds that it will stay cool and affably blend in with the neighbors. But if I'm to dissect what I appreciate about OTIS's building it is the opportunities it affords for the eye to escape when the body cannot, and perhaps that, more than balances of compositional light and darks, is what creates the impression that the oppressive grey outside holds more promise than one had ever perceived there before.

*More of a formaldehyde-soaked Damien Hirst type of sublime, as opposed to the sweeping Romanticism of Caspar David Friedrich 

**I spent every afternoon following middle school studying in a cement cube, so experience must serve as my credentials here.

The McDuff

January 15, 2005

What I appreciate about this image is how the lower curve of the garden hose echos the curve of McDuff's back. Any guesses, dear reader, as to what a McDuff happens to be?* 

*Family members are not eligible to guess.

The Sweep

January 14, 2005

I don't often get to be the passenger. When I am, even the most familiar routes seem infused with novelty. Tunnels and bridges hold a special fascination during night time drives. With tunnels I love the sudden entrapment of sound around the car and the rush of lights on a parallel, but opposing, trajectory with mine. Bridges at night afford a sweep up into darkness that I always find extremely comforting. 

Lipstick on a Pig

January 13, 2005

At a certain point I realized that the fidelity of my Photo Phazer images were a bit sub-par compared to other pixel based imagery I was viewing on the net. I found myself second guessing the naive profundity of the low-tech photograph and turned to Photoshop to elevate my washed out bits and bytes to sublime documentation. 

What these movie stills really needed, I decided, was some more saturation and a liberal dose of "film grain" to wash away the mushy tones and geometric pixilization.* After some cheap employment of filters and sliders to a few images I realized that you can't just put lipstick on a pig. So I put aside all insecurities and consoled myself with the thought that when the entire project would be exhibited quantity would more than compensate for any lack of image quality.

Little did I know that only Blogger would be exhibiting this project. Welcome back dear insecurities!

*Is pixilization a word? It seems to be used freely by people griping online about LCD picture quality, but I would hardly deem that authoritative proof.

Nom Nom Nom

January 12, 2005

It are my birthday.

Chilled Out

January 11, 2005

At some point the world's longest kitchen remodel yielded a shiny new fridge. The fridge signaled the end of an era back in 2005. No more outdoor meals from the hot plate. No more yellowjackets in the stew. Plastic cutlery was bid adieu.

Many a member of the household was thrilled with all that the new refrigerator promised on the culinary front. Being a simpleton, I just appreciated the play of pretty patterns across the stainless steel surface. 

A few days before the Christmas tree came down I spied the reflection of its lights in the door of this high-tech ice box and immediately activated the Photo Phazer. 

This was one of my favorite one-minute movies in 2005. It was simply me moving the camera back and forth along a short horizontal path so that different bands of colored reflection grew and shrank, appeared and disappeared, in an illusionary journey atop the metal door.

* * * * * 

Soon after that I would watch the mesmerizing work of Jeremy Blake in Punch Drunk Love. It seemed I wasn't entirely alone in my aesthetic preoccupations. Or, out of deference for his preeminent superstardom, I should say that Jeremy Blake wasn't alone in his. 

Shave

January 10, 2005

Shaving is a paradox for me. It affords me an opportunity to relax and reflect, and yet I tend to avoid doing it. Perhaps I'm afraid that too much relaxation and reflection will rob me of valuable time to feel stressed and proactive.

Take a Guess

January 9, 2005

I should be embarrassed to admit how many photographs like this I've taken. What reality presents as a sublime play of light across some surface often translates into an indistinct image of mushy color. It would be wonderful if I could reveal some profound little story about what is actually depicted here, but I have to say that time and geography have robbed me of any context, so your guess is as good as mine.

Candlelight Within, Magnolias Without

January 8, 2005

While living in the LA area our rooms were on the second story of the house. When you looked out the windows, our sight line was in the center of a wooded canopy. The large waxy magnolia leaves would reflect the shifting patterns of light and the vast quantity of diminutive oak leaves would shimmer like green sequins when touched by the coastal breezes and Santa Ana winds. To wake up in the warm California morning amidst the tree tops was a delight that I won't forget, and I greatly miss the sound of the leaves rustling about just outside our balcony patio door.

* * * * *

Now I wake to the sound of air-braking trucks on the highway that runs along a small hill top outside our front door. It isn't all that bleak, as I can often trick myself into thinking that the persistent hum of traffic is the flow of a river (which, metaphorically, I suppose it is), but it has none of the sensory charm that our oak grove bower held, and I look forward to the day when the sound of birds rustles me from sleep more frequently than the sound of horns.

Trike

January 7, 2005

This worn trike sat in a downpour because it had nowhere to hide. The entire play yard of my first school was concrete surrounded by a high chain link fence. The fence kept out vandals and provided a clear division between child's recreation space and parking lot. 

I found it depressing.

But I'm an adult and don't have the elasticity of spirit that a child has. The play yard may have been cement but it rarely lacked games and laughter. Only when the infrequent downpour pounded the ground did the space take on the same drab aura to the children that I regarded it with everyday. 

Unforgettable

January 6, 2005

There are albums that wrap themselves into your life. You hear them, and they etch your consciousness with their notes and refrains. I won't presume to say that they give different moments in life meaning, but they can provide the spirit, and without them a great deal of emotional complexity would be absent from our biographies.

I look at the play of light vaguely illuminating the chunky pixellated black in the image above and remember being warmed by the plaintive tones of Dinah Washington's album of old standards. Sitting in a low-slung arm chair watching the reflected light swim across the wavy surface of the spinning LP I listened to This Bitter Earth:

And if my life is like the dust

that hides the glow of a rose,

what good am I?

Heaven only knows.

. . . and I thought that Dinah's voice was a comfort preserved. It was meant for me to find for a $1.00 at the local thrift store so that I could experience it while the January moon came out over the magnolia leaves.