I took this on my first ever photowalk today, using the digicam I brought back from Lebanon. I’m glad I brought it along, because it was -9 °C out and I could barely operate my other camera for more than a couple minutes at a time. I very quickly learned that I had the wrong gloves and lenses for staying nimble on a day like today.
So, what was I thinking going out on one of the coldest days of the year to cosplay as photographer? I was thinking that I need to start getting out of my own way this year. To start getting uncomfortable more often. To mess up and try again. To learn from others and get better.
So yeah, why not today?
Thank you @mikeoflegend and @eyefocusphoto for making this needed start happen for me.
I was thinking a lot about narratives and the function of narratives while in Beirut — the way they sustain a sense of self in the midst of constant rupturing; the way they transmute that rupturing and produce continuity, real or imagined (is there a material difference?); the way those continuities keep us sane.
And without really planning it, I sought out those connections while in Beirut, like the camera I bought in 2007 as a foreshadowing of the practices I embody in 2024, an origin story to a narrative I’m still writing, though I sometimes wonder to what end; like the roll of Harman Phoenix I took with me to more than figuratively inscribe what ashes of the past I can still bring back to life, though I sometimes wonder for how much longer.
Beirut made me very comfortable with dead-ends, non-starters, and dreams deferred. When things don’t pan out: “insa, habibi, insa.” When stuff falls apart: “fadek, habibi, khayra bghayra.” The pandemic gave the world a taste of what the Lebanese know from birth. But I think I’m done with that story. I think I want a new narrative twist.
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I took this photo in one of the “haunted” rooms of the Greenwood Art Collective last night; it was dark, because nothing had been set up in that side of the building in this month’s art walk, so it was the perfect place to step away from all the shmoozing and socializing for a little bit and be a weirdo in the shadows.
Christine was the guest artist at Mutiny Gallery. I’m super proud of how much we’ve both been pushing ourselves lately. The extraverted world will never know what a gargantuan feat it is for the likes of us. Oh, to be ghosts among the living.
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If my digicam was a Nikon, this caption would have been something like taking pics with my CoolPix of cool people taking cool pics, but it’s a Canon, so I’ll stick to “power poses on my PowerShot.”