I’ve never been to UW to see the cherry blossoms bloom and was definitely not expecting to see hundreds and hundreds of people gathered to do the same thing. The longer we lingered and watched, the more surreal it all felt. I love these goofy rituals we get ourselves into when the planet turns a certain way. x x x x x x
Taking photos with someone else is an interesting way of looking at things differently. You’ll probably notice the same things, but you may not; you’ll pause to listen in one spot while the other is talking and vice versa; you’ll use these stops to compose or capture, or you may just peer through the viewfinder, too engrossed in the conversation. You’ll probably start off talking about what you’re seeing, but it’s more than likely that you’ll end up somewhere else entirely. Looking back at these, I’m struck by how most are imprinted with a memory of something said or remembered, … Continue reading “Photo-Elicitation” →
I’ve been thinking about “AI” and “art” and “photography” and the slippages people makes when discussing where these concepts coincide and where they do not. It frustrates me to see the conversation around the place of technology in art-making being swept up in outmoded generalizations around what “is” or “isn’t” art when the ethical anxieties that AI brings up are better addressed at a more granular level: what is or isn’t an artifice? At what point does the maker end and the mechanism begin? I took these photos in 2008 on what we’re now calling a “digicam” of some kind. … Continue reading “What is Artifice?” →
“I’ve always approached the ‘scene I was looking to represent’ directly, standing squarely in front of my subject to avoid any kind of slants or vanishing points, cuts or leaks.” (Luigi Ghirri: The Complete Essays, 1973-1991) That’s the thing about Luigi Ghirri’s work that struck me instantly when I saw someone sharing his work a few weeks ago; that, followed immediately by an eerie sense of familiarity: ‘I could have taken this very shot.’ This spooky feeling of déjà vu made me want to read what this man had to say, after having started this journey with Sontag, Benjamin, and … Continue reading “Luigi Ghirri” →
“If the fragment is truly broken (frangere), it cannot, it seems, be thought of in terms of a part (portio), for the part, as part of a whole, would deny that which is broken its broken nature, its different status, by relating it always to the former (whole). The fragment…must be thought of apart from a part, and therefore as wholly distinct from the whole (of which the part is a part) as well.” (Dan Mellamphy, ‘Fragmentality,’ 1998) x “Contemporary poets use all three modes of fragment, sometimes all at once. First, the fragment can illicit a response or echo … Continue reading “Fragment Fragments” →
It’s funny “haha” and funny “hmm” to me how often I’ve swung between dogged determination and complete surrender. I am the original member of @baumwerkj’s Order of the Dung Beetle before it had a name, back when @heure_bleue__ initiated me as such. I am also constantly broken open and made a vessel of things I did not choose but became available for. Pisces season seems to come around every year to mark some new striving after a vision; sometimes it turns out to be a mirage, other times it is transfigured into a brighter image of the truth. I used to be embarrassed … Continue reading “Green Lent, Red Pisces” →
Why is photography interesting? The number of people who might care about what I have to say has almost doubled since I took it on as an intentional practice, so that question might be better posed to the people who took interest, instead. But why *is* photography interesting to me? I have often said that I am an inherently visual communicator, but those of you who have been here from the start know that I picked up the craft as an object of discourse or matter of concern first. Words came before light, in an isomorphism of what Dane Rudhyar … Continue reading “Why is Photography Interesting?” →
Speaking of Microsoft (see also: x x x), I’m sure there’s a term for this kind of JPEG glitching, if I cared to look it up – maybe one of you nerds will let me know in the comments. It appears that the memory stick I brought back with me from Lebanon contains quite a decent percentage of corrupt files like these photos I took with my old iPhone 4s in 2012. Part of me feels like I should be sad? But the majority vote in my parliament of affects seems to be swinging in favor of finding this kinda … Continue reading “Digital Artifacts” →
“Silence is such a great concept. There is no silence, unless in a vacuum; it’s that great mystic world which cannot exist in our world. Also, in music, the time between the musical events is as important as the event itself.” (Robert Henke) x FOR ANY INSTRUMENT OR COMBINATION OF INSTRUMENTS I TACET II TACET III TACET x “A good drone is highly complex under the surface. It is like a view over a city, which can be perceived as just a grey mass of buildings or as a very complex set of small parts where each part is complex … Continue reading “Sound Concepts” →
I want to use this last post of a gorgeous bus stop from my time in California as an opportunity to ask for your financial support of @RidersRightsLB. Next Saturday is #TransitEquityDay, and, to coincide with this occasion, the #Seattle Transit Riders Union has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support a mutual aid initiative that RR is coordinating in #Lebanon. I’ve put a link where you’d expect to find it on my profile. Please consider supporting mobility justice in Lebanon during an extremely difficult economic and political time there. The parallels we are drawing between our two very different contexts are deliberate. Rosa Parks and … Continue reading “Transit Equity Day: RR x TRU” →