Tag: photography

by jad

It is Absolutely Refreshing to be Militantly Cringe

What if you spent less time worrying about which of the things you like is cringe and just liked those things more intensely instead? I’ve always liked cautionary tales like House of Leaves because they reminded me of me and the need to check my obsessions, but as all true believers will tell you, there’s something religious about excessive devotion. We started talking about that because I’d just come out from giving a talk where I’d mentioned my feeling of kinship with James Acord, the artist born in the year of “Hiroshima” (just like I was born in the year … Continue reading “It is Absolutely Refreshing to be Militantly Cringe” →

by jad

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

We’re not supposed to talk about asteroids in spooky quadrants of the sky as hardcore materialists and dialecticians, but the mind likes to color outside the lines. I read something the other day that made me think about my need for ordering chaos and how that connects to my nurturing side. The suggestion there was love and care tends to be expressed practically, through communication and intellectual engagement; that, for this personality type, devotion comes from attention to detail and makes one primed for a vocation in education, social work, or even healthcare. But what drew my eye was the … Continue reading “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” →

by jad

Fragile Frames

The tension between slowing down and keeping up the fight; between becoming useful and being left the hell alone; between caring less and caring so much more. That’s what how this feels. Like springtime in Seattle: the tension between two fronts. There’s a season for all things; a time for expansion and a time for contraction; a time for exploration and a time to make up your mind; a time to think and a time to act. That’s how this feels. Like an inflection point. A nonlinear timeline in the upper-left corner. “Do you feel fragmented?” A friend asked me … Continue reading “Fragile Frames” →

by jad

Konica C35 AF2

This Konica is one of the earliest cameras with autofocus technology, which means that it sometimes makes the strangest decisions. I think the system uses contrast between light and shadow to figure out where to focus, so I’m pretty sure I pushed its limits with the lighting conditions (it was also raining at some points) — all in all, it was mostly reliable. It feels like this could make for a great travel camera, because it’s a rare point and shooter with manual winding. I’ll have to run another roll through it soon to be sure. I went through this … Continue reading “Konica C35 AF2” →

by jad

My Heart Sees It

Someone asked me if my dad’s roll of Kodak Advantix film had been used, and I was certain it hadn’t, so imagine my heartache seeing these frames come back from the lab. This is my baby sister when she was still a baby sister. That’s the balcony at our old place; the same balcony she took her work calls on when we hung out at the same place when I was back there in January. It looks different now. So do we. I didn’t expect to see these photos so quickly. I didn’t expect to feel the way I do … Continue reading “My Heart Sees It” →

by jad

The Windmills of my Mind

My sister found and sent me a picture of a single-serving carton of the chocolate milk we both grew up on and it looked exactly the same. This set me off into a slow moving spiral of sappy nostalgia, like a wheel within a wheel, you might say, a mood that I was already in this morning, having just finished a roll of film that was in my dad’s Kodak Advantix camera—a roll he’d loaded some decades ago but never used. So now I’m sharing these random moments I’ve collected around town; quiet moments in the noise. I found my … Continue reading “The Windmills of my Mind” →

by jad

How Long, O Lord

These are the last of my photos from Beirut. My time there was both wounding and healing, both frustrating and hopeful. I’ve already moved on to new worries and concerns, as is often the case. Life moves on. But I feel less disconnected than I have been for years. Scenes from Bourj Hammoud on 35mm, featuring “Panos,” the spot my dad would grab a Rum Baba while waiting for mom to get ready to go out when they were dating. Strange alignments between Beirut and Deir el-Qamar that I only noticed once I got my scans back. Here are some … Continue reading “How Long, O Lord” →

by jad

Middle Finger to the City

The concrete structure sandwiched between the first and last slides in this series is the Interdesign building designed by Khalil Khouri in 1973. As ArchDaily puts it, “the building took 23 years to build, a process halted by the onset of the Lebanese Civil War. By the time it was completed in 1996, the urban landscape that surrounded it had changed. The structure has stood largely unused since, as a relic of hopeful modernity. While its design is singular in its narrative and expression, this structure illustrates the tension between aspiration and struggle throughout its complex history.” I first learned … Continue reading “Middle Finger to the City” →

by jad

We Toasted to Victory

This is the moment we visited my father’s grave. It was the first thing we did, the day after I landed in Beirut. Among these images, some frames I remembered him occupying the last time we were all here together, when he could still walk with difficulty, and could point out the ancestral landmarks to me and Christine. I didn’t look back at those photos I’d taken of him back then. I just felt them in the moment. “If I were you, I’d constantly be going around like: do you know my small Lebanese hometown is basically a cult run … Continue reading “We Toasted to Victory” →

by jad

Ghosts in the Frame

A few hours after I shared about wondering if it was time to nag the lab for my scans (it wasn’t), I saw them in my inbox, much earlier than the turnaround had promised. Spooky… Because there’s something inherently ghostly about seeing film come back weeks after having already processed your experience of a place digitally, especially when some frames are similar while others are not. It’s like the sedimentation of memory itself; every re-telling is another exposure on the film of your mind: hazy, layered, and re-imagined. I came to this spot because, to me, it represented my father, … Continue reading “Ghosts in the Frame” →