Born Lucky — Photo Journal 2017, Weeks 2 and 3
Three weeks into the New Year and I’ve still been shooting almost exclusively with my iPhone 6s. Traveling and bad weather have had a lot to do with that. I shot one roll with a disposable camera while visiting my parents in Norwalk, CT and then, celebrating my birthday in New York City. Maybe I’ll have those developed by next week.
I was born on my mother’s birthday, a Friday the 13th. I don’t go for the big years ending in “0” celebrations, but when my birthday falls on a Friday the 13th I do get a little sentimental. Especially now that my mom is in her 80s. My wife Viki and I flew back East to spend a few days with my folks. My father, always the ham, was happy to show off this nearly 65-year-old tattoo he got when he was in the Navy. He’s got four of these old school, inky jobs and often gets stopped by young kids to admire them. This was an Instagram that got a shoutout on the @styletattooss site — which made his day. (Not that he really knows what the hell Instagram is, although he’ll be happy to know it got over 700 likes!)
We spent our birthday at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, CT. No one won much, in fact, I think most of us lost (both my sisters were there, as well as one brother-in-law and a nephew). Part of the excitement (for my parents, at least), was that we made the two-hour trip from Norwalk to nearly New London on a casino bus — a highlight of which was my sister Sheila “crashing” it and surprising me when she got on the bus in Milford. This meant I was no longer the youngest person on board!
A light snowfall on Saturday night was a treat! I keep telling my parents that the two guys who live in the house across the street from them are gay, but my parents seem to be more fascinated that one of them is an “exotic” person of color with a strange name. I’ll let the outdoor lighting treatment speak for itself and enjoy my Todd Hido moment. (I’ll be buying his newest book, “Intimate Distance” with my birthday money as soon as I finish writing this entry.)
My parents live just an hour’s train ride into Manhattan, so just about any visit to them starts or ends with a few days in the City. The weather was not the best, but I managed a few Hipstamatic street shots. I was originally shooting with a black and white combo, but quickly realized color (my still favorite Beard lens/Otto film combo) was going to considerably brighten things up.
We saw some great exhibits in New York City, including Bill Bernstein’s “Night Fever” disco days photos at the Museum of Sex. (The Museum itself kills an hour-and-a-half on a rainy day, and that did not include signing a waiver to jump on some tit pillows!)
We also discovered Francis Picabia’s insane painting career—here’s a guy who really could do it all — at MOMA. I stayed on to catch (again) Nan Goldin’s “Ballad of Sexual Dependency” — I never get tired of it, it’s a paean to warts-and-all documentary photography and inspires me every time.
A handful of Goldin’s photos from the Ballad’s slide show appear in the book by the same title. There’s a very good piece by Kate Wolf called, “Is Documentary-Style Photography Dead?” (written in 2013), which explores Goldin’s “snapshot” style of the ’80s and early ’90s, pre-digital and way before mobile photography. An argument is made (by Goldin) that all the processing we do takes away from the “truth” in photography. Yes — for many it does. But it made me think about platforms like Instagram, and even Medium, where I’m writing this, as honestly as I can.
Photographs are always manipulations, put 10 photographers in front of the same scene and you will see 10 different versions of it before anyone can even tap the little wand and add a filter. Is that not our truth in documenting something? I think the point in the way we work now is to limit the post-processing, give a photo a little time (to be reasonable when using “Insta”-gram, how about an hour?) and make just one (or “maybe two” — as Eggleston will concede) of any one scene and move on.
I may have just broken my own rule, but I think I took about 15 photos of this food cart at the end of the High Line (or is it the beginning?) — at 33rd St. and 11th Ave. I was trying to capture one of these pop-up neon messages that didn’t say “Pretzels” or “Gatorade”. “Be happy” seemed to fit the bill, barely.
Because ultimately, this was a week that saw the inauguration of a president with a decided deficit in popular votes, perhaps installed by Russian interference who refuses to acknowledge his lack of a mandate and is leading us down a very dangerous path in these Divided States of America.
So far this year, in all of its three weeks, I’ve managed to hit four states (flying in and out of Newark adds New Jersey to New York, Connecticut and California) — all blue. It was good to get home to San Francisco in time for the historic Women’s March, even if the weather was as rainy as New York, and only slight warmer (climate change, anyone?).
I had great hopes of hitting this scene with my Ricoh GR, but I left it at home when I knew the downpour was coming right at 5pm, the time the march was starting. Still, I thought I’d get some good shots with my iPhone. Apparently no one anticipated the size of the crowd here, or anywhere else. I’ve been in a lot of marches in my day, but I never experienced one where you could barely move. I ended up with a handful of photos taken in very close quarters. This, I think, was my best:
To see my complete 2017 Flickr photo journal (so far), click here.
