Robert Adams

My friend Will K. and I made the pilgrimage to the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY this week to see the re-installed New Topographics show.  Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke and Lewis Baltz have been peripheral influences on my current project, so to see the seminal exhibit re-hung at Eastman was a treat.  (The show was originally on view there in 1975, and the repercussions and influence of the collected pictures is still widely felt in the fine art photo world.)  The museum is nice and quaint – much smaller than I imagined, but the visit made for a nice afternoon.  Besides looking at photography, Will and I spent the rest of the time on the make for refreshments and cheap food in various locales around town.  We saw Inglorious Basterds at the Little, too, and it was great.  Nearly 24 hrs after we arrived, and after finding plenty of refreshments, we stumbled out of town.  I took some pictures with my iPhone – check them out after the jump -

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Tonight I processed some B/w negs from the summer.  Its so good to be back in the darkroom.  My hands smell of fixer; they feel powdery.

A great crowd, a great night.  Really proud of the exhibiting artists, and happy that everything went off so well.  Here’s an iPhone photo a friend snapped of the festivities:

Tomorrow a certain longing opens at the Gallery at Vivid Solutions in Washington, D.C.  Its been a bit of a whirlwind to gather the artists, collect the work and install the show, but I’m pleased with the results, and with its potential to live as an engaging collection of pictures online (I plan to publish a digital catalogue) and as compliment to my own photographic practice and current project.

participating artist Kelly Teeling, during the installation of a certain longing

“This is what’s wrong with the world. Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody ‘What’s the story on that?’ and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That’s fine, but sometimes I’d just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.”

- Tom Waits

“This life is a hospital where every patient is possessed with the desire to change beds; one man would like to suffer in front of the stove, and another believes that he would recover his health by the window.  It always seems to me that I should feel well in the place where I am not, and this question of removal is one which I discuss incessantly with my soul.“
- Baudelaire

Summer ended yesterday; I left New Orleans and returned to DC.  It is difficult to think of the summer in a linear fashion, as I was back and forth from DC to NOla to Bham and back around again a few times.  The memories are sort of jumbled, but good.  There is something best about living from a bag, of having life paired down to little pile of things and knowing that in a few days everything will be different.  All the movement is emotionally visceral; I miss the place I was, relish where I am, and desire taking off for the next place.   It reminds me of the summer I was homeless and sofa surfing after returning from a post-graduation adventure in the Balkans.  I had never felt more free.  Now I look back and see a brash, selfish kid who just enjoyed mooching off his friends for a couple months.  I’m certainly not a kid anymore – but I have discovered that there still may be a bit of brashness and certainly plenty of selfishness left.

I hate when people quote song lyrics, but the Baudelaire above reminded of one of my favorite songs from back then that remains one of my favorites now:

Know a man
His face seemed pulled and tense
Like he’s ridin’ on a motorbike
In the strongest winds
So I approach with tact
Suggest that he should relax
But he’s movin’ much too fast

Said he’ll see me on the flip side
On this trip he’s taken for a ride
He’s been takin’ too much on
There he goes with his perfectly unkept hope
There he goes

He’s yet to come back
But I seen his picture
It doesn’t look the same up on the rack
We go way back
I wonder ’bout his insides
It’s like his thoughts are too big for his size

He’s been taken…where, I don’t know
Off he goes with his perfectly unkept hope
There he goes

And now I rub my eyes, for he has returned
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned
For he still smiles… And he’s still strong
Nothing changed but the surroundin’ bullshit
That has grown

And now he’s home and we’re laughin’
Like we did, my same old, same old friend
Until a quarter to ten
I saw the strain creep in
He seems distracted and I know just what is going to happen next

Before his first step, he’s off again

lyrics by Jerome Turner / Wes C. Addle

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Wanna know what my DJ name is, man?” he asked. “It is the best.  Proud of it.”

“Yeah, of course,” I answered.

“DJ Honky White Cracker.”

“Uh, wow, how about that.”

And so went my conversation with Thomas the strip club DJ/Doorman/Bartender, as we stood – or rather as I stood and he sat on the curb – at the streetcar pickup on St. Charles and Common St.  It was around 3a.m., and he had just given me a Budweiser from a 24 pack he must’ve taken from the club.  The beer was cold, and the cardboard case was covered in condensation, making a little pool of water there on the curb.  As he cracked open his second beer he told me that he was a writer and that he had taken the job in the French Quarter to do research for a book.

“It eats at your soul, man.  It eats at your soul,” he said.  “You see these girls, and they come in – they ain’t nothing but a bunch whores.  A bunch of fuckin whores.”

I asked if he still fell in love with them anyway.  You know, in the ‘you’re a damsel in distress/I’m a knight in shining armor’ sort of way.  He laughed in response and called them all whores again.  I’m sure he had had a thing for one or two.  How could a man not?  And I’m sure there were a few that had liked him – he was affable and decent looking, with sharp features and intense eyes.  Unfortunately his good looks were hidden under some questionable sartorial choices: a panama jack hat, hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts.  Good smile, though, and he had an endearing Matthew McConaughey kind of accent.

“Well, there was this one girl, man,” he said with a slow, drunken shake of his head.  “You know, working her way through med school.  She had it, you know, you knew she might make it out and not get sucked in.  Thought she was special – that she might be my lead for my story, but before long, man, she was up on the third floor after her shift suckin’ dick.  Disappeared a few weeks later.  Never saw her again.  Whores man, they’re all whores.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.  “That’s terrible.  Really sad,” I said.  I then asked, “So are you, like, one those dudes that stands out in the street and tries to get me into your club?”

“Yeah, I do a little of that.”

“I hate those guys.”

He laughed.  “Yeah, kinda annoying I guess.  But it works.”

I asked how long he had been at it.

“About 8 months, I think,” was his answer, but he spoke as if he had been doing it for years.  I’m sure it felt that way.

And about that time the streetcar’s light caught both our eyes and diverted our attention as it rumbled around the corner of Canal St.

“Well, there’s your ride,” I said.

“Yep.”

He stood up, and I thanked him for the beer.  With a few swigs left for us both we raised our cans to each other, said cheers and chugged.  A moment later he was stumbling up onto the streetcar and I was left looking for a garbage can for our empties.