brute - emily skaja
thrown rope - peter hutchinson
copy - dolores dorantes (trans. robin myers)
journal:
woke up at 3am & went to the desert. highway 14 served as a kind of line between the slowly spreading dawn & the thick close smoke of fires burning to the north.
the morning sun doesn’t so much rise here as it does spread out. the light fills the darkness like water saturating a cloth. it blooms. osmosis.
spent a morning a few weeks ago at my favourite state park – red rock canyon in cantil. I’ve taken a lot of photographs of this park over the years so I decided to bring my film cameras out to play.
journal:
“I don’t think I understoond the word verdant until now. not fully. whereas dublin is grey & a bit blunt the countryside is lush & rugged & rolling hues of green interspersed with slate rock & peat bogs.
the roadsides are dotted with serene collections of mountain sheep grazing away as the cars move around them like a planet in orbit. they can sense the rain & lay down when it’s on its way. sometimes they lay together in little groups of 2 or 3 resting their pitch black faces on each other like woolen pillows.”
poulnabrone dolmen is the largest & best preserved of irelands some 172 dolmens or pass through tombs. the partial remains of at least 33 people have been found here, indicating the site was used for ritual rather than an long term burial location. the structure dates to the neolithic era, but was in use up through the bronze age.
explorations around the irish countryside with the lomography sprocket rocket camera.
located on the southwestern edge of ireland’s burren region in county clare, the cliffs of moher run roughly 9 miles along the coast. at their highest they rise more than 700 feet from the atlantic ocean below.
camcorder video diary
the cliffs were formed between 313-326 million years ago as a result of a river dumping silt, sand, and clay along an ancient delta. this sediment was collected over millions of years & compacted & lithified into sedimentary strata now exposed as the cliff face. the punishing atlantic ocean waves are now eroding the cliffs, causing them to collapse under their own weight.
you may recognize the cliffs of moher from their supporting role as the “cliffs of insanity” in the 1987 epic the princess bride.
I arrived in the early afternoon to an otherworldly view of the atlantic & the infamous cliffs shrouded in sea mist & swept by gusts of cold salt air. the cattle and sheep of the surrounding countryside didn’t seem to notice the bluster, & continued their lunchtime grazing without incident.
the cliffs now see over 1.5 million visitors per year.
recently returned from my trip exploring ireland. despite bringing a wide range of cameras with me, sometimes the iphone is all you need.
a short walk around hollywood with a 20+ year old digital camera.
exploring with my new-to-me nikon coolpix 990. the swivel style 900 series cameras were released by nikon starting in 1998, with the 990 hitting the market in 2000 as the last of the models to be powered by four regular double a batteries. these cameras were pretty advanced for their time & still return decent pictures with their 3.34 megapixels & compact flash memory card. fun fact: the formatting for these camera’s cards can’t be read by mac computers. I had to do some finagling to get me images from camera to web!
all politeness, digital collage, 2022
my grandmother sleeps in curlers almost every night & styles her hair every day. my grandmother loves cats—I get that from her—& jesus—which I didn’t. my grandmother collects clocks that play sounds on the hour, & she sets them to different times so she can hear each one’s unique music.
her father took her out of school in third grade because he felt it wasn’t worth it to educate a girl—she was just going to get married anyway. she helped to take care of her siblings instead, telling me about how her mother made them dandelion soup when they were too poor on a coal miner’s wage to afford groceries. my grandmother got married at twenty & had four children in as many years. when her husband decided to move across the country she packed up her life & left her family behind. she never went back. she never worked outside the home. she never learned to drive. she would give her mail-in ballot to her husband & sign it after he’d picked all the things for her to vote for. in the months & years leading up to his death of congestive heart failure, my grandfather never told her where their bank accounts were, which bills needed to be paid, or even where he kept the checkbook. he never put her name on the cable account or the phone bill. she never bought anything without asking him for permission first. she had a cash allowance she would spend at goodwill or the dollar store. she never had a credit card or a bank account in her own name. she never owned anything that was hers alone.
she once told me it was ok that she had been taken out of school because she was stupid anyway, it would have been a waste for her to continue.
only managed one complete book this month, real world busy has closed in around me.
turn by anne truitt
I did do quite a lot of article reading, here are some of the most interesting:
fashion has abandoned human taste
the case against the supreme court of the united states
disrespecting laws that disrespect women
the buffalo shooter isn’t a ‘lone wolf’ he’s a mainstream republican
how period tracking apps and data privacy fit into a post-roe v. wade climate
in 2011 I took an early bus from port authority bus terminal in new york city for a day trip to washington dc with my friend & my film camera. I recently found these images from the excursion.
the past few weeks I’ve found myself re-interested in digital collage. figuring out how all the layers are going to work together is relaxing to me & also serves as a way to think through current events.
a sweet morning at the flower fields, in carlsbad california.
the little book of string theory - steven s gubser
seven brief lessons on physics - carlo rovelli
the tradition - jericho brown
the onslaught attacking the civil rights of anyone not a cisgender heterosexual white man has been a lot to process. I have been thinking through things with collage.
off route 66 outside of victorville you’ll find an incredible art installation called elmer’s bottle tree ranch. elmer long built this unique forest using recycled & found materials, constructing trees out of everything from rebar & glass to old typewriters & even a missile. one of my favourite things about the desert are these types of places, the spots where someone’s creativity shows up in unexpected ways. wandering through the trees under the bright blue spring desert sky was a perfect way to spend a route 66 pit stop.
elmer passed away in 2019, so the ranch is no longer expanding, but the existing structures are well worth a visit.
the ranch is open daily sunrise to sunset, it’s free to enter but donations are gladly accepted.
shot on a vintage lubitel 2 with kodak porta 400
while living in brooklyn I experienced my first blizzard. recently I found some of the photos I took walking around the silent streets the day after the snowfall.
indelicacy - amina cain
borderland apocrypha - anthony cody
only managed to finish two books in april, as I’m currently reading a 600 page tome. that aside I did watch a few very fascinating documentaries this month, so I thought I’d include those as well.
grace jones: bloodlight & bambi
jonestown: terror in the jungle
the way down
I went to vasquez rocks a few weeks ago specifically to shoot my first ever roll of medium format film on a vintage lubitel 2 twin lens camera. using a camera without any electrical parts (or a light meter!) was a totally new experience for me, & I wasn’t sure if the images were even going to turn out.
but the lubitel is a sturdy camera which was made for the masses. even after all these years it still works! looking down into a viewfinder forced me to slow down & not snap haphazardly. it made the process almost meditative. excited to shoot more with this camera & see what turns up.
shot on a lubitel 2 with porta 400. see more medium format photos.
driving home from a day hike I noticed some abandoned buildings off the side of highway 14 in santa clarita. after stopping for some lunch I decided to backtrack & look for a way to access this area. as luck would have it, it was part of an open space off sierra highway. it seemed a perfect place to test out black & white film in my lubitel 2 medium format camera.
