after 4 days of hiking on the inca trail we reached machu picchu & were greeted by perfect clouds & blue skies.
desert day digicam
in digicam, photography
a saturday spent wandering around joshua tree national park & morongo valley california with a 2010 sony bloggie mhs-pm5.
july / august poem
in poetry
let’s encase ourselves
like bugskin
flesh against flesh
until we forget
what blood is
the impossibility of perfection
in digicam, photography, diary
journal:
this is the core of the digicam/lofi/camcorder appeal. everything in our world got so polished & perfect & flat; the pressure to look like a glossy magazine life got to be so much that these frankly shitty early devices became irresistible. you literally cannot produce perfect glossed over documentation with a 2004 point & shoot digital camera. it is actually impossible. so the pressure to attempt to do so is lifted entirely. it’s a liberation from the confines of perfection.
february in death valley
in film photo, photography, hiking, travel
a few half frame film shots from my day in death valley on a paleontology hike with the national park service (they do these once a year and I highly recommend it).
shot on kodak gold 200 with the kodak ektar h35 camera.
video diary: 4 days on the inca trail
I could have decided not to lug my little $40 camcorder to a whole new continent & then up several mountains on my trek along the inca trail, but I couldn’t bear the thought of having no low quality shaky video documenting my trip. the camcorder remains undefeated, even after a tumble onto incan stonework.
hot waters
in travel, film photo
after four days hiking the inca trail & a morning spent in the ruins of machu picchu we stopped in machupicchu pueblo (also known as aguas calientes) for lunch. before catching the train back to ollantaytambo to start my return to cusco, I wandered the streets & the bustling market with new found friends & my little point & shoot film camera.
streets of cusco
in photography, travel
walking the bustling & narrow streets of cusco with my fujifilm x30. once the capital of the incan empire, now the main hub for peru’s tourism industry.
on being seen
12:18 - 53rd street - MoMA
what does it mean to be seen but not SEEN? maybe its the difference between observation & objectification? photographs are about seeing yes, but they’re also a way of erasing the viewer or the maker of the photographer. they’re like windows with one way glass. we can see in but they can’t see out. in fact, they don’t even know we’re looking at them. I guess that’s pure voyeurism.
sometimes they do know I suppose. it’s a different kind of feeling. more about being on display for a purpose. if you can even call it being on display at all.
everything becomes a performance OR it already was one.
to be seen
an eye immobilized
against grey. a
mystery–
that’s solving itself
& never revealing
its answers.
springtime in the gardens
the $40 lofi camcorder remains undefeated.
florals on film
a few shots from descanso gardens on kodak gold.
alien planet
in film photo, hiking, photography, travel
took a roll of lomochrome turquoise film to death valley a couple months ago. the results look like photographs from mars! the turquoise film is super fun even if I do have a hard time deciding when using it will create cool results or just weird ones.
shot on lomochrome turquoise 110 film with the pentax auto 110 camera.
florals for spring
in photography
spent a saturday at descanso gardens admiring the blooms.
old houses
in collage, visual art
here & disappearing
a woman is an old house, 2023
a woman is an old house
ask her why
she searches
for dissolution
statements
in admin / news
updated my artist statement with a gif.
thinking about the poetry possibilities of gif making.
oops I did it again
in running
on sunday I finished my second marathon. while I wasn’t faster than my first race in 2020, I had a much better experience & a lot more fun so I’m counting that as win! plus, I completed the “conquer la” challenge which consists of finishing the santa monica 10k, the rose bowl half marathon, & the la marathon in the same season & gets you an additional medal at the final finish line.
in the dirt
in visual art, collage
pray for us sinners.
our mother in the dirt, 2023
death valley winter
in photography, hiking, travel
three iphone shots from my time in death valley on a full moon.
the winter light in death valley is like a caress. rose-hued & hugging the mountains – curling between scrub grass & salt flat. driving the long curving roads like a wave craving sand.
looking up
in photography, travel
while playing with my new (to me) fujifilm x30 in nyc I fell in love with this monochrome film simulation & the winter light on the city’s buildings.
I loved being back in the city, even if only for a handful of days. I was surprised to realize that as much as I love new york I am very grateful to have made my home in california.
frozen sands
something I always liked to do when I lived in brooklyn was go to coney island in the winter. this beach-town is almost totally abandoned during the colder months as the theme parks & boardwalk shops wait for summer to return before unlocking their gates & opening their doors. on my recent weekend in nyc I spent a very cold morning (28 degrees fahrenheit) walking along the boardwalk with my camcorder & making friends with the suspicious seagulls.