Being There

how to take a photograph

On August 26th, 2008 I pub­lished this blog’s first post. Three years later to the day, Being There comes to an end. The deci­sion to end Being There was a long time com­ing. The there part of title stopped fit­ting: I’m here, I’ve arrived.

There’s been a lot of life in the last three years; I went back to school, quit school for a job, quit that job, moved to New York, and went back to school once again. Life has changed me, and my work has changed. I’m work­ing with a large for­mat cam­era these days. I dove head-first in to video, too. And now, from my apart­ment in Long Island City, I relaunch my career as a pho­tog­ra­pher feel­ing a great deal of excite­ment. I am doing what I love to do in a place I want to be. There is a lot of work ahead. Maybe one day I’ll start a blog called “being here.”

Until then, I’m work­ing on build­ing my pho­tog­ra­phy prac­tice. I have sev­eral projects brew­ing here in New York. I’m look­ing for­ward to adding the new work to the projects sec­tion of my revamped web­site. The relaunch will add sev­eral new sec­tions, includ­ing a cal­en­dar, news feed, and an updated biog­ra­phy and CV. I also have a newslet­ter: sign up for updates, and I’ll send you a postcard!

In part­ing, here are a few of my favorite posts from the blog:

• Black His­tory Month, about my expe­ri­ence grow­ing up in a mul­ti­cul­tural school in Canada, and the impor­tance of a safe and nur­tur­ing envi­ron­ment pro­vided by my teacher, Ms. Cromwell,
• When I get Older, about mov­ing back to the neigh­bor­hood I grew up in, and vol­un­teer­ing at my old school,
• Tightrope, about the day I quit my job and was accepted to the Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy (in that order),
• Why the Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy, about mov­ing to New York.

Thanks for read­ing, and talk to you again soon!

Jack­son

On the edge of glory (actu­ally some­where in Delaware). Jack­son Couse, Giu­lia Bianchi, and Valentina Riccardi.

Cap­ture and Release

2010–2011 Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Pho­tog­ra­phy Full-Time Stu­dent exhibition.

June 25–August 14, 2011
Open­ing Recep­tion: June 24 | Fri­day | 6:00–9:00 pm
School at ICP, 1114 Avenue of the Americas

Cura­tors:
Ali­son Mor­ley, Chair of the Doc­u­men­tary Pho­tog­ra­phy and Pho­to­jour­nal­ism Pro­gram
Marina Berio, Chair of the Gen­eral Stud­ies in Pho­tog­ra­phy Program

Only one week left of school.

I went to Look3, and all I got was this photo:

Some­where in Delaware

That’s me, tak­ing a break from dri­ving a car­load of Euro­peans from Char­lottesville, VA back to New York City. Check this space for pretty ladies in about 3 days (when I get my film developed).

Pho­to­jour­nal­ist Tyler Hicks addresses the School of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Boston Uni­ver­sity. In con­text of the recent deaths of Chris Hon­dros and Tim Heather­ing­ton, Hicks answers the ques­tion “why pho­to­jour­nal­ism?” A good watch for recent and soon-to-be PJ grads.

via Giu­lia Bianchi.

Maybe I’m not an MJ, but I am a JC, and JC plays bas­ket­ball with a lit­tle extra spring in his step

Some­times I for­get the things that make me human. I get so caught up in my work, caught up in record­ing what makes other peo­ple human, that I for­get to take care of myself.

Last night I bought a pair of bas­ket­ball shoes and a ball. Those shoes are damn comfy! I want to wear them all the time. I con­sid­ered wear­ing them to bed. If I hadn’t walked home in them already, I would have. (Aside: why do Amer­i­cans wear their shoes in the house at par­ties? I still don’t get it.) I feel like I could slam dunk in those shoes. And they aren’t even the fan­ci­est ones.

At a party the other day, another stu­dent told me “I like you, but you need to be less intense.” She was right, too: if were I to go on work­ing with­out relax­ing and tak­ing care of myself, I’d have a heart attack one day. Plus, being all pent up doesn’t help your cre­ativ­ity. Insight never came from being a ball of stress. And so, basketball.

The high­light of the ICP Infin­ity Awards last night was Dr. Ruth Gru­ber, recip­i­ent of the Cor­nell Capa Award for doc­u­men­tary photography.

Ahead Of Time Trailer from Bob Rich­man & Zeva Oel­baum on Vimeo.

At no more than five feet tall, Dr. Gru­ber was dwarfed by the large glass podium on stage. In the world of pho­to­jour­nal­ism, though, she is a giant. Her accep­tance speech was a brief and clear call: use pho­tog­ra­phy as a tool to bat­tle injus­tice, and to work with your the heart. It was a touch­ing and weighty speech from one of the few remain­ing peo­ple who doc­u­mented the holocaust.

we’re num­ber one

Today I was invited to the Inter­na­tional Cen­ter of Photography’s Infin­ity Awards, tak­ing place next tues­day. Good thing I brought my suit!

The push to July is on! Only two more months left of school and final projects are start­ing to be wound down and put into edit­ing mode. I have edit­ing class on Mon­day nights. The class is so excit­ing that Giu­lia and I usu­ally stay after­wards to keep edit­ing our work. Gotta use that mojo while its flowing.

Late night photo edit­ing at the inter­na­tional cen­ter of pho­tog­ra­phy. Photo of Jack­son Couse by Giu­lia Bianchi.

My horo­scope has been very accu­rate lately, but this is incredible:

ARIES (March 21-April 19): To con­vey my vision of how best to pro­ceed
in the com­ing week, I’ll offer the fol­low­ing metaphor­i­cal sce­nario: Imag­ine
that you are not a pro­fes­sional chef, but you do have a mod­icum of
cook­ing skills. Your task is to cre­ate a hearty, tasty soup from scratch
with­out the ben­e­fit of a recipe. You will need a vari­ety of ingre­di­ents, but
on the other hand you don’t want to just throw in a wel­ter of mis­matched
ingre­di­ents with­out regard for how they will all work together. To some
degree you will have to use a trial-and-error approach, sam­pling the
con­coc­tion as it brews. You will also want to keep an open mind about the
pos­si­bil­ity of adding new ingre­di­ents in the lat­ter stages of the process.
One more thing: The final prod­uct must not just appeal to you. You
should keep in mind what oth­ers would like, too.

I’ve been told many times that I think too much. “You are think­ing too much,” my teach­ers say. It’s been that way since I started tak­ing pho­tos, and I’ve never fully under­stood what they mean!

six strips of bacon, pop pop pop

What I think they mean is that I’m doing my think­ing at the wrong time. Pho­tog­ra­phy is like CPR; it requires a lot of think­ing, but that think­ing has to be done in advance. Admin­is­ter­ing first aid you don’t have time to think, you just have to react and rely on your train­ing. That train­ing has a lot of think­ing behind it — cen­turies of inves­ti­ga­tion into the mechan­ics of the human body. The same is true of tak­ing pic­tures. In the moment, you don’t have time to think. When you see an image, you have to react, rely on your train­ing, and trust your vision. You have to do your think­ing in advance.

The more delib­er­ate you can be about that think­ing the bet­ter. Hav­ing a sys­tem helps. Focus­ing on the process can take away the psy­chic ten­sion inher­ent to cre­at­ing. And when you do feel that appre­hen­sion, its prob­a­bly a good sign. A sign that you’re on the right track. Inspi­ra­tion is great, but in order to cre­ate con­sis­tently you have to do your home­work and then trust your gut.

Espresso at Stump­town Cof­fee (at the ACE hotel)

In Jan­u­ary, I took a work­shop with Jeff Jacob­son. Jeff’s class was incred­i­ble. I think its safe to say that he is a leg­end, a photographer’s pho­tog­ra­pher. Each day, he assigned us explore the city. It was the “rock­et­ship” assign­ment: you have 24 hours to pho­to­graph what it feels like to be you today so that your pho­tos can be sent into space to tell aliens what it is to be a human being. The next day, he looked at every pho­to­graph of every stu­dent. No out­takes, no hid­ing. It was like being naked. Worse than being naked. We looked at thou­sands of pho­tos every day for a week, and Jeff edited them all. It was amaz­ing to watch. The work­shop com­pletely reori­ented my per­spec­tive and reignited my pas­sion for mak­ing pictures.

At the begin­ning of the work­shop, Jacob­son gave us an essay by Charles Har­butt to read. It rep­re­sents Jacobson’s pho­to­graphic phi­los­o­phy pretty well. Here’s one of my favorite paragraphs:

The pho­to­graphic goal flows from the nature of the medium. Pho­tog­ra­phy is the only medium that orig­i­nates in and is caused by the real, his­tor­i­cal, time-space event of a col­li­sion between a man [or woman], a cam­era and real­ity. But the pho­to­graph itself occu­pies its own time and space and is a sep­a­rate thing from that real-time col­lu­sion. Most pho­tog­ra­phers see only one or the other of those aspects of the medium. Doc­u­men­tary, news, and street pho­tog­ra­phers see mainly the real­ity, the con­tent or sub­ject. “Artis­tic” and aca­d­e­mic pho­tog­ra­phers see mainly the image, its style, tech­nique, and fan­tasy asso­ci­a­tions. Great pho­tographs exist not so much where image and real­ity meet and bal­ance, but in the elec­tric ten­sion between real and unreal. The good pho­tog­ra­pher skates as close to the brink of total real­ism, while still hon­or­ing the oth­er­ness of the image, or he skates as close to oth­er­ness – the sheer, unique, two-dimensional object – while never leav­ing the direct real­ism of which the medium is capa­ble. But the great pho­tog­ra­pher skates close to both brinks simul­ta­ne­ously and, in the process, fre­quently states new ways the prob­lem can be per­ceived if not solved, new ways the rules can be bro­ken if not observed. The result is a two-dimensional image that is a sep­a­rate expe­ri­ence in itself while totally authen­tic to the real con­tin­uum which gave it birth.

The full essay, “I Dont Take Pic­tures; Pic­tures Take Me” is avail­able at Amer­i­can Sub­urb X.