Being There

Pho­tog­ra­pher,

Your port­fo­lio doesn’t mat­ter. What does mat­ter is mak­ing pic­tures. Like James Starks when he says, “I play this game for the fun of it,” release your­self from the lit­tle coach, teacher, or  man­ager in the back of your mind that tells you to worry. There are enough anal peo­ple in the world already.

When you take pic­tures, be there. Enjoy it.

You are the cir­cus com­ing to town. The act of pho­tog­ra­phy moves peo­ple. You are look­ing at them, really see­ing them, in a way that no human might ever do again. Respect and hon­our that exchange. This doesn’t have any­thing to do with a cam­era. It has every­thing to do with inten­tion and atten­tion. Be clear in both.

Pho­tog­ra­phy can be a release, for you and for your sub­ject. If you are moved to take a pic­ture, do it. Don’t worry about your port­fo­lio, the project you’re work­ing on, or any­thing else. When the spirit moves you, when you see some­one or some­thing that turns you on, get closer. Enjoy your life, enjoy shar­ing life with oth­ers, and take pic­tures along the way.

Worry about your port­fo­lio later.

Remem­ber when I posted Rihanna’s video here a cou­ple of weeks ago? It’s Robyn’s turn this time:

Robyn goes on tour across the U.K., and, guess what, she brings a cam­era crew. The result­ing video is a per­fect fit for the song. We’re on the bus, hang­ing with Robyn. We see her sign­ing CDs, eat­ing chips, hav­ing fun at the fair, and gen­er­ally being a nor­mal human (albeit an abnor­mally good-looking one). The sim­ple story is of Robyn mak­ing her way from small pub­lic­ity events to a sold out sta­dium show.

What makes this video strong is that it is so well-edited. The film­ing is solid, but the way the footage was assem­bled is what really makes the story. There is rapid cut­ting — the images keep pace with the song, and the cuts fall in time with the beat. For an exam­ple of clever edit­ing, see the three sec­onds from 1:17 to 1:20. In those three sec­onds, there are 8 shots of Robyn walk­ing. These are called “jump cuts.” The shots all use the same fram­ing and dis­tance, but in dif­fer­ent places. It’s a neat trick, one that rad­i­cally con­denses time and puts the viewer squarely in the posi­tion of an insider. I feel, watch­ing this video, that I’m really part of Robyn’s posse. This point of view is repeated through­out the video.

A pretty tight lit­tle “documentary.”

WORDS on Vimeo from the Everynone pro­duc­tion company.

(via Bob Sacha and Pamela Chen.)

This is exactly why I don’t use Facebook:

By Jan­u­ary 5, it was clear that an entire country’s worth of pass­words were in the process of being stolen right in the midst of the great­est polit­i­cal upheaval in two decades. Sul­li­van and his team decided they needed a country-level solu­tion — and fast.

Thank you, but I’d rather not trust my “friend­ships” to Mr. Sullivan.

Pho­tog­ra­pher Brett Gund­lock of the National Post was arrested dur­ing the G20 protests in Toronto in the sum­mer of 2010. The charges were later dropped. Gundlock’s expe­ri­ence, and the bru­tal­ity he wit­nessed as, “over the course of two days Toronto descended into a police state,” have fueled a body of pho­tographs he calls the “G20 Pris­on­ers Project.” His pho­tos will go on dis­play at Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Gallery in Toronto in March.

Brett Gundlock-Prisoners Project– Rock­etHub from Boreal Col­lec­tive on Vimeo.

Says Gund­lock:

“This is a por­trait series chron­i­cling the indi­vid­u­als that were part of Canada’s largest mass arrest at the G-20 sum­mit in the sum­mer of 2010 in Toronto. Iron­i­cally resem­bling police arrest pho­tos, the por­traits are mixed with writ­ten accounts of the subject’s expe­ri­ences. Giv­ing a dif­fer­ent voice to the series, the hand­writ­ing becomes por­traits on their own. The state­ments tell a story dif­fer­ent from the offi­cial police record largely reported by Toronto’s media.”

To help sup­port this project, see the fundrais­ing page.

Oh, how I wish I could say that I coined that one!  But no, it was WNYC. They’ve been talk­ing snow for almost two days straight now.

27 Decem­ber 2010 — New York, NY — The fire crew from Hook and Lad­der 115 in Long Island City, Queens attempt to free their fire truck from a snow­bank on 49th Avenue. The truck became stuck on its way back to the fire house dur­ing a storm on Sun­day night.

Fif­teen to thirty inches fell on box­ing day, depend­ing on your bor­ough. The wind was 50 miles an hour, wet, and blind­ing. The wind pushed snow into every nook and cranny and into large squalls. At about mid­night, I took a walk around the neighborhood. Trucks and cars were stuck and aban­doned on almost every street. A taxi blocked one end of my street, and a rental van blocked the other.   Four police cars were stuck by the sta­tion, and down at Hook and Lad­der 115 one of the pumper trucks was being dragged out of a snow bank by a lad­der truck.

I’m really glad that win­ter has finally arrived.

Is this a photograph?

Dad and David Vis­it­ing from Adad Han­nah on Vimeo.

If it is, I think it is a good one.

Watch the first fif­teen sec­onds of the video for Rihanna’s song “what’s my name?” (fea­tur­ing Drake), and you will see an expert bit of visual sto­ry­telling. Imme­di­ately, place is set: New York City. Inside ten sec­onds the rest of story is estab­lished. Drake is in a “bodega,” or cor­ner store, when he sees Rihanna enter. With some quick cut­ting the ten­sion of sex­ual attrac­tion is set up. The rest of the video unfolds from there:

The inter­est­ing thing about this video is that it is set in New York but nei­ther Drake nor Rihanna is a native New Yorker. Rihanna is from Bar­ba­dos, and Drake is from Canada, but their affair (on the screen, at least) is a New York story: hot, imme­di­ate, and fun. That pas­sion is what makes New York a great city. It is the new New York­ers that give the city its vibrancy, its cre­ativ­ity, and its effer­ves­cent type of unex­pected beauty.

On a tech­ni­cal note, I would wager that this video was made using a Dig­i­tal SLR that takes hi-def video. See the shal­low depth of field slip in and out of focus when the sub­jects move?

OCT 28, 2010. New York, NY. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Charles Rangel addresses a Demo­c­ra­tic meet­ing in East Harlem, New York. Rangel’s dis­trict includes a large con­stituency of Spanish-speaking vot­ers of Domini­can descent, and Rangel addressed the crowd in both Eng­lish and Spanish.

OCT 28, 2010. New York, NY. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Charles Rangel of New York is flanked by Demo­c­ra­tic politi­cians at rally in East Harlem.

OCT 28th, 2010. New York, NY. Charles Rangel’s empty cam­paign office. With an elec­tion nearly ensured by an over­whelm­ing win in the Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary, Rangel’s cam­paign coasted to 80% of votes in the Novem­ber 2nd midterm election.

A con­fes­sion: I am an unre­pen­tant politics-watcher. When I was assigned to cover the midterm elec­tions at the begin­ning of Novem­ber, I was ter­ri­bly excited. There is no bet­ter peo­ple watch­ing than pol­i­tics, and there’s prob­a­bly no bet­ter polit­i­cal peo­ple watch­ing than in Harlem, New York.

I’ve been a fas­ci­nated by pol­i­tics since a young age. I love watch­ing the drama of cam­paigns, both in front of the cam­eras and behind the scenes. In pol­i­tics I find three things that turn me on; charis­matic fig­ures (heroes and vil­lains), argu­ment over what the world is and should be, and acting-out in pub­lic. For me, watch­ing pol­i­tics is like watch­ing a giant, com­pli­cated, messy, human play. I like to look at pol­i­tics as a soci­ol­o­gist would.

Charles B. Rangel is the king of Harlem, are rare type of politi­cian beyond reproach. Beloved by his con­stituents, he is a dec­o­rated war vet­eran who served as the Demo­c­ra­tic Rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Harlem for 21 straight terms. Despite loom­ing cor­rup­tion charges, he sailed to re-election with over 80 per­cent of the votes in the Novem­ber mid-term elec­tion. Yes­ter­day, the House voted to cen­sure Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Rangel. This is the first cen­sure since 1983. It is a sig­nif­i­cant pun­ish­ment for the pow­er­ful politi­cian who founded the Con­gres­sional Black Con­gress and recently chaired the House Ways and Means Com­mit­tee. Rangel was found to have com­mit­ted a series of ethics vio­la­tions, includ­ing hav­ing improp­erly filed his income taxes and hav­ing solicited cam­paign dona­tions that put him in a con­flict of inter­est. A cen­sure is the most severe pun­ish­ment avail­able to the House with­out eject­ing Rangel.

Char­lie Rangel is a com­pelling politi­cian and an easy per­son to pho­to­graph. He is an excel­lent ora­tor. His com­port­ment is refined. He floats through a room, and appears far younger than his 80 years. He is the con­sum­mate power­bro­ker, a part of the local polit­i­cal struc­ture so entrenched that his re-election was a fore­gone con­clu­sion. At a Demo­c­ra­tic break­fast in Span­ish Harlem, it was clear that Char­lie Rangel’s power is also dynas­tic. Flanked by politi­cians of every level, Rangel com­fort­ably played the king-maker. His bless­ing and sup­port for lesser can­di­dates seemed to be a pre­req­ui­site to their elec­tion. Their praise for him was a mix of rev­er­ence, fear, and bald-faced sycophancy.

As was made painfully clear by the Ethics Com­mit­tee, Rep. Rangel is not the untouch­able politi­cian he appears to be. His polit­i­cal power may be dimin­ished by the cen­sure, but it is a pun­ish­ment that lack any real con­se­quences. Rangel pun­ish­ment was sim­ply to be called before the House to hear a read­ing of his transgressions.

I think Char­lie Rangel will sur­vive, as much the dean of Harlem pol­i­tics as ever.

NOV 2. New York, NY. Charles Rangel leaves a polling sta­tion in Harlem, NY after vot­ing. Rangel was eas­ily re-elected to his 20th term as Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the 15th Con­gres­sional district.

This post was orig­i­nally pub­lished at NPAC.ca as build­ing a his­tory. It has been mod­i­fied and expanded from the original.

The con­ceit of Relo­ca­tion is fairly sim­ple: pho­tos made while mov­ing. Each image was com­posed while phys­i­cally trav­el­ing through space.

Unti­tled (Ottawa Val­ley), 2010. Taken from a mov­ing train in the early morn­ing on the way to Mon­tréal for business.

On a deeper level, Relo­ca­tion is an inves­ti­ga­tion of empti­ness, and a record of the ver­tigo expe­ri­enced when con­fronted with the immen­sity of the uni­verse. Read flatly, the pho­tos could be described as land­scapes, but I con­sider them records of uniquely human geog­ra­phy, both inter­nal and exter­nal. They are deeply con­nected to expe­ri­ence, there­fore I feel that they fall in the realm of doc­u­men­tary photography.

Unti­tled (Île d’Orléans), 2010. Taken on a day trip by car trip around Île d’Orléans.

Although the pho­tos in the series were made recently, I worked on this series for a long time. Over and over for years I took pic­tures of places that make me feel aware of my human­ity. That is, when con­fronted with a place that made me feel small and alone in the uni­verse, I would take a picture.

I was afraid of the world. I moved out when I was 16, and for the fol­low­ing few years suf­fered from men­tal ill­ness and depres­sion. Dur­ing this time, I would stay some­times with my father, and some­times with friends. I moved around a lot. For years, all my stuff was in boxes. I never really felt rooted any­where. Later, work­ing as a com­mu­ni­ca­tions ana­lyst for the National Hous­ing Research Com­mit­tee, I learned that this is called being “mar­gin­ally housed” or “mar­gin­ally home­less”. It was a con­fus­ing, scary time.

The after-effects of this con­stant shuf­fling, com­bined with the trauma of mov­ing out, were intense. For a short time I hal­lu­ci­nated reg­u­larly. My long term mem­ory was shot. I couldn’t remem­ber whole peri­ods of my life. I had a hard time mak­ing sense of the world. Pho­tog­ra­phy was a cop­ing mech­a­nism. I pho­tographed places as way to assert my exis­tence. By abstract­ing a place and freez­ing a moment of time, I used pho­tographs to impose visual order and break the world down into man­age­able pieces. I used images as the anchor-points for mem­ory. Pho­tog­ra­phy helped me cre­ate mean­ing out of my expe­ri­ence. Every time I got back a roll, it felt like I was cre­at­ing an archive that I could come back to. My life may have been all over the place, but that archive gave me meaning.

I worked closely with the artis­tic direc­tor at DAÏMÕN, Marie-Hélène Leblanc, to cre­ate Relo­ca­tion. Although I had been mak­ing this work for a long time, every­thing really clicked when she asked me “is it pos­si­ble to pho­to­graph empti­ness?” It was a chal­lenge. I knew I already had. The answer is both yes and no. By pho­tograph­ing empti­ness, you make some­thing. By look­ing into the abyss, you fill it.

I was rid­ing a bor­rowed bike back to my friend’s house after a day at the NPAC con­fer­ence in Toronto. I love rid­ing my bike even more than driving.

To select the pho­tographs, we laid out about 500 prints on a table in my base­ment. We pushed them around, paired some with oth­ers, rejected, dis­carded, brought back, debated, and finally selected the six pic­tures in the show. It took the bet­ter part of a day. This is the same process I use to edit all my projects. I think of pho­tog­ra­phy as akin to poetry. Craft­ing a photo nar­ra­tive is like writ­ing haiku. Edit­ing is a care­ful, eco­nom­i­cal process of bal­anc­ing images against each other. Each has to have value, but those val­ues must fit together to con­struct a coher­ent mes­sage or larger image. Six pic­tures is less than usual for me, but they just made sense with the space and each other. To me, the selec­tion feels bal­anced and effec­tive. It is an uncom­pli­cated but emo­tion­ally com­plex series. This is what I was look­ing for.

The pho­tographs we selected were made after I stopped being home­less. They were made with the clar­ity of per­spec­tive that comes with a sta­ble place to live, a job, time, and adult­hood. Still, they are pho­tographs about and of dislocation.

(Aside: I would like to men­tion here that if you do not own a printer, you should get one. There are decent mod­els avail­able for well under a thou­sand dol­lars. The process I just described is so impor­tant. If I did not have real prints the con­nec­tions Marie-Hélène and I made would have been impos­si­ble. I wouldn’t have been able to give her copies to take home and think about. For another project, I made a lit­tle chap-book out of pho­tos. By chance, this book landed in the right hands, and scored me a place in an inter­na­tional exhi­bi­tion with a pro­duc­tion grant. The value of real, printed pho­tos can’t be overstated.)

The final piece in Relo­ca­tion is a video. It is short, about 2 min­utes long, a sim­ple sta­tic shot taken from inside a mov­ing sub­way train as it pulls into the sta­tion. I made this video in New York, after the pho­to­graphic con­tent had been decided. Whereas the pho­tos are cold, sta­tic, and sparse, the video is warm, fast, and messy. It is a explic­itly social coun­ter­point to the cool detached­ness of photographs.

This is 23rd St. (I said damn) from Jack­son Couse on Vimeo.

Relo­ca­tion con­tin­ues at DAÏMÕN until Octo­ber 10th, 2010.