Camera Life
Looking for photographs that I’ve not shared before was daunting on more than a few levels and required some ground rules around “not shared before”. With so many photographs made through my life it’s difficult to know who’s seen what. I’ve translated the meaning as “not posted on Scooter in the Sticks before”. And with close to 5000 pictures posted over the years it’s hard to remember. To make it somewhat easier I’ve stuck to prints as my source since I don’t often scan things to post.
While looking I was struck by how pervasive the camera has been in my life. It’s witnessed things, public and private, that are burned bright in my memory while others seem like strangers. I could also detect an arc of visual and technical development as I compared prints made through the decades. An interesting exercise in personal archaeology. The work uncovers small secrets — some to celebrate while others perhaps left buried in the past.
Forgive the technical quality of the images posted today. I didn’t have the time to make proper scans so I’ve made quick copies with my iPhone to offer suggestions of moments from days past.
The first image was made 15 years ago while wandering Drake Beach in Maine. Like a dog marking territory I’ve recorded my shadow on people and places for years. That beach is mine.
Witness or Voyeur?
For five years I obsessively photographed my wife. Starting with a large format camera that demanded a scheduled approach to portraiture I eventually evolved to the Leica M6 camera to record moments of our lives together. During that period I made thousands and thousands of negatives reflecting much of what our life was like. A relationship develops where you determine the boundaries and limits of what can and can’t be photographed. It’s not easy or simple but yields over time an insight that’s surprising. If you ever ask yourself, “Who am I?”. Let a photographer photograph you day and night for years and you’ll find out.
…The Dogs Want to Sleep in the Sun All Day…
I made this photograph 44 years ago while lying in bed in my apartment on Waupelani Drive in State College, Pennsylvania. It was a hot, lazy summer day spent indoors with a girlfriend — that time of life when it’s perfectly normal to live in bed from morning until after midnight and then wander out into the night just to see what the world has to offer.
That print has stood on a shelf in my darkroom for twenty years; a reminder that the world doesn’t have to run on the schedule or normalcy scripted by society. Each day is an adventure of our own creation. Lofty ideas but difficult to achieve.
One a related note — there is a song Aimee Mann that echoes the feelings embodied for me in the picture. It’s oddly sad yet hopeful at the same time — J is for Jules…
Another beautifully written post…again I love the relationship you have with photos and who you are and your timeline…plus great taste in music…I want this song for my playlist I’m working on….nice Steve.
Thanks Brent. I like this February writing challenge. It really does stretch the mind. Kim turned me on to Til Tuesday. They have a lot of music that resonates with me. The soundtrack of my life sort of thing…
You apologize for the technical quality of the images but in my mind something is added to them by being slightly blurry – it emphasizes the time that has passed since these photographs were taken and – for me at least – allows a look back with a certain nostalgic feeling.
Last year my mother moved to a nursing home and we were left clearing out 40 years of memories from her house. I returned home with boxes upon boxes of old and really old photographs and slides. They are often blurry as well but possess that imperfect quality that makes them so much more real (and endearing) than tons of overly polished Instagram pictures posted today.
As you say, the images do take on a different quality from the originals and I too sense the passing of time in them. Perhaps for different reasons but the physical look has something to do with it.
Finding old photographs can be a real joy. And it can open doors and conversations you may never expect. The polish of modern digital images, especially the posed nature of selfies, I wonder how someone will read them in 50 years. Maybe it will be the same — a period that a person lived through.
Wow. I love the pics you chose, the idea of photographing your life, and the song. Well played, friend.
You’re the founder of the feast so to speak. Your challenge really helps me exercise my creative muscles. Really easy to just slouch back and post pictures of the Vespa. Thank you for thinking of the challenge in the first place and coming up with the specifics!
Nice
Mike. I searched and searched last night for the picture of me with your truck. Couldn’t find it. And then this morning I found it in a drawer in my office. It’s a gem.
My 11 year old nephew has taken up photography. I am encouraging him to be a pest and photograph everything and everyone. I hope he does and he might end up witha lifetime of pictures from a small Scottish town. Pennsylvania with bad weather as it were.
I made my first photos with the family Zeiss Ikon camera during a trip to Washington DC when I was nine. My father showed me how to focus the camera, set the exposure and advance the film. I had twelve frames to work with. My mother broke down and bought a couple more rolls. All black and white. I still remember the excitement of picking up the processed film at the drug store. Your nephew will have tools and support available that I could not imagine back then. He’ll need a smart uncle to guide him along so he stays focused on content and subject and not the endless shiny objects of tool and application.
Sounds like the smart uncle should open a Flickr account for him. Or maybe send him a camera…
I’ve run the gamet of cameras over the years from cheap Kodaks to a nice SLR Fuji STX-2 in my film days. Like you I started on my Dad’s Zeiss Ikon. These days I use either my phone or cheap Vivitar DVR cameras. The good thing about them is they take acceptable video or stills but if the bike vibrates them to death it’s not a big deal. Being able to store pictures on a computer is great.
I’m trying to imagine a whole, grown up workflow in retirement that includes discipline related to naming files and backing things up. But generally, I’m in a much simpler place when it comes to photography. Minimal tools, maximum shooting. Sort of like the scooter…
Just a lovely post, words and images!
Thanks for your kind words.
Some years back, the writer of a photography column in the Washington Post wrote a piece about how his relationship to the photographic process changed with the introduction of Photoshop, and invited readers to chime in with their experiences with the application. My reply (which he published, among others) was that like any other part of the photographic process, I regarded PS as a tool of transcription – getting everything possible out of a given scan of a negative or transparency and ultimately into print form. I wasn’t interested in making stuff up from whole cloth…I was doing what Henri Cartier-Bresson called (some thought derisively) “automatic writing.” This was, and remains important to me, as photography, as with writing, is an extension of memory for me, and these artifacts will remember things that I may not as years and decades pass. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t creative process involved – whether picking up the pen or camera, it’s never cut-and-dried, and that’s part of the attraction for me, always has been. And I’ve always been fascinated with the technical side of this (hence all my palaver about fountain pens and RF cameras here at times), so long as it didn’t get in the way of why I was going any of this.
From what you’ve written, and especially from these photographs, I think you grok my meaning here.
Well said. I’m much in the same vein of thought when it comes to photography and writing. At least the writing I do here or in my journal. Other projects are more constructed.
Almost all of what I do is an extension of memory. Lately, I’ve been looking at old photos I’ve made and it’s startling what they recover from the memory banks. And how much additional stuff is in the print that I didn’t recognize when I pressed the shutter button.