Photo by Angela Strassheim

On Tuesday by chance I ran into Pieter Hugo the South African photographer I have mentioned on this blog. Being a fan I introduced myself and he invited me to a show he's a part of: reGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow. The opening took place tonight at the Aperture Gallery. Of the 50 the photographers, the ones whose images grabbed me most included Mieke Van de Voort who shoots the homes of people who died alone, Natalie Czech's interiors, Angela Strassheim's creepy playful portraits, Jaret Belliveau's intimate family record and of course Pieter's 'hit you in the solar plexus' images from Africa.
I met several of the photographers and all turned out to be interesting folk. I was particularly impressed with Ms. Van de Voort. In a very short conversation we covered topics including transformative power of death to confer meaning on objects and the loneliness of children. An email she wrote about her work can be found here. (I had a hard time finding her images online so you'll have to check out the show). Jaret Belliveau is a young soulful Canadian whose pieces in the show documented his family's struggle with cancer and it's aftermath. His current work (not in the show... he showed me his book) is equally unblinking and personal. He follows his little brother's friends through their chaotic high school years. And of course Pieter had interesting things to say about his work and his process. All in all a nice evening I enjoyed hanging out with everyone over beers. The show runs through June 22. 547 West 27th Street, 4th floor

Think of 3 scenes from your life-inflection points from which you defined things as before and after. Describe the moments and why they are important. My theory is this:

If you are a man, you will describe the overall scene often including your geographical location. Then you will move smaller until you get to yourself. At this point you might throw in a few details: the smell of the summer air, the crackle of the car radio... When you explain the before and after you will tell it as a story.
If you are a woman you will start with the personal details, the sweater you were wearing, the feeling of the wind on your face, and then move outward. You will gloss over details of place but will locate the memory precisely in your emotional history. When you explain the before and after you will tell what the moment meant ignoring narrative.

It's just a theory, but in my tests so far it's been accurate. I don't know why.

3 Inflection Points (without the descriptions):

1. It is 1979. August in Texas. I am in the corner of Tim Almond's living room on Live Oak Lane. The sofas and chairs have been pushed aside to make a ring. 10 boys are chanting "fight, fight, fight!" Bill Melton is standing on the other side of the ring without a shirt on cursing me at the top of his lungs daring me to hit him. Angry and scared as I have ever been, I step forward.

2. I am on the 53rd floor of the Citicorp Building in an office looking out onto the Chrysler Building. It is January 2, 1990. A secretary tells me I have a phone call and the person on the other end is speaking in Spanish. It is my uncle. When he hears my voice he can barely speak. He tells me my mother and brother are dead.

3. New York City, the Lower East Side many years later. I have a dinner with a girl named Jenn. We had met the night before. We talk through dinner. We walk around the city. Hours pass. We end up at the Cloister Cafe in the garden. Flowers from a tree are falling onto our table. We have been talking for 8 hours now. A strap on her blouse falls off her shoulder. She is still talking but I am not listening anymore. I reach over and replace the strap with my index finger. I say, "I'm sorry I couldn't concentrate." She smiles.

I have a large stack of notebooks I've been keeping since high school. This fragment comes from one dated July 22, 1988. No recollection of the context (story idea, overheard conversation, etc)...

The girl: You don't know what you are doing, how could you, because if you knew, you would not walk away, not like this. The truth, the real truth is, you are terrified because I make you feel something and after what happened you have grown comfortable in your numbness. You observe the world from afar but you are not in it. In these last hundred days, every morning while my head was resting on your pillow even before my eyes opened, I had this thought: I am not the girl you adore, but a subject of study, someone one should adore. You have used me so that one day you can write about the girl you once loved. But the girl in your story won't be me. You will change small details, you will forget things and you will make me say things I would never say. You will paint yourself as tragic and beautiful and you will make this moment seem inevitable, but it is not. I am asking you to say something. I am asking you to stop thinking. I am asking you to change.

I recorded a few bits from The Burden of Dreams Werner Herzog documentary for my ipod because there's no seriousness like German seriousness: Herzog on making art. Herzog on the jungle: Part 1 and Part 2. The sound level is low so you'll have to crank up the volume also note they take a few seconds to load up.

Elsewhere: Werner Herzog shot with an air rifle, The famous Werner Herzog eats his shoe documentary, Kinski on Herzog, and finally a gallery of stills from the official WH site. More information and fun trivia in his wikipedia entry.

It is 3:24 AM.

I am in the attic office and it's raining out. A minute ago I heard heavy footsteps tromp across the roof from somewhere around the chimmney. Wind? No steps. Step, step, step. Must be a man, a big man. It, no correction-he, pauses seemingly right above my head. Chills. My first thought: "The shovel is right over there and I can get it before he can." I edge over to the shovel. Pause. Listen. It's late I must be imagining things. I should be asleep. A big rat maybe? Then, unmistakably, more heavy steps. He stops at the skylight (all the townhouses from the early 19th century have skylights over the stairwell). I am a few feet from the skylight and I am furious that this person is on my roof. I creep over to the opening with my shovel to see what I can see. There is a face and two hands peering down through the thick 19th century glass. He doesn't see me yet. At this point, it gets hazy because I am in a rage, but I bang the shovel against the frame like a madman and in a full terror, yell, "GET OFF MY ROOF!!" The face vanishes followed by the sound of quick footsteps slipping and sliding over to the next house. Now silence.

Ahh Brooklyn at night. I will sleep with one eye open.

Mr. Apagya is photostudio photographer based in Accra in Ghana. He takes studio portraits in front of hand painted backdrops. I find the text in the accompanying article a both mildly patronizing and silly (and obnoxiously all in lower case), but ignore the text, enjoy the images. More images here and here.

Photostudio portraits from other places can be found in the flickr photostudio group. BTW if anyone who loves photostudio portraits should watch the Burden of Dreams, a Werner Herzog documentary about his epic Fitzcarraldo and wait until the very end when you can see a the entire process by which a local Amazonian photographer makes his beautiful black and white prints. I would kill to have some of those... almost worth a trip to the middle of the jungle. The documentary is running on some of the independent film channels this month...

About half an hour ago I was standing in the middle of our kitchen in the semi-darkness eating an apple and thinking about stuff. These are all things I do often: apple eating, hanging out in the dark, thinking.

The scene: The family is asleep downstairs, the house silent save for the occasional blast of Arabic from the baby monitor picked up from the mosque down the street . Rain is falling pulling flowers from the tree outside the window. Across the road my neighbor is watching TV as she often does at this hour. Blue light flickers against the back wall of her room. In the brighter flashes she is revealed spread out across the bed in her bra, panties, and socks. She hugs a pillow and eats some sort of cracker. Woman relaxed.

There have been times when I have caught her in her window looking over at us... my family at dinner, Jenn and I on the couch reading in the living room, sitting on the stoop with the baby. She always runs off or pretends to be doing something if we look in her direction, but she's not very quick and her staring is pretty obvious.

It is rare to see strangers so completely unwound hanging around their houses late at night in their socks. Rare indeed, and the knowledge of seeing such moments is necessarily private. I mean it's not like I can say anything if I happen to run into the woman on the street. What would you say? Anything said would sound terribly inappropriate. Possibly creepy. And yet there is that desire to say something: "I have seen you in repose. I know you exist." But of course I never do. God no. We smile, say 'hello', and leave it at that.

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Related: Neighbors on This American Life

Our son is (finally) starting to walk on his own, but he's fairly stealthy about it all. For example I'll catch him in the mirror and turn from brushing my teeth. Like a wild animal caught in the highbeams he will freeze and quickly drop to the floor. Jenn says seeing him walking is like spotting a unicorn.

One of my favorite films La Jette, is available (temporarily I'm sure) in it's entirety on Google Video. This is the original version in French without subtitles. Download it for your computer/ipod while you can. The subtitled version of the film is available as part of a compilation on CD but it's expensive. I am happy to report (as I own a copy) that a book made of the movie's stills has become a collector's item.

1. Call when I am in the tub.
2. When I tell you I'm in the tub and not to call back for a while, call back a minute and a half later.
3. Ask about my wife, who you have met, and then refer to a girl I last dated in 1992 and haven't spoken to since.
4. Call me Ricardo. Twice.
5. Refer to me as a "buddy" after you've called me Ricardo (twice).
6. Ask the question, "What'dya say chief?"
7. Hang up because you have to take a "really important call".

Related to yesterday's post in sort of perverse way, the photography of Sarah Pickering. An interview with the artist.