Speaking of Poltergeists...

This is a non-digitally altered shot of a scene I created using a run-of-the-mill printout from the web, it's of the house used in the movie Poltergeist which I then cut out and taped to a window (I'm revealing my amazing technical secrets to the world here...)

Thoughts on things that creeped me out, and other lofty ideas

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When I was in grade school I loved looking at books about UFOs, ghosts, the supernatural, and really whatever whacked-out mysterious things might exist ("might" being the operative word in my mind at the time). In 7th grade I went through a serious ouija board phase--at the time one of my closest friends claimed to have seen the ghost of a man in a top hat and tails in her parent's bedroom and I must admit her house was fairly creepy (the third floor bathroom was basically in a turret). So of course this meant that it was our favorite place to pose questions to the mass-manufactured Parker Brothers game that we invested so much faith in. (But not really, I mean, we pretended not really, being in that weird place where we had one foot in adolescent skepticism and one finger trying to still hold on to the imaginary realm of childhood.)

I'm not sure if I fully believed in any of it, but it still scared the heck out of me; I had both the mind of  a doubting scientist who wanted evidence (I once asked Santa for a picture of Jesus, meaning a photograph not a painting, Mom and Dad) and the mind of a sometime spiritualist who recognized that the world is full of unsolvable and vastly unknowable questions--and possibly horrifying hairless demons that might live in a tiny closet in your bedroom like on that one episode of Tales from the Darkside.

I continued my seeking ways during college, spending hours in the self-help section of the local St. Louis Barnes & Noble reading everything from cognitive therapy-based books to volumes on runes. I resided--and mostly still do--in this middle ground: my logical brain thinks I'm a skeptic, and my artistic brain thinks I'm a speck floating in a mind-bending soup of who-knows-what. Call me wishy-washy, but I guess that means I'm intellectually agnostic.

My latest series (still unnamed) is an attempt on my part to try to recapture some of that old feeling of fascination and awe that got shelved quite a bit in the day-to-day of making sure the kids were mostly clean, were every once in a while eating something other than beige-colored food, and as of late telling them I don't care who did what to whom, just stop bickering forgodsakes. I had already begun to examine some supernatural ideas with "Strange Happenings" but for whatever reason I just wasn't fully invested in it. Once I shifted my focus slightly to connect it to my past a bit more I began to feel like I'd found my voice again. Throw a dash of physics, astronomy, Jung and all things ancient into the mix and you've basically got an understanding of where my influences lie.

Still, in many ways it's difficult to capture visually how it felt to watch scary shows and movies back then, what it meant to read about chaos theory and Shrodinger's cat (which, trust me, I had/have only a very basic grasp of but still find compelling nonetheless). The best way I can describe it is to say that overall certain images are embedded in my mind, along with a hard-to-describe feeling--one that's unsettling but not entirely unpleasant either. If I look for clips now they strike me as cheesy, but also bring back some of that old feeling, a kind of weird nostalgia.

While this is the impetus for the current series, I'm feeling that some of it has been approached too cerebrally (though that may be central to the images in some ways). It's that logical vs. imaginative brain thing again, that middle ground I always seem to be pulled towards. Still, the photos right now seem too "clean" to me--I've been thinking about how to make them less pristine, more messy in that crazy adolescent poltergeist way. But maybe too there's a chaos I'm trying to control, which might root them in the more orderly nature of how the pictures have been coming together. I don't know, I'm thinking out loud, at which point blog posts can become boring so I'll shut up now. Long story short it's at least coming together more than before. We'll see what happens next.

(Wait--did you know there's a theory that poltergeists aren't ghosts but actually the pent-up energy of teenager's (mostly girls') anxiety and hormones being physically manifested? An interesting tidbit I think.)

Still alive

Well, hello. Has it really been over a month since I posted? Why, yes, it has. Blake Andrews wrote an entry about dying and/or dead blogs ("In Memoriam: Photoblogs 2011"), citing those that fizzled out, those that spontaneously combusted, and those that at last check were hovering somewhere in between. I've been thinking a lot about that post since I read it; specifically, about whether there's still life worth breathing into Tethered--whether it's merely convalescing until I nurse it back into health, or whether it's on its last legs.

The truth is, I'm not ready to let it go. I hope no one will notice if another month goes by with empty space unfilled, or that if people do notice they'll stick with me through the lean times. Feast or famine, baby. One of the difficult things (of course) is that the less I write the harder it is to write (duh). It gets to be that there's too much to say, so I don't say anything at all. But still, a month (and a half) hardly doth mean the final curtain has gone down.

All that said I have grand plans as always--new website, new book, finally getting my new series into a ready-to-show happy place. But then the kids get sick, or I get sick, or holidays happen, or my sister gets married, or I'm sad that my sister's wedding is over and that she's so grown up and that I'm getting older and perhaps not living up to my potential (whatever that might mean). Or, truth be told, I simply procrastinate and procrastinate which leads to paralysis. Still, here I am, pulling myself out of the creative rut once again. I guess that's how this artist thing works--bursts of creativity then go fallow while I wrestle with my various demons and attempt to abolish guilt. I'm trying to remember that I always seem to make it back out of the hole. And a post, any post, is as good a restart as any.

Perhaps not my most profound or interesting entry, but long story short the defibrillator has been utilized, and here's hoping that the blog-heart keeps pumping, and that I can become a bit more consistent.

As far as the images above are concerned, they feel a bit wistful and time-gone-by to me, which is about where I am mentally. I'm not sure why but they make me sad, and for that reason they'll be factoring into the as-yet unnamed new body of work which I'll be revealing more of asap.

Thanks for listening.

4th grade students interpret my work

When I was at the Haverford opening last month I met the exhibition coordinator's girlfriend Jennifer Clark who's a 4th grade teacher. She recently took her students to see the show and just wrote about the experience here. It's fantastic--I love hearing their thoughts about the work and the imaginative stories they came up with around the origins of the pictures. Apparently there is a lot of getting in trouble by whomever they infer created the messes I document. First off, here's how it works in Jennifer's words:

The corner of the world that has inspired me as of late is the work on display currently at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. My fourth grade students were shown some of the images and asked to think about what happened immediately before the photo was taken, what happened when the photo was taken, and what happened immediately after the photo was taken. Their interpretations or inferences needed to have proof within the photograph supporting their reasoning. They also had the chance to give the photograph a title they thought suited it best. The following are what they so creatively produced.

The simplicity of the title "Need a New Light Bulb" is great--humorous in its directness. Here's the entirety:

Actual Title: "Broken"

Student Title: "Baseball Accident"
By: Hannah

Before the picture was taken a couple of boys were playing baseball in the backyard and the ball broke the light bulb. During the picture the boys were in big trouble. I know that because now the light bulb is broken and a door is open so the boys are saying sorry. After the boys were not allowed to play baseball.

Actual Title: "Broken"
Student Title: "Need A New Light Bulb"
By: Grace

Before the picture was taken a girl was looking for a place to sing and did it in the living room. During the picture she started to sing and the light bulb broke. I know this because sometimes a high pitch can break glass. After the picture was taken, she got in huge trouble for singing.

Actual Title: "Analog"

Student Title: "Party All Night"
By: Connor

Before the picture was taken, there was a party and they tried to open a bag of string, but it popped. I know this because there is a lot of string on the ground. During the picture, the person throwing the party goes and gets a broom to clean up the mess. I know this because you can't see the person. After the picture was taken, the person cleaned up the mess and partied all night!

Actual Title: "Analog"
Student Title: "Party Cleaners"
By: Gabrielle

Before the picture was taken, a teenager's parents left for a cruise that didn't allow kids under 18 and told the teenager no parties. I know this because in the picture it doesn't show a person and the streamers didn't look so old so they could have been taken out a bit later. During the picture the party ended and all of the guests are leaving and the teenager's parents park the car in the driveway. I know this because in the picture streamers are trashed and the light from the car lights is shining through the window. After the picture is taken, the teenager's parents come in, see the mess, and make the teenager clean up the whole mess and then they grounded her.

Holiday shopping idea

Speaking of collect.give, the holidays are coming up and some prints of my image "Hammock" (below) are still available via the site, you can see my page here.

collect.give: new book, new website--check them out

For Immediate Release   The charity-based online photography gallery  collect.give announces the release of a book celebrating  the project's first 50 photographers - all of whom have  pledged to donate 100% of their print proceeds to charities they've selected. Since 2009, collect.give  has raised over $28,000 for a wide variety of charitable  organizations, by selling affordable, limited edition photographs.         Description  128 pages, softcover, perfect bound, printed by MagCloud.  ________________________________________________________________________________________ Design By    Heidi Romano Photographs By  Jane Fulton Alt, Malu Alvarez, Jonathan Blaustein, Mark Brautigam, Jesse Burke,  Barbara Ciurej & Lindsay Lochman, Katrina d'Autremont, Amy Eckert, Matt Eich,  Jon Feinstein, Sarina Finkelstein, Elizabeth Fleming, Max. S. Gerber, Meggan Gould,  Andrew Hetherington, Geoffrey Hiller, Peter Hoffman, Jon Horvath, Ben Huff, Dave  Jordano, Stella Kalaw, Melissa Kaseman, Liz Kuball, Shane Lavalette, David Leventi,  John Loomis, S. Billie Mandle, Kerry Mansfield, Mark Menjivar, Kevin J. Miyazaki,  Annie Marie Musselman, Colleen Plumb, Susana Raab, Shawn Records, Ellen  Rennard, Dalton Rooney, Jonathan Saunders, Manjari Sharma, Daniel Shea, Kelly  Shimoda, Emily Shur, Allison V. Smith, Aline Smithson, Brea Souders, Sarah Sudhoff,  Jake Stangel, Lacey Terrell, Sonja Thomsen, Susan Worsham and David Wright. Essays By Crista Dix, Darius Himes, Lisa Hostetler, Rachel Hulin, Miki Johnson, Larissa Leclair, Wally Mason, George Slade, Amy Stein and Alison Zavos.  _________________________________________________________________________     To Benefit  The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). In keeping with the collect.give mission to donate 100% of proceeds to charity, all profits from this book will be donated to the RSPCA, a charity chosen by the designer Heidi Romano. Price $22.00  To Preview or Purchase    http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/290686  __________________________________________________________________________ Contact For more information, visit www.collectdotgive.org or send an email to Kevin J. Miyazaki. Thank You  collect.give wishes to thank Heidi Romano of threestones and publisher MagCloud for their generous in-kind donations related to the book project.

Critical Mass doppelgängers

Technology can be a hoot sometimes. James was on the couch with his iPad and I was here at our desk computer and for a good half hour we were both looking at the Critical Mass top 50 web page at the same time, keeping up a running dialog while we checked out the winners. We were having a lovely time going back and forth telling each other to "check out so-and-so" or "so-and-so's work bores me" or "so-and-so's is hilarious (in a good way)" when we soon we realized that there were quite a few instances where one artist's work uncannily resembled another person's. For example:

 Lucia Ganieva

vs.

Mark Lyon

I wonder whether it would feel weird to see images that were so similar to my own in such close proximity. Moving on, here we have:

Jane Fulton Alt

vs. 

Youngsuk Suh

In reading the statements that correspond to the matching series I'm reminded of how subjective the act of interpreting one's work is. Let us move on to developing trays vs. viewfinders:

John Cyr

vs.

Meggan Gould

Or Russia vs. the Ukraine, just add or subtract snow:

Evgenia Arbugaeva

vs.

Misha Friedman

All of this perhaps points to a potential issue with the CM means of judging: because the winners are based on a blind mathematical system of voting there's a large possibility that there could be a lack of variety, as seen above (and in other work on the list which I'm not showing here). I'm not sure if this repetitiveness has always been in evidence--maybe I've just never scrutinized the winners this closely in the past. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to knock Critical Mass, it's a great opportunity for photographers and Photolucida is an amazing organization. But it's an interesting conundrum--jury by a group of 200 can lead in the end to a sort of non-curated whole that gets, well, a little monotonous when all is said and done.

iPL at the Corcoran

My book is now part of an exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery which opened today, announcement below. See the full list of books and artists here. Many thanks to the curators for selecting my publication--you can buy your very own copy for only $12 by going to here.