A Fist Full of Film

This is the Rebellion against overproduced images often in the digital world. These are images made from my film cameras. Each image I shot myself. The subjects are often friends, and acquaintances in their world.

Horse Lattitudes Do you remember the moment when you lost Dad?  The blank stare of disbelief that reverberated coldly in the darkness.  The thumb on the “end” button of your cell phone, your thumb stuck to the iphone glass as if by some invisible glue.  The comforting hand on your shoulder that gave no comfort at all because of the vain words that accompanied it that went innocuous and fell to the bed you were half sitting on.  The silence.  The darkness of not feeling the oblivion engulf you.  The inkling that you didn’t care.  The loss.  The feeling of sadness, a morose weightlessness laden with weight.  The out of body, the defense mechanisms, automatically moving in quiet poetry.  The rehearsed lines of condolenses, of bright sides of the story.  The recoil of emotion bracing for the impact of friends that try to say too much, but mean well.  But still it hurts.  The bill collector or the father in law, who don’t give a shit.   The silence of consideration and how people should react when someone doesn’t want to talk.  The fast forwarding of what life would look like in your mind’s eye.  The imagination of what could have been, or what is.  The artifacts of things that used to be his, now held coldly in your hand.  The feeling of the limited, of the temporary, of the fleeting, and imagining your hand decaying holding that innocuous relic that comforts you and grieves you simultaneously.   The voice of a true friend,unbeknownst to you, crying for you, their words crackle over a cellphone wire, disguised by distance, shielded by plastic technology, and protected by State Lines. I remember the first steps I took outside after that call.  The fresh air, the unwiring of my phone not in my pocket.  The chill of coldness because I just wanted to get away and didn’t bring a jacket.  Walking around in a full parking lot of my apartment complex at 3 in the morning.  Various sounds of Life murmur through plaster and sheet rock, through open sliding glass doors on balconies above street level.  The nocturnal sounds of human life and their pets.  An HD television has gone blue, no longer the black and white snow of yesteryear.  I can see its mediterranean color cast between vertical blinds of uniform apartment windows.  They must have fallen asleep, like we all do.  ”We all eventually have to sleep.”  Trying to comfort myself in monologue.  I look up at the heavens, like most who have lost someone.  I see stars, I see clouds, no majestic sattelites, no meteors.  Just the stillness of the unlimited. Exhaling releases a vapor, a cloud, and again I think of life, and the extinguished.  I’m not going to get over this easy, I said two years ago.  And I’m not going to milk it or belittle it.  And this will not define me.  Nor will how I react to it define me.  The 3rd parties will postulate, they will rationalize, they will draw their own damn conclusions.  Their wisdom will flow like diarrhea.  And stink just as much. But the only voices that count are the ones you already care about, and it won’t take the coddling of words to convince you of something you already knew.  And from those precious few, you will gain the support and strength.  And most of all, you will always remember. MOMA, NY Rolleiflex 2.8E 80mm Schieder-Krueznach Portra 160 NC

Horse Lattitudes

Do you remember the moment when you lost Dad?  The blank stare of disbelief that reverberated coldly in the darkness.  The thumb on the “end” button of your cell phone, your thumb stuck to the iphone glass as if by some invisible glue.  The comforting hand on your shoulder that gave no comfort at all because of the vain words that accompanied it that went innocuous and fell to the bed you were half sitting on.  The silence.  The darkness of not feeling the oblivion engulf you.  The inkling that you didn’t care.  The loss.  The feeling of sadness, a morose weightlessness laden with weight.  The out of body, the defense mechanisms, automatically moving in quiet poetry.  The rehearsed lines of condolenses, of bright sides of the story.  The recoil of emotion bracing for the impact of friends that try to say too much, but mean well.  But still it hurts.  The bill collector or the father in law, who don’t give a shit.  

The silence of consideration and how people should react when someone doesn’t want to talk.  The fast forwarding of what life would look like in your mind’s eye.  The imagination of what could have been, or what is.  The artifacts of things that used to be his, now held coldly in your hand.  The feeling of the limited, of the temporary, of the fleeting, and imagining your hand decaying holding that innocuous relic that comforts you and grieves you simultaneously.  

The voice of a true friend,unbeknownst to you, crying for you, their words crackle over a cellphone wire, disguised by distance, shielded by plastic technology, and protected by State Lines.

I remember the first steps I took outside after that call.  The fresh air, the unwiring of my phone not in my pocket.  The chill of coldness because I just wanted to get away and didn’t bring a jacket.  Walking around in a full parking lot of my apartment complex at 3 in the morning.  Various sounds of Life murmur through plaster and sheet rock, through open sliding glass doors on balconies above street level.  The nocturnal sounds of human life and their pets.  An HD television has gone blue, no longer the black and white snow of yesteryear.  I can see its mediterranean color cast between vertical blinds of uniform apartment windows.  They must have fallen asleep, like we all do.  ”We all eventually have to sleep.”  Trying to comfort myself in monologue.  I look up at the heavens, like most who have lost someone.  I see stars, I see clouds, no majestic sattelites, no meteors.  Just the stillness of the unlimited.

Exhaling releases a vapor, a cloud, and again I think of life, and the extinguished.  I’m not going to get over this easy, I said two years ago.  And I’m not going to milk it or belittle it.  And this will not define me.  Nor will how I react to it define me.  The 3rd parties will postulate, they will rationalize, they will draw their own damn conclusions.  Their wisdom will flow like diarrhea.  And stink just as much.

But the only voices that count are the ones you already care about, and it won’t take the coddling of words to convince you of something you already knew.  And from those precious few, you will gain the support and strength.  And most of all, you will always remember.

MOMA, NY

Rolleiflex 2.8E 80mm Schieder-Krueznach Portra 160 NC

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