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.

“Do you even know how to use that thing?” The man in the tweed suit asked me in Midtown Manhattan.  ”Do you know how to use that?”  I responded.  He gave me a look that would probably be translated;  ”Brother, please.”  I measured the light in my mind’s eye and “remembered what it was,”  and fired.  One shot.  One kill. The sound of a rifle, cracking the the silence of cold morning air, finding its mark in the beast of burden, or the enemy by itself is elegant and sign of precision. Instead of the repeating qualities of automatics.  This is analog photography, by design, seriously just taking one shot, and letting it go.  Putting the camera away, and rest in the confidence of what you could “see” was the shot. Film is not efficient.  Film is not convenient.  Film is everything archaic, manual and slow.  It is why it is art.  Because the technique is as much an art form as the process.  Again here I am using my own process in my kitchen to create the negatives, and develop them.  And this is yet another example of that “Leo Process.”   I never was part of a fraternity, nor an elite club of people.  My time in the Church, was close to that, and even my time on the rowing team allowed for a sort of male bonding.  But when I meet a guy on the street, who recognizes my old camera before he sees the person, and asks me in a digital world of my contemporaries if I even know how to use something twice as old as me, and I do, it feels like a connection to the past. We often speak of doing things bigger than ourselves.  Bigger than the generic life of the mundane of lives bought and sold at the convenience of big box stores.  God can play a factor here.  Or Country, in a militaristic perspective can be bigger than the sum of its parts.  I’m not equating taking photographs to fighting wars or Believing in God.  I’m equating it to what we in my infintesimal mind is Identity.  And in my identity, being able to relate with someone else provides a satisfaction of the collective.  But too much collective, and we feel we’ve lost originality.  Too little and we are bound for Egomania.   Why do I use such a toxic form of art to do what is I do?  What are the motives for my desire to do so?  Is it for recognition?  Is it for personal gain?  I find myself asking questions on my motives to the very core of who I am.  Because of the amount of money(none) and accolades(few/far between), I can rule that out.  Perhaps it truly is for the love, in which case, that makes me a fraternity brother of most of the dreamers and out of the big box thinkers.  Hooray.  Being conscious of that makes me sick.  Realizing I’m sick makes me better. This post makes me sound like a David O. Russell movie. Midtown Manhattan Secret Process, Lens, Camera, Film

“Do you even know how to use that thing?”

The man in the tweed suit asked me in Midtown Manhattan.  ”Do you know how to use that?”  I responded.  He gave me a look that would probably be translated;  ”Brother, please.”  I measured the light in my mind’s eye and “remembered what it was,”  and fired.  One shot.  One kill.

The sound of a rifle, cracking the the silence of cold morning air, finding its mark in the beast of burden, or the enemy by itself is elegant and sign of precision. Instead of the repeating qualities of automatics.  This is analog photography, by design, seriously just taking one shot, and letting it go.  Putting the camera away, and rest in the confidence of what you could “see” was the shot.

Film is not efficient.  Film is not convenient.  Film is everything archaic, manual and slow.  It is why it is art.  Because the technique is as much an art form as the process.  Again here I am using my own process in my kitchen to create the negatives, and develop them.  And this is yet another example of that “Leo Process.”  

I never was part of a fraternity, nor an elite club of people.  My time in the Church, was close to that, and even my time on the rowing team allowed for a sort of male bonding.  But when I meet a guy on the street, who recognizes my old camera before he sees the person, and asks me in a digital world of my contemporaries if I even know how to use something twice as old as me, and I do, it feels like a connection to the past.

We often speak of doing things bigger than ourselves.  Bigger than the generic life of the mundane of lives bought and sold at the convenience of big box stores.  God can play a factor here.  Or Country, in a militaristic perspective can be bigger than the sum of its parts.  I’m not equating taking photographs to fighting wars or Believing in God.  I’m equating it to what we in my infintesimal mind is Identity.  And in my identity, being able to relate with someone else provides a satisfaction of the collective.  But too much collective, and we feel we’ve lost originality.  Too little and we are bound for Egomania.  

Why do I use such a toxic form of art to do what is I do?  What are the motives for my desire to do so?  Is it for recognition?  Is it for personal gain?  I find myself asking questions on my motives to the very core of who I am.  Because of the amount of money(none) and accolades(few/far between), I can rule that out.  Perhaps it truly is for the love, in which case, that makes me a fraternity brother of most of the dreamers and out of the big box thinkers.  Hooray.  Being conscious of that makes me sick.  Realizing I’m sick makes me better.

This post makes me sound like a David O. Russell movie.

Midtown Manhattan

Secret Process, Lens, Camera, Film

2 months ago 13 notes
  1. fistfulloffilm posted this