Redo: A New Space

To all the peoples of the internet (and the world). I am starting a new blog that will focus solely on photography, words, and the ideas explored through them. The reasons for this new endeavor are many. For one, my interest in photography and language as mediums of investigation continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Second, I realize now that I don’t put out art at a fast enough rate to have consistent posts here in this space. Third, that duotone blog theme is just so damn hard to resist! I hope you will join me at my new space and be as kind (or kinder) to me there as you have been here.

http://bareknuckleflash.wordpress.com/

cheers,

Alex

One Morning

I found these fallen cherry blossoms in the Quad at the University of Washington as I sat in the crisp morning with my coffee, my ipod, and Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist. These flowers remind me of a song “Our Mother The Mountain” by Townes Van Zandt as covered by The Great Lake Swimmers.

Space Lion

There is a song, a piece of music that won’t leave my ears. Every time I hear it the world slows down and silence gains new meaning. This music creates distance and yet lures you in ever so slowly. The composer is Yoko Kanno and the piece is titled Space Lion. As the song unravels it accomplishes what every gentle piano work ever tried to do but in a novel way. This song, which starts above the clouds and spans an impressive lineage of music, becomes the historical trace. It is old and new at the same time, its influences are obvious yet its origins elusive. Give it a spin.

We’ve Walked The Earth In Solitude

To capture a moment…

This song makes peace.

On The Road Again…

Life is always changing, sometimes these changes are small, habitual, or pre-planned. Some changes are unavoidable like the turn over of seasons or transition between quarters. Other changes are hard, but necessary, a change that saves you from something or somehow makes you better. Travel is like constant change, you’re never in the same spot twice.

Just a note, I don’t normally drive, which is why I can take pictures from inside a moving vehicle.

Currently Listening To: Neil Young – Long May You Run

Electric Dream

Only In Blue

Apparently my camera has a really cool, full manual white balance feature that I just discovered today. The results are below. The good thing about Seattle is that the weather is always good for photographing in blue. Rain, rain, rain…and its good to be inside.

Currently Listening To: Neil Young – Four Strong Winds

In Honor of Sunshine

I was recently chosen for a sunshine award by my friend Pete at world sketches I will be posting my own sunshine award winning blogs in a later post.

This morning I took my camera with me to school to capture moments of sunshine, hence the post title. Before I get to the photos permit me to wax philosophically for a moment. The sun is the giver of life. Plants, trees, animals, humans, we all depend on the sun light. Even on a chilly Seattle morning just stretching my hand out into the warm sunlight causes me to think this is what life is about. Nothing can replace the tickling feel of sunlight on one’s hand in the middle of a cold, crisp morning. Nothing can replace the the burning glare of the afternoon sun in the middle of summer’s heat. Nothing can replace the last cool breaths of sunlight at dusk when the sky glows pink and the clouds break for one last ray of paradise. Memories are made of this.

Currently Listening To: Johnny Cash – That Lucky Old Sun

Chris Doyle, A Man With God’s Eyes

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Chris Doyle is a world renown cinematographer best known for his work with the equally amazing Chinese director Wong Kar Wai. Together their aesthetic captures something completely temporal, be it the transitive nature of the modern city or the fleeting emotions of love and lust, and translates it into imagery that will make itself immortal in your mind’s eye.

But back to Chris Doyle, he is not only an amazing cinematographer but also a writer and photographer. To that end one of my favorite books is his film diary Buenos Aires done while making “Happy Together”. The book itself is about time and change, the temporality of experience, and the struggle to create. In fact this book was one of my inspirations for this blog. If you own a copy of this book consider yourself lucky as it can be difficult to track down. If you are a fan of Wong Kar Wai or Chris Doyle’s work, then do yourself a favor and find this book. If you care about photography, what the medium can accomplish, and how far the medium can be pushed as a visual art, then get this book.

Why am I writing about this then? What Chris Doyle routinely achieves through film and photography is what I hope to achieve in my art someday. That is I want to be so good or lucky as to capture a fleeting moment, a mood, an emotion and seal it forever in a visual medium. This in particular is my aim for photography. I want to push the limits of the camera, of the photo and capture in that strained space something permanent about human experience. Obviously the thought of achieving this goal is a long way’s off. But for the time being this could be considered a sort of artist statement. Like my version of George Orwell’s “Why I Write”. And Chris Doyle truly is a man with God’s eyes.

If any of this interests you I strongly recommend checking out Wong Kar Wai and Chris Doyle’s work.

Currently Listening To: Shigeru Umebayashi – Yumeji’s Theme

You Can Spend The Night Forever

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How do we measure time? I don’t mean by minutes, hours or days, I mean what kind of events or experiences mark a significant passing of time? People go through different phases, moods, periods. Often times it seems like two people sitting right next to each other are in completely different time zones. Time for me is usually marked between finishing artworks. That is the time and space between one significant or successful artwork to the next makes up a period worthy of reflection in my own mind. Unfortunately that means this current span of time looks to drag on for quite a while. Or perhaps life has been so cluttered lately that my internal clock has ceased to function properly. I feel I have been relegated back to measuring minutes and hours as a meter for time with days having almost no meaning at all.

Days fade into one another, sun rises signify nothing but another phase in other peoples’ lives. More accurately, I think minutes, hours, and days themselves have no meaning at all. What matter are the things you get done between them.

Currently Listening To: Charles Mingus – Moanin’