“You know when I saw that latest work you were doing I thought you have totally gone off the deep end.”

This statement was made to me after I showed this work for the first time during my talk at Photo Plus Expo in New York. The person who made this comment to me is a legend and someone I really respect as a photographer. Once we spoke further about this work he explained that he realized there was a method to my madness and understood where I was attempting to go with this work. It was a great moment for me, not because I need praise, but more specifically because I think this exercise, or doing things like I’m doing here, is critical to the creative process.

Let me explain. Something was missing. It still is, but I’m closer to finding what I’m looking for. I felt my photography had grown too detached. I went from fully digital and REALLY feeling like I’d lost my work, back to the analog world but I still felt like something was missing. What I realized was I missed the actual physical part of photography that I knew many years ago.

So, I got lucky and found a darkroom in Santa Fe, a location I’m sharing with another photographer who also feels he wants to reconnect with the physical, wet print process. I have yet to make a print in the space, for a variety of reasons such as not being in Santa Fe and also not having the space fully built out, but it’s coming and it’s coming soon. I KNOW what this place will allow me to do. And believe me, I’m NOT a great printer, not by any stretch. But, it’s actually not about that. It’s about slowing down and MAKING something by hand.

I grew up doing a fair amount of physical labor, and I have a feeling all of this stems from this reality. I NEED to make things and the computer just doesn’t do it for me. But, like I said before, I’m not IN Santa Fe as much as I’d like. I have this pesky Blurb job and all these other responsibilities, so I felt like I needed something here in California. I needed a project that would help me satisfy those physical, MAKING needs.

So what you are looking at is the first incarnation of this project, something I’ve tentatively titled “Vandalism.” What you are looking at is all done in camera, painstakingly slow and laboriously. It’s about reexamining existing work, rephotographing it and adding in a little trickery/mystery along the way. There are several different materials involved, several different cameras and techniques. None of this is really that important.

Also, as you can see, I filtered the living crap out of these images(the ones in this post) for NO other reason than I could! You see, I sometimes lose control and this is a perfect example. It feels great! I think maybe this plays into this strange physical need. The camera on the iPhone SUCKS so bad that using straight images makes me feel like I have the swine flu, so I filtered the crap out of them because it forces me to press buttons and at least DO something to the image. It’s a pale and lifeless substitute but desperate times demand desperate measures.

This book sample is a Blurb 8×10, portrait style softcover book. It’s not really a book, it’s just a sample to see how these images look on paper and how they play with each other. I used the ProLine Pearl paper, which is great but I might actually change that up and go with the uncoated which does have more of a handmade, craft-like feel. You also might be wondering why I put this title page in the BACK of the book, and at the END of this post…well I’ll tell you why. SO many people who look at my book pay SO little attention to the book that one of the things they do is open and view a book from the back! I KNOW, it’s criminal but it happens all the time. So, I repeated the front matter in the back of the book. Take that short attention span people!

This book and this project are about simple things. Clearing my mind. Asking myself what I want to do. Wondering what is missing in my work and why, and then just simply playing around. I have no commercial angle with this, no need to rush it out, or ever really show it for that matter. It’s for me. In the wee hours of this morning I was packing for Uruguay, shuffling around the frigid house, digging through old bags, making notes and trying to compress as much stuff into as little space as possible. I came across an old plastic bag filled with oil paint, ink and an odd assortment of drawing and sketching materials. I dug it out and now it sits across the room from me, silently screaming. All of this makes me wonder “What’s next?” Going off the deep end never felt so good.