classic cars
The Old Plymouth
Old Plymouth off Broadway #3
I have a soft spot in my heart for Pontiac. Ever since word of its demise, I have been meaning to take a picture of the sign at the dealership on Auto Row in Oakland. I finally got around to it the other day. And while I was driving around looking for a place to park, I saw some other photo ops on the side streets. This old Plymouth was in beautiful shape. And as I just commented over on flickr, I have to admit I find it very sexy in a zaftig sort of way.
Fingado Art Gallery Opening
This is the final set of images I will have in a group photography show that opens Friday at Fingado Art Gallery. Nine is quite a few but the prints are not very big, just 12 inches square. I printed them at Dickerman Prints and had them mounted on aluminum at General Graphics, both in San Francisco. They came out very nice, and I’m pretty excited about it.
It has been an interesting project to try to print and prepare for presentation a small set of photographs. In a way, it seems easier than simply showing things on the web. I think the reason for this is that a physical show has, by its very nature, physical limitations and boundaries. A small set of images allows one to focus on them and the process of getting them where you want them to be. By contrast, putting things up on flickr or another such site is pretty much wide open in terms of numbers and organization. One can drown in a sea of possibilities.
This was my thought about what’s going on with this series of photos. The starting point is an exploration of color. Not color simpliciter, but as it relates to memory, history and the fictional narratives they constitute. The combination of color shifts and vintage subjects recall a generic past and, paradoxically, place the viewer within a fictitious historical narrative by playing upon her memories and nostalgic sensibilities. The deportation is paradoxical since taken literally, these narratives describe a logical impossibility. The images waver between recalling a past as it was, and a decayed, dissolving past as it comes to us. On one hand we are presented with something recalling a snapshot from the family drawer, a snapshot whose color as shifted over time, but whose referent we can conjure through memory as pristine. On the other hand, the subject is captured and presented not as it was in the past, but as it is now, in the present. It is the color, as it were, of the subject itself which has shifted over time rather than the photograph.
Night Rambler 5
It showed up one day earlier this week. It sat quietly over to the side minding its own business, not making a peep. I went by once and noticed it immediately, but I, too, didn’t say anything. Life is like that a lot these days. One makes mental notes and tries to find them later amid the clutter of scraps of paper, children’s toys, empty wine bottles, and job postings.
I went by again and the tug was more insistent; the mental note came floating down from the rafters, landed in plain view. For two days I shuffled it to the top of the stack of other mental notes.
Sarah had noticed it sitting there and said something to me about it. Tuesday night it was still there when I left the house to run the errand in another note. I threw my tripod in the car on my way to get milk.
On the way back home, i went by again. This time I stopped. I didn’t care that it was night. The moon was almost full. The golden convertible gleamed in the cocktail glow of moonlight and sodium vapor.
It was accidental at the time, brought about by the time constraints of modern suburban living. But these two great tastes taste great together: suburban neighborhood car photography, and night photography.
tweets
- My mother's two sisters, Thea Thespina (left) and Thea Maria (right) on either side of Theophanis when we visited... http://ff.im/-gYrPs
- Misty Mountains, Mystical Morning http://ff.im/-gwt4w
- Alkher Illa Doffor (The Nectar Remix) by Cheb I Sabbah http://ff.im/-gvl41
- #facebook is having serious problems loading this morning.
- Warm Shift by Jon Hassell http://ff.im/-g6hR5
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