.. still an interesting effect some 573 years later !

I know the feeling Mark. Isn’t it funny how we use the web to talk about how the web is making us crazy. I did it here:

http://alecsoth.com/blog/2007/05/21/back-online/

>>>

It was S. Liu’s last sentence that really nailed it. And it was that one image of Robert Frank’s wife, in the passenger seat of that car, that really slapped me upside the head. I just know that certain mindset that you get into, when you’re driving and shooting and exploring, and you’re “on”, like someone else said, “antennae up”, (maybe Martin Parr). But just that AMOUNT of time allows you to think, and to sink in, and to let your internal clock just slow down a tad. It’s just got to be healthy.

I was just trying to put my head inside of Robert Frank’s head, as he was driving, driving, driving, and roaming around, and shooting those classic images, and just wondering how it would be different if the same project would be tackled in the year 2007.

I also wonder how this “speed-up” affects younger photographers, with their iPhones, and their text messaging, and their “got to be in touch 24/7″ way of living. Just wondering if their time increments are now just so much shorter.

Lots to think about, on this topic, but I gotta run — I hear my iPhone ringing…

http://alecsoth.com/blog/2007/05/21/back-online/

“By their own nature, candid photography and poetry are not produced at industrial scale. That is why they are hard to make and even harder to market. Our society demands big and expensive projects that take months and years to make but seconds and minutes to consume.”

Everything is speeding up at breakneck speed, and I notice that I just blow through these Blogs, and bodies of work like I’m eating M&Ms or popcorn. I know you can’t stop time, and you can’t even slow it down, but it does make you wonder about how people are viewing work today, on the web, at broadband speeds, versus how they used to view bodies of work, even five or ten years ago.

I remember my “old method” of viewing work — I’d get in the car, and drive out to our local independent bookstore, and I’d walk over to the Photography section, and I’d pull up a wooden bench, and it was like a small, quiet search for New Gold — to see what new books had been published since I’d been there last, and hopefully someone else had already secretly busted open the cellophane wrapper, so I wouldn’t have to do it and feel guilty. I’d sit there for sometimes hours at a time, slowly turning the pages, and smelling the ink, and really pondering the images. In its own small way, it was a special event.

Now, I get up in the morning, make my coffee, check my email, (while some of the Blog pages are loading in Firefox), let my dogs out, and I blow thru the blogs at wildwire speed. Now, I’ve discovered Google Reader, so now, I’m not inconvenienced by having to go to someone’s “old page” (maybe as old as three or four days!). I’m viewing these images on a laptop screen, (while checking my email if the page doesn’t load fast enough for my new impatient standards), and usually am also doing one or two other things at the same time. The thought of having to get in the car, and drive to Borders or another “real” bookstore, and hassle with parking, and door dings, and the like, and risk getting there and there has been no new work published, well, that is just unthinkable.

The only upside, (and it’s a real upside), to the web version versus the printed book version, is that I’m seeing work from MANY more people. I guess that’s a good thing.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but life is just blowing by me lately, and I’m not sure it’s all a positive thing.

Thanks for the wonderful post.

The name of the Kavlar book is ‘Terriens’, not ‘Earthlings’,
although that would make a good title for a book.

Feli

At some point, I’d stopped assisting and was preparing to move back East, and I had (what I thought) was a great idea, to come back to my home town and photograph these local politicians in my town, ala Avedon, (my other God). So one morning, I got up the nerve, and I found Garry Winogrand’s phone number (on directory assistance!), and I called him on the phone, and asked him what he thought of the idea. He listened for a few seconds, and then started screaming at me about “how could I ever think about this until I’d actually shot the pictures!”, or something to that degree. Imagine Tom Waits, with that voice, being really irritated.

At that point, with my tail between my legs, I politely hung up the phone and thanked him for his time. It was a great lesson for a young kid — that the cart comes BEFORE the horse.

PS. Here’s a Lee Friedlander picture of him, dated 1957. Somehow, Gary Busey comes to mind:

http://tinyurl.com/2wp5su