Aujourd’hui, caméra est morte

Another camera exploded this week. I should be more careful. 

To be more precise, a piece of Instax film exploded inside my camera. You've heard the expression "coming apart at the seams"? This is what the photo did. The insides squirted out the sidesides. Then somehow that led to the topside exploding. I'm not really sure what the chain of events was. All I know is I pushed the shutter button just like normal. But this time the camera top came shooting off followed by a photo with black gunk smeared on it. When I looked inside the camera, which was much easier now that the top had exploded, the rollers were covered in black gunk too. A little bit of that goes a long way. 

Oh well. I'm a dad. I'm used to dealing with explosions. I've cleaned shit smeared up a kid's back. I've been bruised by projectile vomit and I've cleaned spaghetti from behind the couch. But none of that stuff was as inaccessible as gunk inside a camera. It was really in there. And goopy. The only thing I could think to do was take another photo. It's my go-to move. 

The next one looked about like you might expect.



In this jpeg the gunk has dried, but at the time it was still wet. I had to blow on the photo for a few minutes, then wave it in the sun to dry before putting it in my backpack. That worked for the print, but inside the camera was still beyond the sun's reach. That gunk wasn't going to dry any time soon.

I decided to roll with it. Maybe I could turn this lemon into lemonade. It's not every day my photos are covered in black streaks. It created an aura of grit...and mystery. Maybe there were naked ladies from New Orleans under the black? Or scratch off lotto numbers? A scratch-n-sniff photo? The possibilities were endless. Best of all they were completely dependent on the viewer. I'd transcended post-structuralism without even trying. It was even easier than exploding a camera.

Here's how the next one came out.

Was the gunk dissipating? Was I using it up? I couldn't tell. But the photo had a certain charm. If I squinted and imagined myself in a museum it resembled one of those Gerhard Richter painted photographs. But uglier and by accident. 

Gerhardt Richter, Uebermalte Fotografien, – 02 MARCH ’05

No. Who was I kidding? My photo had no charm. The content fought the form. The punctum was battling the studium. And besides all that it was hard to make out what was under the black crud. I was no challenge to Richter. But he could walk away at any time. I was stuck with my exploded camera.

At this point most photographers would've come to a sensible conclusion. The camera was fucked. Pack it in. Time to repair or find another one. And I'm usually on board with that. Cameras have very little sentimental value to me. They're like shoes. You use them. They wear out. You find another pair. And right now this camera was like about as usable as a shoe without laces. But alas, I was in San Francisco. Did I mention that part? Repair or replacement was not an immediate option. The only way forward was through.

I thought my photos could use a little human touch. After the gunk had dried on my next photo I used my thumbnail to scratch away part of the black area. 

Aesthetically it had a ways to go. But as evidence it worked fine, because this was the photo which first showed me the problem went beyond surface gunk. Part of the interior emulsion was screwed up too due to the uneven rollers. There was a big white gap in the upper right. And some other smaller splotches lower down. But was this a lemon or lemonade? I needed more evidence. And to get high.

This is from a third floor fire escape. Lesson: black splooge plus undeveloped emulsion gaps doesn't necessarily equal success. But I knew that.

On my next photo the white spots seemed to be shrinking. Or maybe they were hidden.

The problem was I couldn't determine which parts of the image were intact without removing the gunk. And by that point it might be too late since there was no way to add it back. I'd gone past photography into sculpture. 

By the next morning the roller gunk had dried into a relief painting. I tried a photo. The black streak was gone! But it was replaced by dolphin lightning.

If I were a Chargers fan, this photo would seem like an act of God. I wasn't, but the photos still seemed like an improvement over yesterday's blackouts.

The lightning bolts were sometimes yellow, sometimes whitish, usually with a tinge of magenta. The key thing is they always jumped out of the ocean in the same general area of the photo. Repeatability is the heart of the scientific method. I could work with this. In fact it fit perfectly into my normal mode of operation in photography, which is to tweak the viewer. Confusion, artifice, etc. If I could combine those dolphins with the subject matter I'd be in business, and if I did it well maybe no one could tell? Maybe I wouldn't need a new camera after all. I'd just have to photograph white and gold dolphins from now on. 

Unfortunately there were no dolphins in downtown San Francisco. Just coffee shops, bums, and hipsters. Here's the hotel lobby where I was staying on Grant Ave.



Clouds are an ever-ready subject. 




Here are some spring Charger blossoms found in a gutter.

I thought my car pedals might look like dolphins but I was wrong.

After shooting this way for a day I started to realize I'd never find the right dolphins in real life. So I opened up the camera and started chipping away at the relief painting with my pocket knife. I know what you're thinking. How could I destroy the source of all those good times? Once I took that step the dolphin series would be gone forever. But the thing is, I just wanted my old camera back, with smooth rollers and no gunk.

If you've been shooting long enough to wear through a few cameras, you realize that jamming a pocket knife into your camera is no longer any big deal, certainly no more complicated than neutering a pet or clipping a chicken's wings. And unlike an animal, most cameras have a back that opens. 

I pulled open the film holder, then held the blade against the rollers while I pushed the shutter repeatedly. After about 20 spin cycles I'd removed most of the gunk. The camera didn't even put up a fight.

My next attempt looked like this.

Getting closer. The dolphin lightning was gone but the rollers weren't quite clean. I opened the camera again, repeated the pocket knife process, then tried another photo. 

That's when I saw Jesus.

The face was blurry yet identifiable. It was either the Messiah or the ZigZag rolling papers guy. Either way I knew I'd stumbled on something important. If I played it right this photo could be a gold mine. I'd heard about people driving for miles to see Jesus on a tortilla chip. How far would they drive to see Instax Jesus? And this was even more lucrative than a tortilla chip, because not only did I have a photo with accidental Jesus, I could make more whenever I felt like it. I had the magic rollers. 

I know what most people would do in a situation like this. Pump out more photos. Sell them on eBay. Retire to the French Riviera.

That's what most people would've done. But I pride myself on being a contrarian. I like to scratch below the black paint before making any decision. I realized that pumping out Jesus photos would flood the market. One Jesus photo is amazing. Five thousand Jesus photos? Not so unique any more. 

I had to nip this in the bud. I called my agent Bethany and explained the situation. "How are we going to handle this?" I asked. She said same way we always do, by forming a plan of action. A plano ng pagkilos, she called it. In April we will market a limited edition of twenty Jesus photos. Each photo will be made available through my gallery at an escalating price depending on the edition number. 1-5 will be $7,000 each, #6-10 $8,500 each, and so on. #20 will be $75,000. If you think that sounds like a lot of money, just consider this. It's the Messiah. And likely to appreciate in value.

That left just one key step, destroying the camera. Yes, I could've taken a pocket knife to the rollers instead, but it seemed too risky. They might've produced more faces. To protect my investment there was only one safe recourse, a fiery explosion. Luckily I had some gasoline handy. And a pack of Mentos. And a Sodastream pressurizer. 

And that's how my camera died today.

Instax Gratification

I'm not silly enough to think our little Tumblr group has any claim to Instax Gratification. The name is catchy, it rolls off the tongue, and best of all it fits the instant ethos. So I suspected there might be other Instax Gracifitations online, but before yesterday I figured there were just a few. In fact I keep a folder on my desktop to bookmark interesting Instax sites, and I have to say they're relatively rare. Until recently it had only contained seven URLs. And that was just Instax, without the Gratitilation part.

Turns out I'd been searching for the wrong keyword. An extended Google adventure searching Instax Granstagnation yesterday turned up a surprising number of results. It seems many more people are using Fuji cameras than I'd realized, and quite a few are posting photos under the title Instax Grafinegation. Who knew?

Most seem to be fly-by-night operations, here today gone tomorrow. Someone buys an Instax camera or receives one for a gift. They get inspired. They shoot a few photos, call the blog post Instax Gracitifation, then the magic wears off and nothing else is heard from them. This post fits that model. And this one. Not to mention this one, this one, this one, and this one. 

Monica Shulman

What these posts confirm for me is that this camera hits hard, like cupid's arrow. I still remember my first young Instax crush. It was 2011, during a photo meeting at Lisa's house. I saw a 210 sitting shyly by itself on Lisa's mantle. It was staring straight at me. Our gazes met and for several seconds I couldn't turn away. Who's,...what's that? I asked. Even before the reply I knew that our fate was sealed, that Instax and I would find a way to be together, to make this work despite the odds. 

It's not just me. I've seen the same thing happen time and time again. Just last week in Belgrade I watched Luka come under the spell, gaping in excitement as he watched my photos magically appear out of nothingness, then asking if he might shoot a photo or two with it, then wondering aloud where he might find such a camera. All of this occurring in a burst over the course of just a few days. Instax Grantafelation! I left him my 210 as a gift. I've given three away that way. I know what you're thinking and don't worry. Another camera is on the way as I write this.

Luka coming under the spell

The thing about schoolboy crushes is that they inevitably fade. Gradually one begins to notice the flaws, and it's only a matter of time before that's all one can see. And the Instax 210 offers plenty to complain about. It's huge, ugly, and cumbersome. The viewfinder looks like something out of a cereal box. The strap unleashes without warning, and the parts are plastic and easily broken. The batteries don't last. As with all cameras, most photos aren't keepers. But each time you prove that point you're 70 cents deeper in the hole. After a while you wonder who the fuck came up with Instax anyway? Is it some cruel joke? A test of true fidelity?

Visual Intersections

Thus the slew of Instax Graficitation posts trailing off into silence. The ones above are just the tip of the iceberg. This post, written quite recently, promises to survey the field and show the best of what's out there. But it's too late. Most of the sites mentioned appear to have lost interest already in Instax. Someone reserved the title Instax Grantafulcation on blogspot, but the energy fizzled before they could post anything. There's a site called Instax Graflextication which has nothing to do with Instax. I think it's about bath balm dolls. Instax Granticifation comes close, posting a small selection of Instax from various Tumblrs. And some of them aren't half bad. Last update: two months ago. It's one to keep an eye one maybe. Visual Intersections shows potential too, but I think the most promising site yet is Instant Gratistelation. It's got plenty of Instax along with various other instant photo types. A quick browse tells me that this one is a labor of love, and best of all it's fairly current.

For some reason many Instax shooters are attracted to scantily clad women. Maybe it's just a matter of odds, since there are probably more pictures of that subject than any other in photo history. Men are simple machines, really. A pair of eyes and some testosterone searching for quick gracitifation, plus some other stuff not worth discussing here. Add it all up and it's a trillion dollar industry. 

Still, I find the Instax/femme combo a bit strange. OK, you captured the model looking like she just swallowed a goldfish. First shot perfect. Do you need to blow the whole 10 pack? Because that stuff doesn't repack, just saying. Yeah, and I'm gonna call it Instax Grassification. Oh yeah? Me too, and my version shows a little more skin. Hmm, what should we call it? Instax Gratistination? Ooh, bad girl. Down. Baby. Phu-leeze. If you want to shoot hot bodies, why not get down to business? Instax Girls may occasionally push the boundaries of tastefulness, but at least the approach is raw and unabashed. But, alas, the most recent post was 4 months ago. End zone. Fade route. 

Instax Girls

The crush comes on quickly like, well, an Instax photo, Then proves just as disposable. Damn you, Santiago Stelley! Your Instax photos are among my alltime favorites. Then you quit. And Pierre Lachaine? Why did you remove your Instax photos? Some photographers keep Instax as a mistress off to the side, visiting occasionally but withholding the promise of a serious relationship. Jeff Dietz, Brian Sparks, and Dan Rubes, I'm talking to you. Won't you stop flirting and make an honest camera out of Instax already? 

Maybe I don't really want that to happen. Part of the Instax magic is its idiosyncrasy. If I saw hordes of people roaming around with 210s --heck, if I saw one other person carrying one-- I might lose interest. I like the crush cycle and its inherent gaps, and the way it keeps relationships in check. I think it may be one of the foundations of art. Give me two eyes and the hunger for instant gratiflagration, and I'll show you a museum.

Steal this post

One of my Tumblrs had an unexpected spike this week. Normally the photos on Instax Gratification will collect just a handful of notes. Ten would be considered a lot. But on Monday the photo below by Lisa Gidley went on a sudden note terror, collecting likes and reblogs in clumps. It's now up to 134 and counting.

Swatched, Lisa Gidley, 2011

It was pretty easy to trace what had happened. On Monday Mark Peter Drolet had reblogged the photo. I have no idea how many followers his Tumblr has but I know it's a lot. Mark is like a viral spotlight. Anything that winds up on MPDrolet is immediately seen by hundreds of people and will begin collecting notes as a matter of course. And that's a service which Mark is providing for free.

For me this experience brought home the viral power of Tumblr, which works not so much as a standard viewing platform --à la Flickr-- but more as a huge leveraging service.

I think it is this aspect which separates it from the previous paradigm when it comes to image reproductions. In the old world --way, way back, say 5 years ago-- copying jpgs was viewed as outright theft, and photographers discouraged it. But with Tumblr, you want your images to be copied. Reproduction equals distribution, and distribution can lead to good things. It's a complete sea change within just a few years.

Unfortunately much of the photography world still hasn't caught on. Mark recently received a note from Getty requesting that he remove certain photos from his Tumblr stream because their reproduction was unauthorized. Getty owns copyright and they asked nicely, and so Mark complied with their request. But to me it seems Getty is wasting a huge opportunity. Why not get those photos out there? Why keep them hidden? It's like a record company producing an album and then refusing to allow its songs on the radio. How is anyone going to discover that music?

I see where Getty is coming from. They view photographs as intellectual property. It's just that their perspective is through an old fashioned lens. To them a photo is like a bicycle leaning against a porch or a Rolex in a safe. It's ripe for theft. If you consider a jpg in the same way, you might go to great lengths to protect it. You might ruin it with a watermark, thus ensuring that it'll never be stolen --or even looked at. Or you might lock it away and ask others not to copy it. Until quite recently that's how I too viewed photographs.

Maybe in the old world a photo operated like that. Nice prints exist in limited quantities, and each edition has a specific monetary value. Photo books still operate that way today, and thrive in that environment.

But I'm not sure a web jpg works the same way. A jpg is just the digital expression of a visual idea. It has no value. You can't sell it. You can't convert it into a nice print. Maybe you can't even steal it, since if you "steal" a jpg from a website, it doesn't remove the photo. Probably the closest you can come to theft is to copy a jpg, remove its identity, and represent it as your own. This abhorrent behavior may occur sometimes but I think it's rare in the Tumblr world. The much larger problem is unattributed reproductions, which is less an issue of theft than inattention. 

"Photographers ultimately need to make money by selling their images," explains Getty. "Often, we or the photographer are trying to limit exposure so that certain images can be sold exclusively." This reasoning would've made perfect sense 20 years ago. It's the logical basis for imposing limited editions somewhat unnaturally on the photo world. But does it make sense online? It's difficult to understand how reposting to Tumblr imposes a financial burden. I think in most cases it fosters the opposite effect.

I'm not calling for outright civil disobedience. If Getty or a photographer asks you not to repost their images for any reason, I think it's their right and the request should be honored. But I think the logic behind that request becomes more strained by the day. For most photographers I think it works against their best interests. If we're going to spend so much energy making images, why not use every tool at our disposal to distribute and make them visible? Right now the main tool is Tumblr. Make a note of it.

Adventures in ownership

My father-in-law is named Adrian but the family calls him Gump. It began as a cute name for the grandkids to use, then spread to everyone. My first night in Maine two weeks ago I tagged along with Gump to visit a neighbor who was going through hard times. Reggie was 94 —that's 140 in Maine years— and beginning to slow down a bit. But the real trouble was his wife. Her Alzheimer's had progressed to the point where she had become a walking fire hazard, so he'd decided that next week they'd separate. He'd keep the house. She'd go into an inflammable group home. He was depressed. She was calm but oblivious. I thought they'd make a nice portrait sitting in their living room so I asked if they minded. "Sure," said Reggie. The one that got away. Finders keepers No sooner had I taken a photo than Gump plucked it out of the camera and offered it to the couple. Now I had a problem. Whose photo was it? Normally this isn't an issue for photographers. When a person takes a photo that person is the owner. That's why it's called "taking" a photo. But with the Instax it's a bit different. The only record that exists is a small 3 x 4 object. Like anything else in the world it's up for grabs. Finders keepers. So it was theirs now. I decided to take another. Then Gump shot one of me with the couple (above). And I took one of the cat. And another interior shot from further back. After a minute there were five Instax photos sitting on their counter and I didn't feel like I owned any of them. Which was fine. They'd be happy with the photos. They deserved them. But it really brought home to me the idea that authorship of a photo might not automatically equate to ownership. What killed me was that my first photo of the couple was a fantastic shot. They had beautiful expressions and the scene was completely natural. I had a strong desire to own it, but I wound up leaving it with along with the others. I'll never see any of them again. A few days later I had the Instax at the Brochu family reunion. Instant photos are kid flypaper. As soon as the camera spits one out every kid nearby wants to try birthing their own. I passed the camera around but then I had to reclaim it. The big kid pile was just too tempting and I had to shoot it. The problem was each kid I shot wanted to see the result. They'd grab the photo, shake it, stick it in a pocket, and that's the last I'd see of the thing. I managed to look at a few before they disappeared, and some were wonderful. I'd love to own them, and in theory I guess I do. But as a practical matter it's the opposite. In Instax photography as well as in land use possession is nine tenths of the law. Several weeks ago Joni Kabana ran into this situation when she made a portrait of author Cheryl Strayed. Afterward she gave Strayed a few prints. Who owned them at that point I'm not sure. Kabana owned the copyright, but Strayed was pretty sure the prints belonged to her. After all, there they were sitting on her desk like the pens she owned and the paperclips she owned. So when the New York Times asked for an author portrait to accompany an interview, she sent along one of these photos. Then all hell broke loose. The NYT turned the photo into a silhouette. Kabana's credit was lost. A stink was raised. In the end they decided that a photo should probably be treated differently than a paperclip. Silhouette of Cheryl Strayed based on a photo by Joni Kabana Unless it's an Instax photo. Or, perhaps, an old scrapbook memento. At the Brochu family reunion, Tab's aunt Lucy set out 20 old photo albums on a table. She was tired of keeping them and offered them up to everyone. We could open up the sleeves and pick and choose singles. Even inlaws like myself. Many photos were pedestrian, about what you'd find in most family albums. But as with any unsorted collection, tucked here and there were some absolute nuggets. I took roughly 10. The negatives are long lost. Only one copy of each exists in the world. I suppose I own them now. A mysterious picture from one of Lucy's old albums Back in Skowhegan a few days later I stumbled on the hidden studio/gallery of Steve Leakos. It was right on Main Street —marked by a small ticket booth with a mannequin— but somehow I'd never noticed it before. I rang the bell and Leakos let me into his cluttered space chock full of paintings, boxes, circus displays, and antiques. It was technically a gallery but not much had ever sold, and after talking to him for a while I began to understand why. He made no effort to market it. I was his first visitor in a few days. Empire Grill, Skowhegan, Maine, by S.P. Leakos
w/ handmade proof of ownership attached Leakos makes what the art world colorfully terms outsider art. He is self taught and occupies his own private universe. Not only is he unknown in art circles, he's unknown in Skowhegan and proud of it. Not even the students at the famous Skowhegan School of Art know about him, and that's fine by him. Snobby kids, he has better things to do. Like paint, which is what he's devoted most of his time to for the past 60 years. He knows his works are masterpieces and they're priced accordingly. And if the world doesn't realize his genius, tough shit for them. I'm no expert but I have to say I liked his paintings. They showed quite a bit of skill. But in the art world that's only half the battle. You're not going to get anywhere keeping all that stuff in a basement. I tried to explain this to Leakos but he'd already settled the issue in his mind. We went round and round in circles discussing how his art fit into the broader scheme. He knew there was a disconnect but he didn't know how to solve it. Didn't even want to. Leakos was 76 and seemed happy, but his outlook was laced with a strong tinge of bitterness. He'd given up the idea of anyone taking an interest. He was on his own and knew it. Of course this was all familiar territory for me as I'd wondered about all of these issues in relation to my own art. If there is a divide between creation and promotion I lean toward Leakos' side of it. But to what end? Standing in his studio crammed with old boxes and half-finished paintings gave me an unsettled feeling. By this time I'd resolved the Instax ownership dynamics, so when I asked Leakos for a portrait I offered to make an extra for him. Easy, I said. It's an instant photo. I stood him in an doorwat, shot two, then gave him the choice to keep whichever he wanted. He liked the first one best. On the bottom of it he carefully wrote the date and my name for his records. But after a moment he demurred. On second thought he decided he didn't have room for any more stuff, not even a little snapshot. He handed both photos back to me but not before snipping off the handwritten caption on the first. There I was holding nine tenths of a photo. Legally. Steve Leakos in his Skowhegan studio/gallery The folk myth is that certain tribes are opposed to photography on the grounds that taking a picture of someone steals their soul. Of course we know that's not really true. But the thing is, it actually is true. Photographers are soul snatchers. Maybe a better way to say that is that a portrait is a collaborative endeavor. Any snatcher requires a snatchee. I don't speak for everyone but for my own photography I have the sense that portraits should be owned 50/50. I think any person in a portrait should have some control over how that image is used, and I think the photographer should also have some control. This works great in my own little world since I don't take many portraits. I may physically possess the negative but in a way we both own the idea of the photo. And if someone doesn't want a certain picture made public or used in a certain way, that's fine. I'm not out to offend anyone. As for the broader photo world, control is a bit tougher to sort out. Not only can any image online be reproduced easily and without limit, a good proportion of them actually are. Reproductions are the lifeblood of Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and many other sites, often with authorship information removed or indirectly referenced. Tracking down ownership is a headache. In fact the very idea of "ownership" online isn't very simple. Asking who "owns" the photos on a personal Pinterest board is a bit like asking who owns the heartthrob posters tacked to a teenager's wall. If a poster was torn down would the original photographer require compensation? Or the teenager? What about the photographer who makes a screengrab of someone else's "property" (Umbrico, Rickard, etc). The reproduction has exactly the same pixels as the original. Who owns which? Or what about Michael Wolf using a camera in the "real" world to photograph an image on a computer screen? Has he somehow claimed ownership of the image? As I said, a headache. With Instax it's much simpler. One object exists. Someone owns nine tenths of it. Done. Fruit Display, Skowhegan State Fair The following Friday at the Skowhegan State Fair I found a nice subject in the goat barn. The goats were tied to a circular ride, the fence had some red cowboy hats tied to it, and the ride operator was the spitting image of Travis Bickle. It would've made a dreamy photo. But a sign on the fence said "$5 Per Photo". I guess I could've paid my money and shot him but I didn't. The sign soured my mood. It meant that goatherd Bickle owned every photo taken of him. It wasn't even 50/50. I don't know if the guy was a photo scholar or what but he really made me think. What if I shot an Instax photo and gave it to him instead of $5? Or turned around and charged him $5 since presumably that's what it was worth and there was only one which I clearly owned? What if I paid him $5 and then reproduced the photo several times on Tumblr? What if I offered him $2.50 for a photo with control over its use? The goat barn got me thinking, and thinking is the death of shooting. So I didn't wind up with many good photos from the fair. I spent most of the time watching cow teams pull a sled full of cinderblocks, thinking about ownership. When I came home Gump was hot for a boat ride. It was dusk. We had the dog along. It seemed ripe for a photo op so I brought along the Instax and a beer. Pretty soon we were doing 50 down the center of the lake. The boat had two small headlights up front which scattered mixed light on the spray from below. The dog was frantic. The sun was sideways in the sky. It had all the visual fixings. I ripped off several Instax pictures but unfortunately each one sucked. I don't know what it was. I just couldn't find my juju. Instax, boat, dog, and just a hint of juju It was dark by the time we pulled the boat in and I figured I was done shooting for the day. I lodged my camera in the bedroom, then went outside to help Gump move a life-size fiberglass horse statue to its place near the porch. I don't know why we'd waited until dark but anyway. The horse was bolted to a large sheet of plywood sitting in the bed of his pickup. We needed to lift it and carry about 50 feet, but first we had to clear some gravel away from the house and level a spot. Gump grabbed a shovel while I stood opposite the horse from him and slightly lower. I glanced over at Gump and Holy Crap! There was the photo! Horse legs, his legs, and a shovel all juxtaposed in confusing lighting. It had Instax written all over it. But Fuck, no Camera! I had to let that one go. Losers weepers. The next day we visited Gump's temple and this time I was sure to bring a camera. Gump's temple near Kingfield, Maine This is the mysterious project in the Maine woods which I wrote about last summer. No one but Gump really understands what it is or what it's for. I use the word temple because it looks vaguely spiritual and I'm not sure what else to call it. But I'm not certain what it is. The only certainty is that it's a constant work in progress. Machu Picchu, photo by Culture Focus Since my last visit Gump had been to Chichen Itza in Mexico and Machu Picchu in Peru to get a sense of how past civilizations had tackled structures like his. Based on that research he'd created a drivable stone foyer into the basin, deepened the interior, and widened the surrounding plateau by several acres. Once he finishes burying the electric lines the plan is to host a country music festival this fall (ironically his insurance prohibits "rock" concerts). Maybe a few weddings. A backdrop for portraits. The possibilities are many. I think Gump's general guiding principle is to build something that can't be found anywhere else. There's only one temple like his. He owns it and it can't be reproduced. And nowadays there aren't many things that can be said about. (More recent Instax photos of Maine here)

Hunting and Cooking

I go on binges occasionally in which I get obsessed with a certain camera, then shoot the hell out of it until I get bored or it breaks or some other camera comes along. Lately that camera has been the Fuji Instax 210. I wrote a bit about it back in January. After that post my interest flagged for several weeks, but in the past few months it's been rekindled in a big way. On many outings it's become my go-to camera. One thing I love about the camera is the immediate tangibility of the pictures. You click the shutter and it spits out this thing. It's not on a screen, nor is it locked in the dark like film awaiting development. It's a real object which you can put in a pocket or give away or fan your face with or whatever you want. It's a real thing you've got to deal with. But before that happens is the delicious period when you wait for development. The picture starts blank, then after about a minute the colors gradually come in. It takes about five minutes to fully saturate. I don't think I will ever get sick of watching the Instax photos form. It's like photo crack. There's an incredible sense of anticipation, then the rush slowly comes on, the photo fills in. After a few minutes it's done and you're ready for the next one. I think I could pass a whole day shooting a photo, watching it develop, shooting another, and so on... Aim, 2012, Blake Andrews
Instax Gratification I've heard many people discuss their first time in a darkroom, the magic of watching the image appear gradually in the developer tray. Some people say that's what hooked them on photography. Personally I've never really had that feeling in the darkroom, but I think waiting for Instax photos gives me a similar sense of magic. Unlike the darkroom it's always a surprise. Will it be blown out? In focus? Where will the edges be? In the darkroom I usually have a much better sense of these things. But with the Instax I'm never sure. The old saw applies. The only way to find out what something looks like photographed is to shoot it, then wait five minutes. Instax film is relatively expensive and sometimes I will cheat by taking a digital snapshot first, just to make sure my Instax photo will be in the ballpark of what I want. I see this as a nice ironic twist on history. In the film era Polaroids were traditionally used by photographers to check a scene before the "real" photo was made. I'm doing it backwards. Untitled, 2012, J.M. Colberg
Instax Gratification Joerg Colberg wrote about the photo as object briefly last week. He approached it from the perspective of the art market but I think the general question applies to simple Instax snapshots. What is the meaning of the photo as an object, and how does that compare to its meaning as a pure idea? With the Instax I think there is some ambiguity. I enjoy the photos as small shiny objects. But I also love how the camera interprets a scene. I love its palette and how it treats light, and the small white frame locking it all in. I make scans of my favorites, and even on a computer screen they hold my interest. A few days after Joerg's post, Andy Adams ran a poll on FPN: The tally (so far) is 51 votes for Image, 4 for Collectibles. A landslide. Perhaps this isn't surprising considering that the poll was conducted online. After all, on the web there's no such thing as a collectible object. Every image is an idea, a digital representation. Even if the original photo is a precious object, the corresponding jpg is not. So an online poll might be expected to reflect that. When it comes to my main photographic pastime, 35 mm film, I'd vote for Image over Collectible. Generally after I expose a photo and make a work print of it, I'm done with it. I've seen what the image looks like. I've either captured something or I haven't, and after that issue has been settled I don't much care if it's printed this way or that or toned or framed in mahogany or whatever. Hunters aren't cooks, said HCB, and I think there's some truth in that. But with the Instax you can hunt and cook at once. Response to Print of Trees and Fog, California, 2011, Laura Plageman A recent trend in photography is to experiment with the photo as an object. Stephen Gill and Gerhard Richter play around with paint and flowers laid on prints. Laura Plageman folds up her photos and then rephotographs them. Matthew Brandt soaks his prints in various bodies of water. The popular revival of archival processes such as wet collodion, tintypes, photogravure are part of this movement. Horse Thief Lake, WA, 2008. Chromogenic print soaked in Horse Thief Lake water, Matthew Brandt I think the fetishization of objects is a clear reaction to digital imaging. Until a digital image is printed (and most aren't) it has no substance. It's a computer file. These files are now the lifeblood of photography. To share work online you post files. To enter a call for submissions you send files. Many exhibitions are printed on site by a gallery or curator from files sent by the photographer. The print is secondary, a simple byproduct of the image. I was reminded of this reading about the fallout from Cruel and Unusual at Photoville. I'm not sure where the prints originated. They were shown for a week, wilted in the heat, then destroyed at the end. In this context the print was relatively unimportant. A new one could be generated from a file or negative. This seems the farthest extreme from the museum ideal of a precious object on the wall, and to be honest I am sort of in love with this idea. It's like the Tibetan monks who spend days making a sand mandala grain by grain, then sweep it away at the end. Yesterday while taking photos in Eugene's Whitaker neighborhood I brought along a stack of mis-exposed work prints and stapled them to telephone poles, tucked amid the concert posters and lost dog fliers. I like to think of someone approaching these photos and trying to understand the motivation behind them. No message, nothing to sell or say, just photos for the sake of photos. They might last a few months before fading or being torn down. Who knows. It's the thought that counts.

Snowman

Shot this in a bar a few nights ago with the Fuji. The hazy character is Faulkner Short, a damned good photographer in his own right, but this time he was on the receiving end. He looks like a snowman here with charcoal buttons but the black spots didn't actually exist. They're just Clayden Effect artifacts reflected in the pint glass. Or maybe I was on the verge of blacking out and my camera was already anticipating what was about to happen. Sometimes it's two stops ahead.

French bowling instructors, Donkey Kong,and the Clayden Effect

In one of the very first Simpsons episodes Homer gives Marge a bowling ball for her birthday. She's never bowled in her life. Homer's plan is that she won't want the ball and he'll inherit it. And in fact the ball already has his name engraved.

But the plan backfires. Marge is pissed. Determined to learn bowling to spite Homer, she takes lessons, falls for a French bowling instructor named Jacques, and almost breaks up their marriage before finally reuniting with Homer in a parody of the final scene from An Officer and a Gentleman.

This past Christmas I tried to pull the same stunt. I bought the kids a camera thinking they would quickly get bored with it and then I'd have it for myself.

The camera was a Fuji Instax 210, a modern update of the old Polaroid Instamatics. I'd seen one recently at a friend's house and it was love at first sight. The image quality is fantastic. Tack sharp snapshots, unlike the Polaroid 600 I got for the kids a few years back.

But I couldn't really justify buying myself yet another camera, especially another "toy" camera. However Christmas was coming up. It might look good under the tree. It might look really good with my name engraved.

OK, I didn't actually engrave my name. But I did buy one for the family as a holiday gift. I put it under the tree Christmas morning. Then I sat back and waited for them to get sick of it. And it all would've worked out if it hadn't been for those meddling kids. The problem was they fell in love with it.


Most of their shots were of plain household objects. For a kid there's a simple pleasure in walking around with a camera and pushing the button just to see how a thing looks captured that's just fucking awesome. I love to see that spark. I wish everyone had it.


I suppose you can do the same push-button experiments with a digital camera but the Fuji Instax 210 spits out a real object. Then you get a few minutes of waiting as the images slowly develops. "Better than a deed, better than a memory," to quote Jacques. "The moment... of anticipation!" People always talk about their first time in the darkroom watching their photographs magically emerge in the developer. To me an instant photo is even better. You can handle the thing as it develops with no drips, no stinky chemicals. It's magic every time.

I followed one morning. "What are you shooting today?" I asked.


"I'm taking photos of random things because that's what you take pictures of," said Emmett.

"Ok, well what qualifies as random?"

"Like a piece of paper or a fork or something."

"What makes that random compared to something else?"

"Um. Shut up, Dad. Do you have more film?"


Ah yes, more film. Unfortunately the camera is based on the same economic model as inkjet printers. The body is only $80 but every shot costs $1. This makes it hard to sit there and watch your kid burn through a 10-pack in five minutes. I mean, that could've paid for 20 seconds of college. The camera came with 100 sheets. After we went through 50 the first morning I began rationing. "What's that you want? More film? I'll have to check and see if we have any."

Meanwhile I was sneaking the camera into my backpack to try it for myself. If they wouldn't get sick of it I'd have to take matters into my own hands. I drove out to Grid E7 in Springfield to try it on some display windows.



Not bad. Love the tonality. Later that night we went with friends to the BYOB vintage arcade downtown. On the way I took a few shots from behind the wheel.


The license plate on the dash was torn off in one of our recent fender-benders, can't remember which incident exactly. But anyway I just love the image it reflects in the windshield. I couldn't stop looking at that on the drive, trying to combine it with outside elements. The Instax 210 makes a great car camera.

We stopped at Ninkasi for a few pints. I shot their patio fire.


Then we took a few beers around the corner to the arcade and I shot there. I felt a like a kid shooting a fish in a bowl.


Here's a look inside the fishbowl.


Below is my alltime favorite arcade game. I scored over 300,000 once during my serious playing days back in fifth grade.


That's my son Emmett, 6, at the Donkey Kong controls, with Zane, 11, right behind. The guy on the right is Geoff who I've known since I was 8. I don't mean to sound like an old fogie but arcade games now really suck in comparison. They're all the same guns and bullshit. No charm.

This shot took me a while to decipher.


Most of the photo is normal but in the center of the photo where the flash reflects off some metal surfaces the picture is dark. I've circled the areas here in red. Those dots aren't painted. They should be brilliant white but they're not. Weird.


If you look closely at the fishbowl photo above it shows the same effect. The center of the hottest white area is dark black.

What's going on is the Clayden Effect. As far as I can understand it's a bit like solarization. When exposures jump far outside the normal range all hell breaks loose. The emulsion can become partially desensitized and the image is sometimes reversed. Ansel Adams played with the effect in this famous image.


The Black Sun, Owens Valley, California, 1939, Ansel Adams
He describes the process of making it in this book. Apparently the effect requires a thick emulsion film, the type that was more common in Adams' era but is rare nowadays. This may be why the technique is relatively unexplored (Google Clayden Effect for scant results). Even Adams didn't pursue it very far. The only other recent project I know of is Harlan Erskine's Black Sun series (good description here). Maybe there are others?

Reading up on Clayden I realized that the Instax film I was using had a very thick emulsion. So by chance I'd stumbled on something. Aiming the camera directly at a mirror I tried to capture the effect as clearly as possible.


Bingo. The effect worked, and I could repeat it when I wanted. Great. On the other hand, meh. The photo is sort of interesting as a scientific experiment but it doesn't do much visually. But it's set the table. Maybe I can shoot the sun or something. Or look for shiny surfaces.

Unfortunately those experiments will have to wait since I'm currently out of film. The kids have gone through it all. I have film on order and when it comes in I'm going to set aside a secret stash for myself. Then I think I'll play around with the Clayden Effect, if I can sneak the camera away from those meddling kids.