Stark reminder

Can street photographers be classified by personality type? That's the question posed by Andrew Stark's Escaping Into Life, at least initially, before diverging down the rabbithole into street photography (cue Jon Stewart musical phrasing) Won-derland. The essay, which I briefly profiled back in February, has recently been made available as a 2.9 MB PDF. In the interest of full disclosure I should say I was a participating photographer in Stark's study and that my Myers-Briggs is ISTP, but you've probably guessed that already.

The Sydney Equation, from Andrew Stark's Escaping Into Life.
Don't worry, it makes sense in the context of the essay. Or does it?

What To Do? #67

199. SE 82nd and Harrison, Portland, 2004

200. SE 12th and Hawthorne, Portland, 2007

201. Kutztown, PA, 2009

WTD? is a weekly installment of old unseen b/w photos)

Colin Wood reprise

Two years ago I wrote a short post about Diane Arbus's photo of Colin Wood (below):


Yesterday Colin commented on the post. I thought his reaction was insightful enough to be worth sharing. Warning: Heavy therapy ahead.

"I'm the kid in the pic.

She was right that I did seek the tough kids in the park. I'm not sure why--there was no physical threat to me, per se; I was just sickly, asthmatic, lonely, fearful of harm, and sought the confraternity of strength against the weakness I felt inside me. In this way she saw me true.

At seven, I weren’t no angel. I could be cruel, lash out, victimize: fear made me feel weak, a feeling I detested for shame and contested to my detriment. She likely recognized this conflict in me as her own and with this pic unconsciously captured both the shallow-boiling anger and malice within me as well as a kindred, violent alienation within herself. I was her mirror. In this way the clenched fist and silly grenade express what ailed her, me and many temporal beings who comprise the world: wounded love taking refuge in pride."

Berra the photo teacher

Baseball season already? I think Yankee great Yogi Berra could've been a photography teacher in another life. With minor changes many of his aphorisms can be adopted to photography:

Photography is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical.

A nickel spent on art ain't worth a dime anymore.

Half the lies a portrait tells about me aren't true.

Think! How the hell are you gonna think and photograph at the same time?

I never photographed most of the things I photographed.

If people don't want to come out to the gallery, nobody's gonna stop 'em.

All photographers are liars or crybabies.

If a photograph was perfect, it wouldn't be.

Nobody goes to that gallery anymore. It's too crowded.

If you come to a photograph in the road, take it.

People ask if photography is over. To me, it ain't over til it's over.


Some of his quotes need no alteration at all. Zen photographers take note:

The future ain't what it used to be.

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.

If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.

You can observe a lot by just watching.

Last Baltz

Digging through the U of O stacks a few weeks ago I found a first edition of Lewis Baltz's The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California. It was buried in a corner, binding down. I couldn't tell what it was at first, just that it looked old. I don't think it had been checked out in years.

As sometimes happens, the book found me just when it was supposed to. New Topographics has seen a resurgence of interest lately all over the web, bringing the spotlight to related topics and photographers. A paperback edition of Industrial Parks is set to be republished in August, and Baltz has been given some thoughtful reconsideration lately on Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes (especially here and here). With Baltz et al undergoing a general reassessment, it seems like a good time to re-examine the book that made his reputation.

The first thing one notices about Industrial Parks is its design. The cover is grey. The typeface (sadly abandoned in the new paperback edition) is of course Helvetica. The photos are on odd pages. The captions on even facing pages describe the photos with a number and specific street address. There's no introduction or author statement or any excess language other than a mechanical translation of each caption into —what else?— German. All in all the book has the bland modern feel of an industrial park near Irvine, California.

Baltz / Monochrome Mondrian
The photographs themselves play right along. They're rectangular (Green makes extra note of this fact), formal, precise, and clinical. Baltz has transformed what I assume was a normal looking world into a sequence of shapes and lines which don't describe any specific place as much as they convert it into monochrome Mondrians. The funny thing is that by abstracting themselves from reality, the photos do wind up describing Irvine. Or is it Costa Mesa? Or Santa Ana? Tustin? The section of Southern California surrounding Irvine is so sprawling and indistinct that the towns blend, their boundaries of no more significance than abstract lines.

The amazing thing is that Baltz managed to describe not just the place but the structure of the shifting future economy, then in its adolescence. At this point it's hardly news that Mom and Pop storefronts have given way to internet shopping from placeless warehouses, but Baltz's photos were the canary in the coalmine. These weren't your Mom and Pop vernacular landscapes anymore. They could be anywhere, and by the next century they would be.

When I realized that Baltz captioned his photos with specific street addresses, my first instinct was to Google Streetview them to see how they looked now, just as I did last year with Shore.

Sadly, this effort proved to be a bust. Most of the buildings in Industrial Parks can't be Streetviewed because Google hasn't yet expanded into those territories. The few buildings that do appear in Streetview are photographed with wide angle camera from far away, which is not how Baltz shot them. Streetview rephotography may have worked for Shore, but not so well for Baltz.

1881 Langley Ave., Santa Ana, CA, 1974, Lewis Baltz

1881 Langley Ave., Santa Ana, CA, 2010, Google Street View

16722 Hale Ave., Irvine, CA, 1974, Lewis Baltz

16722 Hale Ave., Irvine, CA, 2010, Google Street View

1611 Boyd St., Santa Ana, CA, 1974, Lewis Baltz

1611 Boyd St., Santa Ana, CA, 2010, Google StreetView

To get a truly re-photographic comparison would require boots on the ground in L.A. Unfortunately that's about 850 miles outside my telephoto range, not to mention 3 dress codes outside my fashion range. But, miracle of miracles, a little snooping on the web turned up someone who'd done that very thing. LACMA blog contributor Sarah Bay Williams had photographed in Baltz's tracks and posted her findings. I think the results are pretty interesting.

Lewis Baltz rephotographed by Sarah Bay Williams
Alas, my copy of Industrial Buildings came due recently. Before returning it I scanned some of the images I wanted for this post but neglected to take good notes on the captions. As I was pulling this post together last weekend I realized I needed to see the book again.

According to the library data base it was checked in, but when I went to the stacks it wasn't there. I searched all the shelves nearby, including books with backward bindings. No luck. Could it actually be checked out? Doubtful. More likely it was re-shelved incorrectly. No one would find it for several more decades.

Standing there in front of all those books I couldn't help thinking they resembled a monochrome Mondrian.