Oh, It's On Now

I have become a huge fan of Lee Friedlander in the past two years. The body of work he has produced over the past 50 years is most impressive, and he continues to be very productive today, even at 74 years of age. When I saw his shows in San Francisco in April, one curator told me that Friedlander was in Japan photographing at that time, and that he would have two books published this year. A well-known photographer told me last year that, in his opinion, “nobody is more consistently inventive than Lee Friedlander.”

I think that my new interest in Friedlander’s work was at least partially precipitated by the recent changes in my life. I turned to 35mm photography last year as a result of new demands on my time. As I was trying to save my marriage and my kids from divorce, I completely shelved my large format equipment. Weekend outings with my camera came to an end, and all of my waking hours not spent working were devoted to my family. My kids’ mother decided that wasn’t good enough and the divorce eventually happened, but the effect on my photography has lasted. I have not made a large format photograph in over a year and a half now. I have sold two of my lenses, which I never imagined I would do.

But I continue to photograph, and fairly often. It’s easy to grab pictures with a 35mm camera on a lunch break. Or during a trip to the park with the kids. Or while waiting in a drive-thru at a coffee shop. In the introduction to his book of Frederick Law Olmsted landscapes, Friedlander writes “We photographers don’t really make anything: we peck at the world and try to find something curious or wild or beautiful that might fit into what the medium of photography can hold.” What a wonderful quote from someone who has used handheld cameras his entire career. We peck at the world.

Friedlander will be opening a show and signing his latest book, New Mexico, at a gallery in Santa Fe on October 31st. And I’ll be there. I may never have the opportunity to meet him again, so I’m seizing this one. And I already have a photograph in mind for when I meet him…

I can hardly wait.

A Rally Cry

I’ve always been one to remember dates and (mostly useless) trivia. I can often tell you where I was and what I was doing years ago on a particular date, and I can often make odd connections between things that occur on the same date, but years apart. For example, I can tell you that the cocker spaniel my sister and I had for a pet died on the 100th anniversary of Ansel Adams’ birth—February 20th, 2002. I recently won a bet with a friend who claimed Oregon State had never played a football game on a Thursday night before they played USC two weeks ago. I knew this because I remembered them playing a Thursday night game on August 31, 2006, which was the 25th anniversary of the day I started first grade.

I’m crazy.

Today is the second anniversary of the day I went to Hawaii for the first (and only) time. I flew there on October 6, 2006, for a friend’s wedding. The wedding was in Honolulu on the 7th, and I stayed there and on the Big Island for 6 more days afterward. I had worked my ass off during all of 2006, and that was to be a week of relaxation and photography of an exotic landscape I had never seen before.

But I was unable to really relax at all. My work back home just dominated my thoughts, and I was fighting back as hard as I could against another onset of depression. I also missed my son and baby daughter tremendously. I clearly remember my son (2 years old at the time) telling me that “next time I want to go on ‘bacation’ with you, Daddy.” That made it very hard to leave.

While I was in Hawaii, I heard a country song that was getting a lot of play at the time. It was by Rodney Atkins, and the chorus went:

“If you're going through hell
Keep on going, don't slow down
If you're scared, don't show it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there.

If you're going through hell
Keep on moving, face that fire
Walk right through it
You might get out
Before the devil even knows you're there.”

It was a catchy tune that found its way to my ears at a very appropriate time.

And now it seems I need to live by that song’s rally cry more than ever. The pressures are almost as high as they’ve ever been in my life, but now other problems have piled on. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have those kids there to greet me at the end of all these shitty days. But I’ll always be thankful that I still have that.