Lately I have been inspired by the long-exposure photos of Alexey Titarenko. I think his “City of Shadows” is beautiful and haunting. To be sure, some of my fascination comes from my fascination with 1990s St. Petersburg. Nonetheless, I find the images lovely. So I thought I would try some long or, in this case, […]
I recently finished another book project, “Fragments Red.” This volume will be the first of a seven-volume project, each pairing photographs with reflections of different sorts. A handful of drafts, each with a number of changes. Then there was the layout and design issues, where to put gatefolds, how to bind them, solving pagination issues. […]
Consistency is important. Consistency not in the sense of making the same thing or even the same type of thing, but in the sense of making something. Doing something with my hands. Anything. Lately, I have occupied my hands and my mind by using books as an inspiration for a type of drawing, something called […]
I often think of photographs in collections or series, linked to a single subject (e.g., an idea, place, time, experience). Given my preference for printed, physical photographs, I increasingly try to imagine a project in the form of an artist’s book. Artist’s books are not restricted by the format of a traditional book, sequential pages […]
I do not write for the public. G.M. Hopkins I don’t quite know how Hopkins meant this comment. His poetry suggests, to me, that he meant he didn’t write popular verse. He wrote for an audience of one or maybe for no audience. He wrote what he needed to write and didn’t give any thought […]
As I make more books and things (collections of postcards are in the works), I increasingly think of photos in series. I don’t deny the power of a single, amazing photograph, but there is a value in seeing photographs as part of a collection of related images. I have long appreciated the powerful work of […]
I don’t know quite how to begin. These ideas are just beginning to take shape. Maybe I can start simply, by describing what concerns me, what seems, at least to me, to be a problem. The other day, while stopped at a traffic light, the two people in the car next to me were both […]
I envy Vivian Maier. Not because I like her work — I have seen too few of her photos to know what I think of them, though I doubt they would appeal much to me. No. I envy Vivian Maier because she seems not to have cared whether or not I liked her work, or had […]
I make things and leave them places (a Little Free Library or a local coffee shop or a local French bakery or stashed amongst the books at a local bookstore) for other people to find. I don’t know what happens after that. It adds a sense of mystery and intrigue. I create things I need […]
That a photograph must tell a story is commonplace. “Storytelling” has conquered every form of photography, from landscape to street photography to elaborately staged scenes. I prefer to see photographs as fragments, extraits from a now lost present. John Berger remarked on the gap between the moment photographed and the present, saying All photographs are […]