reach

pastland

if you haven't watched through the end of season 4 of Mad Men, skip ahead to the pictures.
if you've never had midnight revelations about the gory anti-glories of love, turn around now, you'll be lost.

so this is how the finale went down:  don draper proposed to a clueless beauty and broke the heart of a sophisticated equal.  at first i thought it was only a sudden, weak plot point (like so many in season 4), and then i saw a pattern.  the women who get close to draper - the few with whom he shares his deepest and darkest - get thrown to the curb in favor of ignorance and denial.  and then i thought about my own experiences with men.  i'm an open-minded person, with unyielding empathy, so i attract men with needs to be acknowledged and accepted for all their secret identities and hidden shames.  what i've learned is that the more secrets they share, the less liable they are to commit.  they prefer their partners to be slightly blind, or to pretend to be.  they want to dump their trash in the street and go home to a sweet-smelling bin.

in the end, i was reminded of one of my series in progress, which has been neglected for far too long - Romantic Dinners & Walks on the Beach.  i think it's time to add some dynamics to this set; some lightness with the dark, a little jam with the pill...

flee, chase

the documentary, Unknown White Male, is about a man who woke up one morning with total amnesia.  apparently, when this happens to someone they enter a fugue state - the period of time when they have no memories, no identity, and no cognitive awareness of it.  they are wiped clean.  they've never fallen in love, been hurt, felt snow or danced.  they have no sense of humor, no identifying personality at all.  people in this state are prone to wandering and if they go far enough for long enough, they end up creating a new life, completely unaware of their previous existence.

i've been waking up from dreams lately feeling fugal.  the kind of dreams where you experience insane depths of emotion and wake up unable to identify your life.  i manage to go about my day, but i feel like an understudy marking the part, waiting to return to my real life.

the images here and in the last few posts seem to reflect this trend.  the feeling of being stuck and unstuck all at once.

it's not you, it's me

i've got an image from my slowly developing series, "Romantic Dinners and Walks on the Beach", in the Lenscratch Self-Portrait Exhibition.  as usual, aline has attracted some seriously significant talent from all over the world.  definitely worth checking out.

a few images from the series...

outta the way, eve

four images from my intersubjectives series have been selected for F-Stop Magazine's "All About Me" issue, published today.  the collection of work chosen by christy karpinsky is stunning and i am quite stoked to be included in such a wildly talented international pool of self-portraitists.

sunday afternoon at 85mm, f1.2

a great friend let me borrow his royally sweet glass for a job, and i couldn't resist setting up a few shots at home before giving it back.  i really hate not having models available on call.  it was extraordinarily difficult to get myself positioned in the shallow focus without a stand-in or a remote.  

i've been considering moving, and this event indicates to me that i should look for a place with kick ass neighbors.  suggestions welcome.

Y E S

POSITIVE AFFIRMATION.  POSITIVE AFFIRMATION.  POSITIVE AFFIRMATION.  ETC.

you never know what you're gonna get

a house divided

"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it."  - A. Lincoln, 1858

i'm not a narcissist, i swear

some new self-portraits.  not sure where i'm headed with these.  maybe nowhere, maybe not.

self-searching: found

from the series, Intersubjectives

I am thrilled to announce that my work has been selected for SELF-SEARCHING: The Art of Self-Portraiture at the Vermont Photography Workplace's PhotoPlace Gallery.  The juror, Aline Smithson, is an incredible artist who has been a great inspiration for me.  What's more, the gallery is located a stone's throw from where my family lives in Vermont, so I hope to be able to attend the reception in September.

More images from the series: