A note...

A great friend of mine and I were talking a few days ago and among the many wise things she said, I've been repeating only one of them in my head:

"The other day I was thinking and I realized this is your generation's decade. This is going to be your decade --fix it."

So I laughed it off and took a big lumpy gulp. That scared me, for lack of a better word.

Because as it has been, this last decade leaves me a bit stunned -- a bit irresolute with all the manners in which the world has manifested itself to me. In fact, I've seen the world through so many eyes and ideas, that I'm so unsure how to even take the rest of it in. Hence stunned and irresolute.

But as a tumultuous and tense end, 2009 has been conclusive in a way that, perhaps, only the american 1960's could compare with. We're left at the foot of what can be revolutionary times, technologically, politically and in some respect intellectually. We're not closing with a period and on to a new paragraph. We're riding this megalithic paragraph, this sentence "our generation" has been riding rather lazily has much left to be written into it.

With all sweat beading at my fingers, I'm hanging on only to what I can - what I know, what I have known, who I have known and how I've come about to know all of it.

And that's all the certainty we can have, moving on to what hopefully will be a brighter period.

Apparently this same friend dropped another quote she heard from some kid: "everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."

I say let's do it. Let's die and be born prosperous 20somethings - the years in which we're encouraged to make mistakes - and grip on to whatever of our unsettled identities we could.

I hope, if only, that this year is a good start for such a (dare I say it?) resolution.

My love, my good, my hopes to all that receive it without questioning a good thing.

Happy new year's eve.

Crap...

So I did this impromptu shoot because my friend brought over some pants he made and he suggested I photographed them and I thought it would be fun. I worked on it for about an hour but it was very frustrating with my lens and my small space.

Whatever this is the photograph. They were fisherman pants so I wanted to get good motion on them so I had my boyfriend jump, so it was hard to control the frame and all that good stuff.

I still have another deadline to meet for this publication. I need an idea...and quick.

Yes, I'm still alive...

I keep thinking that I have to blog to catch up. But the guilt has manifested itself, at worst, in a dream, where things just went to crap on the way back to Rochester.

But the days lately have all been of such a different feeling. Every day has been very different and while that sounds like one of those obvious things that people say, it is true. I'll post a picture everyday with some small explanation and you'll see.

Saturday December 19, 2009

I woke up to my mother speaking on the phone - on a Saturday, before, this used to be the case 99% of the time.

I had coffee and meat and beans and rice for breakfast. It seemed gross for breakfast, but it had been so long since I had food like this...well, my tastebuds and the taste of authentic hispanic food reconciled exceptionally.

That night, I went to my aunts house. My uncle was having a party for the people in his office - some family came over also. Out of all the people these two little cousins of mine were the most schocking. They can talk so much now and have grown (in height) so I snapped them. They hardly remembered me.

First letter from home

It has indeed been foreign.

I got to the airport at 79 humid, sunny degrees. I had 4 hours of sleep in a 36 hour time. I could not be sleepy because of all the excitement and that feeling of novelty that gets me giddy.

My mother, my sister and boyfriend were all working - my other sister

came to

pick me up, which seemed appropriate since she's the most home-attached of my family, but she is also the more stoic figure so she had this way of greeting me that was very "oh, welcome back." The ride was relaxed and

simple. No bombarding of questions - to her, I had been gone a few weeks, a month at most. She has a new haircut.

The lock on the front door was new. The house keys were so thin when I got my h

ands on them. The Christmas decorations were already up and around (the bouquet of

angels

on the kitchen counter, the porcelain baby Jesus and nativity scene).

Everything looked small. The beds looked like they had been lowere

d.

My room was taken over by my sister.

She tried covering the writing on the wall with posters.

Nobody was home either, we stopped by the supermarket before getting back to get my mother a cake.

I fell asleep while waiting for her to get home, and was wo

ken up only

hours later

by my boyfriend. My mom arrived

soon after. This was a photo moment, but I was unarmed so there is no documentation of her faces. Damn.

Then, food. Sing happy birthday for my mom (she turned 55 on the 17th) and the cake. Then me

and [my boyfriend] Eddy went to Wal-Mart. Barely 5 hours after my arrival and I was already doing groceries.

I ended the night with my boyfriend and his workmates on the parking lot outside of my apartment. We hung out till about 3 a.m. I fell asleep, in my bed for the first time in what felt like months. Oh wait, it has been months.

At the airport

I wrote this entry while at ROC airport. I didn't post because my computer was working at a comatose rate. So I'll just post it anyway :D. It's only text, I was already getting looks from people from having a camera as it is.

----------

Here I am sitting at the half-food-court-half-business area of the ROC airport.

I didn't just suffer the annoying (and to some degree) humiliating screening process. Oh no. I had to re-buy a one-way ticket to Ft. Lauderdale because the one I have now is...well, it's 1,400 miles away. At home. In Miami. 1,400 miles away. But it's been roughly 24 hours without sleep for this little piggy, and the truth is I don't have the energy nor the coherence to be the cunning person, or, as this one kid so modernly called it, "the top eBayer."

So - thank god - I had PLUS loan extra credit (not necessarily a gracious thing when you're talking loan money) and that was refunded to my bank account and so I was able to buy anotehr ticket. Now I'm sleepy as hell, watching the blurry people go buy and being so tempted to start reading, only to realize that I would be so incredibly drowsy, regardless of how interesting the topic may be. Today it would have been Alfred Kinsey's Honeymoon --maybe after the first flight.

I'm so ready to get back. Only 9 more hours.

P.S. I am as hungry as I am afraid of leaving my belongings unattended in this sketchy little table to go get food. Very.

The weekend: Work hard, relax harder.

So last week was a blur. The weekend even more so.

I worked on two stories for the Reporter over the course of the week and dealt with the rest of my work and while it seemed easy at first, my sleeping times argued otherwise. I was beat by Friday.

In any case, Friday I finished my last story, and my friends wanted me to drop everything and join them in a snow fight. I have a few things in mind to acquaint myself with snow (snowman, snowfight, tasting snow...peeing my name in the snow....). But I didn't. I had a deadline I did not meet by about two hours. Hopefully the story doesn't make me look like a total idiot. The intricacies of the hip-hop culture were beyond me until last week, and learning it all in a week was quixotic, at best. Anyway, here's a picture of my friends taunting me by throwing snowballs at my window. I promised that next time I'll join them.

The rest of the weekend was me sleeping and relaxing and doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's always a great guilt, but my Mondays are always sobering, and easy.

I finally got around to watch Fight Club (among other movies) and found it fascinating but a bit overwhelming also. Nevertheless, the movie has been floating in my head, so when I came back from the store with products that I was running out of, I saw some of my items were repeated on my shelf and thought it was comical, in the obnoxious consumerism-criticism sort of way, which was of course a result of watching Fight Club.

I made a diptych. I thought it was appropriate for the idea of doubles. I'd explain more about how much of a moment it was for me - it was a bit schizophrenic - but I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

"Tyler Durden: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy [stuff] we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club.

Catch-up: Flashes & Purist vs. Pictorialist

Amy, Dec. 09. 09.

Dan, Dec. 09. 09.

Marcus, Dec. 09. 09.

Me and photography are taking things slow, I feel. We have our moments of getting excited and wanting to just do it all at once. We discuss things, her and I. I say Wouldn't it be fun? She says You're not ready.

In the past few days, since my last entry, I've found my inspiration and thought spreading itself into many different directions: I'm writing an editorial piece on the history, culture and appeal of hip-hop, discussing politics every Tuesday and Thursday, looking at the works of Crewdson (thanks Stefan) and Juergen Teller and all in all trying to have a definitve debate in my head about the merit of both pictorialists and purists in photography. Trying to discover my niche, thinking about my future at odd intervals throughout the day.

Needless to say my head is in a million places - but photography has told me today, to focus on Teller and the P vs. P debate, today.

I just read an article on the life of Teller himself and found myself a little challenged and a little displaced by his rawness and his emotional connection to photography. It seems obvious. It's about the real, the exposed and the grit, the personal, and the embrace of all that is truth as beautiful. A sort of aesthetic stoicism that matches the build of this man. He's stocky, and rough looking, with evident Germanic roots. And he taks about sex a lot, and beauty and women. And he's honest and so are his photographs - honest about himself, that is.

But he seems like a punk, and I don't think I'd like him if I met him, but that doesn't mean I would not appreciate him. He seems a bit obnoxious and very strong minded, but I love that in any person. And in an artist in his dominion (fashion and artistic photography) it seems not only appropriately rebellious, but necessary. He's the little black dot on the Ying and Yang of the world of fashion and fantasy. A one man backlash (if you don't count Terry Richardson, who Teller claims borrowed from him).

That's because he's a "straight shooter." And in an industry where jealousy and envy and idolization becomes the basis of consumerism of products as well as ideas, he seems to make that connection more directly and with a more real grip on the psychology of his public.

Of course, I have always retouched my photographs, never being fully satisfied with the way one look, or sometimes, just wanting to try something new and achieve a specific look for a specific feel. The way, for example, that photographs I have taken sometimes have this age to them, or this nostalgia. I've been in love with that aged look forever because it reminds me of the stock piles of family albums my mother has back at home, some filled with pictures I'm not even in, but can still transcend.

This love for the reality in photographs but this attempt at showing the world more closely how I see and want them to see my work, creates a bit of a hypocritical paradox. I think I sometimes want my photographs to be raw and rough. But I also want some photographs to be beautiful. But I can't just leave a photograph as it is. It feels detached. Maybe I haven't learned to really think before I shoot yet. Not as strongly as I would need to in order to fully practice the "straight" method of shooting and see where it leads me.

Today's exercise in photo class kept bringing Teller to mind, and his harsh lighting and in-your-face pictures. The above pictures came out with him in mind.

The strange intruder

Rooftop, Iola November 2009.

I used to have my camera with me at all times when I was in 11th grade. I shot everyone and everything from the floor, on chairs, in their faces. I have dozens of gigabytes (oh the digital age!) worth of photographs of at least 5 days out of the week and a small box filled with film that I don't even remember what i shot on.

But now, it's more considerate. Now things feel more delicate to photograph.

Is it that I've become more conscious of what a camera means in any social situation? Is it a transition from my compulsive journalist way to a more considerate documentary way?

This all bothered me extremely just this past thanksgiving break.

My boyfriend (seen here on the left of this photograph) came at the very beginning of the break. Keeping in mind our project on what home meats to us, I thought this was a good opportunity for photographs. I charged my camera the night before. I took little under 200 pictures, nothing like the 300 shots a day I used to do.

It felt a bit, interruptive. I thought about doing it but even with my boyfriend I couldn't just grab the camera and snap away. I took only a few pictures, the rest of the time, I had the camera set down somewhere around the room.

I thought it was just maybe that it was him. Or the fact that he was here for only a few days.

Until thanksgiving day. My FYE professor invited everyone in the class who was staying on-campus for the fall break to come over her house. I thought, this is perfect for the Home project. It speaks to the idea of being miles away from home to not even spend a day like this with family. But I couldn't bring myself to ask. It was as if there was this delicate social intricacy to the moment that I didn't want broken, and much less could break, because it all felt so personal, like I had to experience it first, before knowing how to approach it photographically.

Is it that I'm realizing how proprietary photography is at firsthand?

But the numbers of pictures has gone down. Within the first week of being here in school I had taken 1200 pictures or so. I took less than that in the month of November. It's all more spaced apart.

I can't say I know. Maybe we're going through a rough patch, photography and I. Maybe I'm just getting used to the environment again. But rarely do I decide to bring the camera along now. Sometimes it feels a bit intrusive.

Pardon the melodrama, but I guess only time could tell?

Sunny Disposition

Today I knew how the day would be.

For the past week, or so I've been working for Reporter Magazine on writing an article on the H1n! Swine flu outbreak. This has taken more of my time than I thought but it was one of those good busy weeks. The kind of thing that gives you hope that the outcome will be good, and that you can be proud of at the end of. You know, everything that high school wasn't. No I kid. I was somewhat proud, but that's something else entirely.

The article was turned in on Thursday, returned to me yesterday (Friday) and finished again today. I had a few things to answer that were left unanswered so I fixed it. I think.

It was a lot of work. I knew it would be a lot of work. And I've been at this piece, and the stress from it since before thanksgiving break so I was just about done with it.

But I strapped these yellow babies on from the very early morning. I wanted a good feel to the day, and with this sky so overcast, I had twice the motivation. The way you can spite the world with fashion hahha.

Sure enough, the day is over, the article is turned in (no word from my editors yet) and I'm more than satisfied with the amount of sanity I was able to keep despite of how consuming it was to write the piece. If all goes well it should be in print by next Friday (or Thursday night for you overachievers).

About the picture: the style I've been experimenting lately is the use of that huge mount flash that basically has no way of changing output power - it's for Holgas - so it gives pictures a very raw look like the work of Terry Richardson and then the coloring applied was a constant love I have for the sort of warm & cold dichotomy in the editorial work of Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott . I love that look and I wanted a sort of self-portrait look but the first few shots I took were very unsatisfactory and too frontal or too posed. I thought this was more candid.

Enjoy :D

Why Permeable?

Habit Reversal, Nov. 2009.

It took me two days to come up with a title for this blog. Surely, with that being said, you may want to know just what it means.

To put it simply, the name attests to a recent personal “self-goal,” if you would.

A few months ago, I watched a film called Shortbus (not your grandmother's film) and one of my favorite characters was a fictional New York ex-mayor, Tobias. The dialogue where you momentarily meet Tobias happens between the aged ex-mayor and a young male model, Ceth. It follows:

Tobias, the Mayor: But you know what's the most wonderful thing about New York? It's where everyone comes to get fu***d. It's one of the last places where people are still willing to bend over to let in the new. And the old. New Yorkers are, uh, permeable. You know what I mean?

AHEM! Continue.

Ceth: Yeah.

Tobias, the Mayor: You sure?

Ceth: Yeah.

Tobias, the Mayor: Therefore, we're sane. Consequently, we're the target of the impermeable. And the insane. And of course, New York is where everyone comes to be forgiven. What've you done wrong? Tell me. How have you sinned? I'm sure it's nothing serious.

Ceth: How would you know?

Tobias, the Mayor: Well, I'm... I'm sure you did your best. But imagine if you grew up here, like I did. Home can be very unforgiving. It's true. People said I didn't do enough to help prevent the AIDS crisis, because I was in the closet. That's not true. I did the best I could. I was... I was scared. And impermeable. Everybody knew so little then. I know even less now.

[Ceth kisses him]

I've never been to New York City. I've never had AIDS either. I've been in the closet, but that has nothing if not little to do with this idea of “permeability.”

The idea of a new city however, is more like that. The idea of not being home. The idea of meeting new people, not being known by anyone, coming so far away. Essentially, I could portray myself in a different light than I have been. It's obviously a bit of a fantasy considering that such an endeavor would eventually come and bite me in the behind.

But I decided to be more vulnerable – more permeable. I felt it allowed for the transition easier and that it was a way to grasp the novelty of the place more fully. I was very bored with life. I got what I wanted. Permeability, and a fresh perspective on things.

Although I can't say this “osmosis” is fully through. So I thought it appropriate that if this blog will be daily, if only for the next 11 weeks, it would be a good way to date and record this transition and someday I will look upon my youth and laugh at it all, or be touched, or whatever it is that nostalgia will do to me.

Here's to hoping.