Two years ago I started a self-portrait project as a way to practice photography everyday and also, sometimes, get my ego stroked. I'd hoped to use my new skills to tell my story. As it turns out, the story bored me to death and inspiration lulled. So sometimes I used my skills to feign inspiration, enhance the story, or sometimes fabricate one altogether. Yes, I used my lens and our dirty friend CS3 to make it appear as if I'd never had a zit during my 195 days as a self-portraitist.
Maybe this has something to do with living at ground zero of plastic perfection, but I find myself growing bored of zitless faces and tidy spaces. Life is messy. Cluttered. And sometimes the scene can't be broken into thirds.
I have decided to embark on another photographic journey. I'll be traveling very light this time, leaving Stella and her fancy accessories behind. Capturing images with the tiny automatic lens of my iphone. Why? Why would any self proclaimed photographer leave behind the very thing that makes her so?
an unfabricated story...
It was her many features, flash modes, fancy lenses, and oooh the manual focus that left me so smitten. Shortly after our union I was drunk with the delusion that she and I, in our love triangle with Photoshop, would create photographic perfection. Elusive as that "perfect" photograph was we marched on. Inspired by so many others along the way, Canon users too! Suddenly it seemed the whole world was creating images that, to the naked eye, seemed flawless. Why then did every effort of mine seem to produce flawed images or worse, failed images? Oh and effort there was, sometimes hours with Photoshop to get the job done. But when was the job done? When could let it go out into the world to be scrutinized by prying eyes?
and I did it all to myself. I put myself out on display only to feel an acute onset of discomfort with every upload. As much as my being is not defined by their approval, it was. I feel the need here to point out the same need in you, but I won't. I just did. I want so badly to justify how my narcissism was/is a natural condition. A self imposed condition. A self imposed, but naturally common condition. I surrounded myself with them. I wanted to be like them, like me. I wanted you to like me.
What began as a beginner's journey turned into a quest. A quest that had some desirable prize at the end. It was draining as it so often is to find that oases turn to mirages when you seek them. The story I'd set out to find, to tell, became clouded with deceit. I never meant for it to be so, but that's how lies go. One begets another, until you've photoshopped out every flaw that told the truth. This is not to say that all photoshoppers set out to deceive you, nor to say that photoshopping is inherently evil. This is to say that I want to capture my story as it unfolds in my messy, extra ordinary, in-significant little life. Here in this story I am neither the main character nor the producer. I am the audience.
I invite you to join me in the audience if you wish, but I don't expect any of us to applaud, cheer or, even scoff. My intent is solely to see it as it is. As a person of visual acuity and virtual amnesia this is a thing I choose to do as long as the images remind me of what it is I want to remember. That is the number one rule. The second rule is that my friend CS3 will not be joining me on my journey. This story isn't bound by time limits or constraints. It is not bound by subject matter, rules of thirds, or good lighting. It is not a story of how well I can take a photo. It is just a story that I feel like unfolding before my own eyes before I forget.
also I'm just too damn lazy to carry eight pounds of equipment with me everywhere I go.
It starts here...
the Nonsense in Between
