4/24/11 WSJ: Jejune Institute
Article on the Urban Scavenger Hunt known as the Jejune Institute, created by Jeff Hull. I would love to describe the experience and the idea of the project. But it’s complicated, and better you find out for yourself.
Also, closure of the Jejune Institute.
“There’s the thing, and the name for the thing, and that’s one thing too many.” -Octavio Coleman Esq. ?
This entry was written by , posted on April 24, 2011 at 1:42 pm, filed under Commissioned, Street and tagged San Francisco, Street, The Wall Street Journal. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
3/7/11 Chinese New Year Parade
This entry was written by , posted on March 7, 2011 at 10:45 pm, filed under Street and tagged Chinatown, Parade, San Francisco. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
1/16/11 Leica Street Studies 1
This entry was written by , posted on January 16, 2011 at 8:00 am, filed under Leica Project, Street and tagged Downtown, Leica M9, San Francisco. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
11/30/10 The Leica Project Award
This summer I was invited to participate (thanks to Luceo) in LOOKbetween, an event created by Andrew Owen and Jenna Pirog, directors of the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. The idea behind the gathering was to bring emerging photographers together and let them share their ideas and show their work while the elders and the masters of the industry listened. Several awards were open to the photographers invited, one being The Leica Project Award. I submitted a collection of my street work rather confident it would be passed over and to my surprise, I was chosen. Leica has given me an M9, their new digital rangefinder, to complete a project of my choosing over the course of the next year. They understand the creative process quite well, and are giving me all the freedom in the world, which I’m very grateful for. It’s not everyday that someone hands you a beautiful camera and says, “go make pictures of whatever you want, we trust you.”
I received the camera a few weeks ago when I was in LA and I’m still familiarizing myself with it. I expect it’ll take a month or two for me to have seamless and spontaneous control of the camera. In the meantime, I’m rising to the challenge of taking a digital rangefinder to the streets and working on my manual focusing skills. As far as what I’ll be photographing the next year with this camera, I don’t know. I’ve written myself a long list of things to explore and I’m just going to see where it takes me. Here are a few frames from my first outings and the beginning of a new project. (Thanks to Justin Stailey at Leica USA for making this award a reality)
This entry was written by , posted on November 30, 2010 at 2:13 pm, filed under Leica Project, Street and tagged Leica M9, San Francisco, Twin Peaks. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
10/18/10 Fleet Week 3
I can think of few deeper ironies
Last weekend, after seeing the Blue Angels practice above the city in preparation of Fleet Week, I decided I’d go explore the event. On the first day I went to board a naval ship. As I approached it I saw someone wearing an 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit t-shirt. My gut turned and chills ran up my spine. This was my old Marine Corps unit. I sailed around the world with this unit, on a boat just like this. It’s been 7 years now, all the people I knew are gone, but walking onto the ship was like walking back into 2003. I think my face turned pale white. The smells, the textures, it all came back. I remembered that time I got a concussion on the tarmac after someone leg-sweeped me too hard. And the time I got hazed in the storage den after I earned my blood stripes. And the time I snuck out onto a gun turret at night to smoke cigarettes and stare at Hawaii as we approached it in the dark. I remember the shooting drills, the fast-roping, the anthrax shots, the constant moaning and swaying of the ship. I remember the heat and stink and the possibility of never coming home. And that peculiar feeling of seeing ocean in every direction. It was all the same way I left it. And I found it hard to take pictures. I felt ill.
I soon became overwhelmed by the civilians, the parents with their children, they were everywhere. Kids climbing tanks, playing with guns, sitting in cockpits. The irony was almost intolerable. It was an unsettling experience, and I couldn’t concentrate enough to take pictures. Feeling that this was something I had to capture, I came back another day, more prepared.
The mothers giggling and taking pictures. Their boys and girls posing with automatic weapons, imitating the sounds of machine gun fire. I could not comprehend or shake it from my mind. “This is too much,” I told myself. These people seemed to be oblivious to the fact these weapons just returned from war. Either that or they found that to be a good thing. I wonder though, did they stop to think about the possibility that the 240 Golf they were posing with might have killed a child? Did they understand what that Mk-19, the one their child was playing with, can do? I invaded Iraq with this Unit. I have disassembled, carried and fired these weapons. They are not toys. They are tools for war. They are for killing.
Watching the Marines, who had recently returned from Afghanistan, I could see in there pursed lips and restrained behavior how they really felt, “These people have no idea.”
This entry was written by , posted on October 18, 2010 at 3:38 pm, filed under Americans, Personal and tagged Fleet Week, Guns, Marine Corps, Military, San Francisco, War. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
10/18/10 Fleet Week 2
This entry was written by , posted on at 2:03 pm, filed under Americans and tagged Fleet Week, Guns, Military, Naval Ship, San Francisco, War. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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