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Bucket Week - Day Six
Here lies memory. I guess it has to be buried somewhere, and where better than in a photograph.
Memory.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I have been featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island, aka the 'Bucket'. This is this the last installment in this series.
Memory, Pawtucket 1994
I made this picture in 1994 on Sabin Street in Pawtucket. A sales yard for grave markers and headstones sits back from the corner, separated from the entrance to the Oak Grove Cemetery by a used car lot. With a large-format camera, knowing it can pick up lots of detail, I like to compose busy pictures and filling the frame from corner to corner. Here, I'm looking across an assortment of used cars to the monument yard and the old fashioned billboard for this family business. Oddly, even though the Grahams are no longer authorized dealers for Rock of Ages, they left the sign and just made an attempt to paint out the name.
I often place a key detail at or near the very center, but I keep it small. It might be a word, a bit of text, or some other element that functions as a visual joke or pun. I did so here: the painted headstone with the word "Memory" on it is likely what prompted me to stop and get the camera set up in the first place. Here lies memory. It has to be buried somewhere, and where better than in a photograph.
Below is an image I made 20 years later, in 2014. I wasn't attempting to recreate the scene, but many of the elements repeat. The family monument business continues as does the used car lot. The banners are gone, as is the Rock of Ages sign. The central billboard has been renewed and done over in reverse typography. The headstone of memory remains, now in a stylish and contemporary black granite. The lot is emptier, and the vines are overtaking the crane, but the scene continues. Perpetually, the telephone poles run akimbo down Sabin Street.
Memory, 2014
Bucket Week - Day Two
US Route 1.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island, aka the 'Bucket'.
Broadway, Pawtucket, looking south, 1995
This picture was made in 1995. I had an idea to photograph Route 1 in Rhode Island from north to south. This is almost as far as I got. It did lead to other projects: the intersection set and a walk down RI route 2. This is a 4x5 camera image on HP-5 film.
Bucket Week - Day One
On the W.E. trail.
This week in honor of the city of my residence and my daughter's home town, I will be featuring Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Pawtucket will be kicking off it's campaign for the 2015 Pawtucket Arts Festival on Thursday. A worthy effort.
Wilkinson Park, Pawtucket, 1993
I made this image in 1993, not too long after I arrived in Rhode Island from upstate NY. I was working then exclusively with a 4x5 camera and I had just begun the work that became the Rhode Island Photographs project. This image is an homage of sorts to Walker Evans, and it is fair to say that almost everything I was doing then was an homage to Evans. Evans did a great series on war monuments during his time with the FSA. He was responding to photographs made of monuments during the Civil War, photographs he attributed to Mathew Brady, although we now know them to be made by others in Brady's employ. The Evans photographs inspired Lee Friedlander to make a series on monuments. I was thinking both of Friedlander and Evans when I made this.
Photos from a can
We replaced the regular camera in this photographer's bike bag with one made from a decaf coffee can. Let's see what happens:
All nestled all snug in it's bag...
It really is a camera.
The camera has my preferred 3 pinhole set up. I drill holes in the can and spray paint the inside flat black. I make pinholes in cinefoil which is just black aluminum foil, and then taped those in on the inside. Black tape for a shutter and all done. It's just that easy.
first test
I use photo paper to make paper negatives. This time out I've been trying different ways to reduce contrast so i can get some better tonality in the images. Photo paper is made to be exposed to lamps in the 3200K range. This is multigrade paper and in normal printing you manipulate the contrast by exposing through colored filters, altering the color of light over a range from magenta to yellow. So I taped some yellow filtration behind the pinholes to cut down on the blue (high contrast) light reaching the paper. I had some success.
I also diluted the paper developer by half to slow the process down and give lighter tones a chance to develop, which is only fair.
These pictures were made mostly along my bike commute in various locations in Providence, RI. September 2014.
Survey gets RISCA Project Grant
What I did over my summer vacation
Well, to start, I didn't take a vacation... I worked for Providence instead. I lead a team of young photographers as part of a city Summer Youth Employment program. Because of the recession the city expanded the summer programs to include the arts. Go Providence!
This is the City Photo Crew.
Over 8 weeks in July and August went all over the city shooting digital photos, videos and instant film.
Thank you to Yessenia, Jossmill, Amber, Markia, Kenny and Hayden. Thanks too to my assistants Hannah and Brett. Lots of work and Lots of fun.
Check out the work on our youtube channel. follow the link or tune in to 09photocrew.
For more info on the city program follow this linkage: press release
also, the Mayor's wrap up press conference. mayor speaks
and I have to give a shout out to my fellow project artists: the tapeart crew. They did some amazing things with their group check it out here. Look at Ocean Riser... incredible!
All this and more possible in part because of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act -- The Stimulus Program.
