photography

Explorasaurus.

| Betsy

Lately I’ve been wandering around a large yet small city with my camera and incredibly uncomfortable shoes. I’ve enjoyed the whoosh and burst of air that hits you down in the Metro, sunsets over monuments, visiting museums, dancing to old 90s music, dudes that give someone elderly their seat when they teeter totter on the Subway, and long walks with coffee.

The lovely mix of politics and punk, messenger bags and Prada, suits and skateboards has been a total delight to explore. Of course, there have also been not-so-lovely moments, scraping a Secret Service car in Georgetown (getting them to laugh when I asked if their little secret pins were like “flair” was pretty sweet, though) and angry people in the Metro when there was a fire and lots of smoke.

Here are some photos from the past few months, including lots from the 9.12.09 Tea Party where I went to see if their DIY signs were good or not. Personally, I found the majority of the posters either incredibly offensive, misspelled, or misinformed. The reason for my delay in posting these photos? A few days after the rally I discovered some of my relatives were there. Honestly, it took me awhile to try and understand why our views could be so different. At the rally and on the train back to my car, all I heard was hate, hate, hate. Dissent? Go for it. But hatred? There’s no place for that if you expect to have a dialogue and not a shouting match.

[ETA: The above being said, however, there were signs at the rally that were based on fact, not conjecture! Those signs? Sing it! My reactions were based on the anger I saw arising (from listening to a man tell his 4 year old that the government were crooks, to shouts about “commies going to hell”) in the crowd. Seeing so much anger in a public space was personally shocking, although our right as Americans to express disapproval is one I hold dear. For the people upset about what’s going on and voicing their opinion? Again, go for it. Just keep anger out of it. And before you stand up with a sign, it’s always a good thing to know why it says what it does. It’s your chance to state your voice, why not make it properly heard? Let what you carry provoke conversation not anger, understanding not yelling, and dialogue not diatribes.]

Believe what you wish, just be informed as to why you believe that way. What I don’t understand is, why is everything boiled down to religion this “we’re right,” “they’re wrong” dichotomy? Maybe I’m wrong, but aren’t the tenets of love and acceptance found in every religion? If so, how can you honestly say you’re doing God’s (or Allah’s or Jesus’ or the Buddha’s, etc) work when you’re speaking in anger?

The shots here are waiting for a bus with the awesome Through the Eye of the Needle, Metro seats, my Secret Service repaired mirror, and a Tea Party shot. You can see them all over here.

Studium. Punctum. Magic.

| Betsy

I love how some books, days, people, experiences can seem to almost alter your DNA, seem to change you forever. Like they snuck in when you weren’t looking and scrambled things into a better working format. I love that sense of lightness that pops up when you’re growing and don’t know it yet.

In looking through my photographs from the past 3 years, I came across 6 distinct photos from 6 different moments that hit me to the core. From top, left to right: Visiting a bus a new friend was converting to a living space in the country outside San Francisco, watching the sunset on Cadillac Mountain in Maine, a loved one’s hospital gown before major surgery, a Swoon piece in San Francisco’s Mission District, visiting inquisitive lambs in upstate New York and peppers hanging on the street in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I love how in looking back each one of those photos denotes a specific place and state of being where I was in the process of growing and learning something important, but had no idea of how much until months later. When I look at them through the eyes of Roland Barthes when he was writing Camera Lucida, their punctum leaves me reminded of their individual importance.

From the Camera Lucida entry on Wikipedia: The book develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum: studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it.

When you find old photographs or even look again at photos that have been on the fridge for years, do you really see where you’ve come since then? Can you pinpoint the studium and the punctum and be taken back to that very moment?

I love that there is magic in revisiting, relooking and remembering.

3 Photos, 1 Quote.

| Betsy

On my recent trip out to Portland, Oregon, I found myself in awe of the view below me for a good bit of the flight. The sun vs the clouds, the clouds vs earth, water vs land. I uploaded the photos the other day and was awed again at the wide variations in color and texture. The quote below is from Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It’s a little smudgy now, but it’s been written in blue on the tiny chalkboard on the wall in my room near the door for months now.


“Within an evolutionary framework we can focus consciousness on the tasks of everyday life in the knowledge that when we act in the fullness of the flow experience we are also building a bridge to the future of our universe.”

If you’re up for it, take this as a tiny PSA to look around your environment today and keep your eyes out for tapestries that may be hiding in the form of banality. Oh, and happy Saturday.


A few things I’ve been loving or found interesting lately:
*Bags 4 Darfur
*Kala Raksha Preservation of Traditional Arts
*Stitches on the Bridge Project (link via Kim)
*An older post over at Show Your Workings on Craftivism
*Linda’s wonderful tutorial: How to Make a Reversible Swiffer Sock
*Simon Hoegsberg’s “We’re All Gonna Die: 100 Metres of Existence
*Haifa Zangana’s City of Widows: An Iraqi Woman’s Account of War and Resistance
*The honest and frustrating account of journalist Leila El-Haddad’s attempt to get home to see her parents in Gaza (This one actually breaks my heart as to the state of things)