Itch To Fly

Etchings

2011-12-24T12:37:00.000-08:00

I wrote this some time ago. I’m very shy when it comes to sharing written things. This could certainly be better and touched up, but it’s just a summer memory.

Oh, and for some reason, I started a tumblr. http://antonioysursa.tumblr.com/

Sanctify

2011-10-27T00:09:00.001-07:00

Somehow she feels equally present in both images.

I'm sorry for my absence here. Flickr is the only place where I remember to post.

Thank you to those who still follow! You're all wonderful.

Stones of Summer

2011-07-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Home again. Here are some snapshots from the last couple weeks.

By the way, I'm reading "The Stones of Summer" by Dow Mossman. It's one of the most beautifully written novels I've ever come across; I'd highly recommend it.

Natalia and the blood red roses that erupt wildly every year.

The neighbor's laundry hanging to dry.

Family dinners outside

Karina pulling down the willow branches for the sheep.

My parents eating on the back porch

The flooded, pulsing ditches reflecting the earth.

The dragonfly I found, dead on the ground, laid out like a lost constellation.

My cousin at a swim meet.

Self portrait late in the night.

Chasing Summers

2011-06-30T14:15:00.001-07:00

I'm always chasing after the summer, afraid that it'll be forgotten. I keep running and running, trying to catch it in my hands. Similar to the way we used to glide through the dark as children, trying to hold the fireflies. We'd cup them really tight, and look inside, watching them fly within our clenched fingers, gasping for air. Our faces would be illuminated in short, flickering bursts by these whirling balls of sun.

I'm gasping for air. Trying so hard to hold onto these moments. Trying to keep them in my hands. Living in them. Breathing into them. Dying for them. Scared that I'll forget what all of this looks like in its momentary brilliance.

2011-06-03T00:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm ready for this school year to be OVER so that I can go home and start taking pictures again. One week lefttttttttttttt.

This summer will be nothing but photography and books. I can't wait.

Home and sheep

2011-04-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

A few images from when I was home over break. I'm usually not very inspired to take photos during the winter, but here are a few snapshots.

My sister bottle-feeding a newborn lamb.

Winter Snapshots

2011-03-26T11:35:00.001-07:00

Back in the States! Here are some random snapshots of friends and such from the last three months.

The Pale Lady

2011-02-25T14:45:00.000-08:00

Paris, so seductively beautiful.

December 2010

Here I am at the Sally Mann's exhibit! I about died.

Unafraid

2011-02-11T08:53:00.001-08:00

What is it to be young and unafraid?

Going through old images. Summer 2009

New blog format - help??

2010-12-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

I know absolutely nothing about html, but does anyone have any tips or know of any good websites that I could use to change the layout of this blog? This layout bores me to death. I want to see the images larger; I want them to take up most of the page actually.

This blog has been neglected, so check out my flickr if you actually want to see more of my work. http://www.flickr.com/photos/antoniophotography/

(not that I have new work on there anyways)

I've actually never been an avid blogger, but there is work out there that inspires me, which is why I keep this thing. I'll try to update it more regularly though. The wintertime is generally a very dry period as far as new images go. But I do have thousands of new photos from Spain/Greece/Portugal to weed through. Making a massive book when I get back to the States in January.

The Dragonfly

2010-11-17T02:52:00.001-08:00

My memory of this photo shoot is a beautiful one, something hard to describe.

It made me realize how much of themselves my family gives to me when I take their picture. A sort of treasure that a photographer almost feels bad for taking.

http://antonioysursa.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/antoniophotography

Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit

2010-11-16T12:28:00.000-08:00

I am obsessed with Sally Mann. Her photography, her process, her writing, her approach, her eloquence, style, vision, originality, fearlessness, the layers in each individual body of work and the way each body plays off one another. I would die a happy man if I got to see her work in a museum. Alas, I can not make my way over to Virginia to see her new exhibition The Flesh and The Spirit. If you live anywhere near the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, do yourself a favor and go. Then tell me about it so that I can squirm with envy. :P

The Flesh and The Spirit focuses on the body. Mann has now looked upon herself as subject in a new series of self portraits. These images juxtaposed with her lesser known still lifes, color portraits of her children, and images from What Remains and Proud Flesh tell a story of mortality, death, love, loss, beauty, and youth.

I cannot wait to buy the book which includes essays by John Ravenal, David Levi Strauss, and Anne Wilkes Tucker.

Villar Del Ala

2010-11-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

Two years ago my family and I visited Villar del Ala, a small village tucked into the undulating hills of Soria, Spain. On my recent stay with my grandparents in Zaragoza, I thought it fitting to revisit the town where a freckle of my family history lies buried. Lately my family history has struck an interest in me, inspiring an “archaeological dig” if you may, a study using pictures and words.

To get to Villar Del Ala, one must drive through worn towns. You then pass these beautiful, lush fields that almost dissolve into one another. Willow trees and oaks and olives and soft streams that sing through the wispy grass. Time passes more slowly here. The cows graze all day; the sparrows rest on wired fences, forgetting to fly; the leaves flicker at their own accord. During the fall, the clouds drift almost fearfully and the skies melt like popsicled dreams. You drive and drive and drive, and then from a certain vantage you can see Villar –this small speck of white in the midst of broccolied trees. You park your car, step outside, and look. You look and then you close your eyes, imagining everything that once was and all that still is.

With no more than fifty inhabitants, little has changed during the last century in Villar del Ala. La Goya still lives in this town. In fact, she lives in the house my great grandmother was born in. She is the last person who shared a childhood with my abuela Guillerma. Strange, it is, to know that my grandmother’s memory will die with her. Nobody remaining knew Guillerma as a child, so when I’m with La Goya I try to absorb absolutely everything, listening intently as a tiny piece of my familial history unfolds, opening like a tulip under the sun. She gives the skeleton of the stories; I imagine the flesh.

It’s almost unsettling to see how much time can affect someone. Two years ago La Goya was full of this energy. She walked around the village with us, talking the entire way. Sharing her stories and memories. It was as if we were drawing water from a well. We all listened, trying not to miss a thing, as she told us about abuela Guillerma. I remember my mother asking questions while my grandmother, Guillerma’s daughter, cried softly. I photographed, the camera humming in my hands. I remember La Goya showing us her favorite spot outside, this place behind a dying tree with a paralyzing view of her paradise beyond. I have pictures of her before the landscape, her arms outstretched, pointing towards the river which coils through the valley below. She took us to the cemetery too where I walked over the bones of the past, the place where everyone in the village is buried. Among them lie Rita Revuelto Blasco, Julian Bartolome Sanz, and Josefa Bartolome Revuelto.

During this recent visit to Villar del Ala, we heard no more stories of abuela Guillerma, and I did not get to photograph La Goya before her paradise. I was desperately hoping we would though, naively imagining another tour of the village. But it was different this time, different because time showed us its effect. When we arrived at the house, my abuela knocked on the door, without an answer. We waited awhile, and then after a second knock, La Goya opened it and welcomed us in. But it was shocking to see the effect of two years on her face. Suddenly the pictures and the fragmented memories from our previous visit meant more. Upon entering, my grandmother asked how she was doing, to which La Goya responded, “Muy, muy mal.” She walked to her rocking chair, put her legs under the table and spoke, telling us about the large tumor they found in her breast, but how she is unafraid because she’s lived a beautiful life. Almost immediately she was off on another subject, telling us about the village and the way it is changing.

I loved watching La Goya. That face. Leathered and worn after eighty seven years under an adobe sun. Her high cheekbones give it a heart shape, leaving blued shadows on either side. Dips and folds and craters and moons, a skin with the roads of her own story. Her hands are beautiful as well. Large, fingers that know the slivers and blisters of a heavy shovel. They are hands that glide and speak. I love her voice too, a gently dignity to it. Sharp and clear, the Spanish tongue that curls both violently and swiftly. But I love her stories most. You hear history in that tremble, but you mostly hear love. Love for her husband, love for her children, love for the village which she knows like the back of her rivered hand. And a love for a childhood friend, who left at eighteen to Uruguay and never returned.

My camera hardly froze the twenty minutes or so we were there. I do not know if La Goya noticed, or maybe she simply didn’t mind giving that part of herself to me, but she never said a word about me photographing her. In my five years taking pictures this has never happened. So I left feeling an immense gratitude, but also the guilt that a photographer often feels for taking a bit of someone else. If anything, I hope these pictures show a splinter of her story and the sweetness tinged with melancholy that filled her home.

As we were getting ready to leave, La Goya’s husband walked in with a plastic grocery bag in his hand. He too had aged, and he bore with him the fear losing his wife. Almost immediately his eyes spilled tears as he expressed his worry, so we talked with him for awhile. Soon after we said our last goodbyes. I promised to send them pictures, and I walked out the door feeling awed, inspired, hopeful, reassured, saddened. My grandparents and I walked to the cemetery once again. This time the grass was freshly cut, and the last roses of summer crawled up the stone walls. We were all silent, and my grandmother wept to herself. Then we walked through the village alone, without La Goya, and we came upon her favorite spot. The place behind the dying tree, a simple and beautiful view of the valley, the river, and the mountains evaporating in autumn’s mist.

When you leave Villar del Ala you almost want to blow it a kiss or wave goodbye. I stood at the gate of the village, near the stone cross which marks its entrance. Though tempted, I did not bring my camera to my eye. Instead I looked around me, at the whitewashed house, at the skeletal dogs too afraid to sniff my hand, at the pale and dusty cemetery, at the rolling hills. I closed my eyes, marking a picture in my mind. And then we left. The car rolled down those green hills, and I looked back through the window, watching Villar grow smaller and smaller and smaller until it was buried. Buried under the trees, buried under the rivers, the valley, that milky sky, the hum of church bells, the wave of the stork’s wings. Villar del Ala will always be one with the land, a red earth that caresses the bones of a history I hold dear to me but hardly even know.

Tuca getting older

2010-11-11T18:20:00.001-08:00

3:20 AM. My last midterm is tomorrow, and I am going to celebrate like a mad man when it's over. These last two weeks have been rather stressful.

I've been very nostalgic lately as well, so here is a photo of home. One that makes me all happy whenever I look at it. It is my dad with my 13 year old dog Tuca.

Samsung Post

2010-11-02T07:06:00.001-07:00

I have been terribly behind with my little assignments. Here are some images from summer. All taken with the Samsung nx10, provided by Samsung.

I am rather homesick these days.

Sun, phone, child, light

2010-10-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

Granada, España

I'm not going to lie, this street photography thing is stressing me out.

Sophia

2010-10-04T10:38:00.000-07:00

My beautiful little cousin Sophia. I took this a few days before leaving home.

Pouring Granada

2010-09-17T10:28:00.001-07:00

It was pouring and beautiful.

"what a super night's party"

You see these kinds of poorly worded phrases on so many shirts and it's hilarious

Amber, me, Daniel, Jose

Back home, on my way out the elevator

Website Updated!

2010-09-12T08:51:00.000-07:00

My website has been updated. I have a bunch of new work up, kind of scattered throughout it.

Take a lookkkk.

http://antonioysursa.com/

Marlboro man

2010-09-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

Ronda, España

I'm trying to be more brave when it comes to street photography. Yesterday I went on a day trip to Ronda and I kept seeing this man give people rides around the town with his horse. He reminded me of an actor from an old western film. As I was getting ready to catch the bus home I saw him once again. I pretended to be brave and asked for a portrait, and he kindly obliged. Not quite the shot I had in mind, but this whole street photography thing is kind of exciting. So different from what I'm used to.

Granada 1

2010-09-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

My mom and aunt have been harassing me about showing them photographs from my time here in Granada. :-) Sorry for the flood of images, but I think this may be the best place to upload them. A mix of snapshots and a few attempts at street photography.

pretty little places like this everywhere you look

from left: daniel, pepe, me, jose

a view of the Alhambra from the Albaicin . pretty white walls everywhere

i love the streets here

75 cent sangria!

daniel

el Albaicin

people here are much more laid back. and the kids are always out really late.

yes, that is a kitten in her bag.

everyone rides these. They're all over the place.

i missed the shot i wanted. he was feeding ice cream to the dog from his spoon.

from left: pepe, ana, sam, lisa, ben

daniel, me, lisa

i see these on quite a few windows and think it's beautiful

I'll never have enough images of all the little porches and plants

from left: patrick, sam, jose, pepe, me

the Alhambra from the Albaicin

Chasing

2010-09-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

I remember driving home one evening in the summer. My mind was elsewhere, and suddenly I realized I was following the moon, the opaled lady in the sky. Large and grand, almost buttery and majestic in her stance. She was larger than I'd ever seen her before, large enough to draw out the dips and folds and crevasses on her face. Large enough to imagine myself leaving the wind in this world, for a sky of spacey blackness where everything is quiet and still, where you trip into the craters, but where it doesn't matter if you fall because gravity is gone. Behind me was the sun, which left an orange spot in my rearview mirror. The scene left me transfixed; I couldn't stop staring, so instead of taking the exit home, I kept on going.

Things are most beautiful when both the sun and moon are in the clouds, when earth is lit by day and night. These few minutes of perfect light are when I prefer solitude. Alone in my backyard or driving towards a horizon I hardly understand. You see, almost always, I drive with the music off. I prefer the hum of the road because it helps me lose myself to thought and memory. Sometimes I would head out into the desert, where the roads are monotonous, and I would simply go. Go and forget. To lose and remember myself. It's kind of like sticking your head under water, or leaving earth for space. At one moment you are in noise and wind, but once you submerge yourself, everything becomes silent. It's better to be lost in the chaos of your own mind, where you can only hear the hum of the wheels, the beat of the waves, the ripples of shooting stars.

Other times, when my eyes tired, I would park the car in the middle of the desert. Removing myself helps me to remember and to miss. If I was lucky enough, a storm would visit. Rains would pound against the windows, and I would step outside to let it fall. It reminded me how to feel again. I would close my eyes and open my mouth to the sky, and I would taste the salty earth. If I was brave enough, I would open my eyes and I would watch the sagebrush fly against the field. Running and dashing like a jackrabbit, swirling around me at the beat of its own tornado-ed mind. But sometimes the sagebrush would get caught against a fence. And stop.

I have a tendency to miss things. To miss being a naive child, to miss the days that never ended. To miss youth in me and in the ones I love. How wonderfully naive we are to think that these things never change, to imagine them as something lasting. As I drove along empty roads or when I let the storms wash over, I would reconsider these braids of time and change, the braids of loss and memory and love. Remembering those who I see in faded images and long to know. Remembering the things that are gone, all that is leaving. That which is present. And coming.

But when it’s all too much, I let the rain wash down my entire body, and I try to let my thoughts run with it. Holding onto youth or a lovely past is like chasing the moon when you’re on the highway. It’s like jumping into a silvery lake, and holding your breath underwater. In the silence of rippled waves, you are temporarily relieved. You are fooled by the fantasy of your own dreams. But in the out-of-water forest, or beyond our windy earth, everything keeps running and running and running. And people like me keep chasing and chasing and longing and loving.

Like soldiers we are marked

2010-09-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

We are your mother's children.

We ride through lakes and together the forests chase us.

Pine needles scraping our backs, marking us as soldiers.

And we become a single.

Legs clapping, drumming.

Cracking leaves under toes.

Skin leathering.

And the mooned sky is the only light.

Dewing the savory flesh of youth.

Blessing it with her own.

We are your mother's children,

marked as soldiers, through lakes, over pine,

we are one.

First days in Granada

2010-09-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

I will be in Granada, Spain until the end of December and will likely be posting many photographs here. I've selected a small batch from my first days here... all were hastily edited as I'm about to run out the door.

My host mom

my room

Incredible Flamenco show, outside, at the Alhambra

My father's birthday

2010-08-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

I don't expect people to like these much, as they are purely personal snapshots. They are images of a summer memory. A happy one tinged with melancholy.

Windy Breath

2010-08-11T15:20:00.001-07:00

A 15 minute photo shoot with my sister, in the wind.

Moon over the highway

2010-08-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

Night, be gone. Roll over the highway. Hide your icy lips. Crater me. Leave me. And return with the yellow at your side.

(samsung nx10)

A Space Boy Dream

2010-08-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

The night fell like dust and the moon whispered her song through the clouds. Rockets and spaceships and rocketed spaceships and milky galaxies all around. We glided as children through the purpled dark, fireflies in our hands, and we ran and ran and our laughs were drowned by the night.
Their faces lit up, lanterned sparklers exploding in their hands. Last night before the part, last night before the red seas would split us once again. The elders sat back, watching the youth explode with the lightning bugs. An end to these months, perfected with fire and light and love.
But the youth, like night, like scattered explosions in the sky, will remain a bright, yellowed memory in our minds. Vibrant, then gone, gone, gone. Gone with the wind; like summer’s memory in itself.

(a summer memory)

Fawn

2010-07-29T12:22:00.001-07:00

The sun. It burns, burns, burns, chapping our lips and freckling us like rocky mountain fawns.

(Details. The fireflies in my backyard. My cousin's chapped lips and freckles)

Samsung NX10

2010-07-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago I got an email from Samsung offering me a free camera in exchange for 6 months of pictures. I recently received the Samsung NX10 and I'm now a "field tester." haha.

Here are my first few shots with it. :-) These were taken with the 30mm lens, shot at f2.

Exploding Spiders

2010-06-27T00:27:00.001-07:00

Together we drove back from a small fair. The air was sweaty and the wind sweet. I cranked up my ISO and shot away. My camera will continue to come with me everywhere.

Willows

2010-06-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

My mother had a willow tree growing in the backyard of her childhood home in Uruguay. Years ago, when she was moving to the States, she carried a small branch in her suitcase.
The daughter tree now stands tall in my backyard, and my god do I love it.

(I am finally on summer vacation. More inspired than ever.)

Polaroid

2010-04-09T19:10:00.000-07:00

I shot quite a few polaroids (quite a few, as in 10) over spring break. I'm pretty excited about this whole project.

Anyway, here are some weeds alongside the ditch at home.

A double exposure shot on expired polaroid 669 film.

Change

2010-04-03T09:59:00.000-07:00

These images were taken in my grandmother's backyard. As I was going through old folders, looking for website images, I came upon these older photographs. I had forgotten about the time and the moment, but seeing them brought me back to the summer of 2007. Things in my life and in my family were very different back then.

The bottom image was taken a couple weeks ago. I was shocked and strangely saddened to see that the plants had been completely uprooted.

Slowly I have been working on collecting (and taking) photographs of the place. I generally take pictures of my loved ones, but I am finding that it's equally important to have intermixed images of where the narratives occur.

New Website

2010-03-14T14:24:00.001-07:00

www.antonioysursa.com

Finally my website it complete. Check it out and turn up your volume!!!!

Summer 09 snapshots

2010-03-07T13:56:00.000-08:00

Spent a few hours scanning negatives the other day. It's always exciting to find photographs that you don't remember taking. Moments from last summer. Shot on HP5 400.

My family eating breakfast on the back porch –a very traditional Sunday scene, and one of my favorite things to do.

My old dog Tuca sitting on the porch my while cousins and sister make snow cones in the background.

First studio shoot

2010-02-25T17:15:00.000-08:00

I am in a studio lighting class right now. This was for my first portrait assignment.

The studio is so intimidating; it's not my thing at all. In order to be a good studio photographer, I think you really need to know how to talk, how to work with your subjects and pull things out of them. I'm too busy looking, too busy in my mind, in order to talk.

But I was content with the way these shots came out I suppose.

Model is Jessie who made my job easier. (Thank you Jessie.)

Random film shot

2010-02-17T20:12:00.000-08:00

Part of my film final last quarter.

HP5, developed in FG7, printed on Bergger warmtone.

Model: Nicole

I miss film and photography terribly. I need to start making new work.

View from my window

2010-01-25T19:17:00.001-08:00

2/100

Part of a new project I'm working on with the 100 sheets of expired polaroid film that I bought awhile back. Simply put, it shall be a series on my life.

This is what I see everyday... the view from my window. I'm quite excited to continue with the series; working this way, with such little control, is completely different from anything I've ever done.

Sophia Darling

2010-01-22T00:31:00.000-08:00

Some of you may remember my sweet cousin Sophia’s story. Three years ago they found a tumor in her brain, around the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus. After surgeries, weeks in the hospital, and an outpour of prayers and support, the tumor was successfully removed. Sophia is now ten years old. I never imagined that I would be writing something like this again, but we found out early this week that two tumors have recurred around the hypothalamus. The feelings are heart-wrenchingly unexplainable. The only thing I can do is to pray and ask for all of you to please, please keep Sophia and her family in your thoughts and prayers. The next steps are to make decisions about the tumor removal... many things are unknown at this point. I have uploaded a rather recent photograph of her. Please feel free to pass it on, post it on your blogs, send it in emails. You can link back to my deviantart/flickr, as I’m sure I will have updates, but more importantly, my aunt and uncle regularly update her CaringBridge website, with day to day journals on everything that is going on. www.caringbridge.org/visit/sophiawilson/ We need a miracle. Thank you all dearly, Antonio

Inspiration - Ryan McGinley

2010-01-11T14:29:00.001-08:00

I've been really inspired by Ryan McGinley's photographs lately, so I figured I'd put some of my favorites on this blog.

These images are from his road trips across America or from his recent series Moonmilk, which was done in caves. The images are so free, youthful, mysterious, fantastical.

Makes me want to road trip.

"I am interested in reaching a broader audience with my work. It’s one of my goals. Youth, movement, and freedom are the ideas that inspire my work."— Ryan McGinley

"I like the idea of taking people outside their element to photograph them. They lose themselves. We spent two to three months together all day everyday. We are naked together each day. We are creating a life that doesn’t exist. My photographs are my fantasy life. They are like the movies of my life. I mean, everything in my photographs happens but it happens because I make it happen."

— Ryan McGinley

"My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful. They are a world that doesn’t exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living."

— Ryan McGinley, New York Times, 2007

Young, once

2010-01-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

Some images of my cousin and baby lamb over Christmas break. I have to do a lot of begging before photo shoots with him, but I am always so amazed by how effortless and intense he is. I don't have to tell him absolutely anything, and he gives me everything I want in an image. People often don't realize how much a photograph depends on the actual subject; he makes my job so much easier. I miss the little guy terribly while I am away at school.

Last Death

2009-12-20T18:50:00.001-08:00

Images taken the day before my youngest sister turned thirteen. :-(

It's always a challenge to take photographs in the winter here, but I'm kind of pleased with the way these came out.

First film scans

2009-12-13T15:09:00.000-08:00

I finally scanned a few images the other day at an extremely high resolution. I'd like to do some digital prints of them eventually. The look is very different than fiber in the darkroom, but it's so much more economical to do things digitally. Only scanned about 10 images, most of which have already been uploaded to my flickr. But next quarter I am not going to waste time and will actually put my lab hours to good use. There are soooo many ignored and forgotten negatives that I would like to do something with. Below is one such image; I'm not too crazy about it, but it's sort of growing on me.

Am looking into purchasing the mamiya rb67, as I'd really like to experiment more with medium format. Need to do more research though.

I'm home for christmas break now. There are a million ideas in my head, but all the snow and freezing weather makes it a little more complicated.

Cheers people.

Oceans Never Freeze

2009-10-15T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'm not so good at this blog thing. Considering how rarely I update it, I am surprised by even the few views trickling in. I will try to be more regular with the updates from now on.

Anyway, I'm back at school. Busy. And I've been looking for a job like a mad man. It is ridiculously competitive. I've also been trying to get some work together, along with an artist statement, to start applying to galleries in the area. I figure it's time to try to do something with my work instead of letting it sit on my hard drive.

Besides that, my camera has been neglected for months. I've been itching to take new shots. There are finally a few ideas bubbling in my head, so hopefully new work will follow.

Above is a shot from the summer. He is my cousin, brother, muse.

Title: Oceans Never Freeze, which is from the Stars song

E & B

2009-09-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

I never like these in-betweens.

East of Eden

2009-08-21T16:05:00.000-07:00

This shoot is a few weeks old. Model is my sister in my backyard.

What is your art about?

2009-08-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

I took photography classes for the first time this past year, and it was an incredible and humbling experience. I learned about film, developing/printing in the traditional darkroom, the zone systems. But I think one of the most rewarding things I realized was the importance of being able to talk about your own work (and that of others).

Sure, I am all for ambiguity and self interpretation. The viewers should be able to take something from a piece without necessarily being guided by what the artist intended. But at the root of it all, an artist should be able to support their own body of work, to understand the layers that compose it.

I was having a conversation with one of my photography professors one day. I had gone into her office to discuss classes and then I decided to ask her advice on a book I was creating. I needed help editing the sequence of images.

As she was helping me narrow photographs down we had a conversation that went something like this. My professor began by asking, “What is your photography about?”

“Ummm. My family,” to which I quickly added, “and the relationship I have with them...?”

I felt like a fish out of water.

And then she responded, “Is that what your work is really about? Because quite frankly, I don’t give a damn if these photographs are about your family. I think your work is about much more than that. If it is about your family, fine. But you need to convince me as to why. Does the viewer actually care if the people in these images are related to you? Does that matter?”

She continued by asking me what I want the viewer to take from my photographs. What message do I want to convey and story do I want to tell?

She recommended that I think about this, to write things down when they come to mind.

I have gone back to this conversation so many times, and have begun to formulate my own ideas as to what themes underly my photographs. I have a better grip and understanding as to what I think my work is about, and I know that I still have a lot to analyze.I have realized that my photography is not entirely about my family. The fact that I photograph the people I love is only a small component of my work. I’m not going to go on and necessarily share what I have come up with. I just want you, the reader, to think about this for yourself -to reconsider and reevaluate what you are doing with your own art? What is your art about? What underlying themes are there in your work? And what do you want us viewers to get from it?

Think about it, and share it if you’d like.

Sally Mann, Proud Flesh

2009-08-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

I am obsessed with Sally Mann, and I almost died yesterday when I found out she is coming out with her new series Proud Flesh, which will be featured at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. Oh, how I wish I could be there. I am hoping (and assuming) that she will be coming out with a book as well, but I have been unable to find out more information about this new body of work.

Anyway, the images in this series are of her husband. Everything was shot with her 8x10 camera using the collodian process. She had released a few images in Aperture magazine a few months back, and I'm incredibly anxious to see more.

I need to write to this woman. Any ideas as to how I could get her address people?

Relief

2009-08-01T01:14:00.000-07:00

I must have spent over 30 hours creating a 40 page photo book of my work. I was anal about the thing. The layout is simple, but I wanted it to look more like a coffee table book that you would buy at a store. I never expected the process to take so long, but anyway, I'm super excited about it. Three weeks until it arrives.

Here is the front cover. It is all white, with the pictured words.

Camping

2009-07-29T09:38:00.001-07:00

Went camping a few weeks ago with family. Took some shots here and there...

Making Holly smile

My aunt's dog. The thing is a lot more cute when he has hair.

I don't know why this is being underlined.

Photo Final

2009-07-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Below was my final for a photography seminar class I took last quarter. I learned quite a bit about editing my photos as a whole. I've also been trying to work on speaking about my photography and trying to verbalize the subconscious thought processes that go through my head. It is incredibly challenging for me, but definitely an important thing to work on.

We could have no more than 5 images to present.

Below is a quote that seemed to perfectly illustrate my thoughts for this small series of images. The words have always amazed me.

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams... no, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream - alone..." - Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Clovers

2009-07-03T22:09:00.001-07:00

This was a photograph that was not included in my film final.

I have yet to scan all of my film photographs. My final is all matted so I have to take everything out to scan. It will happen eventually, but for now, I might as well post this. It is a photo of my friend Emily. She was a great and very natural model.

I think the film was TriX, developed in rodinal. I wouldn't recommend that combination unless you like a veryyy grainy look.

Where field and sky collide

2009-07-02T22:12:00.000-07:00

Below is a sequence of images (part of another larger series I am working on) of one of my favorite places in the world. I come here as often as possible to regain my sanity through my surroundings and the books I tow along.

It is my paradise –where field and sky collide. Where the silences of nature’s noise bring me the greatest peace of all.

A fledgling stares at me, his lifeless wings temporarily keep him from becoming a victim of his fears. I rest on a rotting wooden board –one that lies sprawled, creating a bridge over a tiny ditch. A ditch that runs like a series of veins through my fields, giving life to all that lives.

Monarchs, kaleidoscope wings against the sea above, sweep overhead, casting a spell of awe on everything it graces over.

Sighs of exhaustion are heard from the sun-baked sheep, as they graze like dandelions in a honey field.

The beekeeper tends to his hives under a netted armor, as the insects busily swirl around and around like waves over sand. The keeper’s aging, peppered horse swishes his tail against the heavy beat of summer and the flies that hop on his skin.

Crickets cry –a synchronized hum that guides the delicate and steady streams of water –water that brings life to my dangling feet and numbness to my toes.

Tall emerald grasses bow down to this stream, beckoning to it, as it quietly overpasses pebbles and underpasses the skippers and dragonflies.

Blackberries cling to their thorny branches, waiting for their velvet black to engulf them, waiting for puckered lips to devour them.

A soft breeze stirs everything. It cannot be felt at all; only seen in the leaves’ unsteady and rhythmic flits and dances.

Fences separate the lands, but we cherish it together. Stories are passed, memories preserved. But memories faded by reality.

Again a monarch passes overhead, this time with sparrows in its graceful spectrum.

Everything leaves me in a perfect daze.

Here we go...

2009-07-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

I'm still wondering why I have decided to start a blog. Not sure who will care to read it, nor do I completely understand the purpose of having a blog... but creating one seemed far too fun and tempting. Lets see how well I can keep up with it.
I will most likely be posting new work, day-to-day photographs, and small series/sequences that I won't upload to flickr.

Ok. Umm, testing, testing.

Peace.

I think I'm done.