Today is another day of nothingness. But as I wander through piles of photographs that have yet to processed and catalogued, I can’t help but smile when I come across something with as much charm as this. It’s got everything one could want: hollywood junipers, rock facade, decorative concrete blocks, googie styling, and of course a thrashed Matador. Ahhh, Albany.
Lucky me. Either the AMC collector in El Cerrito sold his collection or moved into my neighborhood. Three beat Matadors and a Javelin are constantly showing up parked in different places, trying to avoid the three-day limit on parking before towing happens. They are always somewhere new, but I never seen any of them actually in motion. Maybe he does it with a Star Trek transporter. The only downside is that there are no Gremlins or Pacers. C’mon! Are you a collector or what?
Sometimes when I’m working from home, I’ll go to a cafe and work. Today I met up with a programmer friend who also likes to work outside the house at a favorite cafe, Local123 in Berkeley. The trouble was that once we got there, there was nowhere at all to sit. This is the second time in a row that I have arrived there and had to move on. It’s a nice place and it is great for the owners that they are so busy, but it looks like I have to find somewhere else as a first-choice work spot. In any case, we headed down San Pablo Avenue to Actual Cafe in Oakland.
Actual is located in the neighborhood where I used to work and go for lunchtime photo walks. As soon as we turned off San Pablo to park, it all came back to me, and I remembered what a photographically rich area the neighborhood is. Everywhere I looked I saw a shot. It would have been very easy to get totally distracted and just go for a stroll, but I resisted the urge. Instead I just took a couple shots and headed into the cafe to get working. But I made some mental notes of things to come back for on the weekend.
I recently changed the route of my bike commute to work. I was simply trying to get away from San Pablo Ave, which, while it is the straightest shot to my workplace, is also very bike-unfriendly. There are lots of cars, obstacles, freeway on/off ramps, and debris.
I decided that I would try to slide over to Hollis Ave through Emeryville, and this took me into west Oakland. The result is a new crop of photos, and some incubating ideas for future series.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Pontiac. Ever since word of its demise, I have been meaning to take a picture of the sign at the dealership on Auto Row in Oakland. I finally got around to it the other day. And while I was driving around looking for a place to park, I saw some other photo ops on the side streets. This old Plymouth was in beautiful shape. And as I just commented over on flickr, I have to admit I find it very sexy in a zaftig sort of way.
This is the final set of images I will have in a group photography show that opens Friday at Fingado Art Gallery. Nine is quite a few but the prints are not very big, just 12 inches square. I printed them at Dickerman Prints and had them mounted on aluminum at General Graphics, both in San Francisco. They came out very nice, and I’m pretty excited about it.
It has been an interesting project to try to print and prepare for presentation a small set of photographs. In a way, it seems easier than simply showing things on the web. I think the reason for this is that a physical show has, by its very nature, physical limitations and boundaries. A small set of images allows one to focus on them and the process of getting them where you want them to be. By contrast, putting things up on flickr or another such site is pretty much wide open in terms of numbers and organization. One can drown in a sea of possibilities.
This was my thought about what’s going on with this series of photos. The starting point is an exploration of color. Not color simpliciter, but as it relates to memory, history and the fictional narratives they constitute. The combination of color shifts and vintage subjects recall a generic past and, paradoxically, place the viewer within a fictitious historical narrative by playing upon her memories and nostalgic sensibilities. The deportation is paradoxical since taken literally, these narratives describe a logical impossibility. The images waver between recalling a past as it was, and a decayed, dissolving past as it comes to us. On one hand we are presented with something recalling a snapshot from the family drawer, a snapshot whose color as shifted over time, but whose referent we can conjure through memory as pristine. On the other hand, the subject is captured and presented not as it was in the past, but as it is now, in the present. It is the color, as it were, of the subject itself which has shifted over time rather than the photograph.
It showed up one day earlier this week. It sat quietly over to the side minding its own business, not making a peep. I went by once and noticed it immediately, but I, too, didn’t say anything. Life is like that a lot these days. One makes mental notes and tries to find them later amid the clutter of scraps of paper, children’s toys, empty wine bottles, and job postings.
I went by again and the tug was more insistent; the mental note came floating down from the rafters, landed in plain view. For two days I shuffled it to the top of the stack of other mental notes.
Sarah had noticed it sitting there and said something to me about it. Tuesday night it was still there when I left the house to run the errand in another note. I threw my tripod in the car on my way to get milk.
On the way back home, i went by again. This time I stopped. I didn’t care that it was night. The moon was almost full. The golden convertible gleamed in the cocktail glow of moonlight and sodium vapor.
It was accidental at the time, brought about by the time constraints of modern suburban living. But these two great tastes taste great together: suburban neighborhood car photography, and night photography.
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