Mermaid

Ten hours in Brownsville

plant

rocket fest

krause

Ten pages

on Eugene Richards.
Easy.

I've been dreading writing this paper because I don't like to sit still for long enough to write a paper.

I've always thought a lot about questions of motives that people ask photographers like Eugene Richards or Nachtwey, etc., insinuating the photographer is exploiting the misery of the subject for their own benefit. They usually go something like "But how can you photograph such pain and suffering? And still sleep at night? And get paid to do it?"

I like his response in this excerpt from a November 1989 article on Richards in American Photographer:

"He has been stopped in the carpeted hallways of the Time-Life Building by better-dressed colleagues who asked,'What sewer are you going down today?'

Richards responds to such questions with great patience.

'People talk as if these subjects are aberrations,' he says.
'What they don't understand is that for most people in the world, poverty and disease are the norm- we are the freaks. But when I tell them that, they change the subject.'

'The only time I get upset by this work,' he explains, 'is when I see how hard it is to get anyone to take interest in what's happening in the pictures. Capturing the misery in life might somehow help correct it- I know that's not true, but it's a story I've always told myself.'"

Well, I might be young, naive and have very little real world experience, but for now I'm going to keep believing that story.

Homage...

...to the quote in the bathroom at Dog and Duck that I love so much. (Previous coverage of this same quote on Megan's blog) It's being painted over. So I wrote it on my arm.



'Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives, and to the good life, whatever it is, and whatever it happens to be.'

-As per Julia, 1/7/58

Skate

The Roots

and an impromptu bboy battle.

I shot another video .

The lovely miss Jenni Jones; multimedia guru and portrait stand in.