Student of Light

I’m pretty sure I’m going to do a project called “This Is Not Your Jesus.”
The basic idea is that the the white, anglo-saxon protestant (WASP) culture has created an idea of Jesus that fits neatly into the lifestyle we have adopted. Example: WASP Jesus doesn’t judge you for being vain; WASP Jesus spends hours in front of the mirror in the morning to achieve perfect hair and iconic pearly whites. And in case you think that WASP culture has not made a jesus in their own image, I present to you the google image results for the keyword “Jesus”
Now that you have checked that out, you can, hopefully, see what I mean. And just in case you are one of my, uh, less religious readers, I will present you with a few facts about the Jesus you may or may not believe in. Jesus was a Jew. Like, a practicing one. Oh, and he was apparently an ugly carpenter. He wasn’t a popular kid either. The rest of the population kind of crucified him. Regardless whether you believe in Jesus or not, you gotta admit: Jesus was so not WASP.

Anyway, all of that was background for my brilliant project. I will take 12 (I have to keep with Biblical numbers, right?) pictures of men who fit the idea of the “WASP Jesus.” Think Eli Baylis if you’ve met him (he doesn’t know this yet, but he’ll be starring in this project. Love you Eli.)

I think I’ll be playing a bit of a fine line here. I want to keep it respectful, but it needs an edge also. For example: I’m not going to do a picture of my subject nailed to a cross. A little too far. But I will do a picture of my “Jesus” with an empty cup of wine. Or maybe try to copy Dali’s version of the Last Super. I want it to be sardonic, but thought provoking. I want it to be offensive, but not heretical.

It’s going to be awesome.

To stray a little from photography…
The debate is on: Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly? My friend Tim says Kelly; I say Hepburn.
Help us solve this puzzle.

I found a blog of poetry I’ve written over the years. I forgot I even had it. I was reading over poems I’d written freshman year of college. You would think I was an emo punk-rocker if you read some of it. I didn’t think I was at the time. Who knows, maybe I was. You’ll have to ask Patrick or Frank to get a real answer on that question.

Anyway, I found a few I thought were interesting. Interesting because of how completely opposite I see life after just four years. For example, let’s take a look at this prose piece:

Love doesn’t wait for us to finish college and grad school, get a job, a house and insurance. It grips us in highschool, calling for the sacrifical liquor of innocence and virginity. And it doesn’t let us go through that entire freshman year of college. Then one day it isn’t there and we’re left on the bare ground with only our two feet, two hands, and one shattered heart.
Then, somehow, love manages to find us again in fateful junior year. We invest, invest, blindly hoping that this is more practical than tying our hearts to Ben Franklin’s kite.
We strike lucky. We graduate, (not alma-cum-laud–who can do that when we can’t even look our fiance in the eyes because of her breast?) We get married. Have kids. Mess up, then pay for our kids to have the same experience we had.
They do. They move. They Visit. We die.
Nothing is new under a dying sun.

I’m sorry you had to read that. Please don’t go beat your head against a wall. Apparently I was quite the cynical chap. I didn’t realize how absolutely pissed off I was until I read it yesterday. I find it hard to believe I thought that at one point.

I’ve changed. My entire outlook on life has changed. Sure, in it’s bare-bone minimum life may look like my emo poem for some unlucky soul out there. But even in people who have been absolutely shafted, there are shards of light. Life isn’t about running some sort of race towards death. I’ve decided life is about connecting with those around us. Everyone. I mean the clerk at the gas station and the CEO of Toyota. We’re all human, and we aren’t meant to live alone.

One of the saddest things I have ever seen was a story I was doing on a lady in Hattiesburg who was being evicted out of her FEMA trailer. Her house was destroyed by the storm, her husband left her, her kids moved away and rarely called home. If I close my eyes I can see her sitting in her trailer with all the windows closed smoking a cigarette with this vacant look in her eye. It wasn’t the look of a person day-dreaming. It wasn’t the look of someone in mourning. It was the look of someone who was completely alone. I told Clarence that I thought it was amazingly sad. “It’s sad, but not as sad as that,” he said, pointing at a picture he took of a druggie injecting another druggie on skid row. I think it’s the same sadness. It’s the reality of two people who have isolated themselves in very different ways. Ultimately, however, they are alone.

I don’t write poetry any more. I probably should; I enjoy it. Instead I take pictures. I hope that my frames cause people to understand my themes. We can’t be alone. If humankind wants to make any progress (or attempt to regress as little as possible) then it’s imperative we treat each other as humans. And that’s really what this post is all about.

Oh, and about my stance on love n’ stuff in that poem: it’s changed to something like what Butters says in Southpark Episode 714 “Raisins”

STAN
Butters?

BUTTERS
Oh Uh hey, hey Stan.

STAN
What’s the matter with you?

BUTTERS
Well, mu mu mu girlfriend broke up
with me.

HENRIETTA
Did she step on your heart with stiletto
heels?

BUTTERS
Yeah. It sure does hurt.

GOTH 2
That’s cool. I guess you can join up
with us if you want.

GOTH 1
Yeah. We’re gonna go to the graveyard
and write poems about death and how
pointless life is.

BUTTERS
Uh, uhm no thanks. I I love life.

STAN
Huh? But you just got dumped

BUTTERS
Wuh-ell yeah, and I’m sad, but at the
same time I’m really happy that somethin’
could make me feel that sad. It’s like,
ih ih, ih it makes me feel alive, you
know? It makes me feel human. And the
only way I could feel this sad now is
if I felt somethin’ really good before.
So I have to take the bad with the good,
so I guess what I’m feelin’ is like
a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds
stupid…

No it doesn’t, Butters. If I had listened to you freshman year, I wouldn’t have to be reading my emo graveyard poems today and I would feel a little less stupid.

Sorry for not having updated this for the past few days. The truth is that I’ve written several entries and then deemed them too personal for publication. So they’ve gone into my archives so I can view them later and maybe rewrite them when I feel they should be read.

I think I’ve lost a lot of my vision as a photographer. I entered this internship with my heart beating and my swords out. I read about photographers ever day. I photographed every day. I even printed out my contact sheets and wrote about every picture. And then, slowly, I melted under the struggles that come with moving to a place away from home where I don’t have my friend group or my parents or any part of my life I’ve worked to build. I’ve managed to make friends (for which I’m thankful) and I’ve started getting into the York community, but I think my photography has suffered as a result of trying to find a life away from my comfort zone.

I’ve started listening through the Eddie Adams Workshop audio archives. And one thing that’s stood out to me after listening to these photographers talk about their lifework is that they all have a theme. I think my photography has a theme, but I’ve never really sat down and thought about it. I spent a lot of today thinking about this.

I’ve basically boiled it down to two things. Love and Hope.

Love.
I am a strong believer in love. I’m not talking about just romantic love, although that’s certainly a part of love. I’m primarily talking about the ability that humans have to connect with other humans on a deep level. I see love around me everywhere. I covered a bowling event a while ago and I got this picture. To me, it screams love. Despite being a silhouette, it’s obvious someone is helping someone else. In this case it’s a mother helping her blind child bowl. When I look through images that speak to me, whether they’re my own or someone else’s, the theme of love permeates them. I think love manifest itself in so many ways. I want to not only photograph love but photograph with love. Love allows us to respect each other and help each other. A man can have his entire life stripped away and still have love. It’s incredibly important.

Hope.
Robert Frank said:

“I think without hope it’s a sad life. Sadder than sad, no hope. “

I can’t even imagine a world without hope, and yet, there are people living today who don’t have any. The antidote for hopelessness is love, so I guess these two themes go hand in hand.
Ash Wednesday was one of the most dismal days of my life. And, of course, I got sent to go cover an Ash Wednesday service. I told my friend Eli, “I’m going to find a photo that says something about hope.” And I called him afterwards to tell him I thought I nailed it. This photo is what I got. When I saw that photo it mirrored how I felt. I almost couldn’t take it, because I saw myself on his face. To me, he looks totally broken. There’s a sadness on his face that made me wonder what had left him feeling that way. He looks like he might break at any moment. But the way the light falls on his face, the way the ashes are smeared across his forehead, tell me he will be ok. There is hope surrounding him, propping him up.

Love and Hope.
I know humans need hope and love. Without them we are like an empty drumbeat without rhythm. So I guess these are my themes. I’m going to try to be more aware of them as I move forward with my photography. If I die tomorrow, I want my photographs to be displayed around my coffin. And instead of people filing by to look at my lifeless body, I want them to be confronted with my pictures. I hope they would leave inspired. Instead of mourning for a dead man, they would be rejoicing in hope. I want them to go back to their lives infused with love because of what they saw in my photos. As a photographer, I can do nothing more than lead my life with hope and love, praying that my work encourages others to connect with those around them after I am gone.

First off, a quick housekeeping note: thanks to the people that read my February 20, 2010 post and called me about it. I had some good chats. I have now privatized that post, because I sort of feel like it’s dirty laundry and that isn’t why you’re here (at least I hope not). I needed to write it, and it gave me the opportunity to talk about it. It’s served its purpose and now it has to go in the vault. Thanks again to the folks who called.

Onward. Today’s post is about a project I started related to photojournalism but that never took off. For a long time, I’ve been frustrated by how hard it is to find interviews with news photographers talking about their work, their passions, and their struggles with photography. As a student, I’ve been fortunant enough to have some top-notch photographers take an interest in me and my friends, but I know not everyone has gotten that opportunity.

I also feel like the news photographer is a dying breed. In fifty years we will still have photographers doing news, but I think “newspaper photographers” are a breed of their own that is nearing extinction. So I started on a project to interview news photographers, past and present. The only person I ever interviewed was Andre Chung, who used to work at the Baltimore Sun (a big thanks to him for that too). After that, it just seemed like it didn’t really work out when I tried to schedule interviews (don’t get me started about how the NYT Photo Editor broke his appointment and never got back with me. I understand you’re busy, but just tell me that up front.) Now that I’m here in York (where there are two papers with about six staff photographers between them), I feel like I should give it another shot. Not only does York have some great news photographers, the whole region is crawling with them.

This is an ongoing process, sort of like an oral history of photojournalism. It’s the sort of thing I can do in every town that has a paper. And I think it’s really important, not only for historical purposes, but also for the few students like me who are trying to break into this dying field.

Anyway, here’s to reviving a dead project. (This reminded me I opened a Yuengling an hour ago and forgot about it. I think I will go drink it now. Cheers.)