Sullivan Road

(Taken March 1991 (I think); image © Hamish Reid).

Lots going on here: my house had been broken into and trashed at gunpoint a week or two earlier by an OPD tactical squad because my (then) landlord's son — a minor felon — had deliberately given them my address when he was arrested for stealing a car, and they hadn't bothered checking it; J. had dumped me in a brazen display of self-absorption and total lack of self-knowledge; and I was losing my nerve about staying in this country (I still only had a temporary visa, everything I'd come out here for had disappeared, the economy was going bad again, etc.). The soft apocalypse. Just The Usual...

A Road Trip

I recently drove to Meeker, Colorado, and back (a round trip about 2,500 miles with the route I took and all the side tracks I made). You can see some of the snapshots that resulted here on Flickr (or click on the image above). What a long strange trip it was… (OK, and really enjoyable).

Bridge

Apropos of nothing at all, a little video I did over the weekend (with a soundtrack by my friend Stephen M. Duffy):

The End Of The Day (North Berkeley BART)

One of the first digital photos I ever took (as opposed to digital images), made with my then brand-new Kodak DC290, probably sometime in 2000. I'm not one of those crusty old types who bemoans the passing of film — I couldn't wait for digital imaging to became available for people like me, and I've never looked back…. Suddenly (or at least slowly, over the succeeding few years), those sights and images I'd imagined became more attainable (ironically, this wasn't one of those images — it's just a snapshot I took to see how well it coped with low light). The same thing's been happening for me with video in the last few years, but that's another story.

La Jetée

Chris Marker's La Jetée: I don't know how many times I've seen this film, either on-screen or replayed in my mind. The first time, I sat enthralled in a small film history class late one wintry evening at the City University in London. Unlike the rest of the class, I'd come unprepared, and had no idea what to expect (I didn't even know we'd be seeing a film that evening). Everyone else sat there, getting their expectations confirmed; me, I sat there getting an education. An education in how to build a sense of movement through variably-paced episodic stillness, in the narrative strength of visual brevity, in the suggestive use of black and white textures and contrasts, of concise verbal narration (the half-understood French soundtrack played like a counterpoint in the back of my mind to the fugue on the screen), and, above all, in implication and indirection. The story — the paradox at the heart of the film — was the least of it (I'm always one to miss the point, and besides, you could see it coming from about five minutes into the film...). It's still the visual imagery and sequencing that haunts me all these years later. And I could never see Orly the same way again.

But it's funny how in the future we'll all look and dress like cute white 1960's Parisian art students.

Piling On

I'm never too sure what to make of this sight (under Interstate 880, near where I live in Oakland) when I wander past every few days….

Now And Then...

The New California Barber Shop and The House Of God Spiritual Temple, Dogtown, Oakland: 2002 (top), 2012 (bottom). Both buildings have been derelict now for maybe eight years; there was talk a few years ago that they were being renovated or replaced, but I guess the recession took care of that. In the meantime, they just fade away….

That Decisive Moment

Sometimes you just stumble out of a back alley looking for coffee, and there it is… (Kent Street, Sydney, 2011).

Triangles

I like this photo more than I should: the color's kind of wrong, and the overall effect isn't what I'd seen in my mind before I took it. And I don't generally do coy nudes like this, I do nakeds (most of which just aren't going to go up here, for one obvious reason or another).

But I like it because of who it is, because of what's behind the hands, and most of all I like it because that little triangle at the top neatly hints at that larger triangle those hands are hiding with their own triangle. And I like it because — despite all that — about half the people who see it on my studio wall don't "see" that anything's being hidden at all.

It wasn't planned that way, of course.

Drive-By: Oilfield

California, September / October 2011: Round Mountain Road, China Grade Loop, State Route 33, 7th Standard Road, Lost Hills Road.

Video by Hamish Reid, Oakland, CA, hamishreid.com
Soundtrack Copyright 2011 Stephen M. Duffy, Oakland, California.