Then...

<- Click here

We lugged all of that stuff from the college darkroom up on the second floor behind us. It was the middle of the night. See the big thing right in front of me? That's a Korean War aerial camera. My buddy Jim Furlong found it somewhere, got us some film and found a single engine, three seat plane with an overhead wing. We took the door on my side off so when the plane banked I could dangle right over the city held only by the seat belt. BTW, that monster camera didn't have a neck strap so I held onto it hard as the ground sped ay below.

We've got those odd expressions because we'd created a timer for the big ole 4X5 Speed Graphic camera. We just sat there waiting and waiting until PHWUMP! Flashbulbs popped all around us. Yep, flash bulbs! Funny, that one shot took all sorts of planning and set up (not to mention break down) and yet, who cared? We were young and time and muscle was what we had.

Jim Furlong was the most important photographer who ever lived. Because he infected me with a graphic obsession that's never gone away... that's why. I always wonder as my work comes together, what Jim will think. He created hurdles, and rewards.

Late last month Jim died. But I always wonder as a new image happens, "What will Jim think about that? You've got to have a standard, right?

Jim & Lenny and Battles

<- Click here

In 1962 the guy on the left up there was 26. His name? Jim Furlong. The other guy was also one of my college roommates, Len Freiberg. Like Lenny, I was twenty years old and behind the 4X5 Speed Graphic triggering the shutter. Jim wanted to comment on the idea of subjectivity. You know, how opinions are all a matter of perspective, where you stand, how you view stuff. How people can see the same thing and one guy comes away thinking, "Hey, nice picture of a couple of men commuting on the subway." But someone else goes, "Holy dung! Those characters are dangling from the ceiling!"

Jim kept coming up with ideas like that, and talking us into risking our asses to make them work. He's the guy who taught me photography. We spent a bazillion hours together in a small darkroom at King's College where we were, I guess, the photography departments for the school paper, the literary magazine, and the yearbook. We also freelanced and sold pix to the local papers and some mags.

Lenny sent me this diptych last night. The originals had faded and frankly I was pretty sloppy back then, losing the battle against the dust storm that swirled in that darkroom. It was nice to have a second shot at them after forty eight years. I'm a lot more meticulous now and I've scraped away most of the lint, motes, and dribble that covered the images like a Spring snow.

Judging by the St. Patrick's Day Sale in that paper, it was early Spring when we did this thing.So there was probably as much white stuff on the ground outside as I left on these pix. Still, try as I might I couldn't restore one aspect of that cool evening. There was no real way to bring Jim back. He died recently. At least his body did. But that smile... that cheer... those ideas and feelings... They're just as real as my memories of two friends dangling from that ceiling and the way we laughed and still do... all three of us. Len and I here and I'm sure Jim somewhere else.

If it's a battle between death and Jim's warmth... Death runs a poor second.

Furious Chance

<- Click here
The most intriguing images are mysteries. Um, well, to some degree every photo-based image is a mystery, since exposition is particularly difficult in the display of a frozen instant. But some are better at telling a story than others.

I enjoy the tack sharp images which make the subject crystal clear, but leave the meaning as elusive as Al Gore’s sex appeal, or as eloquence is to George Bush. I like the image which gives us a surface we can dive through… one which seems to be the sheen atop an ocean of meaning.

Photographic images seem to say,"Hey dummy, this is what reality must be like if it looked this way." But like this massive furious orange cement gorilla atop a five story building, you know that the image maker isn’t telling you everything. You know there’s a secret to this photograph… if it is a photograph... and if there ever was a monster beast high atop that ugly parapet on a day as clear as summer makes them.

But even if that image didn’t happen, we know that it is happening in that rectangle. So why? What reality is this image describing?

I tell you, the images we can make contain some puzzle piece each time we produce them. And there’s a satisfaction in solving those mysteries. That is if there are unique solutions. No… no… there are unique solutions, and each of us can create one.

There’s something predatory about image creation. We hunt for game, shoot it, then we do our own taxidermy. Images become trophies that represent something we accomplished: some thought or feeling which overwhelmed us. And we display them to tell what we concluded to others. To tell them of the possible fury which can lurk up above us, ready at any moment to smash down a massive fist, even in the brilliant sunlight of a perfect summer’s day.

Could it be that chance is a monster gorilla in an orange shirt?

Summer's End

<- Click here
On a back road on a stormy Fall morning, the first school bus comes at half-past daybreak.

---

Incidentally, the gremlins attacked me. I tried to set up a new AirPort Express to extend the reach of my Mac's AirPort Wi-Fi here in my city town house. I was hours on the phone with Mac. Nothing seemed to work. Only a half hour ago did we finally beat them off. So all I had time to prepare was this visual thought about the niche between Summer and Fall. The image I promised yesterday has arrived - take a look at the last posting. Sorry for the delay gang. Grumble....