Bird.

Here are some websites of her work. Please check her out, you will better understand how magical she is.

http://birdvision.weebly.com/

http://courtneykziegler.blogspot.com/

.hold me tight and think of home.

this is my best friend. she is my other half. my lobster. i haven't seen her in a million years. but when i did, we had adventures. we traveled around the world, upside down, to the moon, into stardust, and raped the city. sometimes without even leaving our rooms. one day she left and started to do all of these things in reality. and without me. after her departure we both struggled. there were phone calls at all hours of the morning. she was lonely in her new city. and i was mixed up and destructive in ours. she was starting new, and i was slipping into the cracks of old ways and new heartbreak. i grew weak without her strength, and let myself fall victim to people and emotions that i have always held no interest in before. she fell in love with someone new every day, and i got my heart broken by people i had known for too long. my last two years without her have been a very interesting period. i lost my spontaneity and ease. no longer would i dash around the city on adventures, turning my phone off and ignoring reality, with the comfort of her to guide us. i became conscious and paranoid. i had to be involved and connected to everyone and everything for fear of missing out. i allowed certain characters in my story to abuse me and control my movements and thoughts.

now i am here. two years later. i have broken free from these patterns and allowed myself to be free again. on my own, with my own two lobster claws. i miss my silly adventures with Bird, but now i am in the place to pick up with that again. the sense of freedom i have acquired is unexplainable. i am ready to confront aspects of my life that i was never prepared for before with ease and beauty. and she and i have begun to connect again.

i call this the dawn of my magical period.

in honor of this new period, i will be constructing a series of multimedia, montage, "film" stills combining a bit of her work, found art, and my photographs to document a few of our old adventures. i will be constructing scenes with our images that show the magic of our adventures using scans or different images of us. i will be including notes we wrote to each other, sound clips from songs we shared, hopefully sound clips of our conversations, and film clips that remind me of us. my ideas are somewhat scattered right now as this is the first time i have really worked out side of the dark room aesthetic to create something and i am not a huge fan of photoshop. i am basically flirting with a bunch of ideas right now. i will be scanning some artifacts today and see where it all leads me. it should end up like a story board of an animation, with some static film stills and audio tracks intermingled. stay tuned!

rocktober.

Today we took a visit to the Oakland museum for a private curator talk on the museum's photography collection. In the gallery of the f64 images, i decided it would be interesting to start a new show series called 1/1000. Or something. A new representation of contemporary themes in west coast photography. What themes and genres would be focused on? I would want it to be a serious survey of 20th century photography and its basic themes, much like the f64 group was focused on a square or rectangle format, mostly 8x10, black and white aesthetic that Photography historian Naomi Rosenblum describes as:

"...what surrounded them in such abundance: the landscape, the flourishing organic growth and the still viable rural life. Pointing their lenses at the kind of agrarian objects that had vanished from the artistic consciousness of many eastern urbanites - fence posts, barn roofs, and rusting farm implements - they treated these objects with the same sharp scrutiny as were latches and blast furnaces in the East. However, even in California, these themes look to a vanishing way of life, and the energy contained in the images derived in many instances from formal design rather than from the kind of intense belief in the future that had motivated easterners enamored of machine culture."

I think it could lead to a very interesting movement. I just strive to create more of a bond between photographers in the bay area, like the one that was evident in the early part of the century. I do worry how it would be received among critics and older photographers... food for thought!

I am positive, however, that such a survey would include many modern photographic trends that i am not particularly a fan of. ah well.

this is england.

11 am: Morning class is canceled, no where to be until 4. Molly has just made a large pot of coffee and cigarette butts from last night's party of three adorn every plate, ash tray, old cup and vase that has been abandoned within the last few days. records are homeless from one end of the room to the other, and molly, kevin, and i squeeze on the abused love seat built only for two. "I fucking love this movie." this is repeated all morning. It is not only beautiful and tragic, but it makes you want to be a lot of things. a little boy in rural england with silly sweaters and large trousers, for instance. something about this movie makes you want to fight, for everything and nothing in particular. it makes you want to riot in the streets, but also sing silly british songs and shoot tin cans in an empty field. Is it the sense of time and place that brings forth these conflicting emotions? the characters development from loneliness to a brotherhood that progresses into ugliness and loneliness once more? I am not sure, but I fucking love this movie.

scan-o-rama.

All my teachers are so against disorganization, but i like it. it makes every day a scavenger hunt! negatives are little presents in my giant claw machine of a life. here are a few of today's winnings...

the wild things are right outside your door.

it's like, when do you realize that a place ceased to be your home? maybe even a long time ago..

and maybe its time to find a new one?

or maybe you have but you don't know how to break it to yourself..