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Audience

End of the Season

Christmas Photos: Gifts

Christmas Photos: Moravian Star

My great grandfather on my dad's side was an English Moravian missionary and ran a mission in the hills of Jamaica. I never met him, and know little of the religion, except to recognize a few symbols:  the multi-fasceted star that hangs above doorways and the thin ginger cookies that appear at Christmas time. Someone once told me that Moravians are kind of a mash up of Presbyterians and Mennonites, and the faith is strongest in the Caribbean Islands. I keep my star up year round, but this afternoon, it caught my attention, glowing in the afternoon light.

Christmas Photos: How Not to Cut a Cake

This is what a cake looks like when cut using a spoon under intense pressure from 4 hungry and squawking children waiting to be fed their holiday dessert.

Law and Order Gets Me Through the Night on Best Indie Book List

Thanks to Larissa Leclair for putting my unbound book, Law and Order Gets Me Through the Night on her list of best indie and self published books of 2011. I'm excited and honored to be in the company of these great photographers and book artists.

http://www.larissaleclair.com/photography/2011/12/20/the-best-books-2011-self-published-indie-published/

Only the Sign

In the first half of the previous century, my great grandfather owned a textile mill outside of Spartanburg, SC, in a little community called Saxon.  He sold the mill and disappeared from the family long before I was born, but his story and the long shadow he cast over the next three generations is woven into my DNA. I have photographed Spartanburg and occasionally Saxon off and on for 20 years now, but the project has never gelled. I only know what I don't want to do - exclusively photograph abandoned places or stage reenactments. I have a stash of strong images but I'm searching for a new way to link all the parts together. 

My grandmother, the last and strongest tie to Spartanburg, passed away five years ago, and now there is no reason to go to Spartanburg, except to take pictures. This unresolved project is weighing on me, perhaps as I realize that I am likely at the half way point in my own life. Earlier this month I stopped at Saxon, now a dangerous place, and found this foreclosure sign rotting in what was once the yard of the "great house." After my grandfather sold the mill to a large textile company, that conglomerate also went out of business, as manufacturing jobs moved overseas.  The place has been in decline ever since. Last year the house was demolished. The mill can still be seen through a fence but is full of gaping holes where the looms once ran. I don't want 2012 to slip by without resolving this project - if family history can ever be resolved - maybe you just find a way to make peace with what you can't really understand.

House Next Door

Buy My Books

Okay, time for some shameless self promotion - yes, I have shied away from tooting my horn, my whole life, and also here on the blog, but today the indie Photobook Library run by the wonderful Larissa Leclair in Washington, DC - see some good things do come out of our nation's capital! - posted about my two unbound books, Law & Order Gets Me Through the Night and All's Fair, Volume One, on her site, http://www.indiephotobooklibrary.org.  

So what is so unusual about these books?  First of all they are the size of business cards and are unbound. If you were to buy one of the books, you would receive a box filled with 50 different images and an acrylic stand,  gathered together inside a sheer cloth bag. The idea is that whenever you want to see a fresh image, you pull a picture out of the box and display it on the stand. At any time, you are free to move onto the next image. So it's like buying a portfolio, as well as a book. And it fits in any home or office. Ginsu knife not included.

Law & Order Gets Me Through the Night is about my addiction to the show coupled with raging insomnia. Since I can't sleep, and I'm watching the show, I thought I might as well shoot it off my laptop. Plus, I get to engage in my fascination with Vincent d'Onofrio.

All's Fair features images from this very blog in the same format as Law & Order Gets Me Through the Night. 50 different photos, a tiny box, a tiny acrylic stand and a small cloth pouch, in which  to carry the book. 

Here are the images from Larissa's site. More pictures will be posted later.

Anticipating Year's End

I'm in that happy pre-Christmas time when the best is still ahead. The preparations, putting up the tree, stringing lights, school ending for a blissfully long break, the anticipation of being with family and friends - all this is yet to come.  Even as I put the tree up, I dread taking it down. Undecorating the house makes me unbearably sad. This year I plan on inviting friends over for wine and companionship as I break it all apart. Perhaps some super friend will organize the boxes to avoid the depressed junking of the ornaments that is sometimes the best I can do.

The larger issue is that another year is closing. I'll feel better in January when a fresh set of 12 months stretch ahead of me, even if it means I'm a year older - I'm a January baby.

I just read about a magazine that is looking for submissions around the theme of  the muse. The editors said to "think outside the box" on what a muse is. Well, time is my muse, in that its fleet footed ways keep me working and pushing. Of course, I can't catch it, but I keep swatting at it, ineffectually, maybe, but I'm still in the game.

A Beautiful Place to Read

I wish this old victorian house was mine, but this lovely spot for reading is in someone else's living room in Spartanburg, SC. A few years ago, I wandered through the home during a garden tour with my aunt and mother. There's something so magic about a cloche - almost like time itself is under the glass.