what you need to ignore for this to work

Posted on January 25, 2013 by greg

I keep seeing phenomenally stupid shit like this from Second Amendment absolutists. Hitler imposed gun control, then created a totalitarian state and killed everybody!! Obama wants to impose some gun control measures!! Obama and Hitler are exactly the same!!!

Let me just say I have nothing personal against stupid people. Some of my best friends are stupid. On occasion, I’ve been known to be stupid my ownself. But Jeebus on toast, guys, does anybody really need to be THIS stupid?

See, here’s the problem with the whole ‘Hitler imposed gun control’ meme. In order to make that claim, you have to ignore a LOT of the historical record. Document archives, contemporaneous newspaper articles, history books — you just have to ignore them. All of them. You have to ignore a buttload of stuff that happened even before Adolf Hitler came to power. And then you have to ignore what Hitler actually did. That’s a whole lot of serious ignoring.

For example, you have to ignore the basic fact that Germany lost World War One. The Great War. The War to End All Wars. You know…the war you saw in Season Two of Downton Abbey. You have to entirely ignore the fact that the Treaty of Versailles imposed strict limitations on the German military AND on the amounts and types of weapons that Germans could own, as well as regulating shooting clubs. To comply with that treaty, the post-war German government passed the Regulations on Weapons Ownership act, which declared:

“[A]ll firearms, as well as all kinds of firearms ammunition, are to be surrendered immediately.”

Got that? All firearms and all ammunition. Surrendered. Immediately. Now that’s some serious gun control, right there. But you have to ignore that for this ‘Obama is Hitler’ business to work.

A decade later, in 1928, some of those restrictions were eased. The German government passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition, which allowed German citizens to possess personal firearms. But they didn’t make it easy. You had to obtain a permit to own a gun. You had to obtain another permit to sell a gun. You had to have a different permit to carry the gun. And, of course, all of those guns had to be registered. But you have to ignore all of that, remember, if you want to buy the Obama = Hitler concept.

So there was all of that gun control, and Adolf Hitler had nothing to do with it. Hitler didn’t become Chancellor of Germany until 1933. Did he then impose stricter gun control? Nofuckingway. He relaxed them. Well, only for members of the Nazi Party, true. They no longer needed a permit to buy or carry a handgun. But it was the first step.

Hitler did nothing else for five years, then in 1938 the Nazis passed the German Weapons Act. Gun control, right? Nofuckingway. The new law eased gun restrictions even more. The law reduced the legal age for gun ownership from 20 to 18 years. It no longer required German citizens to obtain a permit to buy and possess rifles and shotguns. Permits to carry those weapons were extended from one to three years. All limits on the number of weapons or the amount of ammunition were eliminated. Firearms still had to be registered, but now any German citizen could get one. But you have to ignore all that, remember, to meet the ‘Obama and Hitler, brothers in gun control’ notion.

Later in 1938, the government enacted the Regulations Against Jews’ Possession of Weapons Act, which essentially prohibited Jews — even those who were citizens of Germany — from owning weapons. Yay, finally something Second Amendment absolutists don’t have to ignore. Gun control!

Of course, they still have to ignore the fact that by that time Jews were also prohibited from being employed by the government, from practicing law, from practicing medicine on Gentiles, from teaching, from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of ‘German or German-related blood,’ from holding public office, from serving in the military, from voting, from being citizens. Not to mention the fact that Jews were required to carry special Jewish identity cards and wear yellow stars on their clothing. Denying them access to firearms was just one of the rights Jews were denied. That stuff, you have to ignore in order to play ‘Obama, Hitler — what’s the difference?’.

Second Amendment absolutists would have you ignore the historical record and believe Adolf Hitler imposed strict gun control on the German citizenry. They’d have you believe Hitler was able to become the supreme leader of Germany because the populace had been disarmed. They’d have you believe that if the people of Germany had been armed, the Holocaust would never have happened.

That’s complete and utter bullshit. Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader of Germany because the German people adored him and elected him. He didn’t slaughter millions of innocent people because they were unarmed; he slaughtered them because the citizenry allowed him to do it. And while Hitler did forbid Jews and communists and Romani people from owning weapons, that was just one of the human rights they were deprived — all with the consent of the people.

But you need to ignore all that in order to accept Obama as Hitler.

To compare President Obama’s small, sensible steps toward some minimal firearm safety legislation to Hitler’s practices isn’t just offensive, it’s profoundly stupid. It’s stupid on several levels. And somewhere around the lowest level of stupid, you find the folks who aren’t even able to keep their totalitarian dictatorships straight. Like in the poster above. Obama as a Sturmabteilung brownshirt along with a faux Chinese font intended to be suggestive of Maoist Marxist-Leninism? Really?

For fucks sake, people, a little totalitarian consistency — is that really too much to ask? There’s got to be a limit to how much you can expect people to ignore.

in which i answer a question about photo projects

Posted on January 23, 2013 by greg

Because I’m the Managing Editor of Utata.org, I get a hefty chunk of photography-related email. Most of it has to do with photography exhibitions, or photography books, or questions about Utata photo projects. Relatively little of my email deals with my own views on photography. But a few days ago I got an email that included the following questions:

I guess what I’m asking is how do you develop a personal photography project? Do you just pick a thing and start taking picture of it? Do you make up rules or guidelines before you start? How do you start a photography project?

I started to write back and basically say ‘Dude, I don’t have a clue how to start a project.’ But that sounded pretty stupid. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I must have some vague notion of how to go about it. I mean, I’ve done a number of photo projects. They couldn’t have all happened by accident. Could they?

So over the last few days I’ve found myself sporadically thinking about projects. This is what I discovered: each of the three projects I’ve included on this site (I have other photo projects; I just haven’t published them here) began in a different way. And since I do not want to write another post about guns, I’ve decided to write something about each of those three projects.

later i saw a red-haired woman in a blue sundress

I’m going to begin with the Traffic Signals series, because it’s the simplest. Well, that’s not true — the Larking About in Alleys series is actually the simplest. But Traffic Signals is the oldest of the three projects. And, of course, I just checked and found that Faux Life is older by a year. But fuck it, I’m going to talk about Traffic Signals anyway.

The project as it exists now actually began with a different project. The Utata Storytellers Project of 2009 required us to make up to six photographs in which we would relate a story. We were only allowed a maximum of 35 words per photo. I kicked around a number of ideas for the gig, but came across my final project idea rather by accident.

the unquiet sky, shy as an alligator

I was standing at a crosswalk with some other pedestrians. There was a buzzing sound coming from the traffic signal. That buzzing ceased (or at least reduced in volume) when the light changed and we were allowed to cross the street. It struck me as odd and more than a little funny. It was as if the traffic signal was also sending out audible cues.

So I concocted a little talein which a person believed he was being given messages through the traffic lights and pedestrian signals. It’s called After the Bombs Dropped. For the photographs, I used an app called Poladroid, which mimics Polaroid photography. I thought it added a more authentic feel to the story.

When the project was finished, I found I was still intrigued by traffic signals. I was fascinated by the fact that so many people — both drivers and pedestrians — obeyed them, even when there wasn’t any traffic on the streets. And yet even though they obeyed the signals, people never really looked at them. And they were everywhere. Everywhere.

So I kept photographing them. On the set in my flickr photostream, I continue to use the Poladroid app for the images. That aesthetic still appeals to me. But for my personal files (and here on this site) I use the app but dispense with the faux Polaroid border — primarily because the border looks goofy here. (It may look goofy on flickr as well, but hey — that’s flickr.)

restless

I like to think the series is deceptively simple. As I said, traffic signals are everywhere. But while they’re ubiquitous, they’re not necessarily visually interesting. Most aren’t.

I’ve come to appreciate how difficult it is to photograph traffic signals in a way that creates a sense of drama. It’s not about documenting traffic signals; it’s about imparting a sense of tension within the frame.

it was a mistake to call her

I’m not always successful. But the challenge keeps me interested in the project. It also, I have to confess, annoys anybody I’m in a car with when I insist they either stop the vehicle or let me out and drive around the block until I get the photo.

It’s not quite an obsession, but it has an obsessive component to it. And happily the world is full of traffic signals, so it’s unlikely I’ll run out of material.

a quick response…

Posted on January 21, 2013 by greg

…to the guy (I assume it’s a guy) who sent me an email me saying

[T]here’s nothing paranoid about standing up against tyranny. obama is paranoid about an armed citizenry and wants us disarmed.

Dude, look up ‘tyranny’ in the dictionary. The fact that you can, without fear of reprisal, publicly call the President of the United States a tyrant is confirmation that you’re NOT living under tyranny. The fact that on Gun Appreciation Day groups of people all over the United States were able to peaceably assemble in public and openly denounce the elected leader of the nation in the most objectionable terms is a testament to the fact that you’re not living under tyranny.

The fact that THIS guy is still free to walk the streets and continue to post videos and own firearms (even if he’s not legally allowed to carry them concealed at the moment) is verification that you’re not living under tyranny.

And another thing — the fact that you think you’re living under tyranny is evidence that you’re paranoid.

paranoia and romantic defiance

Posted on January 20, 2013 by greg

It was an odd day, to be sure. It certainly highlighted the centrality of guns in the minds of many US citizens. Even the name of the event — Gun Appreciation Day — struck a strange chord. These are the folks who tell us guns are tools — and you can’t blame the tool, they say, for how a person uses it. But we’ve never had a Drill Press Appreciation Day, or a Chainsaws Across America rally. The name itself is evidence that guns are different. They’re not just tools. Not even close.

My cousin and I attended the local Gun Appreciation Day event, which was held on the grounds of the State Capitol building. We arrived about half an hour early and joined the crowd that had already gathered. It wasn’t quite what we’d expected — mostly white, middle-class families with young kids. Even more surprising, the gender distribution was about equally divided — nearly as many women as men. Everybody was dressed neatly in a style I think of as ‘conservative casual.’

It was the Pro-Life rally demonstrating on the anniversary of the passage of Roe v. Wade. The Pro-gun rally was a wee bit farther away, on a different terrace.

There was no crowd at the pro-gun rally — not at first. There were a few men sort of scattered about the area, standing alone or in pairs. I wandered around until I found one of the event organizers, who pointed out the designated assembly spot. I then played border collie for a bit, herding some of the early arrivals to the rally point.

A sizable crowd did eventually gather. I estimated the crowd to be maybe three hundred people. The organizers have claimed an attendance of over six hundred. Maybe more showed up after I left.

These were the people I’d been expecting to find at Gun Appreciation Day. Almost exclusively male, almost exclusively white (though to be fair, this is Iowa — so ‘almost exclusively white’ is sort of redundant). Lots of camouflage jackets, lots of ball caps with NRA logos or the icons of sports teams. Lots of beards. Lots of stoic faces. Lots of flags. Several American flags, a scattering of Naval jacks, and lots of Gadsden flags (the yellow Don’t Tread on Me flag designed during the American Revolution by Christopher Gadsden).

For the most part, people were awfully quiet waiting for the rally to begin. These were the sort of men who are reluctant to start a conversation with another guy — a guy they don’t know. Once you got them talking, though, they were uniformly cheerful and friendly. In a way, these guys weren’t very different from, say, collectors of Beanie Babies or Star Trek memorabilia. If you engaged them in a conversation about guns, they were positively chatty. At the merest mention of black powder muzzle loaders or the relative merits of a 16 inch upper barrel receiver for an AR-15, these guys would happily natter away for hours.

You expect peculiarities at any gathering of people with esoteric interests. On one level, these guys were no more eccentric than a gathering of the Society for Creative Anachronism or the Baker Street Irregulars. On another level, of course, these folks are radically different. And that difference, in my opinion, lies in a strange mixture of paranoia and romanticism.

From the comments I heard from the people in the crowd, and from the speeches given by the organizers, it seems clear many of these folks are driven in large measure by the romantic mythos of the ‘frontiersman.’ The mythos is rather contradictory — it involves a lone man, but one with a family that requires protection from savages. It’s all about self-sufficiency, but self-sufficiency within a network of similar ‘lone men with families’ who all bond together in times of need.

In this mythos, the frontiersman acts as both a stepping-stone and a bulwark between the wilderness and civilization. The uncivilized frontier is dark and full of danger, but the frontiersman manfully shoulders the burden of protecting civilization while being partially shunned by it. Whether it’s Natty Bumppo in The Last of the Mohicans or Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings or the Jack Nicholson character in A Few Good Men, the frontiersman stands at the border of a dangerous world and defends those who can’t or won’t defend themselves — women, children, and men who aren’t suited or capable of doing a man’s job.

There’s also the romance of defiance at work here. The concept of standing up against tyranny is very attractive, of course. But the rallying cry of “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands” is only meaningful if somebody is actually trying to take your gun. If not, then it’s just sad and pathetic blustering.

There was a great deal of bluster in the speeches yesterday. There they stood, those gallant speakers, on the grounds of the State Capitol, having been issued a permit by the government to hold a rally in which they could give speeches describing their courageous stance against governmental tyranny. They were, in effect, exercising their Constitutional rights by freely and publicly stating they were being denied their Constitutional rights.

Although I’m convinced a deep strain of heroic romanticism influenced a lot of the folks at Gun Appreciation Day, there was also a more disturbing facet — paranoia. There was a pervasive sense of fear among many of these people. They seem to truly believe they are under attack — that somebody is actively seeking to do them harm, that somebody is out to get them in some way. There was a stone-solid conviction among the people at the rally that they absolutely needed multiple firearms with high capacity magazines to protect themselves from…well, from lots of things. Despite all their protestations of courage, the heart of their argument is grounded in fear.

They’re afraid somebody will attack them in their homes. Not just somebody, but several somebodies. One woman at the rally said limiting ammunition magazines to ten rounds would would make it difficult to defend her family against multiple intruders. They’re also afraid somebody will attack them on the street, so they need to be armed all the time.

They’re afraid in their homes, they’re afraid on the streets, and they’re afraid of their own government. Those fears seem primarily grounded in wild suppositions about what the government might do and incorrect information about what the government has actually done.

They carried signs proclaiming Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make armed revolution inevitable. They carried signs with fictional quotations by Thomas Jefferson: The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Paranoia combined with romantic defiance against a threat that doesn’t exist — it’s an unhealthy but intoxicating mix.

But perhaps the strangest thing about the day is this: I was certain that many of the people at the rally were carrying concealed weapons. The organizers think as many as half of the people there were armed. That’s probably an exaggeration, but even if only a quarter of them were carrying, that’s a LOT of guns.

And yet I didn’t feel particularly safe. To be fair, I didn’t feel particularly at risk either. I’m pretty sure, though, that if a shot was fired at that rally, an awful lot of innocent people would have been wounded — and possibly killed — in the chaos of the returning fire.

It was an odd but instructive day. I rather doubt I learned what the organizers of Gun Appreciation Day would have wanted me to learn, but I left the rally feeling all the more convinced of the need for sensible gun control legislation.

finger demons

Posted on January 18, 2013 by greg

“There is evil prowling in the world…”

Evil, you guys! Evil, right out there in the world, just a-prowling along, according to Rick Perry, the Republican Governor of Texas. You can be assured, Gov. Perry knows evil when he sees it, and he knows where it comes from: it comes from demons.

“Guns require a finger to pull the trigger. The sad young man who did that in Newtown was clearly haunted by demons.”

Demons, you guys! Demons in that kid’s trigger finger! Can you eradicate demons with laws? Why no, you cannot. But so long as demons inhabit the trigger fingers of weak and wicked people who have access to innocent firearms, something must be done. We cannot stand idly by and allow these horrific finger-related tragedies to continue. Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Republican, knows how to fight demons:

“Let us all return to our places of worship and pray for help. Above all, let us pray for our children.”

I know. I know you were expecting Gov. Rick Perry of Texas to take a more active stance against demonic-possessed trigger fingers. You were maybe expecting him to advocate amputation of the offending digit. So was I — I totally thought R. Perry, the elected Republican Governor of Texas, was going to be all “Off with their fingers!” But no. Texas Gov. Perry is taking a more modest, non-confrontational approach. We can pray the demons right out of those fingers. You know…to protect the children.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and his demon-free Republican finger protecting children

In related news, tomorrow is the First Annual Gun Appreciation Day. Oh, we’re happy to show how much we care about the victims of finger-demon violence, but Americans have been reluctant to demonstrate just how much we esteem and cherish guns. That ends tomorrow, you guys.

Some of you may feel it’s inappropriate to hold Gun Appreciation Day 48 hours before Martin Luther King Day. But Larry Ward, the singular genius behind Gun Appreciation Day, is convinced Dr. King would be totally honored by having his birthday associated with Gun Appreciation Day. In an interview on CNN, Ward (and I don’t know his political affiliation, but I’m willing to guess he’s a Republican — though he may not be from Texas) said this:

“I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.”

You guys, if he hadn’t been shot down in cold blood is there any doubt that Martin Luther King would agree that had slave-owners issued firearms to their slaves, then maybe slavery wouldn’t exist and lawdy I think I got stupider just writing that.

Larry Ward is one of the most passionate, if inarticulate, spokesmen for responsible gun ownership. In the following interview with a citizen-journalist, Ward argues:

“[W]e can’t stop them from grabbing a weapon and walking into a school or a private place or a post office or a mall.”

By ‘them’ Ward means felons and the mentally ill (and presumably people possessed by finger demons, though he failed to address that particular issue). And because we can’t stop them, there’s no point in passing legislation that might stop them. Obviously. Here’s the interview:

He’s pretty charismatic, that Larry Ward, isn’t he. You’re probably thinking tomorrow’s Gun Appreciation Day will be massively popular with everybody. But no! You guys, there are people out there who apparently don’t appreciate guns. Seriously, I’m not making that up. In fact, a group called United for Change USA has offered a petition to prevent Gun Appreciation Day from taking place. In their petition, they say:

This is an outrage and a slap in the face to Americans who value life and freedom!

Clearly, the best way to respond to a slap in the face to Americans who value life and freedom is to prevent people you disagree with from expressing their point of view.

I may attend the local Gun Appreciation Day event tomorrow. Not because I appreciate guns all that much, but because I appreciate free speech a lot. But first I’ll need to wrap my fingers in tin-foil dipped in holy water. I don’t want any pesky finger demons to disrupt my appreciation of guns.

by any means necessary

Posted on January 15, 2013 by greg

Tomorrow President Obama is supposed to announce his new gun policy proposals. Yesterday, Steve Stockman (why yes, he IS a Republican from Texas) objected to those new proposals — whatever they are.

Yes, you read that correctly. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is objecting to the proposals President Obama hasn’t yet made. I guess he doesn’t want to wait until the last minute to start his objecting. Texas Republican Steve Stockman is so incensed by the proposals the president hasn’t yet made that he’s threatening to defund the White House and to file articles of impeachment.

In his press release, Stockman says “The President’s actions are an existential threat to this nation.” He warns that he “will seek to thwart this action by any means necessary.”

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Jean Paul Sartre…sorry)

By any means necessary. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it. Sartre said it first, though I’m not sure if Sartre and Stockman would agree on gun control.

“I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.” — Jean Paul Sartre

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really into eradicating class. Just a guess on my part.

The phrase was repeated by Malcolm X, who oddly enough probably would agree with Stockman on gun control, though I doubt Stockman would be comfortable living next door to Malcolm X.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman (No, wait…that’s Malcolm X…sorry)

“We declare our right on this earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” — Malcolm X

Texas Republican Steve Stockman — probably not really interested in Malcolm X’s rights as a human being. Just a guess.

Malcolm wanted black folks to be armed. Probably to protect themselves from people like Texas Republican Steve Stockman. It was in response to the Black Panther Party acquiring military-style weapons and brandishing them in public that some of the most stringent gun control measures in modern U.S. history were passed. Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman in California, proposed legislation prohibiting the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. Republican Governor Ronald Reagan happily signed the law. Imagine a law like that being proposed today (or tomorrow, by President Obama).

Texas Republican Steve Stockman probably thinks Don Mulford and Ronald Reagan were socialists from Kenya. And maybe gay. Just a guess on my part.

Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Texas Republican Steve Stockman wants to be very clear about the seriousness of the danger posed by President Obama’s yet-to-be-announced proposals:

“The President’s actions are not just an attack on the Constitution and a violation of his sworn oath of office – they are a direct attack on Americans that place all of us in danger.” — Texas Republican Steve Stockman

Sartre, Malcolm X, Texas Republican Steve Stockman. By any means necessary. Great minds think alike.

Phenomenally stupid minds also think alike. Did I mention that Steve Stockman is a Republican from Texas?

a trick of fog and mist

Posted on January 12, 2013 by greg

Fog. The weather forecast said — promised — there would be fog in the morning. So I arranged my schedule (okay, I don’t actually have anything even remotely resembling a schedule — but if I did, I’d have arranged it) so I could be downtown early in the morning. Because fog, right?

Here’s a meteorologically true thing: the only difference between fog and mist is their density as measured by the degree of visibility. They’re both just localized collections of water droplets suspended in the air. They’re essentially stratus clouds — flat, lazy, featureless clouds — hanging on at or just above ground level. Here’s the difference between fog and mist: if you can see for more than a kilometer, you’re in mist; if you can see less than a kilometer, you’re in fog.

waiting for the bus

I had both. Fog and mist. Most of the time there was a layer of fog about 10 to 20 meters above the ground, beneath which was mist. Sometimes the cloud would dip down and I was in fog; sometimes it lifted a wee bit and I was in mist.

It was very odd and strange, and even if it made photography confusing as hell, it made for an interesting walk. One moment visibility would be only a few hundred feet, the next you could see for a couple of block; one moment it was chilly and damp, and the next moment if was…well, it stayed chilly and damp, but the degree of chilliness and dampness shifted radically.

chill breeze by the river

I was on the street by around 6:30 in the morning. At that hour, there weren’t a lot of people about. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve held a straight job, and I’d forgotten the simple fact that most folks go to work by themselves. Aside from car-poolers and folks who take public transportation, people don’t generally go to work in groups. Almost everybody I saw that morning was alone. One solitary person, moving purposefully through the fog/mist. It made them all seem isolated.

heading for the diner

Isolated, but not unfriendly. I photographed several people as they walked toward me, and as they reached me I usually smiled and showed them their photo. Most of them paused long enough to admire themselves, make a joke, ask a question. The guy in the photograph below looked at his picture and said “That’s pretty good. But why did you take my picture?” I guess it was a good question because a very attractive young woman had been walking in front of him, and I didn’t shoot her photo. I said “Because you’re so purty.” He laughed, punched me gently in the arm, said “Fuck you,” and wandered off still laughing.

because you’re so purty

I know that right now you’re almost certainly wondering about the etymology of fog and mist, because that’s just the sort of person you are. And aren’t you in luck, because I can tell you there’s some uncertainty about the etymology of ‘fog’ but not about ‘mist.’ Most linguists suggest fog is related to the Dutch vocht and German feucht (which, if there is any justice in the world, has to be pronounced fucked). The origins of ‘mist,’ on the other hand, are pretty clear. It comes from the Old English term mist (what a shock), which apparently referred to a ‘dimness of eyesight.’ That Old English term is believed to derive from the Proto-Indo-European meigh which meant ‘to urinate’ (and no, I’m not making this up).

In photographic terms, this means if you’re shooting in fog or mist your autofocus is fucked, which could leave you pissed.

on court street

Here’s a photographically true thing: as atmospheric conditions, both fog and mist can be dense enough to bitch-slap most autofocus systems. One of the things I’ve come to rely on with my little Fujifilm X10 is its quick and accurate autofocus, and even though it tried valiantly, the X10 wasn’t always successful.

At first it was a tad frustrating when I chimped a photo and saw it wasn’t in focus. Then I reminded myself that sharpness is a bourgeois concept. It’s also a relative notion. If the photo shows what you want it to show, that’s all that counts. Besides, black-and-white photography is more about form and line and shape and geometry than about clarity. Fog and mist are made for b&w work.

old woman

At one point I saw this stooped figure approach, moving in a slow rolling sort of gait that was oddly gorilla-like. I shot the photo above and another, and waited for the person to walk into the patch of light at the corner. It turned out to be an old Slavic-looking woman, which left me in sort of a moral quandary. Not in regard to shooting her photo; that seemed immediately inappropriate. The quandary was whether or not I should offer to carry her bag. It didn’t look particularly heavy, but that wasn’t the issue. However, it seemed a rather impertinent offer; I know how my own mother would have reacted to that offer. “What…do I look too old to carry my own bags?”

So I lowered my camera and stood there, waiting and trying to decide what to do. She shuffled on by without even looking up. And I continued on my way.

outside the bail bond office

The fog started to lift pretty quickly after that. The X10’s autofocus breathed a sigh of relief and went back to work. There were more people on the street — some still making their way to work, some already working, some making deliveries, some just hanging out, some taking their dogs for their morning ‘walkies.’

The people with dogs were always willing to stop a moment and allow their dogs to be praised and admired. Here’s an odd thing: all of the dog-walkers I met that morning were happy to have their dogs photographed, but every single one of the people were reluctant to be photographed themselves.

in a hurry

Near the end of my walk I saw this woman in the photograph below standing along the promenade overlooking the riverwalk. I shot a couple frames of her standing there. She looked so sad and forlorn I felt I should speak to her. So I said “Excuse me?” and when she turned I told her I’d just taken her photograph and asked if she’d like to see it.

She smiled and said yes. When she saw it she laughed and said, “Oh good, you got the old lights on the bridge. I was just standing here admiring them.”

on the promenade

We chatted for maybe five minutes. She was just out taking a walk in the fog, and was as happy and cheerful as anybody I saw all morning. There was nothing the least bit sad or forlorn about her.

It was just another trick of the fog and mist.

in which i take another pointless walk

Posted on January 9, 2013 by greg

So I took a walk last Friday evening. Like most of my walks, there wasn’t any real plan or itinerary. I just start in a direction and wander. Sometimes I see interesting things; sometimes I don’t. I try not to expect too much, but I generally assume I’ll notice something intriguing along the way. And if I don’t, pffft. I had a nice walk anyway.

This walk led me first to the Pappajohn sculpture garden. This used to be a scruffy neighborhood filled with tire warehouses and muffler dealers and small sewing machine repair shops. Now it’s a four and a half acre park — not quite in the heart of downtown Des Moines, but close. Call it the left subclavian artery of downtown Des Moines.

At the bottom of the frame in the photograph above you can see Spider by Louise Bourgeois, which I’m told is a portrait of her mother. Go figure sculptors.

Butterfield bronze horses

I like modern art. Usually when you hear somebody say ‘I like modern art’ you can count on those four words being followed with a fifth: but. And that’s true this time. I like modern art, but I’m not always impressed by collections of modern art unless there’s some coherence to the collection. And that’s my problem with the Pappajohn sculpture park.

There’s a lot of wonderful work here. There’s an interesting De Kooning, a wonderfully weird pair of malformed heads by Ugo Rondinone, a couple of elegant and graceful bronze horses by Deborah Butterfield, and a cheerfully goofy latticework humanoind form by Jaume Plensa. A lot of good work. But there doesn’t seem to be anything to connect the sculptures thematically except that they’re modern.

It feels random, tossed together, aimless. Don’t get me wrong; I like the sculpture park. It just feels like a tax dodge.

Auto body service

A block or so away from the Pappajohn sculpture garden you can find the sort of businesses that used to inhabit that area. Small businesses surrounded by chain link fences topped with barbed wire, maybe patrolled by a beefy dog. Places like this auto-body shop. It’s not as pretty as the sculpture park, to be sure, but it’s a lot more consistent and internally coherent. Everything here feels like it belongs; the sculpture garden feels like it was placed there.

Give it another thirty or forty years and the Pappajohn garden will probably feel more organic. Probably. Maybe.

The walk ended near St. Ambrose Cathedral, where they were holding evening services. The only thing the cathedral has in common with the body shop is that they both feel natural and authentic where they are. St. Ambrose has been around for more than a century and a half. It began as a log hut, dedicated to St. Ambrose because of his tireless work against the Arian heresy (and our boy Ambrose must have been pretty effective because I doubt if many people have ever heard of the Arian heresy these days).

St. Ambrose cathedral

It was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. I was determined to learn what I could about the Arian heresy when I got home. But after about fifteen minutes of reading about the internecine squabbles of 4th century Christians over whether or not Jesus had an existence before he was born, I decided to have a beer and watch television.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job