Category Archives: Image A Day – 2016

Starting on January 1st. 2016, I will be making at least one new photograph for every single day. I’m certainly not the first person to adopt this challenge, but I am looking forward to seeing what may come of it.

February 09 – Industry, Steel, And Aaron Siskind

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02-09 Industry post“Stone, steel, dominions pass,
Faith too, no wonder.
So leave alone the grass
That I am under.”

~A.E. Housman

– – –

I’m not sure who said it first, but it always stuck with me: there is nothing as unnatural as a perfectly straight line.

There’s actually some truth to this. Straight lines don’t really just occur in nature. Every natural process with the potential to create a straight line is subject to other processes that disrupt it. Theoretically, trees would grow straight up were they not subjected to wind, rain, gravity, uneven soil. If the distribution of air, sunlight, nutrients, gravity, and other factors were perfectly even, we would have straight-edge trees. These elements aren’t even, have never been even, cannot be even, and so they produce randomly mutated fractal patterns.

Interestingly, we humans now we live in environments wholly based on the straight edge; I-beams and milled lumber, the foundations of our homes, our streetlamps, television screens, windowpanes. There is no greater example that I can think of that represents the unbroken human endeavor to conquer nature.

Today’s photograph is how I present the tension between humankind and the natural world – steel beams, the skeletal structure of a half-complete hotel in Albuquerque. I made this image when I was in my “Aaron Siskind” period. It was my second or third year of college, and I refused to photograph anything other than sub-par replicas of his patented abstract style. For those of you unfamiliar with Siskind, he was a prolific American photographer considered to be closely involved with the Abstract Expressionist movement, whose works focused primarily on the details of nature and architecture. At his height in the 1950s, his works were often described as blurring the line between painting and photography – something I’m personally interested in as an artist.

I was working as a research assistant at The Center for Creative photography on starvation-level wages under the Federal Work-Study Program. At the time it didn’t bother me; access to so many wonderful, historically significant photographic prints and photographer archives was plenty enough for me. Hell, I considered it an honor (and still do).

Then, recently, I found a faded, crinkled pay stub in an old suitcase. Boy was I being robbed.
But that’s a story for another day.

They say that emulation is the greatest form of flattery. I hope Mr. Siskind was looking down on my  from high with his notoriously crooked smile. I learned a lot trying to copy the masters, and I believe this is how many artists begin their journey. Not from square-one, but on the shoulders of giants, borrowing their voice while we struggle to find our own.

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February 08 – Tap-Dancin’ Granny

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02-08 Granny postThe first several years I lived in Tucson, I lived right off of 4th Avenue. Close enough to walk, far enough away to have only had my car vandalized about a dozen times during my tenure,

Some of the grime has been polished off the 4th Avenue I remember from those days, but hey – nothing stays the same forever. Shirtless days on the front porch, cold beer in the summer, an embarrassing amount of hackysack. Brooklyn Pizza’s garlic knots and walks over to The Grill at three o’clock in the morning for some tots. The old underpass, bathed in dim yellow light, always wreaked of urine; most of the young ladies I knew – a generous portion of which who’d smack me across my smug face for referring to ’em as “ladies” – preferred not to walk through by their lonesome.

I magic-markered a piece of copy paper and thumb-tacked that sucker right by the exit to the one-room hovel of a guest house I lived in. “Do you have your camera?” was scrawled in smudged blue ink. That was my healthy little reminder every time I headed for the door. I hardly ever went anywhere without my camera, and only seemed to need it when I’d left it behind. This seems to always been case, even today.

I made it a habit to go down to the 4th Avenue Street Fair every autumn and every spring. It takes a certain kind of con-artist confidence to stick your lens in strangers’ faces, and the various street fairs, county fairs, political protests, and other events proved to be a healthy training ground for inexperienced street photographers like myself. Some people notice you and immediately ruin everything by smiling or posing.

Other people just have to common courtesy to threaten you with as ass kicking.

With enough experience, you learn how to lie your way out of sticky situations, charm your way through others, and – most importantly – make accurate snap judgments about the people around you.

The easiest photographs to make – and often the most fun – are of street performers. They’re used to being looked at, and usually like to dust-off their ‘A’ material when they see a camera watching. Something in my gut tells me that this woman may not be with us any longer. This photograph is somewhere in the neighborhood of ten years old, taken outside of Caruso’s Italian Restaurant on South 4th Avenue. A tap-dancing, smoking granny – how could one not take a photograph?

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February 07 – Changes In Perspective

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02-07 Tucson Underpass postThis Sunday’s photograph of the day is one of the older classics I’ve always loved and nobody else ever seemed interested in. That’s just one of the painful little things you have to get over when you’re an artist; almost every single painting or photograph that I love are the very paintings and photographs nobody seems to like. And those pieces that I’m not so sure about? The ones I even consider throwing away or deleting? Well, people tend to love those the most.

It’s just one of the ironies.

Nevertheless, I remember looking at the negatives, still dripping wet after being developed in my friend’s kitchen. These are Fujica Half images, so there were tons of exposures to look through. The composition of these really intrigued me. I had a small pile of proof prints eventually made, and that’s when I realized how I wanted to display these images. Thumbing through the proofs, I saw this image upside down, and it really intrigued me. It looked like an alien city or a futuristic concept.

I was reminded of the scene from Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s Eleven” where the fidgety tech character is in the labyrinthine hallways to seek out the server room and tap into the security camera output for the hotel. The room itself is flooded with blue neon light and looks incredibly alien – it turns out that the film’s location scout had looked at a photograph of a server room upside-down and though it looked neat. So the set was built, complete with neon lights coming from the floor, rather than from the ceiling.

Happy little accidents. It’s the simple things we don’t think of that can really influence our work. That’s why critique is important, and why artists like to bounce ideas off each other. Some small little detail may make all the difference.

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February 06 – Mission San Xavier del Bac

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02-06 San Xavier postOn the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, about ten miles south of downtown Tucson, rests “the pearl of the Sonoran desert.” San Xavier del Bac is a Spanish Catholic mission, erected between 1783-1797 near a natural water spring fed by the Santa Cruz River. It’s the oldest European structure in Arizona, considered by many to be one of the greatest specimens of Spanish Colonial architecture. The natural spring no longer exists, and this stretch of the Santa Cruz only runs for part of the year.

This is one of my favorite places in the world. There’s no way I could every take an original photograph of it – it has been photographed countless times by tourists, photo enthusiasts, and professionals. Most famously, Ansel Adams turned his lens to the beautiful structure; the images reside at The Center for Creative photography on the University of Arizona campus.

This particular image was made in the Spring of 2001. This is one of the earliest visit I’d made to San Xavier, although I would make the drive out on a regular basis during my tenure at the University of Arziona. Up on the hilltop, in the background, is where I would often sit and listen to the wind. It’s the most peaceful, magical place. A wonderful site to clear one’s head.

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February 05 – Craters In The Earth

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02-05 Meteor Crater postThe year was 2001 and I was a cocky asshole of a man. My girlfriend and I somehow conned her parents into lending their minivan to the enterprise and we lit-out for the western territories. I’d received an acceptance letter from the University of Arizona and I was ready to get the hell out of Kansas. Little did I know that attending the UofA would mean just about nothing, other than a pile of debt with a degree worth less than the scrap of parchment it was printed on.

But that’s a whole other story.

An 18-year-old version of me screamed down the highway in a soccer-mom van with a young slab of beautiful woman-flesh – and that’s all that mattered. We camped along the high desert, free spirits, and I will never forget the experience. Trading sex in a two-door coup for sex in a bulky 1970s-style canvas tent is probably one of the more sublime experiences this young man could have ever hoped for at the time.

We drove through Tucson and struck camp at Mount Lemon and surveyed the landscapes along the painted desert of Northern Arizona. It was the first time in my life I felt truly unfettered, rising in the morning to the sound of rushing creek water and a lovely ivory face beside me, cloaked in locks of streaming brown hair, lips upturned in a sly satisfied smile.

No drug can ever replace the experience of being eighteen years old and in love. Today’s photograph is a reminder of that innocent time; my woman by my side, unaware of the struggles ahead, I dialed the numbers in and pushed a button along the rim of the great meteor crater. This picture represents everything I held important from those lofty teenage years.

It was a good time, in tall grass and open sky. And I will take that pleasure with me into the earth.
When the time comes.

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February 04 – The Rialto Theater

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02-04 Rialto post

The Rialto Theater is one of the most recognizable buildings on Tucson’s most recognizable street. Situated on Congress Street across from the famous Hotel Congress, The Rialto opened its doors in 1922 with silent films and vaudeville performances.

I moved to Tucson in 2001. At the time, the University of Arizona was a construction zone, as was a great deal of University Boulevard. Congress Street felt like a ghost town during the daytime, but a handful of businesses kept the heart of downtown pumping – especially The Grill, which only recently closed its doors.

Paying the university a premium for the privilege to listen to jackhammers and to perpetually circumnavigate rent-a-fenced holes in the ground are but two of many disappointing experiences. The 24 hour availability of tater tots at The Grill and the wonderful performers that The Rialto attracted would be the other side of the coin; the downtown scene was among the greatest things I remember from those early college days.

Today’s ‘photograph of the day’ wasn’t made with a vintage camera like the others. It was made with what we’d consider a toy camera. Weighing in at only twelve ounces – the most forgiving weight of any camera – my first plastic “Holga” model camera cost about twenty bucks brand new. The unpredictable exposures, light leaks, and low-tech aesthetic these cameras produce have seen them grow in popularity over the past twenty years. When I last checked, the same model camera I’ve been shooting with costs somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty dollars.

Film isn’t dead. Neither are Daguerreotypes, for that matter. Historians, enthusiasts, and hobbyists will always keep these old methods alive. Thanks to Hollywood directors who prefer to shoot on film, popular low-tech products like the Holga (which attracts photo nerds like myself), and the infinite resource that is the internet, film will always be out there – even if it’s lost its relevance.

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February 03 – Drive Thru Liquor

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02-03 DriveThru Liquor post

“Film February” continues with this little gem, taken using another one of my handy-dandy vintage film cameras.

Folding cameras were a mid-century fad, dominating the post-war market. You had the style of accordion bellows, but in a handheld package for ease of use. These were imprecise cameras, to sum them up succinctly, but black and white film stocks had a lot of latitude. A poorly exposed negative could still yield a pretty decent print.

Learn more about the Sears & Roebuck Tower Series of cameras here.

Today’s photo of the day comes from Stone Avenue in downtown Tucson, across the street from the police station. I have no hard confirmation, but the rumor goes that Texas is responsible for the grand innovation known as the drive-through liquor store. The source of so many an absurd idea, Texas seems as good a candidate as any; I’m inclined to believe it. In any event, they’re scattered across the southwest like jacks.

This was the maiden voyage of my Tower ’52. I’m pretty sure that this is the very first exposure I made with the camera, which I’d purchased at an estate sale on Tucson’s east side (along with about two dozen other camera bodies). The compression plate is bent, so the film focus falls off on the left and right edges, but it’s this kind of imprecision that makes old cameras fun to work with. Unpredictable things happen, and you never know what the film is going to look like until you develop it.

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February 02 – Tucson Streetside

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02-02 DoubleFrame post

Monday saw the start of Film February – only film photographs for this month during the 2016 ‘Photo A Day’ project. I began with an image taken using one of my favorite vintage cameras from the 1960’s. I realized that my explanation about how the Fujica Half works might not be entirely coherent to those of you who aren’t as absurdly gear-headed as I am.

For more detailed specs, read about the Fujica Half here.

Today’s image is intended to illustrate a little more clearly what the Fujica Half accomplishes. Instead of one horizontal picture, like what you would get using a regular old 35mm film camera, the Fujica half makes a series of small vertical exposures – two exposures fit in the same space that one standard 35mm picture would go. It takes some getting used to; when you look through the viewfinder, the image plane is vertical. I can’t think of any other camera out there that operates like this.

These two images were taken a few years ago. I used to carry the Fujica Half everywhere I went because it was such a compact camera. In my free time, I would go on bike rides all over Tucson, looking for interesting things to photograph. If memory serves correctly, the palm tree is from the center median along Swan Road, just north of the Rillito River wash. The statue on the right is from Evergreen Cemetery, located near Oracle Road & Miracle Mile.

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February 01 – San Pedro Chapel

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02-01 San Pedro post

Film is not dead! It’s only kinda, sorta, half-way, a little bit, almost dead.

February over here at LenseBender Design is going to be the month of film. Every single day I’ll be contributing a new film-based photograph made exclusively with one of my vintage film cameras. I have an extensive collection of old cameras – and even some vintage film stock – so this should be a pretty fun ride.

The first photograph of the month was made using a little-known camera known as the Fujica Half. For more information on this nifty little hand-held miracle machine, you can read about it here.

The San Pedro Chapel (pictured above) is located in the historic Fort Lowell neighborhood near the Rillito River north of Tucson. The neighborhood is named after the military outpost that once stood nearby. Fort Lowell was an Army outpost active from 1873 to 1891 and was intentionally placed on the outskirts of Tucson at the confluence of the Tanque Verde and Pantano Creeks. Year-round water at the mouth of the Rillito River made this area prime real-estate for a camp.

Once the fort was decommissioned, the Department of the Interior put the fort’s lumber, windows, doors, and other salvageable items up for sale; the fort was quickly dismantled and hauled off. The old adobe structures were already disintegrating back into the desert by the turn of the Twentieth Century, when immigrant families from Sonora, Mexico began to settle into the territory.

The migrants occupied the remaining fort structures and replaced the missing windows, roofs, and doors. The enclave eventually became known as El Fuerte. The community mainly raised livestock and sold lumber to residents in the town of Tucson.

The community developed strong roots. They built new houses in the Sonora Ranch style, dug wells (finding water at less than thirty feet), built a school house, and established a cemetery and built a church. The first church on this site was just large enough for the Carmelite Fathers to stand in while serving mass; the congregation would gather under the mesquite trees outside.

A more permanent structure was built in either 1915 or 1917 (the records are not clear on this), but was destroyed by a tornado in 1929. The San Pedro Chapel that survives today was built directly over the ruins of the previous chapel in the Mission Revival Style and dedicated in 1932.

In the 1940s, as Tucson was growing, the Church and general store of the El Fuerte community made this area a de facto town center. Mexicans living in the east of the territory would travel to El Fuerte to attend mass & school as well as  enjoy family parties, baptisms, and other social events. The Chapel is still in use today, as it was then, for baptisms and weddings. At its height, the community was only about three-hundred people, and this building is one of the few reminders of what once existed here.

And I just happened to stumble across San Pedro Chapel on a bike ride.
Pretty darn neat.

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January 31 – Farm Country

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01-31 Kansas Barn post“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

~Henry David Thoreau

– – –

One of my occupations, of late, has involved walking around the city. During these urban hikes I keep a sharp eye out and I try to keep in mind my own individual, physical perspective. As a challenge to myself, I’ve been re-imagining the familiar neighborhoods, shopping centers, roadways, and walking paths. The city – the concrete and steel, the timber boxes of row houses and the carved-out subdivisions – has so thoroughly consumed all of the wild, untouched areas I grew up around, so I’ve been looking for spaces untouched by development.

This barn sits on the intersection of Interstate-435 and 87th Street Parkway. It is in the eye of the storm. To the right of this red barn, just off-camera, is the off-ramp and a line of cars waiting to merge onto 87th Street. Behind the barn is a field, probably two miles deep, before a thicket of housing, strip malls, and office buildings. Across the street from this barn is a McDonald’s, a Taco Bell, and a supermarket.

I don’t know the story behind this tract of land, but I’m guessing there’s a stubborn landowner who has refused generous offers on his property. I applaud such action, if only because I enjoy the basic concept of a person saying no to cold hard cash – it forces each of us to consider the possibility that there are indeed things more important than money.

I this small slice of untouched land. A little reminder of what the whole surrounding territory probably looked like a generation ago, before all of this “progress.”

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