Tag Archives: modern

June 02, 2017 – Fire Dance

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A very healthy example of the ‘nouveau cirque’ movement includes a group here in Tucson called “Flam Chen,” a pyrotechnic theater company established in 1994. I was first exposed to them while making a documentary about a local piercing and tattoo organization while also assembling a thesis revolving around body-modification and Modern Primitive subculture.

In April 2010 the troupe performed at a locally famous tiki bar on Broadway, Kon Tiki (try the ‘scorpion bowl,’ guys – it’s serious). The torches in front of the establishment were lit for the first time in over twenty-five years and Flam Chen was the special guest to help commemorate the event.

relight

Today’s image is of a woman named Aurelia Cohen – a musician, dancer, choreographer, and aerial-silk artist, just to name a simple fraction of her talents. Physically disciplined with undeniable stage presence, chances are good that people don’t forget if/when they’re lucky enough to see her perform.

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January 27 – The Back Alley

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01-27 The Back Alley post“In any art, you don’t know in advance what you want to say – it’s revealed to you as you say it. That’s the difference between art and illustration.”

~Aaron Siskind

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The thing about photography I find so wonderful is that it affords me the opportunity to look through the viewfinder and examine the world in a way that we rarely do in our day-to-day lives. Yes, that’s a sizable blanket statement, I know. But it’s true. It’s the only thing in my life that forces me to slow everything down – my thoughts, my heart rate, my emotions. It’s my meditation. Several years ago, while I was still in college, I used to walk around Tucson by myself, camera in hand.

Rather than the staid art of street photography – or the grainy, black and white portraits we often associate with ‘street photography’ – I found myself investigating the spaces in-between buildings and behind them. I would go to the warehouse district, down to the railroad tracks, out to the tire yards. Traveling at the speed-of-car, everything around us is a blur, save for what’s in the windshield – which is usually just traffic. When conducting noble battle with other 45 mile-per-hour aluminum projectiles, it’s a good idea to keep one’s head in the game. But we miss out on an awful lot.

After a couple of my earliest urban walkabouts, certain visual themes began to surface. Without even thinking about it while I was photographing, it was clear looking at the proof-sheets that my eyes were drawn to right angles. All of the pictures were nearly abstract, minimalistic compositions of windows, doorways, power conduits & boxes, architectural features, concrete slabs, and corrugated metal. A photographic DeStijl quickly became my new visual language

I would set aside time between university lectures and my job at the photo lab just so I could pack my camera and head out on my bicycle in search of new textures and colors. I photographed scenes like the one above for about two years. I haven’t revisited them in a while, but I occasionally think about the series. It’s meaning is still elusive to me, but it continues to feel significant. In a way that I haven’t been able to articulate, some of these images are deeply moving to me.

I think it might be time to put a show together, to reexamine this series, and see if I can crack the code.
Wish me luck.

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