The images are the fruit of an undying hustle to learn.  I have a wanderlustnonstop and this results in books all over the crib, travels all over the globe, and thoughts all over the spectrum of topics that move us.  But then there’s the floe, that big chunk of ice that finds itself on cruise control in the seas.  To take life like that is an equal pleasure.  I take time to enjoy and consider…to process the hustle.  So: hustleandfloe.

The camera informs my work by its testimony.  It is, itself, a conversation with the nominal past - nominal because it's still here - and the present.  As such, it is a deeper testimony on our relationship with technology.  Most often, we embrace a new technology not because we've exhausted the old, but rather because we simply want something new.  What is the cost of that? 

...utility (it's not so mundane as the word promises)

In the most basic sense as we leave behind new uses for what we consider to be old.  that may be defined as waste.  This is not a condemnation since the "old" moment is usually an obvious one in terms of the primary utility.  So, let's keep exploring new technology.  But, once we arrive at that moment, a new journey should begin, starting with a new question. "What can I do with this old thing?" Now inspired, you ask, "What can make it new?" 

The easy thing (its original purpose) is now better accomplished with a new technology.  All good.  But why stop at the first utility.  Let's move to think.  Move toward art.  Move toward the sublime.   That's presumptious, unless we recognize art as the goal, not the assumed product.  Art is never guaranteed.  Would it surprise us if it were?  And who would claim appropriation of the sublime, anyway, versus simply pointing himself in that direction.  The poets have left us that: direction.

So, here we are, reexamining what we were originally trying to do - capture an image.  The new technology has exceeded the Brownie camera on multiple and specific dimensions, but we have to admit that as the subjective opinion that it is and now open up our first opinion of what picture-taking is.

What if I were to change my priorities, change what I wanted from captured images, change my process for capturing them?  Now, I am on track to discover what is unique to the instrument and unique to my perspective.  Don't take this as instruction.  Take it as me.

Now, in this context, as I bring the images that my eyes see and many that my eyes cannot see into the medium of photography, the Brownie camera and I can find our special thing.  For me, the night is the grandest appeal.  By definition, it creates secrets.  It also makes the inanimate breathe and move.

There are things that we're both uniquely dispositioned for that I cannot do with modern technology.  For the digital purist, do not take this as affront.  I said that "I" cannot do those things, not that they cannot be done.  The nearly completely manual nature of the instrument lets me judge light without the restriction of automated settings.  I feel the scene and count for exposure times.  I position the flat base of the camera at angles that it finds comfortable, if, in fact, sometimes difficult for me to hold perfectly still.

After three years of shooting nearly every day under those "constraints", I feel that I have come into the modern-day soul of this instrument.  The constraints and deficits can now be converted into the parameters between which I find infinity, exactly the same as the infinity between any two points on a line.  The end points are illusion that we have only recently resolved with the calculus.  All the better... Who would reach to be so esoteric as to say, "I have no boundaries."   I do.  And I don't.

So, that's the journey I'm on.  To learn. 

What I carry on that road is this person:  writer ( AdAge.com ), nostalgic basketball fiendishness that is made flesh like this: Throwback Basketball) , a runner who did this (2:54 personal best marathon) and who I am trying to catch up to again, an ugly surfer (on a 9'6"), a skateboard rider (on a dirtboard, rather), a fisherman (lakes, not oceans), a novice hiker, a brother to four fly dudes in Texas, and a grateful son. Thankful for I John 5:12 and Isaiah 51:12 - putting all my nonsense in perspective. (Kindly don't confuse this with the überPolitic of any of our media's self-proclaimed evangelicals.)  

I live in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, NY. (Doin' the bed-stuy can!) 

Respect.

Much peace.

hustleandfloe