Staring At the Sons

A son.

The holidays are officially over. We finished “taking down” the decorations and packing them into the storage room this past weekend. I also processed the last roll of black and white film from the portrait sessions with my sons the week of Thanksgiving. There may be a roll or two of color candids, aka happy snaps, which I made with a point-and-shoot camera, but these are the last “serious” photographs I made. Photography was definitely part of my overall enjoyment of the holiday. As I looked at the scans this morning, the experience was different. Their eyes were upon me.

A son.

I’m taking Nietzsche’s oft-quoted phrase out of its original context and meaning, but his phrase “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back” came to mind. I thought that if I looked at their portraits long enough, I would stare back at myself. Somehow. And I did. I certainly “see” myself in my sons in terms of the physical and personality. I am reminded of Chuck Palahniuk’s assertion that “Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary” balanced with Richard Avedon’s aphoristic “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.”

I hope that someday, somehow, even without me knowing it, they will stare at their own portraits and see me. “The Child,” after all, as observed by Wordsworth, “Is father of the Man”

For What It’s Worth

“There’s something happening here / But what it is ain’t exactly clear…”

Apologies to Steven Stills and Buffalo Springfield for co-opting their anti-war song, but this opening phrase often plays in my head in relation to any number of associations. I developed this roll of Kodak Double X a few weeks ago, then scanned it. This image was one that I singled out.

I was using my recently restored Nikon F2 Photomic, which I constantly point out has been in my camera bag since I purchased it used in 1978, and a new-to-me Nikkor 43-86mm f3.5 lens, gifted to me earlier this year. I do not typically shoot with a zoom and have, in fact, sold off two or three in recent years. It’s totally unreasonable, but I eschew zooms because prime lenses are supposedly “sharper,” which is an almost meaningless term in the age of pixel-pumping, and somehow “cheating” because you can…well, zoom. Rather than position yourself, Bresson-like, in the ideal position.

This type of snobbish constraint was something I picked up as a young autodidact from magazines and photojournalism student friends. It’s rubbish, but it clutters my head, nonetheless.

I was drawn to this scene because it was rich in content. There is, indeed, lots of “something happening here.” I set up the shot, guiltily using the zoom to frame the scene. I pressed the shutter once and felt satisfied, but before I pulled the camera from my face, I watched the person walk quickly into the lower right of the frame. Now there was something more happening here. I instinctively pressed the shutter again.

“BAM!” It was an Emeril moment.  

I am describing this image because, like the best dishes, it has layers of intentional content, from the tiger-stripe curtain to conquering ivy, to the damaged wheelbarrow (so much depends upon a wheelbarrow). This is not a swipe-type image. It is meant to be savored – compliments of the photographer.

The ‘Inherent’ Loneliness of Chairs and Trees

If a chair sits empty and isn’t photographed, was it ever really empty?” --John Bent

“Sitter” by CB Adams

 There’s a recent book about photographic “no-no’s” that I haven’t read, but I suspect it includes (or should include) two of my guilty pleasures: one my wife calls my Lonely Trees series, which includes one of my most-liked images ever, and the other, which I have borrowed the title for, Lonely Chairs. This latter series is less well-liked on the interwebs, as if this were any signifier of quality, but which I am drawn to repeatedly. I mostly keep such images to myself, this one notwithstanding.

This image, “Sitter” is the latest lonely chair I have put to film. I was driving down a St Louis street and my eye was drawn to the interplay of light and shadow – the light being especially pleasing, like a spotlight on the chair. By the time I found a parking space and metered the scene, clouds invaded overhead and I took waaaay too many shots before leaving.

I’m not sure why lonely chairs appeal to me, but I know they do to other photographers as well. I’ve seen countless empty chair images made everywhere from Parisian streetside cafes to junkyards. I find a melancholic resonance between lonely chairs and lonely trees, emphasis on lonely. That’s probably the appeal, the sad appeal.

“Sitter” was created with a Pentax SV, 50mm Takumar and Kodak Double X film.

Bogdanovichyssoise

“I love beautiful black-and-white movies…” – Peter Bogdanovich

By CB Adams

When I think of chemistry in terms of analogue, film-based photography, I first think of developer, stop bath, fixer, photo-flo, etc. But there is another “chemistry’ or reaction between photographer, camera, film, light and subject, as well as a less-definable emotional attraction, energy and woo-woo vibe.

I passed this structure for more than year before I brought a camera to make images of it. I don’t know why, nor do I want to know why, this small, garage-like building surrounded by arable fields attracted my attention, but it felt emotional, dark. I shuddered every time I passed it, like the old saying, “Someone just walked over my grave,” uttered after a shiver.

I often adhere to the “first thought, best thought” approach to things. My first thought was to stay off the private property and photograph the building from the roadside. This initial approach was to highlight the small window, just visible above the corn, and the horizontality of the roof. I was using a Tele Rolleiflex to make this image, and even without the chimping “advantage” offered by digital, I had the definite feeling that I hadn’t make the image I wanted, the one that drew me, beckoned me, into its energy. It was too “Children of the Corn.”

So I trespassed, as I often do. A “Private Property No Trespassing” sign is a welcome mat to me. Has been for years. I justified my trespass this time with, “Well, it’s only 30 feet or so from the road. I’m not trespassing that far.”

Clearly, “first thought, best thought” wasn’t working for me, so I shifted to Robert Capa’s maxing  “If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough,” which almost always serves my photographs well. I was using a tripod, and if you review the proof sheet you would see subsequent images you would see me inching (footing, actually) my way toward this structure. The final two images on the roll are my favorites.

The one I show here includes the out-of-focus corn, which has a creamy-dreamy cinematic glow to it, thanks to the Cinestill film, which is a cinema film. Hence the Bogdanovich quote above. This image has a “Last Picture Show” vibe to it, at least to me. The other image, which I’m holding for another time, is the same frame, a few feet closer, no corn. It has a different feel, almost winter-like and stark, like an Andrew Wyeth painting. Again, my vibe, not necessarily anyone else’s.

When a scene like this curls its come-hither finger at me, I obey. I try to make a photograph that is somehow true to the emotional resonance that my internal antenna is receiving. I feel like the little girl conversing with off-air television in “Poltergeist,” like challenged to make a cohesive image from the memory of that chaotic static. Yeah, it’s in there, but how to reveal it. I don’t question that need and can only make the best image I can and, if it passes my own muster, then I offer it to others.

Why I 'Toy' Around With My Photography

“My Bird Girl”

This is not the image in the Art Through the Lens show. It’s an “oldie but a goodie” from my catalog, taken with a Holga on cross-processed

I have a photograph included in the upcoming Art Through the Lens 2019 group exhibition at the Yeiser Art Center in Paducah, Kentucky. I was asked to provide an artist’s statement. This required me to consider — once again — why a good portion of my photographic endeavors involve shooting with plastic toy cameras and then developing and printing my negatives myself. As my relationship with these low-fi rascals continues to mature, so too does my ability to express (sometimes defend) my attraction to them.

Without further ado, here is my latest take on why I toy around with this sub-sub-sub-genre of photography (they asked for no more than 150 words, and that’s exactly what I provided, wordsmith that I am):

I shoot a range of film (and digital) formats from 4x5 to 35mm, yet images captured with plastic toy cameras – 120 format Holgas and Dianas in particular – comprise a significant portion of my portfolio. I am drawn to this low-fidelity, low-tech approach because of its reductionist nature – reduced sharpness, reduced aperture and shutter control, reduced predictability, to name a few. These constraints create boundaries within which I find a rich and rewarding opportunity to render the world. Like poets who work within a rigidly defined form, like haiku, shooting with toy cameras requires discipline while offering a liberating creative freedom. By doing less, these cameras and films challenge me to do more, from taking the image, to developing the film, archivally printing the negative on fiber-based paper in my darkroom, and even to matting and framing. The limits of toy cameras make me a better – and freer – artist and artisan.

Upon Achieving the Toy Camera Trifecta: What Now?

“Hanging Tree: Commandment,” shot with a Holga camera, was selected for the 2018 Somerville Toy Camera Festival at the Brickbottom Gallery in Boston.

By CB Adams, Qwerky Studio, a Language and Light Incubator

“Dream Deferred” is arguably Langston Hughes most famous poem. In it, he begins by asking, “What happens to a dream deferred?” and concludes with, “Or does it explode?” I have lately turned that poem upside down, wondering what happens when a dream is not deferred – delayed maybe, but finally achieved?

That’s because during the toy camera photography “season” that bridged 2018 and 2019, I had work chosen for all three of the top gallery shows dedicated to this lo-fi artform: Somerville Toy Camera Festival, Krappy Kamera and Plastic Fantastic. I would have loved to humble brag about being included in Rayko’s Annual International Juried Plastic Camera Show, but, alas, that show is now defunct as far as I know (plus, it would have ruined the alliteration of my clever Toy Camera Trifecta).

That Trifecta title is my own, and represents my 15-year journey into, through, and around the sub-sub-sub-genre of toy camera photography – the sometimes maligned, often ignored practice of creating the best possible images from the lowest quality lenses, or no lenses at all. Toy camera photography is a peculiar pursuit and yet it exerts a powerful pull on my imagination. In a photo world of repeatable quality and pixel perfection, toy cameras are the Forrest Gump of photography: you never know what you’re gonna get.

I embrace that unpredictability. I am inspired by it. I am driven by it. I am haunted by it.

I first encountered the toy camera photography world sitting in a shabby cubicle with a shitty company-provided desktop computer in Greenville, Texas. I was a consultant then, working on a month-long project for a client. We were given some down time one day, told we had to stay on premises in an airless, secured area but, since there wasn’t much for the team of consultants to do, we were free to putz around on the internet.

“Hanging Tree: Jack Ketch’s Shame,”shot with a Holga, was included in Soho Photo Gallery’s Krappy Kamera exhibition in New York City in 2019.

I don’t know how I found her, but I encountered some photos of a graveyard in New York City, taken by Holly Northrop, who worked at the Village Voice at the time. Those pictures grabbed me. I wanted more. And, I found them, including a trove of images made with something called a Holga, a camera unknown to me.

I was off to the races. From Northrop, I found the work of Michelle Bates and some dude in Kentucky who went by (and still does) the moniker Tread. These artists were followed thereafter by the likes of Jim Rohan, Jennifer Shaw, Warren Harold, and Nancy Rexroth. Unlike that quip from Harpo Marx about refusing “to join any club that would have me as a member,” I wanted in this club. I could “do” this club. But, from the start, I was unsure the Toy Camera Club would have me.

I bought a Holga 120N. I sent it to be “modded” by a guy who had a business called Holgamods. I devoured Bates’ book, Toying with Creativity, now in its second printing. I purchased 120 film, a format new to me, ‘cause I had always been a 35mm Nikon F2 Photomic sort of practitioner. I reentered photography after a 20-year hiatus from taking anything but family snapshots and party pics.

In the same way an alcoholic remembers that first drink, I remember opening the cheap box that held this cheap camera. I had done my research, but in reality, as I held that Holga for the first time, I could not envision how I could make the photographic art that I so admired by others. Driving home that doubt was all the fine work I found in the issues of the now-defunct Light Leaks magazine (oh, how I miss that publication!).

And I began to shoot. And shoot. And shoot. I traveled with my Holga to exotic locales where I worked as a consultant, places like Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Manhattan, Kansas, and I shot close to home. I had some early success. In fact, an image from one of the first rolls I ever shot with a Holga (maybe even the first) was chosen by none other than Michelle Bates for a show called “Unrefined Light: Images by Plastic Cameras and their Friends” at The Foundry Art Centre, located several blocks from my own home. My image shared a wall with two from my unknowing mentor Tread. Four other toy images were chosen for the “The Holga Show” at the Saans Gallery in Salt Lake City.

This early success was followed by several years of photographic desert-like hell. I submitted. I paid entry fees. I peddled my toy camera wares to any call for entry that seemed appropriate. I found no takers, except for a show at the Columbia (Missouri) Art League, which accepted an image I had made with a “frankencamera,” inspired by Jim Rohan, who had shared his design for modifying a German Isoly 120 camera with the flipped lens from a Holga. And the Somerville Toy Camera Festival included an image, too.

Those small successes were barely enough, but I kept shooting. I kept buying film. I kept paying labs, such as Richard Photo Lab and The Darkroom to develop and scan my film. I knew I was fortunate to have the means to pursue this expensive and seemingly quixotic endeavor.  Slowly, steadily, I began to have a body of toy camera work, though I was loath to allow myself to think of it as such.

Fast forward to last year. Somerville chose two of my prints, followed by Soho Photo Gallery’s Krappy Kamera, which accepted two prints (after a dozen years of submitting, on and off), and then Plastic Fantastic, which also chose two. In a strange sort of symmetry, the Krappy Kamera juror was Michelle Bates (who didn’t remember me from the “Unrefined Light” show those many years ago), and Plastic Fantastic, at Lightbox Gallery, chose a photograph I took while attending the Krappy Kamera opening earlier in the year.

And, though not part of my Toy Camera Trifecta, I am also proud to have had toy camera photographs accepted by some other galleries, including Art Saint Louis and the Saint Louis Artists’ Guild, during this period.

I wasn’t owed this success after so many years of trying, but I do feel a certain sort of vindication that my doggedness and dedication to this arcane form of photography has paid off. Yet, this is not a drop-the-mic moment. If anything, it is a challenge to not only make more work, but to make even better work, especially now that I have my own wet darkroom, a decent film scanner, and Lightroom software.

A dream achieve, for certain…until the next call for entry.

Oh, and by the way, with two photographs accepted into the 2019 Somerville Festival, I’m on my way to a Toy Camera Trifecta repeat. Or, perhaps after that, I’ll chase the Trifecta of Toy Camera Trifectas…

This year, “Prescription,” shot with a Holga, was included in the Plastic Fantastic exhibition at Lightbox Gallery in Astoria, Oregon. This photograph was shot in New York City while I was attending the opening of the Krappy Kamera exhibition.

When Good Enough Has To Be Good Enough

At the intersection of being a photographer and a father who photographs lies a shot like this.

When shooting a portrait, a photographer faces multiple challenges in terms of the craft of making a photo. When you add the challenges of shooting family in general and an unwilling subject in particular, things get interesting. When you add some additional elements such as a malfunctioning camera (in this case, a fussy Russian Kiev 88 and a film back that scratched the film the entire length of the right side of all frames) and poor lighting (in this case, slow shutter speed and wide-open aperture), things can get really interesting.

What happens when all of the above challenges converge? Well, I got this photo. There is much wrong with this shot, but it’s still a memory and moment that I cherish, despite the imperfections (not the least of which is a slight focus issue). And one of only two salvageable shots from the roll.

It may not be professional. It may not be great. Hell, it’s probably not even good. But it’s still a keeper. Warts and all. And, truth be told, I love the bokeh.

The Clarity and Charity of Time

I am not a patient person in general and definitely not a patient photographer. This is often at odds with the analogue, film-based photography that I practice. You might think that digital would be my thing, given my impatience. But no. I have to shoot old school and then practically run to the nearest darkroom.

Like Popeye, I am what I am. Yet, I am now involved in the long process of inputting, organizing and otherwise getting my photographic shit together while enjoying my new, custom-built computer, dedicated to my photo workflow. This means I have been viewing some long-forgotten scans. It’s been, well…eye-opening. It’s like I’m seeing some of this work with new eyes. And perhaps I am.

As I revisit this old work, new images now attract my attention. I still like most of the ones that originally got my juices going, but I’m finding some gems (to me, anyway) that have just as much merit and potential. I feel like a musician who is reinterpreting an old song. I’m thinking of my favorite version of Springsteen’s Born To Run; a very slow live version, not the album version. This is also like the advice that I received (and I still pass on to my writing students) about putting your piece of writing away in a drawer and then coming back days or weeks or even months — and it’s like you’re looking at something someone else wrote. Perhaps they (you) did.

This image is a case in point. I was shooting a light-leaky Agfa Isolette camera. Most of the 15 frames are shit. But a few from this sequence spark my imagination. This was lit with 100% golden-hour sunlight right in my own backyard. I think it has a David Lynchian quality.

Maybe I was channeling Lynch’s eye.

Monochrome Pentimento by CB Adams, Qwerky Photography.

A Shoe By the Door I Remember

And when she leaves I weep a little
And when she returns I weep a little
And when I weep I am little
And when I am little I am little
Again

.

I Ain't No Chimp

OK. We know that there's a term called “chimping” that describes the habit of taking a picture and then immediately going, “Oh, oh, oh,” like a chimp, while reviewing it on the camera’s LCD screen. I shoot some digital myself, but I don't ooo or ahhh, but I do get that kind of chimp face when reviewing a shot I just took. Can't seem to stop that habit.

On the other hand, there's no opportunity to chimp with a film camera. That's one of the aspects I love about shooting film. Delayed gratification -- that's good for most things except sex. Anyway, I knew this shot would be a keeper as I took it. Call it intuition. Call it 40+ years of experience. Call it luck or karma. But it felt good and right and exciting.

Anyone seen my banana?

Re:Framing Childhood

Post-funeral. Dismantling photos framed by her parents. Petals dropped from vase-full of memorial flowers. Trying on new frames. Her turn to define memories of childhood.