satsuma's junkyard

VK

2011-10-29T11:19:00.001-05:00

days

2011-09-21T20:33:00.002-05:00

polar express

2011-07-24T06:22:00.002-05:00

radiance

2011-01-11T05:24:00.001-06:00

salon

2010-12-31T21:05:00.000-06:00

haiti:arrival

2010-12-25T14:24:00.010-06:00

neon sunday

2010-09-13T15:22:00.001-05:00

desperado junkyard

2010-07-05T10:42:00.000-05:00

chrome sequins

2010-07-05T10:29:00.002-05:00

sometimes when you love a junkyard, it loves you back

2010-06-24T10:49:00.001-05:00

rowing out tonight

2010-06-17T20:53:00.000-05:00

tulips

2010-05-20T19:31:00.001-05:00

sift

2010-05-20T19:27:00.001-05:00

NOSTRAND

2010-02-28T14:17:00.000-06:00

rims

2010-02-08T18:47:00.000-06:00

rooster

2010-02-08T18:30:00.003-06:00

graffiti garden

2009-11-18T16:38:00.002-06:00

twilight

2009-11-18T16:20:00.001-06:00

wonder wheel

2009-10-13T14:00:00.005-05:00

translation

2009-10-07T13:32:00.005-05:00

platform

2009-10-07T13:29:00.002-05:00

waiting by the sea

2009-07-14T21:25:00.001-05:00

hassan's bday

2009-07-09T20:58:00.000-05:00

a self that touches all edges

2009-07-06T15:46:00.001-05:00

seaside portraits

2009-07-06T14:53:00.002-05:00

jason black

2009-07-06T14:51:00.001-05:00

he is like the summer and the winter

2009-07-02T13:06:00.005-05:00

half of him is dark like the storm cloud. half of him is light like the sunshine.

thor beware

2009-06-22T15:09:00.000-05:00

return to the sea

2009-06-22T15:02:00.001-05:00

mattress

2009-06-22T11:01:00.002-05:00

coney #1

2009-06-19T12:33:00.002-05:00

tsunami of sleaze

2009-06-12T15:59:00.001-05:00

twenty-four seven radio

2009-06-12T15:51:00.005-05:00

corridor noir

2009-06-12T15:43:00.003-05:00

voodoo dolls

2009-05-13T18:48:00.006-05:00

taryn tulla

2009-04-28T14:47:00.006-05:00

staby

2009-04-07T21:14:00.003-05:00

fat baby

2009-04-06T14:14:00.003-05:00

lea and judah

2009-03-07T23:21:00.000-06:00

reeds

2009-03-02T12:52:00.002-06:00

los angeles

2009-03-02T12:47:00.002-06:00

r.v. park

2009-03-02T12:29:00.002-06:00

picnic

2009-03-01T14:03:00.001-06:00

montauk

2009-02-28T20:09:00.003-06:00

jules - love you!

2009-02-28T19:50:00.002-06:00

i heart l.e.s.

2009-02-02T14:13:00.002-06:00

obama

2009-01-21T14:49:00.005-06:00

elevated states

2009-01-21T14:30:00.005-06:00

mishka

2009-01-21T13:10:00.005-06:00

brighton beach

2009-01-21T13:06:00.006-06:00

zine library

2009-01-07T22:57:00.003-06:00

nesta jasper

2009-01-05T13:03:00.001-06:00

cap

2009-01-05T12:55:00.004-06:00

lachrymose angel

2008-12-06T11:26:00.000-06:00

bird vernacular

2008-12-06T08:03:00.003-06:00

mita's wedding

2008-12-06T07:15:00.004-06:00

the song inside

2008-12-06T07:08:00.002-06:00

out

2008-12-06T07:05:00.001-06:00

nepal flashback

2008-12-05T20:25:00.002-06:00

speedboat dreams & art pirates

2008-10-28T11:46:00.006-05:00

intergalactic weaver

2008-10-26T16:00:00.010-05:00

bittersweet symphony

2008-10-01T17:01:00.021-05:00

craig and vanessa

2008-09-22T19:28:00.006-05:00

tomorrow is their anniversary.

KOKI

2008-07-16T21:13:00.002-05:00

sea cave

2008-06-20T20:32:00.012-05:00

farewell

2008-06-08T23:42:00.003-05:00

tree painters

2008-06-08T23:36:00.004-05:00

red sands

2008-06-08T23:24:00.000-05:00

leaf

2008-06-08T23:22:00.002-05:00

maui

2008-06-08T23:07:00.002-05:00

crater

2008-06-04T21:55:00.004-05:00

mid-missouri high steppers

2008-05-10T18:42:00.001-05:00

practice

2008-05-07T19:28:00.001-05:00

school yard

2008-05-06T07:46:00.006-05:00

rhetoric

2008-05-03T11:33:00.005-05:00

Thursday night, I reread one of my favorite essay's, "A Worm from My Notebook," by Richard Selzer. He begins by breaking down the essentials of creative writing, and then goes on to show, in the remainder of the essay, just how it's done. The discussion in class on Friday about pinning the minor details of life down in words or images echoed Selzer's exposition on the subject: "There are no 'great' subjects for the creative writer; there are only the singular details of a single human life. Just as there are no great subjects, there are no limits to the imagination. Send it off, I would urge my students, to wander into the side trails, the humblest burrows to seek out the exceptional and the mysterious. A doctor/writer is especially blessed in that he walks about all day in a short story. There comes the moment when he is driven to snatch up a pencil and jot it down. Only he must take care that the pencil be in flames and that his fingers be burnt in the act."

julie at paquin towers

2008-04-30T21:26:00.002-05:00

the uniform project

2008-04-04T11:28:00.012-05:00

Being out at the Roots School is like stepping into a flash flood of personality and inspiration. Kids are avid and insatiable explorers of their worlds; they don't require sailing ships, jet planes, particle-accelerators, or dog teams to make discoveries. Really they don't need much, a notebook, a conversation, a field, an empty room nested in an afternoon will do. It's amazing to be around teenagers because their response mechanism hasn't be sedated yet; for them, beliefs still yield actions. May this always be the case.

After taking portraits, I recorded a short free-form interview with each participant about their take on what they were wearing and clothes in general. This soundslides it what came out of that day which was rather sunny, bright, and entertaining. The piece falls under an umbrella topic of uniforms that my picture story class is working on collectively.

field goal

2008-03-07T23:26:00.002-06:00

moon in branches

2008-03-04T18:32:00.004-06:00

the thief left it behind/the moon at my window - ryokan

uniforms

2008-03-04T16:46:00.021-06:00

Picture Story wants to explore the idea of uniforms collectively. While I lament that we jettisoned immigration/migration for uniforms, the new theme sparked the class's attention in a way the prior one hadn't. If the Missouri School of Journalism has no qualms about hanging up propaganda posters in the hallways for the U.S. border patrol that flash catch-phrases about patriotism, safety, and security underneath a photograph of mustachioed middle-aged white men on horses - in uniforms - maybe the general apathy that my class showed for pursuing immigration stories isn't all that surprising. I thought immigration would push us all out of our socio-economic comfort zones and make us traverse a subject that began with the arrival of the first colonists and that continues to pervade our society. Since the question of immigrant status is one of the prominent issues in the presidential race, it gives us even more reason to look at it through our lenses. But uniforms it is, so I'm headed towards high-stepper practice tomorrow and then to the fast-food strip as a plan b.

midwest

2008-03-01T17:59:00.002-06:00

twelve: the double-helix remix

2008-02-27T22:51:00.012-06:00

Here's a shuffle of shots but is there a dime store strand to hold the pearls together? Are there any pearls here? Is there too much redundancy or can you begin to hear a syncopated rhythm?

The story is approaching twelve. And twelve is an identity workshop, a green cast, the photo booth at the mall, tutoring your mom about myspace. I am planning to begin a parallel story on another twelve year old who goes to public school which might generate a narrative structure. These sketches of Madalyn give slightly different insights into the nuances of her character. I could use advice on how to prune or shape what has been collected so far.

Madalyn Grossman equates traditional school with worksheets and tension. At Roots, a self-directed learning environment, she designs her own day. Here Madalyn sings along to a song on her ipod into a hand-held soda bottle microphone in the Roots bio-diesel school bus.

Madalyn and Ella Ferris-Folkerts make an afternoon inspection of her cast that will be cut away in just a few more days. When Madalyn broke her arm her mother asked her if she wanted an ambulance to take her to the hospital. Madalyn said, “I got all serious and I said, ‘no, I can handle it’ and then I started screaming again. I got in the car and my mom drove really really fast to the emergency room.”

Madalyn hangs out with a cat while Eli takes a moment to say farewell on Mitchell on his final day of Roots. In the fall, a few of the boys at Roots constructed a tree fort and Madalyn, Rose, and Ella built a cat house made out of palates and plywood.

Madalyn, and Rose Bake ,left, and Allia Rahman, right, implement a strategy to crush the boys team during a morning of capture the flag

Rose, Madalyn, and Allia face off with Quanah Leija-Elias on the opposing team. The boundary is drawn; it’s girls against boys. Madalyn said, “They don’t let us play on their teams because they don’t think we’re fast enough. They say were slow runners and they don’t play by the rules.”

Tyler Thomas lurches away from the camera during capture the flag. “Kehynan and Tyler did really mean stuff to me and Rose so we have to have counseling meetings,” Madalyn said, “We had one this morning and they didn’t say a word. We sat there for five minutes waiting for an answer from them. They got their ipods out and basically weren’t respecting us as all.”

Madalyn and Ella Ferris-Folkerts work on math problems together. Slingshot jokes and personal news flashes prop up pensive stints of problem-solving while snow falls outside.

Madalyn and Isadora wait for their mother to order them sandwiches after dance class at the 9th Street Deli. Madalyn said her mother, “has a busy schedule so sometimes that catches up on us. We’ve done a lot together - more than my mom and my sister have - because my sister gets a lot more of the attention. Having all those experiences before she was born helps.”

Candy Grossman runs her hand though Madalyn’s hair before they leave for a dance class. “I’m her agent in way,” Madalyn said, “I like to organize her purse and organize her desk and manage her myspace page. She’s kind of clueless when it comes to myspace. She didn’t even know how to edit her profile. She knows how to do a lot of stuff on the computer that I don’t so I guess we’re even.”

madalyn

2008-02-19T17:03:00.006-06:00

capture the flag

2008-02-19T16:54:00.003-06:00

december: last day of roots

2008-02-19T15:32:00.007-06:00

For Eli, this really is his last day of roots. After the holidays, he moved to the south to live with his father.

five-points-of-view blueprint

2008-02-11T17:18:00.003-06:00

The reading from the Tao of Photography made me think about Jackson Pollack and how he broke away from the tradition of representational painting and headed into unknown territory. Abstract Expressionism shifted the focus away from the object- the painting - and back toward the act of painting. Pollack walked around his canvas which would have been as big as the tundra and sent paint flying out over it in much the same way a raincloud throws water out across fields and rooftops. Whether this solemn ceremony resonates with the viewer is uncertain; if anything reaches us in the gallery, then we should accept it as an incidental side-effect, an unintended repercussion of the act of art-making. I think, though, the intention is to transport that raw energy of creation into the object. However, the performative aspects of painting don’t always survive in the final document. There’s two sides to art (yes, exactly that number). One that wishes to unshackle itself from commodifacation, the product, and the outcome and the other that pants as it races to meet people, the kind that opens the front door and shouts something at you as you walk by on the sidewalk. I mean it tells you something you really want to know maybe about our spineless culture or our need to rehearse community even as it splinters and gets stuck under our fingernails.

But right now is a good time to pry ourselves away from our built-in tendencies to art direct our final image, and to dive as deep as we will allow ourselves into the act of making photographs.

So the reading made me ruminate more over how I will photograph the five points of view assignment and less about what I will photograph. The five points of view present me an opportunity to reconnect with my original desire to become a photographer when I identified with the camera as a tool of discovery. Hopefully, I will incorporate the tangible suggestions from the text: breaking rules/photography conventions, shifting perspectives, exaggerating depaysement, staying aware of juxtaposition, and even hideously under and overexposing frames.

Veering in and out of twenty-four hours, I will follow Madalyn Grossman, a twelve-year old who is in the image above singing her heart out in the Roots biodiesel school bus. She leads an unconventional life and is most articulate about who she is and what she believes. She is also serious about her dance studies and I haven’t been with her outside of the Roots alternative school yet. This assignment will give me a chance to follow her into other spaces in her life.

lost film

2008-02-09T15:26:00.000-06:00

George is making a documentary about Scott and his haphazard/hazardous traveling lost film fest. George likes coffee but Scott doesn't. In the meantime, we all wanted to replay this quote by Cartier-Bresson again and again: In a world that is buckling under the weight of profit making, that is overrun by the destructive sirens of Techno-science and the power-hunger of globalization - that new brand of slavery - beyond all that, Friendship exists, Love exists.

MAUI

2008-02-09T15:06:00.001-06:00

L.A.

2008-02-09T14:49:00.002-06:00

spiral bound

2008-02-01T10:51:00.001-06:00

Madalyn Grossman and Ella Ferris-Folkerts work on math problems at Roots Homeschool, an alternative learning habitat on the outskirts of Columbia. Slingshot jokes and personal news flashes prop up pensive stints of problem-solving while snow falls outside.

live windows

2007-12-10T02:02:00.001-06:00

snow urchins

2007-12-05T05:55:00.001-06:00

here's one from the summer.

morning on bernadette

2007-12-03T15:05:00.000-06:00

car lots at dawn, frosted intercoms
blue whale of a sky swims over the grid -
that putrid and pulchritudinous pavement oyster

in a crummy cathedral, prayers leak out of haggard bodies
zipped up in windbreakers, buttoned down in shirts
wrapped up in concerns, torn from loss, frayed with regrets

rosary prayers revamp the brokenness, the mess
and offer a brief respite from the routine of restlessness

homecoming at hickman high

2007-11-25T13:24:00.001-06:00

lynne & her girl, danny.

the drive home

2007-11-20T02:11:00.000-06:00

satellite tv

2007-11-20T02:10:00.000-06:00

and air conditioning.

mississippi

2007-11-17T21:40:00.000-06:00

Saint Lazaria

2007-09-02T17:45:00.000-05:00

Facing the open ocean on the far edge of Sitka Sound, St. Lazaria Island is a seabird magnet that is rarely visited by humans or other mammals due to its foreboding topography. The lack of predators makes it an ideal nesting grounds for fork-tail and Leach’s Storm-Petrels, tufted puffins, rhinoceros auklets, glaucous-winged gulls and pelagic cormorants to name some species that raise chicks there. Leslie Slater, a wildlife biologist for U.S. Fish & Wildlife, has studied nine sea bird species on the island over the past 14 years. Perennial monitoring of population trends, productivity patterns and diet samples may yield significant insights, Slater said. For example, when a seabird species begins to lay its eggs earlier and earlier over an extended period of time it may be an indicator of climate change.

Wildlife biologist Leslie Slater, right, and biological science volunteer Liz Goldsmith reach into a rhinoceros auklet burrow to retrieve the chick from its subterranean chamber. Slater and her work crew have implanted a handful of artificial burrows into the earth to more easily conduct their research and locate the chicks. The auklets generally return to the same burrow year after year and their underground lodgings can be quite extensive; with the longest one documented measuring about 20 feet in length. “They can interconnect with other burrows because they do some maintenance each year,” Slater said. “You can have storm-petrels or rhinoceros auklets using the same burrow but just different branches of it. Because they keep digging or because roots grow in and it changes the structure of the burrow,” Slater said.

Liz Goldsmith places a rhinoceros auklet chick into a sack to weigh it. After it hatches, the infant auklet will sit and wait for its parents to return with high-energy fish like sandlance or herring to feed it, Slater said. This routine runs most of the summer until the day the chick’s parents fail to return. Then it’s only a matter of time before hunger pushes the bewildered orphan out of the burrow and into the world.

Biological technician Kitty Roush, left, and biological services volunteer Liz Goldsmith, look through spotting scopes at the cliff face where the thick-billed murres raise their chicks in clefts in the rock. They keep track of eggs, as well as hatch- and jump-dates. Behind them is the remnant of an antenna that once transmitted footage from a live video-cam trained on the murre colony. It broadcast to a monitor in Harrigan Centennial Hall in Sitka for a handful of years, beginning in 2003. While visitors could gaze into the Anasazi style, cliff-dwelling habitat of the murres, it’s rumored it also drew in local fishermen who might glean a weather report for the conditions out near Cape Edgecombe. The biologists installed the camera to conduct research. “We wanted to see which fish were being brought to the chicks and that information just isn’t available anywhere else,” Slater said, “Although the camera would work for the incubation time, it would always break just before the eggs started hatching.” The camera has since fallen into disrepair and the funding for its’ upkeep has dried up.

The thick-billed murre colony balances on a precarious precipice above the Pacific. When it’s time for the murre chick to depart, the father calls up from the sea to encourage it to jump. When it finally leaps, either on its own accord or with a helpful nudge, a few other mature murres ferry down alongside it. After the chick lands, usually with a belly flop, the other murres fly back up to the colony leaving the youngling to swim out to sea with its’ father. They swim out to sea together won't return to St. Lazaria Island for at least two years.

One of the perks of living on St. Lazaria is getting to visit the island’s sea cave during a minus tide. From left, Liz Goldsmith, Kitty Roush, and Leslie Slater peer at the neon sea sponges, oozing urchins and studded starfish that coat the rocks. Working for the summer on St. Lazaria Island can be dreamlike. The island is a bird Mecca, almost holy. On clear starry nights, the researchers often choose to sleep outside where they can hear the dense serrated coos of the Storm Petrels who have returned from a day of fishing to feed their young. Earlier this summer, students from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Macaulay Library visited for the week to collect seabird audio. While their gatherings haven’t been posted yet, you can listen for free to the sounds of some other Leach’s Storm-Petrel using their search option at http://www.animalbehaviorarchive.org

A glaucous-winged gull soars on the perimeter of its’ colony past the rocks that thrust up from the center of St. Lazaria Island. Though St. Lazaria is only a 45-minute skiff ride from Sitka, the careening, constant cries of the birds, the radical rock formations, and the muscular ocean surge impregnate the island with a sense of remoteness and isolation.

The Helen T

2007-08-30T21:52:00.000-05:00

shelter

2007-08-30T21:39:00.000-05:00

David Randlett untangles cascading nasturtiums at the Driftwood Inn, where he is a maintenance employee in Juneau. Although he recently rented an apartment in town, he's holding off on moving until the weather turns. Randlett says he prefers staying out at the Thane Campground.
"I don't like living in a box," he said. "They want us in boxes."
When Randlett lived in Georgia, a code enforcement officer came by his campsite and asked him, "Why do you want to live like this?"
"Because I can see the deer in the morning, the different waves of birds who stop by to feed, and sit by the campfire and play guitar at night," Randlett said.
"You couldn't camp out for more than two weeks even on your own property and they were going to take my landlord to court," he said. "When they made me tear my camp down, it tore my heart out of me.
"And that's why I came to Alaska, but I'm finding out now it's not free. The wave of political correctness has finally hit Juneau."