“Current mood 171025”

I appreciate that it takes time to get film processed.  I need that time, I’ve realized.  In fact I think I actually need more time than just a week or two to feel comfortable.  Don’t get me wrong, it would be nice to be able to see the images I make right after I make them but I’ve come to understand that I need that time to become detached from the images I make.  I need that time to become objective about the edits that I make because after some time, there are images that I thought were amazing that are actually crap and honestly vice-versa.    

Sometimes there are images which I just can’t place–where the elements all seem aligned, but something’s still not right.  Those images don’t get rejected, they just sit there and wait for me to call upon them later when I’m in a similar head space to when I made the image in the first place.

That shit can take some time.  I’m constantly inspired by the images made by the artists I follow and by the visual stimulus we are all taking in at a million-bytes-per-second.  Either of these sources of inspiration have enough gravitational pull to shift my visual compass but both acting simultaneously is like Chuck Norris fighting Mr. T.  

Which brings me to this image.  Last night AM and I went to the movies.  It turns out we’ve been together for 19 years, love you baby.  After fifteen minutes my mind had melted–the film was so beautiful and horrible and amazing and depressing all at the same time.  My ears were ringing from the sheer volume of the sound design and there were the moments where the low frequency was so low it felt like the air was being sucked out of the room.  But what really got me was the superbly considered and rendered duality to the visuals.  Duality was one of the main themes so it was fully represented in every aspect of the film, but that dance of opposing visual dichotomies spun my compass right round baby right round and I walked out of the theatre damn near in heat.  

This morning an artist whom I haven’t spoken to in a while told me he missed something in my work.  There was an edge in some of my earlier images that he thought I had rounded-off a little to much.  It’s not like my work has ever been super edgy, but I think I know what he meant.  It’s like I’ve gone from “PG-13” to “G”… a strong “G” or maybe a “PG-.”  It caught me a little off-gaurd but at the same time not.  But that comment together with the experience from last night’s film swayed me.  As I looked though my images tonight, everything felt a bit Mickey Mouse and I found myself being drawn to grittier contrasts and harder geometric compositions.  

When I saw this image again it was a lighting bolt.  It feels perfect right now–my version of some stupid meme of an old, mangy dog that’s done a face-plant while crawling off a brown, faux-leather couch in the corner of someone’s mobile-home with the words “current mood” scribbled underneath it.    

Shot on my Leica M7, 35mm Cron on JCH Street Pan 400 pushed to 800 at the Icon.