City Textures - Rolls 130-132
In the same afterward that I quoted from a few blog posts ago, William Eggleston declared that "I am at war with the obvious." Entailed in this statement is an ambiguity about what he really means; necessarily, whatever seems to be the obvious interpretation of the phrase is the wrong one. It's also hard for me to understand what he was getting at because to me, his choice of subjects makes sense, and the same street scenes and rural landscapes that appeal to him capture my attention as well. But I think I get it, or at least have a way of interpreting the phrase to help describe my own process. When I consider what I am drawn to when approaching a new location for the first time, I see that I give as serious consideration to "boring" locations like random streets or run-down cemeteries as I do to places that the area might be known for. In South Bend the "obvious" location is Notre Dame, and my best photos from there (back when I was still shooting digital) are from a parking garage, no identifiers visible.* I believe that Eggleston's view is similar; he's not opposed to photographing well-known sights, but his lens is wide enough to take in both the profound and the mundane. In these next rolls of mine that I'll discuss, both of these aspects are present, but I tended toward the mundane a bit more, and to good success!
After my initial rush of photographing at the beginning of November, almost a whole week passed before I went out to shoot again. It was Friday once more, and Jesus had given me the recommendation to try photographing an old City-Wide Liquors sign in Mishawaka. After work I drove over to that area, proceeding to finish the whole roll there despite the gathering gloom and season-appropriate cold. For those reasons though, being rather unprepared for it to be as cold as it was, I didn't really have a great time, and I don't consider most of the photos taken there to be successful. However, as I was finding the last few compositions to take, I did shoot one solid photo right at the end of the roll. My subject is the reflection in a dark window, an unlit "open" sign hanging above the image of houses across the street. The scene is gloomy yet clear, and I love the cross on one of the houses (maybe it's actually a church?) that exists in conversation with the open sign, suggesting a line of thought about what kinds of places are open late or not, or possibly should be. The obvious photo here would have been one where the sign is lit, and at the time I wished that it was, but after looking it over more I agree with Jesus that it's a stronger image this way. He thinks that this would be a fitting closer to a future book of What My Left Hand is Doing, and I agree with him on this too; there's an air of finality about this photo that suits the closing of a project, even if it wasn't at the chronological end of it.
Untitled.
Whenever I have a shooting experience that isn't as great as I was hoping for, I become anxious to go out again and restore my good feelings about photography. For this reason I went out on the following Monday, taking my lunch break to find more photos in downtown South Bend. I had recently learned about Jacob Titus, a local entrepreneur and photographer whose business is located on Tutt Street, and so my natural reaction was to go there and photograph whatever I might discover. Two photos here present the same scene, an old brick building streaked with noon sunlight and soft shadows. While one portrays the whole environment and the other is a close up, the wide shot is the one that has a more Extraction-esque feel to it—every element of the photo exists on the same picture plane, and even things like the tree and the fence on the right feel of a piece with the main building. In the close-up, I focused on the interesting interplay between light and shadow and wood and brick, successfully emphasizing the varied textures of the wall. These two images demonstrate the different ways I may approach a subject, and in this case, I think both of them were the right choice!
Tutt Street, South Bend, Indiana.
Tutt Street, South Bend, Indiana.
I said earlier that, like Eggleston, I'll photograph whatever I encounter that draws my eye, whether or not it's something that others also find compelling. My next photo is actually one of these things that has been photographed already, as I know for sure that Jacob Titus has shot this scene before; despite this, I feel that I added something to the visual canon of this painted sign. Not unlike when I encountered the unlit open sign, my choice of lighting seems to be less than ideal, since a cloudy day would show the lettering of "Look Out for Trucks!" more than this harsh sunlight did.** But in this case I enjoy the way that the shadows interact with the wall and text, adding another graphical element to this composition that is already very sharp and delineated. The blue sky above and dark shadow of the road below also contribute to this strong graphic design quality, and I left that area very satisfied with what I had found!
Look Out for Trucks!—Tutt Street, South Bend, Indiana.
As I have been told many times in the past, I don't always have to travel far to find good photographs; I demonstrated this with the very first photo in What My Left Hand is Doing, which was taken in my lab space at Gene's. A couple of days after exploring Tutt Street I once again found a subject to capture at work, and I was drawn to the crumbling green wall of a back room in our building. I maybe shouldn't say green, or fully green, as the surface I focused on is a mottled assembly of red, yellow, some blue, the aforementioned green, and a large chunk of exposed gray cement. Honestly, it looks a little gross, and the lighting doesn't help the colors look any more appealing. But the variety of textures and shapes present in this composition—especially the two rectangles and pole giving some semblance of order to this smattering of holes and chips of paint—make this shot very interesting to me. Since taking this photo I have gone on to take more Extractions at Gene's, all on my phone, and I'm pleased that this shot opened up new avenues of abstraction here that I was able to pursue throughout this project.
Extraction—Gene’s Camera Store, South Bend, Indiana.
That evening, presented with the potential of a mostly unshot roll of film, I made my way to Sample Street to photograph the old Fun F/X sign, once again on the recommendation of Jesus. I honestly don't know how I had missed seeing this sign before, as I've been to Sample many times over the past few years, even shooting one of my early medium format photos at the blue building that appears in the background of this shot. I am happy, though, that I ended up here at this particular moment, as the dying embers of sunlight provide just the right amount of lighting for this scene, illuminating the very top of the sign. There's a good division in the composition between the still-bright sky and the ground that lies in shadow, reinforced by my subframing which places the sign inside of a box made by power lines and telephone poles. I enjoy the metaphor of the sun setting, possibly for the final time, on this old business, leaving behind a darkened shadow of what it used to be, caged by the growth around it. Although my fears that the sign would be torn down in the near future proved unfounded, I am no longer worried about that possibility, as I have recorded the scene to my satisfaction, preserving the beauty and the decay of my subject as I saw it!
Sample Street, South Bend, Indiana.
It always feels appropriate to end anything—a roll of film, a project, a blog post—on a sunset shot, allowing the subject matter to resonate with the feeling of bringing things to a close. In this post specifically we're back to where we started, finishing a roll at the end of the day. Here I have a pair of sunset photos to end with, representing again the artificial dichotomy of the fascinating and the mundane. In my wanderings after photographing the Fun F/X sign I encountered some graffiti on an overpass, a representation of a skull and cannon that would feel threatening if not for the smiley face painted on the wall below it. Despite the hints of urban decay, including not just the graffiti but the fenced-off sidewalk, the scene feels peaceful, out of direct contact with the sunlight that glows in the corner of the frame but informed by it nonetheless. Like the text on Tutt Street, I know that this graffiti has been of interest to other photographers in the area; further along the road, however, I found my final scene, one that I suspect I am unique in my appreciation for. Here the sunset that had been restrained to one corner in the previous shot bursts out and spreads across the entire top edge of the frame, providing a border of white that two telephone poles disappear into. In the middle of the photo is a bush turned fully red and yellow, surrounded by other grass, flowers, and piled leaves on the ground. This bush ties every element together—obviously, it represents the best and most interesting of the plants, but it also carries with it some of the fire of sunlight, bright against the rapidly-approaching dark. As one last metaphor, it reminds me that although the year was coming to a close, and winter was just around the corner, life remained both in my subjects and in my desire to go out and find more pieces of the Ordered World. I might have finally slowed down by this point, but I was still pushing forward, binding the obvious and non-obvious together into my particular vision, and that's all I want to do!
West South Street, South Bend, Indiana.
Untitled.
*With that said I do have, like every person who has ever shot in this area, a photo of one of Notre Dame's golden domes. Some things are just unavoidable, but I'm at least proud to say that I don't rely on their hype to be an interesting photographer.
**As I will write about in time, I did end up shooting a different version of this photo on a cloudy day several weeks later; I like that photo too, but I do feel that this first shot is the more interesting one.