Still, life.

I got my start taking pictures of people. My friends to be specific. I remember at the end of my high school senior-year year-long independent study in Photography declaring that I couldn't take a good picture of a tree because I needed an emotional connection in order to take a good picture. This was partly true, and I have set about trying to correct this by learning how to have an emotional connection with everything that comes before my lens (I have tried to take pictures without that spark and it still doesn't work). The other part of that truth was (and still is) that I take pictures to try and find my connection to the world. It was because Art offered me the promise of a way to bridge the gap between my heart and my head that I got hooked in the first place. Twenty year later and I am still hooked, and still trying to, what... make whole something that, I don't know, needs to be made whole?

Uta Barth "Untitled from ...and of time"

www.tfaoi.com/am/13am/13am245.jpg

From:
www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa239.htm

Stilleven

The more active part of the day commences with the process of moving the table from the garage/studio I have been shooting in back to the cheese hall for a new round of photographs in a desperate attempt to capture whatever it is that I am here to capture. The truth is I notice the light all day long sidling through its various postures and positions, occasionally revealing itself in a moment or two of unadorned beauty - streaming through the kitchen window to luxuriate some vegetables, sloping lazily through the window over the dining table in the late afternoon - that the idea of trying to capture the image of "things" almost makes me faint. It is as if I know what I am trying to show and I know that I can't show it by any other way and I know that trying to show it that way is almost guaranteed to be off the mark. Almost.

Aardbei

This time it was time for Jason and I to get some Ijs cream. I did spend the morning shooting photos in the Cheese Hall, but that isn't germane to the conversation at the moment. This time I was considering trying the Hazelnoot. Jason, given my ecstatic renditions of the virtues of their Aardbei (Strawberry) ice cream, goes for the Aardbei, and gets a double. He has heretofore been getting the Rum Raisin, which is referred to as Boer Joungers (Young Farmer's or BJ for short) based on a local bread of the same name. I guess it is in some way a reference to younger farmhands' proclivity for getting soused, although Rum historically has not been a regional specialty.

I got the Aardbei.

The only thing worse than being talked about

Today a reporter for the largest newspaper in the region came and interviewed Monique. Afterwards, I am sure she would have loved to talk to Jason, or Mary, or me about what we are working on, what we think of the Netherlands or why we came all this way to Kolderveen (pop. 200), but is seems that she was late for another appointment. Maybe we will see her on Saturday, for the soup?

Later a young photographer came by and took pictures of Monique sitting on a wall in the Cheese Hall. Apparently he wasn't much interested in another set-up (or anything else for that matter) because he went away and came back with a different lens and asked Monique to sit in the same spot for even more photos. He gave her some helpful pointers, such as "look dreamy" or "look ambitious" or "look like you are excited that you are going to have another cup of coffee". Personally, I have never tried to give similar instructions to the people I have photographed, but maybe something is lost in the translation. After a cigarette and another phone call he came back to say that he didn't have to get to his next appointment for a little while. I continued to do what it was that I was doing when he showed up, which was taking photographs of things I have gathered here in the community, all laid out in (hopefully) interesting arrangements on a table in the Cheese Hall. After a while of studiously ignoring the fact that I existed and quite obviously not photographing anything but Monique in a stupid pose, he left.

On Monday a local TV crew is coming by, ostensibly because what is going on here is very interesting.