More
Words...
In
1974 I put up a few images in a Buffalo coffee house and called
the collection Regressions. Mike Brill made a wonderful poster
and I invited friends to present themselves in a regression
mode. I did some quick and dirty nightclub style photos and
they are included now in the family section as images scanned
from the original negatives. Delightfully quirky then and
now. For anyone who missed the book: Janet’s homemade
dress is a regression equation.
For a
party in 1972 Mike showed up in a gladiator outfit he made
himself, and I threw together a mock grecian tunic. Together
we were ready to start a new department of classic studies,
and decided to make a poster in celebration. The result was
world famous, in a small world sort of way.
I am not
sure what year in the early ‘70s my nephew Andy had
his bar mitzvah, but I attended in Philadelphia and took a
few snapshots. His parents were divorced and there was no
photo of him with both parents. So when I scanned the negatives
I took a shot of his father and put it in with a frame of
him with his mother and brothers. Just another way of creating
a bullshit family.
Throughout
the ‘70s I visited Merida, Yucatan, Mexico and stayed
at a delightful local hotel, usually in the same room. I have
included a couple of images of hanging around the interior
courtyard, a feature that accounted for most of the hotel’s
charm. Once I stayed for a month, taking a few hours each
morning to write out longhand an essay on the Milgram experiments.
It was a dangerously romantic experience.
In addition
to a few restored images of friends from the distant past,
I added an image of myself with Helen Schlect, a Resurrection
House volunteer with whom I worked for about twelve years,
here at table during a visit in 2007 after she retired.
New
Bottles
I have
taken some favorite images from the past and used them to
learn a little, very little, about photoshop. Without an a
priori concept, what emerges is an issue that has always been
around and is inherent in still photography: if the whole
story must be told in one frame, then a really good photograph
says everything in one frame. But cinema was always enticing,
and the sequences from the 1970’s were an exploration
of multiple single frames each worthy on its own but adding
up to something as a group. In this sense these old frames
newly combined are a higher tech rerun. But rather than a
narrative, I have taken the opportunity to say something about
my experience of the subject’s character, or at least
my memory of the time. Along similar lines, a few SLIDESHOWS
have reclustered a set of images in this medium somewhere
between still and moving.
New
Wine
Color
and digital: two new worlds for me, and an opportunity to
rediscover the fun of photography. As an early teener I just
about destroyed to fun of it for myself with all the anxiety
about errors and all the work in developing and printing with
primitive equipment that was yet to be mastered. In this new
technical milieu, and at the other end of life, almost all
the fun returns with very little of the burden. Add the benefit
of forty years experience and the results should be superb.
Tubbs
the cat passed on in February 2008 after about 21 years of
wonderful life. Shortly before she died a little squirt of
a kitten showed up hungry and frightened. He stayed on as
though the whole thing was planned. Bob Ardren also passed
on around the same time. When this informal portrait was done
in our coffee house we all knew it was possible and prayed
it was not likely. Bob VanWagoner and George Earl Fox are
still around and a delightful part of neighborhood life. George
had taken a photograph of Palm Ave. in the 1920s and wanted
a modern version, hence the image included in this addition.
Thea Lobo was looking for a portrait update to match the inevitable
progression of her career. This set we did at a sidewalk table
in downtown Sarasota; the first of our sessions in digital.
Notice,
in the portraits, fewer nudes and more older people. So it
goes.
Alex
Karotis
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