Where am I? -- Where I am.

My photography has slowed lately, and stopped for the past week due to life circumstances.  Reflecting on those facts I decided to look a little closer at the reasons.

The slowing has taken place over a period of several years, partly due to some decreased mobility.  Most of my photography has been done over the last twenty-five years in the course of walking around, snapping some pictures of what I found and then sharing them online. So, less walking and fewer pictures.

The sharing part is probably as important as the pictures; my photographs are most often accompanied by words.  I have maintained this blog, Photography and Vintage Film Cameras, and before that a website since the turn of the century.  I have also contributed pictures and some comments to several online photography sites including Photo.net, Flickr.com and Rangefinderforum.com.

People sometimes advocate for keeping words and photos separate.  I have no real objection to that idea, but it just is not my choice.  I got to reflecting on that fact recently while reading Edward Weston's Daybooks, a journal he maintained about his ambitions and accomplishments throughout most of his photography career. Weston reused some of the entries from his journal to accompany his photos in exhibits and in articles and books. Mostly, though, he seemed to be trying to explain the creative process to himself and to create a context for his photographs. I have tended along the same line, though I have more often thought of the writing and photographs as being integrated into a single product, not usually with a commercial objective.

Not all of my photography has been primarily ambulatory.  A lot of my involvement with picture making has been motivated by an interest in the history of photography, often expressed in a focus on the instrumentation which has evolved over over the past two centuries. I have acquired a large collection of film cameras and have been motivated to attempt to get the best pictures each is capable of producing. I have not spent much money on any of my old cameras; the limitations on the size of the collection are more to do with storage and exhibit space in a small house.

Pictures of people, including portraits of friends and family, have also been a source of inspiration for my photography.  Such pictures represent only a small percentage of my production; they are a concrete expression of my way of conducting social relationships and they rank high in the reward I get from them. I find myself now wishing I had focused more over the years on portraiture and social documentation.  In fact, those kinds of pictures are probably better suited to my current circumstances, so perhaps my efforts will bend in that direction now.

Photography's place in society has undergone some changes over time.  Weston and some others of his generation had something of an obsession over getting photography accepted as a form of fine art.  That concept has had its ups and downs, though is probably mostly accepted these days. To me that issue of status has seemed not of great interest and seems mostly self-serving.  I have always been more interested in the discipline's capacity for illustrating and explaining nature and society, and as a vehicle of self expression.

Attitudes toward photography are revealing of trends in social and political relationships. It seems that people in recent years have become more critical and even paranoid about the practice of photography in both private and public realms.  I encountered a good example of this recently one morning while making some pictures of trees in a nearby park.  Half-way though my walk I was approached by a fellow about my age with a small dog.  

"Why are you taking pictures of people and their dogs?", he asked loudly.  "I haven't made any pictures of people and their dogs", I responded.  "I saw you", he said "what's that hanging around your neck?"

"You are wrong", I said as I walked away. 

I briefly thought about pointing out that the law was currently on my side regarding photography in public places, but it seemed a futile effort.  My impression is that this is more a phenomenon in Western cultures as I don't see much evidence of it in Japan and the East.

Another gauge of people's attitudes toward photography is an effort to censor or suppress the exhibit of pictures perceived as somehow inappropriate for public display.  Sally Mann's pictures of her children have periodically been targeted by such initiatives; recently she and a Texas museum were threatened with charges of pornography. That attack was short-circuited by the state's justice system, but similar efforts are ongoing.  It is of a piece with the resurgence of racism, misogyny and xenophobia which I had hoped the country was moving away from.