While we were laying on the beach, a woman walked by with arms outstretched in the air, smiling big. She couldn’t have been doing anything other than praising god. My camera was tucked away and by the time I fumbled for it, had it set to go and ready to shoot, she resumed normal person walking. I ran up to her and asked her about what she was doing.

“It’s just a beautiful day, a beautiful thing. Praise God!”

I asked if I could take her photo doing that, and she obliged. Afterwards she said,

“Welcome to the United States, and good luck with everything! God bless!”

She had a very heavy European accent, and I was a bit confused.

How do you walk by someone like this and not ask for a photo? Instead of taking his picture on the spot, I asked him to stand against this back drop, something I saw quickly. This photo represents everything I feel when I go to Coney Island.

We came across a man who had garbage bags taken from restaurant dumpsters and was feeding them to the seagulls. He didn’t want me to photograph him, because he said the authorities would come after him. He went on a small rant about how ridiculous it is that New York City makes it illegal for people to feed the birds. People who take restaurant scraps mixed with gross regular garbage and throw it on the beach to the birds epitomizes the reason a law like this is in place. He was a weird beard.

And looking at this, summer nostalgia kicks in, and I remember being on Coney Island just a year prior:

Picture of a Callahan monograph
On my site, I’ve recently put up a new series called My Eleanor. I hesitate to call it a series, because it is more of a compilation than anything else, but semantics, schmantics. In case the reference eludes you, it’s a nod to the great/late Harry Callahan, who made some very interesting and famous pictures of his wife, Eleanor. These pictures to me always represented more than a study of the personal; they also really asked questions about the male gaze. I’ve thought long and hard about just that, and continue to do so to this day. My pictures of Ramsey may be just pictures, but the type of looking I do tends to be different and more directed when she’s in front of the camera. As a male photographer, I think it’s more important than ever to think very hard every time that shutter is depressed, and you have a female subject in front of the lens.

Read something like this.

©Valerio Mezzanotti

In Wednesday’s New York Times, there was an article about women who became men as part of traditional social customs in Albania. From the article:

For centuries, in the closed-off and conservative society of rural northern Albania, swapping genders was considered a practical solution for a family with a shortage of men. Her father was killed in a blood feud, and there was no male heir. By custom, Ms. Keqi, now 78, took a vow of lifetime virginity. She lived as a man, the new patriarch, with all the swagger and trappings of male authority — including the obligation to avenge her father’s death.

This article presents a lot of interesting perspectives on gender construction. First off, homosexuality is taboo in Albanian religious life/culture, and this gender-swapping practice is not considered part of that conversation. Rather, like the above quote, it offers a pratical solution. Equally interesting is hearing the women interviewed praising their life as a man:

“I was totally free as a man because no one knew I was a woman,” Ms. Keqi said. “I could go wherever I wanted to and no one would dare swear at me because I could beat them up. I was only with men. I don’t know how to do women’s talk. I am never scared.”

This practice was more common in a time in Albanian history where women had practically no legal or social rights, so perhaps this thought seems obvious. I can’t imagine one day stripping part of who I’ve become (as opposed to what I am, which doesn’t necessarily have to change) and engaging with people differently.

Accompanying this piece is a photo essay by Johan Spanner. See the work here.

© Johan Spanner

© Johan Spanner

©Rosemary Laing

©Rosemary Laing

Many of you probably know Rosemary Laing’s work with flying brides…

©Rosemary Laing

…but my favorite work of hers of course deals with the landscape. She finds historically sacred land in Australia and literally carpets the floor. The designs are a tip to the classical and bourgeoisie, and the images speak for themselves. Unfortunately, the examples above don’t hold up great on the web, hopefully she’ll show some work around me soon.

My buddy Adam sent me a link to a really interesting and surprisingly relevant Believer magazine feature. Apparently they are running a contest in which participants suggest “convergences,” that are historical contingent, and possess intellectual acuity, at least from what I gather. In this particular one, winner Walter Murch “converges” Maxim Gorky, who details his experience watching a moving picture for the first time in 1896, and the writings of Lawrence Weschler, who responds to early color photographs. First Gorky:

Here I shall try to explain myself, lest I be suspected of madness or indulgence in symbolism. I was at Aumont’s and saw Lumière’s cinematograph—moving photography. The extraordinary impression it creates is so unique and complex that I doubt my ability to describe it with all its nuances.

At first his writing reflects the awe of something so new, but his writing quickly turns into a reality check:

This mute, grey life finally begins to disturb and depress you. It seems as though it carries a warning, fraught with a vague but sinister meaning that makes your heart grow faint. You are forgetting where you are. Strange imaginings invade your mind and your consciousness begins to wane and grow dim …

Amazingly, he goes on to predict that soon movies will show sex and violence. Pretty amazing.

Then, nearly a century later, in conversation with Gorky, Weschler comments:

Somehow it is almost as unsettling for us to see color photographs of people from 1909 as it may have been for them to first see moving images of themselves in black-and-white back in 1896.

Overall, it’s a really interesting read, again, check it out here.

I’m showing Removing Mountains today in Baltimore! Check back to this post for more details.