jolie laide

jolie laide

I started this when I lived in Brooklyn and struggled for grace in a city that grants moments of beauty and ugliness breathtakingly close to one another. Now I live in a place where things are a different kind of ugly and the beauty is pedestrian. I struggle with that.

6.19.2006

I promised an update on the photography project I was asked to do, documenting the graffiti of what I think of as the Subject Bar.

I visited the Subject Bar for the first time over the weekend. There had been an incident the night before, an unruly customer, an ejection, broken glass. The door was being repaired while I was there, so I climbed through an open window to enter.

As I feared, it is quite dark, and so I am going to have to use auxiliary light and fake my own aesthetic, which comes mostly by trying to negotiate the circumstances of available light. Weird, to be asked to imitate one’s self.

With the fine ground powder of glass on the floor, the sleepy start of a bar’s day, the inky interior, the Subject Bar owner is abashed and wants me to come back when there are patrons, life, activity. I am not there to shoot patrons, but what the place looks like with it’s eyes half-closed, when it is quiet and perhaps dreaming.

I go back again tonight, there may be something else here.

3 Comments:

Blogger slickaphonic said...

well the first pic sho is perty.

4:40 PM  
Blogger ttractor said...

Thanks! there is a single bare bulb in the bathroom, this was the only shot I could get off. oy.

note to self: don't try to make art after going on an intense run. I could barely put two words together, never mind pay attention to the abundancy on the walls. so, I'll be going back, as soon as I have an evening free.

4:57 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

it really is fantastic

the rich colors - the glare from the bulb

I love the way the limitations of your technique siezes a small fragment of texture & color and breathes life into it

remarkable

9:16 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home