I dream the film slips through my fingers
Pictures of nothing
I’m tired of games
I get hit by a car on Gramercy Park North
I'm tired of photographs taken in hotels
Nothing pleases, no one has contacted me, no one has ever happened
No way of knowing, no slowing down, no distractions, no decisive moments
No rain no rainbows
A long time ago I did not even know what that question meant
now it is all I ever think about
Tears rolling down my cheek
Smoke gets in my eyes
Sun gets in my eyes
Choking on the smoke
Suffocating
Ecstatic suffering, endless fire
I'm not going to follow you there
On the train I play a counting game
Breathless meditations
A promise, ghost, smoke
Sparkling pieces, someone
When you have a bad day
Back in time, smoke, giving up
Running happily to the music
If you're too sparkly I can't go near you because it hurts my eyes
When I go to the window I use the window
Living for a year, and yet
You can go to the gas station to visit my friend
Walk up and down the street beneath the highway
Back and forth past the Polish restaurant
Wait for her, and then never see her, and yet
You can go home, and everything can go back to how it was
We could stay inside and play games, I don't know
Clear as water, dry as sand
Walpurgis
I pretend to look through the glass at you
Drinking poison, breathing air
Clear as water, dry as sand
I take a walk, I take a picture of the sun, I look out my window, I wait for the season to change. Sometimes there isn't anything you can do.
The day passes. The sun rises and later it sets. I leave the house, walk across the highway, and return. I didn't see the sun today. Yesterday I didn't leave the house. I didn't take any photographs but nonetheless, a day. Even if it isn't photographed, everything goes on.
I try to take the picture -
the shutter doesn't open,
the film doesn't get exposed,
there isn't film in the camera,
I take the film out of the camera, unspool it, and hang it up, the lens cap is on.
I wait for a year for the moment to happen again.
For this day to happen again.
For that thing I see everyday to look that way again, to have another chance.
I try to describe the picture - When you feel my body in the night I wonder, what are you looking for?
I stand still with my eyes closed and feel the sun on my skin.
The sun is warm even when the air is cold. I open my eyes and look directly at the sun. When I look at the sun there's no lens flare,
just a blue screen over my vision after I look away, and a red one when I close my eyes. I can't capture this, I can't have this.
I try to take the picture but photography is impossible so the moment doesn't happen.
I want it to mean something, but it means nothing. It doesn't mean anything.
•
A few people close to my age have told me that they don’t like photography. To them, photographs in and of themselves do not have art value - it is only the moments captured in the photographs that makes the images worth looking at. Fine art photography is an anachronism to them and they find the idea of artistic photography absurd.
I overheard a person say that being a photographer is like being a plumber. You’re either able to fix the toilet with your know-how or you’re not. I wonder what, in this simile, is wrong with the toilet?
On Twitter, after the first photograph of a black hole is unveiled, someone asks if it’s really a photograph per se or just some wave frequency data collected and interpreted into an image. The person then realizes that this is precisely the definition of a photograph, much to their own chagrin. I have been thinking about analog photography, and what other phenomenon are collected, interpreted, and reproduced when light sensitive material is exposed, and photography happens. I have also been considering the tacit imperial act of “taking” a photograph - and what material conditions allow for this to occur. Are portraits dead on arrival? Is there no more style, only content?