Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
China Town
I watched 500 Days of Summer last night. I quite enjoyed it, it's quite a story. I have one like that.
A shot from China Town this past weekend when I went home, best viewed listening to slow violin-infused indie folk.
A shot from China Town this past weekend when I went home, best viewed listening to slow violin-infused indie folk.
Friday, October 9, 2009
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
You know, Woodrow Wilson got a Nobel Peace Prize for founding the League of Nations, and that shit failed.
They gave Yasser Arafat one, too, for "the promotion of peace in the Middle East" which is arguably one of the many things he did not do in his lifetime. The list of laureates is varied and astonishing.
I'm not a political scientist; I'm not even a regular scientist. I do wax political from time to time, though. It should be said that I'm not a source of knowledge on these sorts of things. But, its my personal belief that the prize exists to say "Please keep trying to make peace, because with enough tries you may succeed" rather than "thanks for all the peace, man." If you don't think the election of the first black American President doesn't promote tolerance or hopefulness, and change the shape of global peacemaking, you're ignoring the other 7 billion people on this planet. Future elections, globally, will have new precedence and tone. Obama's presidency alone is a global step in the right direction towards peace.
But, I say, the prize should have gone to the American people for showing the world that the rules of life are still being written. America, as a country, promoted the kind of tolerance, change and forward-thinking that I personally feel the Prize exists to pay homage to. However, as Presidents often are, Obama is the face of the American people on an international scale for his tenure, and he will be the face of our successes, as well as our failures.
They gave Yasser Arafat one, too, for "the promotion of peace in the Middle East" which is arguably one of the many things he did not do in his lifetime. The list of laureates is varied and astonishing.
I'm not a political scientist; I'm not even a regular scientist. I do wax political from time to time, though. It should be said that I'm not a source of knowledge on these sorts of things. But, its my personal belief that the prize exists to say "Please keep trying to make peace, because with enough tries you may succeed" rather than "thanks for all the peace, man." If you don't think the election of the first black American President doesn't promote tolerance or hopefulness, and change the shape of global peacemaking, you're ignoring the other 7 billion people on this planet. Future elections, globally, will have new precedence and tone. Obama's presidency alone is a global step in the right direction towards peace.
But, I say, the prize should have gone to the American people for showing the world that the rules of life are still being written. America, as a country, promoted the kind of tolerance, change and forward-thinking that I personally feel the Prize exists to pay homage to. However, as Presidents often are, Obama is the face of the American people on an international scale for his tenure, and he will be the face of our successes, as well as our failures.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Memories I've Forgotten
My computer is running low on memory. Not that I don't have extra storage space. I have plenty of that. I'm just low on space on my laptop. At roughly 15MB per file, my photographs, as well as my vast library of music, each eat away at about 140GB each, leaving my Finder screens with anything between "1.8 GB Available" to "4 GB Available."
So, in a desperate measure to download The Chi-Lites entire discography, I decided to boot up Lightroom and take out all of the photos I don't need. And, in the process, coupled with the music playing ("Breathe" by Telepopmusik and then "Feel Good Lost Reprise" by Broken Social Scene), I felt an enormous rush of emotion come over me as I perused, my finger held down on the forward arrow, the entire library of my digital photographic experience shown to me in fast forward like Ed Kashi's Iraqi Kurdistan without any talent. In a few short minutes, I brushed through the 10 thousand or so photographs taken in the past 14 months, and as I had initially decided to delete some of the "non-takers," I found that process to be ultimately impossible.
You see, in all of the imperfect frames and the poorly exposed photographs that just didn't quite make it, there was a reflection of myself. All of these memories I myself had forgotten, lost in my day-to-day activities that made me focus too much on the future and not enough on the past. I tried to delete some, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to delete a single file, save the pure black exposures (which escape me to this date why they weren't deleted at the time of their import).
All of these moments I had forgotten. Though many will never see the light of day (I am very sensitive about showing my own work, and only show what I like, which is very little), they exist and serve their purpose. Displayed, in a rush, you could watch my photographic eye evolve (or in some cases, devolve). So many of these images represent me. The places I have been. From Syracuse to Slovakia, Auschwitz to America; from heroin addicts to haircuts and all the way to the Inauguration of Barack Obama. They are what my eyes have seen. And I don't want to forget them.
So, in a desperate measure to download The Chi-Lites entire discography, I decided to boot up Lightroom and take out all of the photos I don't need. And, in the process, coupled with the music playing ("Breathe" by Telepopmusik and then "Feel Good Lost Reprise" by Broken Social Scene), I felt an enormous rush of emotion come over me as I perused, my finger held down on the forward arrow, the entire library of my digital photographic experience shown to me in fast forward like Ed Kashi's Iraqi Kurdistan without any talent. In a few short minutes, I brushed through the 10 thousand or so photographs taken in the past 14 months, and as I had initially decided to delete some of the "non-takers," I found that process to be ultimately impossible.
You see, in all of the imperfect frames and the poorly exposed photographs that just didn't quite make it, there was a reflection of myself. All of these memories I myself had forgotten, lost in my day-to-day activities that made me focus too much on the future and not enough on the past. I tried to delete some, but I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to delete a single file, save the pure black exposures (which escape me to this date why they weren't deleted at the time of their import).
All of these moments I had forgotten. Though many will never see the light of day (I am very sensitive about showing my own work, and only show what I like, which is very little), they exist and serve their purpose. Displayed, in a rush, you could watch my photographic eye evolve (or in some cases, devolve). So many of these images represent me. The places I have been. From Syracuse to Slovakia, Auschwitz to America; from heroin addicts to haircuts and all the way to the Inauguration of Barack Obama. They are what my eyes have seen. And I don't want to forget them.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
My Life Resumes Meaning
After a week of working my ass off helping Martine Franck pull some Cartier-Bresson prints from the Magnum Warehouse and the final week of my Spanish courses at Columbia, my exhausted body collapsed and my brain stopped working.
Now, well rested, my life resumes proper meaning. For, in this week of madness, something miraculous happened. A track from Radiohead's new EP leaked. And with it, I present to you, with no commercial breaks, the future of the greatest band on earth. Title is currently being thrown around as "These Are My Twisted Words."
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
