Selfie/Not-selfie

I was wandering the bonsai at the Huntington when I came upon a gay couple in mid-selfie with a point & shoot camera (not a phone, which as everyone knows, makes the job a lot easier). Out of queer solidarity as much as anything else, I offered to take the picture for them. When I was done, they asked if I wanted mine taken. Oh sure... why not?

I had been pondering a resurrection of this project now that I am part-time in Southern California. I thought it might be an interesting lens for exploration of this new place & its inhabitants, who seem so different from folks back home. I seem different here too; living in a neighborhood that is mostly Asian, am I more visible? Less visible? Both, I think.

Now in the age of the selfie, I wonder what will happen to the convention of strangers taking pictures of each other? Is this project already a relic of an age gone by? Does it more firmly mark me as middle-aged, or even old?

Am I back in the saddle again? Maybe.

Schoolyard

Well, first I was not in the mood. Then I went away for a week in which there was no talking, let alone talking to strangers. After that, for a few days I found I was almost never alone in public. Then I wasn’t in the mood, again.

During my week away I really bonded with my cowboy hat’s shadow, so that’s partly where today’s self-portrait came from.

Another part is, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to photography, what I might want to take pictures of, & the idea of control & some of my control issues, & so it makes sense I had the urge to take my own picture for a change.

Cole Coffee & a video(!)

You can watch this without the sound, if you prefer (I do, slightly):

Well. Something different was bound to happen eventually. You could accuse me of having a short attention span, or lacking focus, or something harsh like that, but I prefer to think of it as having an open mind, paying attention to how things change, looking for openings & possibilities, & learning—always learning.

It was good for a while to not work on this project when it was rainy & gloomy out, fine to notice when I just didn’t feel like asking strangers to take my picture. But today I stuck my camera in a waterproof purse, opened my umbrella, & walked through the rain for a lunch date with a friend, who never showed up because she thought we were meeting at her studio, & I thought we were meeting at the cafe.

By the time I finished my sandwich, I knew we’d miscommunicated somehow & she wasn’t coming. I settled in to being alone with my tea, & thought about asking someone to take my picture, but it was really all wrong for that. Cafes are particular; people in them often wrap themselves in a little cocoon of daydreaming privacy that I tend to respect, having done much of the same myself.

I thought about how this project in one sense is a study of my time alone in public—a very specific slice of my life—& how cafe space is so much about that. Why not enlarge the parameters, just a little, to include how I see the world when out alone, what it looks & feels like to me when I’m not talking to strangers? Instead of having a project on/off switch for sunny extrovert vs. rainy introvert, how about a dimmer that allows for something in between?