31-AUG-2008
Detroit's Hart Plaza at night
Detroit is turning out to be THE place to be this Labor Day weekend. Not only do we have the 4-day free Detroit International Jazz Festival on Hart Plaza, the Detroit Grand Prix race on Belle Isle (Detroit's Central Park) and electronic music concerts at clubs around the city to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Paxahau (producers of the Detroit Electronic Music Festival every May), but now we hear that Obama is coming to town for the Labor Day Parade on Monday! He'll be speaking at Hart Plaza at 11 a.m. and I plan to be there. Even though it will make Monday a VERY long day--get there at 8 a.m. to go through the security check, then stay until the Jazz Fest concludes at 11 p.m.--it will be worth every minute. I can't wait to experience Obama in person. The next President of the United States!
30-AUG-2008
Detroit International Jazz Festival opening night
This year's
Detroit International Jazz Festival opened on Friday night with a concert featuring the Grammy award-winning singer Diane Reeves, followed by a tribute to Motown’s Marvin Gaye, with singers Lalah Hathaway, Rahsaan Patterson and José James, backed by a Detroit all-star big band led by jazz-great Christian McBride. It was totally free--as are ALL the concerts for this 4-day extravaganza--and held under the stars in downtown Detroit. This certainly is the place to live if you love music!
27-AUG-2008
soup, lemonade, bagel & book
CLICK HERE to see the gallery to which this photo has been added.
Day by day I continue taking photos for my self portrait/daily life series. I'd guess I've taken over 600 since starting this project on June 11. As of today, 19 have made the cut, but that is not to say they'll stay there. As new images come into being, sometimes the older ones just no longer fit. Now it has become very much about the whole rather than its parts. This is not to say that each individual image is not important. It is. And if anything, my eye gets ever more critical in deciding the merit of each photo. But no matter how much I may like a photo, if it doesn't fit the whole, it's out. I can't tell you how many good photos are left behind "on the cutting room floor." The more involved I get in this project, the more rigorous my editor's eye has become. I can't recall ever before approaching a body of work with this intense scrutiny.
In the earlier stages of this work, I looked to others to tell me which images to keep and which to reject. The opinions I received were from recognized professionals in the world of photography. Their help was essential and I will be forever grateful to them for offering it. It was their encouragement that gave me the courage to take this project seriously. But as time went on I realized I needed to reclaim authority over my artistic choices because no one could get inside my head and heart to know what it was I wanted and needed to say with this work. Only I could know that. So my task of late has been to go deep within myself and ask questions like: Why am I creating this series? What exactly do I want to say? How can I best say it? Which images hold to that vision and which do not? Why? Where do I want to go from here?
Oh my. I do love being an artist.
25-AUG-2008
self portrait watching the marathon
Of all the Olympic events, there is only one I know from the inside: the marathon. When the commentators talked about the "halfway point" of this 26.2 mile race being mile 20, I knew just what they meant. It was at mile 20 that we turned south off East Jefferson Avenue onto the Belle Isle Bridge, but we still had 6.2 miles to go, and, oh, those 6.2 miles were hard. When I saw the racers pouring water over their heads, I remembered doing the same. My second marathon was relatively cool, but the first was plenty warm. You wanted to do anything you could to cool off. When bronze medalist Tsegay Kebede of Ethiopia found the reserves within himself to pass another racer at the last, I recalled putting on a similar sprint in the final yards of my second marathon to pass the man ahead of me. I can still feel my elation as I crossed that finish line to the cheers of the crowd. And I can also feel the energy draining out of my legs almost immediately. Now gold medalist Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya may have broken the Olympic record with his 2hr 6min 32 second run, but I took 20 minutes off my previous time by finishing the 1980 Detroit/Windsor International Marathon in 3 hours 44 minutes. That stands as my personal best.
Ah yes, I do love watching the Olympic marathon on TV!
24-AUG-2008
2008 Beijing Olympics
The sunflower’s face turns
towards the sun as our
faces turn towards a global
village of athletes where
the only weapons are
finely-tuned bodies and
the common language
is the pursuit of
excellence.
23-AUG-2008
East Village street scene
I spent much of yesterday and today preparing and posting the photos I took during my two days in New York City earlier this month.
CLICK HERE to see those galleries.
21-AUG-2008
store window reflection
Store window reflections can create interesting effects, so why don't I take more photos of them? Probably because I don't spend much time around stores, except for our local market that is. But today I scooted down to our community's two-block shopping street with the intention of taking self portraits in store windows.
I wonder what makes some people shoppers and others not. Perhaps the impact of advertising has something to do with it. Except for the past few weeks of watching the Olympics on TV, advertisers generally have a pretty hard time getting my attention. I don't read newspapers and the few magazines I take don't carry ads. I guess I see roadside billboards but they don't seem to make much of an impact. Besides, what do I need? At this stage of life I'm trying to get rid of things not accumulate more.
19-AUG-2008
pure delight
Have you ever seen a more pure expression of delight than on the face of this little boy? When do we lose our capacity for such utter and complete joy? Is it when we start worrying about how we look to others? All this child is thinking about is how he feels within himself. He doesn't even know anything else exists beyond the wonder of cool water spraying his body on a hot day. Talk about living in the moment!
18-AUG-2008
Is that a history book she's reading?
As you might imagine, at yesterday's African World Festival in Detroit there was not a McCain sticker, t-shirt or banner to be seen...but Obama was EVERYWHERE! May this be true in November. Our country needs more than a change; it needs a total overhaul!!!
17-AUG-2008
self portrait at African World Festival
CLICK HERE to see my "In A Different Frame" gallery of self portraits to which several images (including this one) have recently been added.
Today (Saturday) I spent at the African World Festival in Detroit's Hart Plaza. I went down to see and photograph the Hannan House Choir perform at 2 p.m. and ended up staying until 6:30 p.m. While there I took this self portrait for my book project. Can't have self portraits without showing myself in this most typical pose with camera to eye!
16-AUG-2008
slip-and-fall
The things we do for art! This morning I was dressing to get ready to go photograph a special event at the Detroit Senior's Center when I slipped off my scooter seat. Fortunately, this happens rarely. But this time I remembered what Mary Ellen Mark had said to me when I'd showed her a photo I'd taken of a floor's eye view of my bedroom. "If you want to show what it's like when you fall, you've got to have yourself in the frame." Happily I could just barely reach my camera's strap that was hanging out of my scooter basket. So I spent the next 20 minutes on an unplanned "floor shoot." I'd already written the following text to accompany it:
"So what does it feel like to exist in a world where you cannot walk, where you're always at risk of falling, where your hands can do few of the tasks expected of them? For me it means I see the world as a dangerous place, not in terms of threats from other people, but as a place where I can never be sure of myself, never count on my safety, never really relax. When I write that it surprises me, yet I know it's true. The photo I took of myself getting out of bed reflects that reality. It speaks of my anxiety about transferring safely from my bed into the seat of my scooter. It was that transfer that landed me on the floor at 3 a.m. one June morning and necessitated my calling 911 for help getting up. Dressing is another risky endeavor. It's all too easy to slip off the seat of my scooter. Getting up by myself can take close to an hour. My view of the world from the floor is not one I care to repeat. But I know I will."
