One Sunday afternoon a conservative nationalist group at Shibuya Crossing.
Shibuya Crossing one night.
Alameda Creek
Human beings are “social animals”—we could not exist any other way. Many other life forms may be said to be “social” but human beings are qualitatively different from all other forms.Individuals live within a
In a group there is a dynamic structure of behavior, the groups may differ in qualities such as in size, influence of behavior and its not always the same from one group to another, but there are observable patterns that make an common structure of behavior such as language, beliefs, tools diet, clothes, manners
A large and complex group such as a “culture” has a strong, informal “influence ” on many individuals while a club may influence a few individuals with a weaker formal influence on fewer individuals. A society is made up of all the intertangled social networks of individuals
We learn behaviors during the socialization process, —growing up in a society— as well as ubiquitous reinforcements in our everyday behavior with others—things change—
Last week a well known scientist claimed “there is no free will” and that everything we are is determined. Individuals learn from socialization which is just the time children spend interacting with society until they become an adult. and as adults our own everyday behavior and experiences reinforces the process , Is that cultural indoctrination —or just being a human being.
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On a Monday I got a phone call that Mom suffered a a stroke, and was in intensive care. I booked a Tuesday flight, when I boarded and had walked up about 40% of the aisle I saw my sister sitting down, she had boarded in LA. About week later, mom was up and around a little, she had a room and some privacy. She talked on and on about events in her childhood, probably memories. I thought she was trying to figure out what had happened but she confusedly knew her mind was not working normally.. but she could not figure out why. For the next 3 1/2 years I usually had a point & shoot in one hand while the other hand available.
Perhaps the reason artists do self portraits might be its cheap with an “anytime-available” model who understands the vision of the photograph. I am not part of the “thing” that is the photograph, but I am part of the image. This was the original image.Let photography be fun.
Who is this self that appear in my photographs?
Buddha was not concerned with philosophy of the self, why we are here? is there a God? what is Reality? Buddha”s concern was to end suffering for individuals, kind of a difficult task when so many people get so much pleasure out of watching others suffer.
During the depression was, I think, the first I ever heard of the pressure cookers. Then, we all went to that and that shortened the time more. I can’t remember losing any canned fruit, because I always did it according to the directions, but the pressure canner shortened the time so much. You might cook something three hours by the cold pac method and be done in 20 minutes or so by the pressure cooker, That was the advantage there.
Virgie Bowers, 81, Pulaski County Feeding Our Families, Memories of Hoosier Homemakers Eleanor Arnold editor Interviews done in the mid 1980s
Not so many words this week, Some images of two people from San Francisco
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Market Street, between Powell and Montgomery
Around the Montgomery Street station, I liked they are touching each other while checking out their phones.
The got on and sat across from me for about 20 minutes, we spoke some words, I don’t remember, what, They took seats reserved for elder and handicap . .there is a cane though!
Saturday afternoon meeting in Union Square, perhaps looking at more things they could buy before the end of the day.
Two people seem dressed for two different destinations
AlamedaCreek
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
Torah
I like photographs which to do not require me to reduce the image to the things in the image in order to experience it,
The process of just reducing the image to a bunch of things makes understanding the photograph to become finding a word that tells you what is the relationship between the things.
Keeping the visual experience confined to just the basic elements of art_line .shape.texture, color . . . its still feels like a photograph, but you do not have to bother “thinking about it” or having a word that tells you what you are seeing.
The essence of the image is expressed in the visual experience of the image.
From the image you know more than enough about these people you do not need to know any more than just what you experience visually.
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There is a road, no simple highway Between the dawn and the dark of night And if you go, no one may follow That path is for your steps alone … If you should stand then who’s to guide you? If I knew the way I would take you home.
Ripple, Lyrics by Grateful Dead
One day while sparring in the dojo, one of the students was trying to trick the other into making a mistake. Sensei stopped them and, with a piece of chalk drew a line on the floor and asked the karateka how to make the line shorter. The student erased part of the line. Sensei said, “†hat ’s one way but here is a better way,” and drew a longer line next to it. “Always make your own line longer, not someone else’s shorter.”
Note: this is not my story, its supposed to be a true story I read in a book which fell apart and I forgot the author’s name but I never forgot the story.
Martial Arts belts hanging on a “home-made” display rack , an item donated from someone for sale in a thrift shop..
One day Sekito was walking in the hills with his disciple Sekishitsu, and seeing more branches obstructing the path asked him to cut them away, “I didn’t bring a knife,” said Sekishitsu. Sekito took out his own and held it out, blade-end first to Sekishitsu, who said “Please give me the other end.” “ What would you do with it asked Sekito, and Sekishitsu came to a realization.
Zen ad Zen Classics Volume TwoHIstory of Zen R. H. Blyth translation and commentary
Summer 1970, we spent a few months at Tom&Nance’s house in Strong, Maine where I made some photographs. Their’s was an old house with weathered boards. which made a natural back drop.
We bathed in nearby streams, there was a bathtub in the house but water had to be heated on a wood stove, being summer the creek was just fine but very cold water coming the mountains..
One night Tom and Nance ,and Judi and I were there and Nance’s parents had just arrived from South Dakota, It was pouring rain, very humid, about 9:00 PM we are all in the living room and up the driveway comes a car. This was a pretty sparsely populated area, maybe at night laying in bed, three or 4four cars might pass by before falling asleep and you could hear them coming and going for a couple minutes each way.
It was some friends of mine looking for a place to stay the night—real traveling summer hippies, and Nance’s parents were somewhat freaked out, by the freaks coming in the door, they become uncomfortable and shortly afterwards, when it became obvious that the freaks were going to be sleeping on the living room floor, went back to their lodging in a near by village,
The guys were gone by later morning, Nance”’s parents showed up later morning and spent a few days visiting ..That was over fifty years ago.
Alameda Creek
No matter how fast I run I can never seem to get away from me, No matter where I am I can’t help thinkin’ I’m just a day away From where I wanna be.
Your Bright Baby Blues Jackson Browne
The Alameda Creek images begin as digital photographs to be manipulated with additional digital adjustments using Photoshop. I started using Photoshop when I purchased a MacIICX in 1989. I was already nine years into my graphic design business.
The word “Photoshopped” commonly means the photograph has been manipulated, the implication being there is some kind of truth in the original image not seen or implied in the final image. Makes me wonder what kind of truth was in the original image? The camera makes a photographic image, and when its “properly adjusted ” for focus and duration of expouse, it makes “truthful” image or an image that is similar to what the human eye sees.
The process to print a photograph is separate from the concept , most people have an unconscious measure of “What is a photograph“?” —“Oh , It really looks like that!— I like to differentiate the common concept of “what is a photograph” i from the technical printing process and in my images I like to use a less amount of “photograph” and a more amount of the technical process(es) of printing the photograph. Any “truth” in my images is in the eye of the viewer, not in the eye of the photographer.
I was 30 years old when I went to art school to learn graphic design. After three years I worked at a major Boston printer to learn about the relationship between design and printing. Sometimes customers from large businesses or design/advertising agencies would send sketches (comprehensives) and I would prepare the “art boards” to be filmed to make a high contrast negative which was used to burn the plate used for offset printing. I learned a lot about printing while there. Its called “offset printing” because when the plate is attached on the press it is inked and then inked image is transfered (offset) to a blanket and then again transferred to the paper.
The first time I made a major mistake preparing the “art board” for the offset department—a mistake would be when the offset department could not properly make the high contrast photograph used to expose the plate properly and it was only discovered after the bad plate had been made——the head of offset came to me with my poorly done art board to have me redo it, He was accompanied by the two strippers working on the job and the three stood behind me with the foreman counting out the minutes for the time it took me to fix the poorly done art board. and at the end calculated the cost of my mistake to the printing company,
It might appear the foreman was acting like a jerk, but not so he was over 65 years old, had entered printing as an apprentice at age 14, knew everything about printing and this was how he taught the importance of doing things correctly. .Printing then was very time conscious, there were schedules to meet, the printer was the last in in the chain of events and often things were behind schedule when the job came to the printer. It was a lesson respectfully taught and respectfully learned and a piece of my education used my whole career.
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When I find an exciting subject, I find it easy to to relate it to other evocations. The scene in front of me is only a window to a whole universe of other ideas. I try to go beyond the pictorial. Otherwise it’ll be too simplistic.
.Andrew Wyeth from Andrew Wyeth Autobiography
Photography can just be fun, although it does not need to be , as there are many other purposes for it. But for me, personally, its fun.
Make photographs for fun, sometime before you make the original image, ask yourself how would I describe this event in words, what is the difference between a literal or a visual experience.?
I knew David in grad school, we met at the department head’s house, for some reason we took an apartment together, a bright guy who loved to talk, we had to find a place in a few days, so it was a one bedroom apartment , one slept on the rollaway couch, the other the bed, he used to hold a cigarette like you might see foreigners do, from the bottom between a finger and thumb.
NOTE: He is reading TheAutobiography of Malcom X,
A photograph is a moment which connects the past to the future, you can never experience that moment again, but you can see, and hear it , over and over and you can even touch a printed photograph, perhaps of a loved one who passed away, but no smelling or tasting allowed.
Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans Way back up in the woods among the evergreens There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood Where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode Who never ever learned to read or write so well But he could play a guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell.
Johnny B Goode. Chuck Berry
On the streets of Tokyo, pre-pandemic, nice guitar case! and work hard to be goode! OnSunday nights n the 1990s we used to watch a Japanese TV show featuring pop music groups, The often looked and acted weird, but when interviewed the weirdness was obviously a visual part of the act, they were just normal US pop stars on the other hand, in interviews were always acting weird and saying weird things like they were the angst representatives of the pop world as they were raking in millions of dollars doing lowest common denominator pop music.
Alameda Creek
Film and digital images are called photographs because they use reflected light to make an image.
Film uses (used??) a chemical process to expose grades of value from light to dark; digital measures the values and color using small pixels of a single color designed to work with each other to create an image, like a Seurat painting but very, very, very much smaller.
The film is continuous tone—the value goes from light to dark in a smooth transition—but with digital, no matter how small, the pixel occupies a certain amount of space and there is always a hard edge between pixels, though not necessarily perceived by the human eye. Ever wonder whether a hard drive full of data weighs more than the same hard drive with no data? Does information have weight or even mass ?
We have met a few times on the trail , the conversation develops about Buddhism, he is from India, and has much to say about Buddhism with a more historically traditional Indian view, perhaps more Pre Mahayana/Theravada period?
What is the story of the photograph? Is there supposed to be a story in a photograph? Can it just be some color, shapes, lines, all just for fun?My photographs are like illustrations looking for a story.
Just because you can say a word doesn’t mean you know what it means. How do we learn what words mean? How to use words in a conversation? Or to use words as a language. Words came before writing, and before dictionaries, before schools,
As you look at the photograph, your mind differentiates the things one from another—puts them into words— in the image and then attempts to build a relationship between the things. This is experiencing the photograph visually. The goal of the mind and thus the visual experience, is to “understand the photograph literally,” when you have an word for what it means you have “understood the photograph,”
At this point your mind tells you its time to stop the visual experience. In my photographs it doesn’t matter, the photograph is visual, there is no literal meaning, it is, only a visual experience and no one passes it off as a “real” photograph.
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The door slid open, and this time, half a dozen old-style Japanese books in arm, it was no puppet that sat faintly white in the shadows beyond netting,
Some Prefer Nettles Junichiro Tanizaki the last sentence and paragraph of the book
While spending time with my mother over 3 1/2 years following her stroke with severe memory loss and expressive aphasia, occasionally it was necessary to take her to medical related outside appointments.Before I went to a new place, I would do a practice run b y myself to see how long it took to get there, where was parking, the stairs, elevators, what was the waiting room like, where were the bathrooms.
Sitting in the waiting room could be a challenge, mom’s patience was short, and she was more than eager to verbally express her frustration while watching other patients being called to the “magic door.”
While in Japan for 15 years she studied Ikebana—Japanese Flower Arrangement— earned a Master level in Ichiyo school, teaching certificates in Ikenobo and Sogetsu.schools, served as President of Ikebana International for two years and on retirement in Albuquerque, her own school of Ikebana for 20 years. I made these images or a brochure and many years later when she lived in memory care residence I made this poster for her wall. I never knew if she experienced any identification with it or not, all I could do was to believe in the Power of Design and hope there were moments when she remembered her life .
I always had my point&shoot with me, sometimes one hand was busy with her while the other was making a photograph. No way to set this up on a tripod. pre plan it, make some proofs, fix the lighting, and then after everything is set up for the shot, turn to mom and say “Ok Mom , back again to the second to the last pose we did, and hold it while so we can finalize the lighting.’
My parents, Ray and Lynn, had been high school sweethearts, married 64 years , The last two years of his life he suffered severely from Alzheimer’s but his woman ,which is what she was just as he had always been her man, would never put him into a memory care residence., There had been a negative family incident, may be she could just deal with being alone . . . they lived for 2 years in an apartment while my father used to have episodes ,which increasingly got worse until he had a stroke, was put in a nursing residence, then Hospice at home and he passed.
Lynn’s Ikebana arrangement for Ray at his funeral.
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