Tijuana Diary: Fabricated Poverty

So this was it. We were homeless now, crouched low in the overgrowth behind a university gym. To us, home. Smoking cigarettes, our hands placed over our sleeping bags and blowing twisted smoke rings at the branch canopy above us.

"This is the taste of freedom," Levi was saying. "The best cigarettes are the ones under a night sky."

"Isn't this kind of patronizing, condescending, you know?" I puffed, cringing, paranoid of every sound. "Like, we're homeless, but we're only tourists. We can escape this whole thing tomorrow if we wanted."

"What do you mean?"

"We chose this. We had a bed for the night and we chose this. Urban camping. But is it belittling to those who can't choose it?"

"Even if this experience is fabricated, it still means something," Levi said.

self-loathing self-portrait

Five Fotos: Week Uno

I want to integrate my photography a lot more with my writing, starting with a five foto's of the week (that will likely happen once a month). The point is to showcase my favorite shots of the week, no matter what comes out. Anyway, here's the start.

To A New Place

Canon AE-1 35mm Kodak Plus-x Pan Film - Arizona

• Onward, to adventure and self-discovery.
• Self-developed, under-developed and turned all the film red.

--

Unloading Bay

Canon AE-1 35mm film - Arizona

• Trash dumped behind abandoned Wal-Mart. Returning shit to whence it came.

--

Crushed

Kodak Disposable Camera, 35mm film - Flagstaff

• Bored ice cream parlor with lazily stocked shelves, products designed to catch the eye, begging to be picked up. Muting the colors and downplaying that gimmick, as if the slogan is now "Empty Feelings Inside!®"

--

Borrowed Gift

Pentax K-1000 35mm film, green filter - Flagstaff

•Such a grand tree, borrowed camera and filter.

--

Story of the Eye

Pentax K-1000 35mm film, zero flash - Bathroom

• Eggs in a toilet. Recreated scene from "The Story of the Eye" by Georges Bataille, but definitely NOT for the same reasons as the author.
• Eggs were hard to flush and I had to crush them with a plunger to get them down. In retrospect, not a good idea at all. They probably started to smell, but luckily I moved out the next day.





[Insert something conclusive]

Snapshots

I bought a Polaroid camera for two bucks. It came with 9 pictures in it already, but each one I took came out distorted and mangled and barely developed. Awesome.
Seeing as most film companies are ceasing production, such as Kodak and Polaroid, I figured film would be cheap. I stupidly forgot my economics. Film is so expensive now it's ridiculous. $20 for ten Polaroid shots and not worth it.
An average roll of film is $5 plus the cost to get it developed and onto a CD which is $4.50, almost ten dollars total.
I'm anxious, I guess. I like taking pictures with film, but one day, Target will remove their developing machines. Wal-Mart, CVS and others will soon follow. I'll have to buy film online and develop it in my dorm. Augh.
All artists are willing to suffer for their work, I guess.

---

I started taking pictures of homeless people as a photojournalistic thing. This always makes me nervous, that they will attack me or get insulted, which is worse. I don't want them to judge me for judging them.
I got two shots of unsuspecting homeless people, but then I went into a ditch and saw two old men drinking 40's and talking about how kids have no respect. I took snaps of all the graffiti in the area and then raised my camera to them.
"Don't take my picture. Get that fucking camera out of here! No respect!"
I asked the guy why not.
"You'll steal my spirit, like a native."
I reluctantly put my camera down and left. I still wish I had just taken the shot and I felt angry at homeless people for the rest of the day.
"Why are you upset about this?" My father asked. "They were psychotic. Who cares?"
J.R. was right when he said the camera is this generation's handgun.

---

I went with my father to Safeway to buy dishsoap. At the checkout, the cashier gave me a strange feeling of Deja Vu.
"Did I go to school with you?" He asked me.
"Ethan?" It clicked. He had tattoo sleeves and gages, but it was him.
"You in college?" I asked.
"PVCC."
The school we attended was a mile down the street. He probably never moved anywhere else.
Outside, my dad said, "Small world, huh."
"No, that just means nothing has changed."

---

My father told me about some guy from Boston he got in his cab who came all the way down to Phoenix for the Red Socks game. Someone who has that much money to blow.
My father recognized him as a kid from school, since my father grew up in Massachusetts. He used to beat my dad up for his lunch money.
Too bad this guy didn't realize who my dad was. And so my dad took the long way around and cost this guy an extra $20.
"I got my lunch money back plus interest." He told me.
"How is that interest?"
"Well, shit, lunch money back then was only a quarter."
This guy told my father all his problems, ironically, and my dad still listened. Poor guy tried to solve all his problems with alcohol, his wife was in the process of leaving him, etc, etc.
"When he got out," my father says. "I told him, payback's a bitch."

Day Twenty Six: Mold, Dust, Promises, Memories

Two promises fulfilled. First, I mostly only took black and white photographs today.

Second, I went exploring in my grandparents attic like I promised someone. I found an old phonograph and a trumpet, but I can't get either to work. My grandma can't operate a damn computer and I think she's ignorant, but I really find myself against the wall this time. I'm hoping that the items are broken, not my brain, but I want them to work so I can have some musickal fun. I think I'd have more fun smashing them up. Tossing them down the stairs and watching them float away in the lake. I don't think they'd even float.

I also found an old video camera, the kind you hold with one hand and aim like a sub-machine gun. It still takes film, not tape. The batteries were so old they were oozing acid and it melted the paint on the back. Maybe it will work one day. Maybe I will discover some family memories I never knew I had. They had.

That record player squeaks and grinds against some mint condition Boston Pops album. The volume doesn't go up very high, so it's barely a whisper as the poor record is scratched to death. The sound is hideous and distorted but it makes the best mood music I've ever heard.

More Goals:
Make myself a slingshot and shoot out advertisements. Or buy one from Wal-Mart.

Read advice columns, but just the questions, not the answers. My life is so much better than theirs.

Rip out pages of old books and put them on walls.

Make a new shirt.

Make more oblique goals.

Look up the word oblique.

Day Twenty Four: Love Keeps

Got my photos back, the expired film ones. They didn't turn out as exciting as I imagined, but some of them did become really surreal and cool.

The one at the top I chose because, look at that sky. Look at the house and how creepy it looks, yet the colors aren't dark. It may look realistic, but this photo is very, very fake and not on purpose. It tried to be real.

The house has been there as long as I can remember. It used to belong to a woman named Connie Strand who tried to turn her house into a community center, but no one supported her idea. She lost half a million dollars and her house was taken by the bank.

When I was ten, my father was reading Ayn Rand. He explained the arguments to me, and for the most part, I agreed with them. I asked my dad if I could read the books, and he said to wait until I was 18. When my friend Aaron gave me a copy of Anthem in May, I knew it couldn't have been better timing. Exactly eight years ago, I'm fulfilling my own prophecies.

But I can't read it. I can't get past the first five pages. It tortures me. I like fiction about dystopia, sure, but I can't stand the type where individuality is crushed. I hated the Giver and I couldn't start 1984 for the same reason. But I adore V for Vendetta and similar stories, where individuality is not, and cannot be sacrificed.

Part of the reason is I already feel like we exist under a totalitarian regime. I mean, the U.S. government is the most powerful and expensive government in history. It's bigger than the Nazis and it's bigger than the USSR. We spy on our citizens and have concentration camps and we build walls just like they did. How is this different? Oh yeah, we're the good guys.

So I did not and will not completely fulfill my goal, but I learned some things about myself in the process, so all is well. I've been reading poetic, sad, fantastic surrealism and my heart is at peace.

I read an entire archive of arguments between a young man and his girlfriend. It's one sided, so whether she is a bitch or not, the guy's faults are a footnote. My first thought was, I totally understand. Wasn't one or two of my ex's exactly like that? My second thought was, Love keeps no record of wrongs.

One step forward. . .

I've been dreaming, about stupid things. Anyone I respect would think I was making a mistake. I wonder if they can appreciate the beauty in a dream, even one I don't plan on acting on. There's two. The first, is I want to buy a car and drive back to Phoenix. It's about 3,000 miles and would cost a fortune and it would take forever and people already miss me, so it probably won't happen. I'll take that return ticket home. But can't you imagine?

The other, I told to enough people and I don't feel like sharing anymore.

Day Twenty Three: Cradle

The Happiest Photo in the World

The Happiest Photo in the World


My darkroom photo professor assigned portraits. I took pictures of Beth, Holly V. as studio portraits and K as an environmental portrait.
My prof liked my photos, but not my prints so he made me redo the originals today. He taught me how to use the parts of the photo enlarger that I didn't know. An hour later, my result was the happiest photo in the world.
No picture I have ever taken has made me as happy as the one of K. It's even hard to say any of my other work (writing, drawing) exceeds the pride and joy I felt for this print.


I'm really happy.

ABOUT THE PHOTO: CLICK TO ENLARGE: I took a picture of K in her kitchen applying makeup leaving a stream of (fake) blood trickled down her cheek. She was wearing weird purple gloves and a nice black blouse. The film did not dry correctly, and there are weird scratches and watermarks on the print. I love it more that way. I wanted this photo to be creepy, and it is beautiful at the same time.

I could easily say that the blood represents something anti-corporate or anti-establishment about makeup, but I'm not sure that was entirely my aim. Honestly though, when I read fashion mags I get very nightmarish images of what is really going on in between pages. Draw your own conclusion, if you will.

Schizophotography

I invented a new type of photography. Kinda. I'm not sure if this counts to you, or even to me. Not as an "invention". I coined the word at least.

I call it "SCHIZOPHOTOGRAPHY", which is:

"A portmanteau of schizophrenia and photography, schizophotography is deliberate disassociation with reality through photographic expression. Redefining "point and shoot", "snapshot". If the aim of photography is to remember then the aim of schizophotography is to remember what no one remembers. Mindless self-indulged photos. Beyond candid. Never posed, never using a tripod or straight angle. Forget focus, apertures, rule of thirds."

I wrote the entry on Urban Dictionary.com. Before that, I searched Google for many variations of the word, no results came up, period.

I don't know if you think this is original or crazy or stupid or not. But it's just something I've been working on in my spare time. It's better than nothing. I experimented when I was in Catalina Island and took 478 photos.
I will delete/hide the album soon. Then I will go through and actually edit the photos. This is mostly an experiment.
Some of the photos don't fit the definition. Oh well. I don't expect you to browse through them all. Or like most of them. Or understand why I did this. I'm not concerned.

I don't think schizophotography is original because many people take horrible photos of nothing (though not on purpose). I've been doing it all my life. I just coined the term, when I was going through old photos I've taken in my life and found some of my curtains. I have to admit, that picture said so much more about my childhood and personality at the age of eight than any stupid portraits I had or even most candids. I have an entire shoebox of similar pictures. Nothing and everything. And I treasure them.

I think that's the point. To explore my environment over myself.

---x

You can view my results here. Nothing is edited:


http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=24277312&albumId=1669556

Urban Dictionary entry:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=schizophotography