While sitting at this table at Wired Cafe, I remind myself that I am making art in a town that has been self-obsessed with its own decay for the last two decades. This cafe is showing two bodies of work: something called "Necropolis: City of the Dead," wherein the photographer has made images of crumbling headstones and run the files through a high contrast sepia filter. The other is, from my vantage point, untitled. It documents color and texture from inside Steel.
The cafe walls augment my feeling of living within a small bubble. So many artists who have walked the south side have photographed Steel, and the businesses seem to relish the imagery on their walls as if to say, "see, we have culture and history too!"
Creating images of Steel, I must remind myself that what I am doing is genuine and establishes different motives. Call it survival theory. These walls here memorialize. They authenticate the past. They subscribe to a linear narrative of birth, life, death. Then consumption. While romantic, these images seem quite literal. In sequence, I see repetition. In my images, the only way to communicate is through careful pairing of image by image or precise selection of a photograph to command on its own. My representation of the machine shop could look quite similar to "Artist X's" because how far can one push the aesthetic of a singular, stagnant object?
Photography is like poetry - one builds meaning and emotion through pauses, breaks, structure and chaos. Through stanza and through play. I remind myself that I am breaking in, and that these images will not strictly be shown as a cultural memorial on the side of town where the executives ordered their mansions built. I cannot risk becoming too untrustworthy of myself while living Bethlehem, a city which often tokenizes and cheapens its history. The commodification of the past could fall in line with romanticizing. It is done, in part, to normalize experience and thus make experience recognizable and useful in the present. In Bethlehem's case, I am speaking of the polarized service community.
I must also remind myself that ultimately, I am doing work. We are in the height of summer. I am living, I am thinking, I am acting (therefore I am?) Therefore, this project is evolving. I think I'm doing better than I had imagined, especially concerning solitude. Quite frankly, sometimes to be alone in Bethlehem manifests itself so intensely that the feeling becomes physical. But I can still walk down the street and do something like this: sit at a tall table and be in the company of strangers.
Here's to feeling less sick with loneliness, iced lattes, and yes, I'll say it: bad art.
The cafe walls augment my feeling of living within a small bubble. So many artists who have walked the south side have photographed Steel, and the businesses seem to relish the imagery on their walls as if to say, "see, we have culture and history too!"
Creating images of Steel, I must remind myself that what I am doing is genuine and establishes different motives. Call it survival theory. These walls here memorialize. They authenticate the past. They subscribe to a linear narrative of birth, life, death. Then consumption. While romantic, these images seem quite literal. In sequence, I see repetition. In my images, the only way to communicate is through careful pairing of image by image or precise selection of a photograph to command on its own. My representation of the machine shop could look quite similar to "Artist X's" because how far can one push the aesthetic of a singular, stagnant object?
Photography is like poetry - one builds meaning and emotion through pauses, breaks, structure and chaos. Through stanza and through play. I remind myself that I am breaking in, and that these images will not strictly be shown as a cultural memorial on the side of town where the executives ordered their mansions built. I cannot risk becoming too untrustworthy of myself while living Bethlehem, a city which often tokenizes and cheapens its history. The commodification of the past could fall in line with romanticizing. It is done, in part, to normalize experience and thus make experience recognizable and useful in the present. In Bethlehem's case, I am speaking of the polarized service community.
I must also remind myself that ultimately, I am doing work. We are in the height of summer. I am living, I am thinking, I am acting (therefore I am?) Therefore, this project is evolving. I think I'm doing better than I had imagined, especially concerning solitude. Quite frankly, sometimes to be alone in Bethlehem manifests itself so intensely that the feeling becomes physical. But I can still walk down the street and do something like this: sit at a tall table and be in the company of strangers.
Here's to feeling less sick with loneliness, iced lattes, and yes, I'll say it: bad art.
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