I hate lulls, lethargies and languishments. I’ve been in one or all of these for the past few weeks. I’ve tried not to assess the “why” of why I’ve been experiencing this lull, though of course, I have indulged in that. I have heard the lonesome whistle of depression, what Lucinda Williams named the big black train. So far, that train only whistles from a somewhat safe distance.
Instead, I’ve tried to find the way through and out of the lull. That moment came this week when, feeling leaden, as though I weighed a ton, I put a camera in a bag and forced myself into the January air, which felt like walking through a knives-out maze even though the temperature is relatively mild. The bees in one of my hives have even spent a couple of days whizzing about.
How hard can it be for a creative to do their creative thing? How hard can it be for a photographer to start making photographs. Pulling out of the lethargy of a lull is like trying to escape from fly papers. Cruel as it seems, that’s an apt metaphor. And even crueler than it sound, I have watched flies trying to extricate themselves from fly paper and it is both fascinating and Kafkaesque.
But I finally pulled my legs from the goo and went to a scene that I had wanted to photograph a month or so ago but couldn’t because I was driving with my wife and dog and because the light wasn’t right. The light was right that day and I willed myself to go.
I have photographed this billboard before with a 4x camera and black and white film. One of the photographs I made is one of my best friend’s favorites. In fact, he’s asked for a print the next time I’m in the darkroom. A request that I am honored to fulfill. This second time, I planned on “just a shot or two” of the entire disintegrating billboard. Even that required what felt like a monumental effort.
But as so often happens, I’m photographically like that old Pringles ad slogan, “Betcha can't eat just one!”
And I couldn’t. And I didn’t. And I kept getting closer and finding a visual story in little pieces of the billboard that was peeling off the billboard underneath. Like the one presented here, focusing on a piece tells a more interesting story to me.
And, yes, it’s another photograph of decay, joining years and years of finding the allure, if not the downright beauty, of the unalluring and unbeautiful (conventionally speaking). I try not to examine why I am drawn to this subject. I just am, and best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
It’s not hard to find an overwhelming amount of “ruin porn” on the interwebs. It’s a potent subject. I was opened to it by the writer William Gass. Back in the late 80s, I was working for a university alumni magazine and was assigned to write a feature about Gass’s latest project, which involved his photographs of urban/industrial decay. He had a slideshow with long-hanging rust stains and broken surfaces. I resisted liking this unpretty images. Gass made some sort of “case” for the work. I moved on and into a long fallow period when I was focused on writing more than photography.
But some sort of inspirational (aspirational) seed had been planted. Beginning about 15 years ago, images (many made with an “ugly” Holga camera) of disintegration became a recurring subject. It’s now one of the recurring themes in my work. As my body of work grows and I can take a meta view of it, I know I am drawn to certain subjects and approaches.
So, this billboard pulled me back into a working state of mind and I am grateful for it. I recently discovered William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops” (2002-3), and that work resonates (no pun intended) with its visual counterparts.
Leica m8, 50mm Summicron f2.