Badass Hell

I’ve been interested in photography my entire life. I think it probably started with cameras rather than pictures. Cameras are fascinating machines—first mechanical, then electronic objects of desire. My childish fascination with them was fuelled by the fact that they were fragile, expensive and “not toys”. Someone must have given me a cheap, plastic Diana-style camera at a very early age, because I remember not only the silvery flash of the real, working shutter, but the taste of its plastic body. I can honestly say that I have photography in my blood, unless my kidneys got rid of it years ago.

I was ten years old when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and the most important important thing I remember about it is that Neil and Buzz used Hasselblad cameras to document their moonwalks. The images were, of course, remarkable, but I was furious that they abandoned so much valuable equipment on the moon to save weight.

If you don’t know them, the original Hasselblads were modular cameras with interchangeable parts. The lenses were mostly German-made Zeiss products that came with built-in shutters. Hasselblad made the camera bodies, mostly a mirror box with control linkages, and the 120 roll film backs, which permitted changing film emulsions and formats mid-roll.

Hasselblad was a small company based in Sweden with low production and a lot of hand finishing. The cameras were aimed at studio professionals and very expensive, all of which made them very desirable.

As a junior shutterbug, the closest I came to owning a Hasselblad was a genuine sales brochure, until some time in the eighties when I scraped together enough to acquire a 1958 (an excellent year) 500c with the 80mm lens and 12 back. Sadly, we did not bond. I kept it for a couple of years, shot a couple of dozen rolls of film with it, and then sold it for a break-even price. Lesson learned, one would think.

About 10 years ago, I saw a Hasselblad outfit for sale at a preposterously low price and being older and even less wise, I bought it. I worked harder at it this time, and tried to use it regularly. I had some successes, I think, a few of which are posted in “Aspect”.

I conscientiously carried the camera with me on walks, and was surprised one day by a restaurant waiter, who was familiar with Hasselblads, handing me a roll of Fujicolor 120 saying someone left it behind and that he thought I might be able to use it. It was obvious, however, that the roll was already exposed. I knew, of course, that I would have to have it processed. Photographers are, to some extent at least, voyeurs—both figuratively and pathologically—and this was an opportunity to play voyeur on another’s voyeurism. It was unhelpfully pointed out to me that the film could contain pornographic images that might get me into legal trouble, but I was fairly confident that sensible pornographers were early adopters of digital photography and felt sure I had a plausible defence, if I needed one.

The image shown here is the only one compelling enough to scan. The roll had been inexpertly wrapped after exposure, allowing the film to fog. The resulting image shows an attractive young woman astride a police motorcycle. It was almost certainly taken here in Vancouver, because that’s a Vancouver Police motorcycle. She’s probably well-off because I think she’s wearing a Rolex®. Or it could be a fake. She has a kind of Mediterranean look, but this is a city built on immigration, so she could have been born here. I’m no expert, but that looks like an expensive pedicure. I’ve tried to enlarge the lenses of her aviators to see the photographer or anything else on our side of the photograph, but the flash makes it impossible to discern anything.

So it’s a typical photograph: it provokes questions without answering them. A photograph doesn’t tell a story. The viewer makes up the story. The viewer’s story may align with what was actually going on in front of the camera, but it doesn’t have to. It may be more interesting if it doesn’t. To me, this photograph depicts a rich, spoiled debutante in the process of stealing a police motorcycle. While on an acid trip. I don’t know what’s really going on. I don’t want to. If this is you or you know who it is, please keep it to yourself. The picture is enough.

But, I hear you ask, is this a Hasselblad picture? It certainly could be. This is an uncropped scan of a 6x4.5cm negative. The Hasselblad A16 back gives 16 6x4.5cm images on a roll of 120 film. Best I can do.

I still have my Hasselblad film camera, but I made it my New Year’s revolution this year to become more digital and to that end I have adopted the Hasselblad X1D digital system. Sadly, Hasselblad is now owned by a major drone manufacturer, so they no longer make film cameras, but their standards remain very high. The cameras are still Swedish, but the lenses are now all Japanese. The X1D has autofocus, an electronic viewfinder, gps, wi-fi and a host of things I had hitherto written off as fads. Grudgingly, I now concede that they may have their uses.

Before committing to the X1D, I rented one for a weekend to see if I liked it. I was ambivalent until I received a sign. For the first time, after decades of pounding the sidewalk, I was assaulted by a potential subject. In that brief moment of trying to protect my insane damage deposit while trying to get a punch in, I knew it was the camera for me. We’ll see.

Bookmarks

Henderson Books in Bellingham, WA is a favorite place of mine and if you’re the bookish type, it’s well worth a detour. Here, used books are treated like the sacred relics they are, and not like mouldy trash found in a weird relation’s basement after he died. It’s a bright, clean and friendly environment in which the stock is well-organized into intuitive categories. A pleasure dome in which time stands still.

I acquired this photograph at Henderson Books as a bonus in either the signed copy of Freaky Deaky I got there or in Merlin Thomas’ critical study of Céline. Presumably, it served as a bookmark. I’ve kept it in the condition in which it came to me.

It is 65mm wide along the bottom, and 130mm long on the left side. It is printed on semi-gloss resin-coated Fujicolor paper. The white marks concealing the face have been physically scratched into the surface of the print, rather than having been made on the negative. The upper right corner has been cut with a razor knife and a straight edge.

The camera and flash were fairly close to the subject. A Velbon-style tripod sits in the background, close to the faux oak furniture.

The subject herself is, obviously, an adult female. She has bruises on her thighs. I think she is a platinum blonde. She is wearing a band on her wedding finger (assuming the image hasn’t been flopped). And perhaps at least one sock.

That’s all I can say with certainty about this photograph, both as image and artefact. I know nothing about the subject, the photographer or when, where or why it was taken, or why it was defaced.

A picture like this is full of psychological potential, however, and I could speculate all day long, but in doing so I would be telling you more about myself than about the photograph. This may be an unusual example, but all photographs work that way.

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A Portrait Of Eugène Atget

The best-known portraits of Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget are those taken near the end of his life by Berenice Abbott. It’s hard to warm to these images of him as an old man, a bare husk of what he must have been in his prime. No reflection on Ms. Abbott, who was herself a brilliant photographer, and without whom Atget’s work might have been lost to obscurity.

I like this one of him in his 30s by an unknown photographer. He looks like a guy who might have been a sailor and an actor. At this point he had only just taken up the dark art.

I think of Atget as the first photographer. Not the first person to use a camera, of course, but the first who really thought about the medium and its particular strengths and limitations. Someone who understood that photography was not painting, and deserved its own aesthetic.

He called many of his early photographs “études” and in these images of trees, grasses, garden ornaments he developed a way of looking at his surroundings with a frankness that I think rejected the romanticism of which he is so often accused.

He was born on February 12, 1857. Happy 162nd.

"Street Photography"

I never really thought much about this expression until a few years ago at a local Leica shindig. After releasing the M9, they couldn’t produce enough to meet demand, so they created a roadshow to allow the faithful to fondle the merchandise. Whilst groping the guest of honour with the ridiculous 50mm f/0.95 Noctilux, I heard a guy say, “Oh yeah, I shoot street.” I looked at him. He was a youngish man with a beard and tattoos, wearing a toque and one of those “photographer’s vests” that only Bruce Gilden can really pull off. I realized that I didn’t understand what he was talking about, and yet I wanted to strangle him for some reason.

I start from the premise that words and photographs are opposites. Words are primarily concrete and photographs are primarily abstract. It is the essential abstraction of photography that makes it worthwhile. The viewer is presented with an apparently accurate depiction of a slice of time and space, that is nevertheless unreliable.

A photograph is by nature confrontational and, to at least some degree, disorienting. The viewer will attempt to relate it to their own experience, will most likely fail, and will then quite properly rely on their imagination. But put a line of text in a photograph and the viewer will latch onto it like drowning man to a lifeboat.

Titles, locations, descriptions are all a kind of treason to a photograph. The further one goes down this road, the less the photograph exists in its own right, and the more it becomes a mere illustration of the accompanying text.

As an amateur, I have the luxury of shooting what and when I want. Nobody cares what or if I photograph—it’s total freedom. As such, I don’t feel the need to conform to a particular style or aesthetic, or to encumber what I do with a name. I agree with Mr. Waugh who said, “It doesn’t matter what people call you unless they call you pigeon pie and eat you up.”

Garry Winogrand, the poster child for Street Photography if ever there was one, said, “I hate the term. I think it’s a stupid term, ‘street photography’. I don’t think it tells you anything about the photographer or work.” Who am I to disagree?

From a practical point of view, I never engage in street photography because it’s incredibly dangerous here. You’d get liquified by a bus in a heartbeat. The sidewalk is much safer.

In conclusion, I offer below what is undoubtedly a street photograph. On December 14, 2013, I found a strip of colour negatives in the gutter on the northwest corner of Homer and Helmcken. I carefully dried it in restaurant napkins, then took it home and washed it, lovingly bathed it in Photo-Flo® and scanned it. If it looks familiar—too bad. Finders keepers.