blue coyote laughing

*the NOLA Photo Alliance Toy Stories exhibition I participated in is online HERE

day too

on the second day of shooting Katrina aftermath in New Orleans, I came home exhausted and frustrated.

and I cried.

because I spent a second whole day of taking the same picture over and over and over. with the same bureaucratic stamp that meant the house had been searched for bodies and survivors.

and I was suddenly too aware that each one was not a house, but a home. somebody's home where their kids had been growing up and where they'd made dinner and where they'd slept and made love and where they'd kept their stuff. maybe the only place they had felt they could relax and be themselves. maybe the only place they'd felt safe.

so many escaped with their lives but not their homes. and although we're terribly resiliant creatures, that's a pretty fucking big rug to have pulled out from underneath you.

number

after my first day of shooting Katrina aftermath in New Orleans, I came home exhausted and frustrated. "I'm just shooting the same fucking picture over and over and over." I said.

and it's true. and I spent some time thinking about what that meant. and what I had to offer as a photographer in that situation. and I realized that it's all been done before. and better. and I wondered what I would do for the next few days since I had originally planned to document in a different area the next day.

finally, I realized that what I could offer was volume. the fact that there is still empty house after empty house after empty house after empty house with the same bureaucratic stamp that meant it had been searched for bodies and survivors.

we always end up as a number, don't we?

dark humor

see it bigger here

now that I'm here and looking at my negatives, I realize that I didn't capture what I should have in New Orleans. at least, not enough of it.

I believe in the power of dark humor to get us through tough times. some believe that it is the conscious awareness of death that separates us from the animals. I think it is our ability to laugh in its face.

my favorite New Orleans Tshirt:

"FEMA evacuation plan: Run bitch, RUN!"

*the NOLA Photo Alliance Toy Stories exhibition I participated in is online HERE

just drive

I love to drive. it clears my mind. it fills my mind. it exposes me. it feeds me. I love to drive.

assets

"BARE ASSETS; shake what the good lord gave you"

note to self via dream:
you see stew where others see party favors.
conversely
you see party favors where others see nothing.

just chute me.

I'll fly away...

despite what it may have seemed, I didn't leave the blogging world. nope. just took a roadtrip. to New Orleans. yep. it was wonderful. and awful. and wonderful.

mostly wonderful. heart expanding.

and I want to tell you all about it. I do. but my words are ill-equipped to express my emotions. as usual. but there will be pictures. lots and lots of pictures.

PS

I got nothin more to say.

for a short bit, anyway. here's something to read while I'm away. sadness.

innocence lost

we pondered the hole for quite some time, the neighbor boy and I. wondered why the tree had to be removed. wondered how it had all happened so fast. but mostly, we wondered what was "down there". under all the dirt and stuff. we'd heard quite conflicting rumors about what was at the center of the earth. we thought it was about darned time somebody answered that question.

so we dug.

...and we dug.

...and we dug.

every day for a week we met in his backyard and dug the hole deeper.

until one morning we showed up and saw a horn. plain as day. a pointy, bony horn sticking up from the dirt at the bottom of the hole. and we were pretty sure we saw it move.

we quickly shoveled and pushed all the dirt we'd removed that week back into the hole in a panic. because our question had been answered, and we wished we hadn't asked.

hell was down there. and we'd seen one of the devil's horns.

"I promise, we're not hookers..."

"...my husband's a firefighter. you've probably been on calls with him." my sister said.

and that was when I started to pay attention. because until that point, I thought the officers had pulled over to give us the "this is a bad neighborhood and you shouldn't be out walking here alone" speech. because I've heard that one a few times. even in my own, rapidly gentrifying, DC neighborhood.

my sister and I had been killing some time on Denver's infamous Colfax Ave by walking around taking photos, waiting for our spa appointments, no less, when the cruiser flipped a u-turn to pull along beside us. to ask for our names and question us. because I guess I was looking pretty suspicious in my sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers.

eventually, they let us go with these parting words, "well, the truth is, you don't really look like the type of GIRLS we usually get around here..."

errrr... thanks?