putting the pieces together

Here are the two new Streetcar triptychs. You have seen the individual elements which I made during my time in Portland; here are the final products. The overall size of each of these puppies is a whopping 7 1/2" by 88 1/2".

parting shot

One last Streetcar image before we head back to KC.


Have you figured out I'm always photographing, rain or shine? (That's rain on the window of the streetcar.) Keith Carter once told me during a workshop, "Just keep shooting: it's your job. No matter what."

streetcar again (with another detour)

I lied. I just have to continue writing about the coolness of Portland, even though I swore it off in the last blog post. We’re here for another few days, so bear with me.

Yesterday we spent a long time hiking at Washington Park. This is totally different from Forest Park, which I have already raved about. In this one place you can find the following attractions: the Oregon Zoo, the World Forestry Center, the Japanese Garden, the Children’s Museum, the Rose Gardens, a Holocaust Memorial, a Veterans Memorial, miles of trails and the Hoyt Aboretum, where there are also miles of trails. It’s set on over 500 acres in the city’s west hills, overlooking downtown and is pretty spectacular.






I’m continuing my work on the Streetcar project.

streetcar

OK, I’m going to stop sounding like I work for the Portland Chamber of Commerce. Forget about the crazy good restaurants, the impressive community street party that was First Thursday (and the fact that there are enough galleries in town that tonight is First Friday), the fact that REI is just a few blocks from me, the fact that the best frozen yogurt is too (they swirl the obviously superior flavors: chocolate and raspberry), that there is an ultra great camera store (they put Holgas and Hassies in the same display case), the fact that men here aren’t afraid to wear capri pants, that the streets in our part of town that go north/south are numbered and the streets that go east/west are alphabetized meaning that someone like me who has a painfully pathetic sense of direction can NEVER get lost, and also forget about the fact that you don’t need a car here if you live in the city. Forget about reading any of that on this blog. Its time for me to get back to work.

Photo work.

Remember the Streetcar Series I started last year and continue to work on each time I’m in town? I didn’t touch it the first couple of weeks here because I knew I wanted to explore it from a slightly different approach. I didn’t know what that would be, but felt sure that the photo goddesses would wave something in front of my face at some point.

That wave came in the form of a new camera. It was time for me to upgrade to the new Canon 5DII. Buying it here was on my list of things to do, since there is no sales tax in Oregon. (Oh, you can add that to the things I won’t be talking about.) Stepping up meant getting more mega pixels, like a crazy number of megapixles that are probably over the top really. Wasn’t sure what I’d do with all those mega pixels.

I learned very quickly after my first outing with the new camera that those mega pixels would let me enlarge the image like never before.

So, in the spirit of the Walker Evans subway pictures that inspired me to do this series in the first place, I am now more on the lookout for individuals on the streetcar, rather than interactions and “conversations.” (That will come later when I piece these together as triptychs in the final presentation.) In a way, these are more like portraits.

A little scary to share them so early on, but here goes.

streetcar pictures

Work on the Streetcar project continues now that I am in Portland. Yesterday I ventured out of our neighborhood to ride the rail on its entire eight-mile loop, scoping out good vantage points from which to photograph. I made a new triptych, one which is kind of more about trees than the passengers in the cars.

new streetcar elements

A few wonderful days in Portland... gorgeous fall colors and some new streetcar pieces to go into longer strips. Mostly I photographed at night this time.

streetcar at night

I shot some streetcar pics after the sun went down last night.

coming up empty sometimes

And so it goes. One day of working can yield a small gold mine of material; the next day can be a bust. Yesterday was great, and today was simply an exercise in pushing my index finger again and again on a shutter button.

Here are a couple of pictures that I felt were successes from my streetcar shooting yesterday.




This neon sign greets me each day as I leave the apartment to work. An inspiration, of sorts.


My friend Cheryl came by today and took a look at the work in progress. She said the images reminded her of the work of Romare Bearden, an artist with whom I was not familiar. A google search led me to, among others, this collage.

streetcar pictures

I have been in Portland for the past week and have picked up where I left off with the streetcar pictures. They have morphed from color to black and white and now back again to color. I have gotten into a rhythm as far as the digital capture goes, as well as working with the resulting images on the computer. I have made decisions about cropping, sizing, final presentation, etc. and feel like I’ve gotten to a good place with this new body of work.


Making these pictures is pretty exhilarating, believe it or not.


There are north and southbound trolley lines, which are just one block apart. I start out early in the morning zigzagging back and forth between the two lines, catching one as it is headed south, then the other as it is going north. (I check schedules, so I am prepared.) As the streetcar approaches, I make a decision as to where I’ll stand, i.e. what I want to have as the backdrop that will make up the one of the visual layers of the photograph. I also have to consider what may be reflected in the windows of the streetcar itself (creating another one of the layers.) These two pieces I can control. When the streetcar begins to pass, I hoist my camera and begin shooting. Of course I have no idea what is going to pass in front of my viewfinder; the surprise of what is revealed at the moment I squeeze the shutter is always exciting and always unpredictable.


This third layer that makes up these pictures (the people on the streetcar) is completely out of my control. The way passengers are positioned and the way they are interacting (or not) play a huge role in whether or not it will be an interesting picture.


That element of surprise had always been one of my favorite aspects of photography.


I am printing these as single strips, then connecting them both vertically and horizontally. They are still very much a work in progress as I continue to play around with them, but I feel like they are beginning to come to sort of resolution.


In the meantime, I am having a lot of fun making and getting to know this new batch of images.

new piece

The streetcar pictures have taken shape and have evolved into this current state. This piece is 16" x 20". If you look closely, you’ll see that I have repeated some of the images, and in some cases I have even flipped them, enhancing the notion of coming and going.

If I look at this from a distance, it looks a bit like people in a high-rise office building.

I like it when images become something other than what they actually represent.

a couple more streetcar pictures

walker evans subway portraits

My inspiration for making the street car pictures? Walker Evans, in Depression-era New York.

“With the subway portraits Evans turned away from the lucid, carefully composed images of architectural details, commercial signs and poor farmers that had characterized his work. On and off over the next three years (1939- 1942), he returned to the New York subways to photograph, using a miniature camera hidden inside his coat to record the people seated opposite him.

Evans makes no particular political argument through his subway pictures. Instead he presents a cross section of people, unposed and anonymous, forming what he called a lineup of faces. To achieve this, he gave up most of the creative controls that photography offers, limiting himself to deciding the precise moment at which to squeeze the shutter release hidden in his sleeve.

The resulting images have a naked directness, a quality accentuated by their casual framing. People appear off center, pushed to the edge of the photographs; many pictures are tilted slightly. The furtive nature of the photographs adds to their sense of authenticity, as does the fact that the people in them are so obviously and absolutely unposed. Evans catches his subjects in typical subway behavior, deep in daydreams, or asleep or gazing off into space. A few stare back at him, suggesting that even without a visible camera he was intently, even aggressively, observing his subjects. Most of the passengers are white and represent a range of social classes.

In choosing which riders to photograph, Evans was attracted not only to people with striking facial expressions but also to those dressed in unusual clothing. One image shows a young woman in a hat and collar made out of fake leopard skin sitting next to a friend wearing a hat trimmed with a less flashy fur. In another picture, a sad-faced man with a pencil-thin mustache and wire-rimmed glasses wears his bowler at a rakish tilt. Elsewhere, the newspapers people are reading and the advertising signs in the background add layers of commentary to the images.

The subway portraits express Evans's deep faith in the power of vision to reveal both the physical appearance and emotional texture of the world. In a text he wrote to accompany these photographs, Evans articulated this faith in looking.

‘Stare,’ he commanded. ‘It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.’”

New York Times article, 1991
Charles Hagen

portland people

I made some new pictures today, my last full day in Portland.