self doubt & second thoughts & and the press of time & inspiration

I was out with two good friends in the field of rough stubble which rolls down from the wagon on wagon hill. I was trying to take portraits of Lansing and Moriah, ala Mr. Dirado, and I was failing miserably. I couldn’t find the words to say to make my subjects take the form of the portrait that I wanted to make. The mix of humour and impassioned authenticity that Dirado strikes when he makes a picture eluded me entirely. I am very aware that he has been doing this a long time and I am a novice, and that to expect any kind of greatness from my first serious foray into portraiture is a fool’s hope. This was not my first attempt at “Dirado type” pictures either, I had tried four times before in interior settings, and each time the pictures I took did not satisfy. I found that having a camera in hand made my interactions with my subjects rather awkward, and that the best photos I took were candid ones, which was not the way Dirado worked. I had hoped that taking on this project would help me to practice a more comfortable interaction between myself as portrait photographer and the subject, but the more I tried, the more I began to think that trying to make a strength out of this particular weakness bordered on a Sisyphean task.

When I looked at the photos that I had taken on wagon hill, it was even worse than I expected: they looked like a bunch of senior portraits..and bad ones at that. I felt a sinking in my stomach, the feeling of complete inadequacy at the altar of self-imposed expectations. I began to take stock of the project I had set out for myself, in relation to the time until it was due, in combination with the other work that needed to happen in the coming week. After four photo sessions I had one image that could be called an emulation of Dirado. As I stood, booted feet slowly sinking into the saturated ground of wagon hill, staring at LCD screen of the camera where the thoroughly uninteresting set of portraits I had taken looked back at me, I decided I needed to switch tracks, and fast. If I were to make a final project for this class that I could be happy with, I needed to take photos that played to a strength that I could find with the camera in my hand.

And so, on Sunday morning, I found myself on the second floor of the library, shuffling through the photography books with that special sense of creative urgency that I know so well. I had been thinking about what I knew I was good at in photography, and that was finding little accidental moments that could be captured by the lense, and in doing so made into some record of a visual experience of the world. I was looking for a photographer that worked in this way, who I could draw inspiration from. The thin spine of a small white book entitled “Long Life Cool White” caught my eye, and I sat down between the high stacks of books to read. This book is a collection of photographs and essays by Moyra Davey, and her pictures and words will now be my muse for this project.

In her essay “Notes of Photography & Accident”, Davey writes of the “inherently surrealist, contingent, found quality of the vernacular photograph”. Tapping into this is the best chance I have of producing something worthwhile for my final project. The photographs reproduced in the book, most no bigger than a index card, are complex in their simplicity. They are at the same time formal abstractions of light, diary entries, short poems, and imprints made by the eye of a close and empathetic observer of life’s mundane profundity. I am embarking on a project to find some such accidents and capture them with my camera. The photos I take will be quickly taken snapshots, slightly overexposed, over contrasted, and cool , like Davey’s. They will be of moments that I observe which move me to document them, and they will be quiet and understated. I will pay special attention to those things which are recurring and important to my life, just as Davey’ has paid special attention to books and records. I will conjure up and follow the “almost superstitious confidence in the lucky accident” which Sontag describes in a quote placed near the beginning of Davey’s essay.

Long Life Cool White: Photographs & Essays by Moyra Davey