“I am trying to figure out how to teach students that photography is about working out something or working toward something for oneself! How did you learn that John?”
Posted by Shelley Fuller at October 18, 2004 03:48 PM
This was a comment/question that my photo professor in Nebraska had posted in response to this entry.
How? By taking photograqphs. I am interested in the transformation of how the world becomes something entirely new in a photograph. This interest as a feeling, borders on obsession. The only thing to do is to work towards that interest by making pictures. I like to shoot film. I like to be in the darkroom. The “Photographic Experience” is something that becomes harder and harder to separate from what I would consider “my life”. I don’t see any reason for the two to be separate. Photography is intensely personal. I don’t do it for money or for anyone else other than myself. This allows me to focus (a pun!) on what I am interested in.
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On Saturday I woke up at 8am, and got to the darkroom by 9.
7 hours, three cans of coke, a salmon onigiri and 50 sheets of 11×14 photo paper later, I left for home.
The first photo on the left is the club building at my school. The photo club has two rooms on the third floor. One is for gathering and hanging out, and next to that is the darkroom. As you can see in the middle picture, the actual set up of the darkroom leaves a little to be desired.
In fact, printing photographs here felt a lot like driving down an icy road.
At night.
Wearing sunglasses.
In my old ‘83 Thunderbird.
You can do it, its just you know that there are other roads out there that are set up to provide the user with the best driving experience possible. Same with darkrooms. Proper ventalation would have been GREAT. Instead I altered my usual printing habits to include times where I would close the paper box and go outside for a while to enjoy clean air.
That said, I loved every minute of it. I have a lot more to do but what I printed on Saturday really got me excited to keep shooting, developing, printing, shooting, developing, etc. Living with the photographic process keeps me challenged and energized.
I do not have access to a scanner so instead I used my phone to take a photo from one of my prints. That is Hamaguchi Kyoko and some Maiko on the right.
Last night on the Matsudo station Joban line platform I ran into an old friend.
Yoko spent a year in Nebraska- I think it was in 1998 or 1999. We were pals again when I came to Japan in 2001-02. I wanted to see her again but I had lost her contact information a while ago. I figured that the only way I could ever meet her again was if it was by chance. And chance it was. We have a lot to catch up on.
On Sunday my friend Jen and I will be representing theUniversity of Nebraska, Lincoln at a U.S. University fair in Ikebukuro. We will be sitting at a booth handing out flyers to folks who may be interested in moving from Tokyo to Lincoln, Nebraska.
Jen is an intern at the U.S. embassy in Akasaka. I am an assistant junior high school english teacher.
Guess which one of us wrote this in an email to me this afternoon:
“I am meeting Colin Powell Sunday morning at 10:30, so I may be running a tad late….I plan to be there by noon. ”
Yeah, that was Jen.
If I was going to be late, I would probably use words like, “Overslept”, “Got Lost”, or, “Completely Forgot” in my excuse. But thats only because I don’t get to meet major players in world politics all that often…
