Violin

Where I went to High School was strange. It was connected to the Middle School, and set back from the street. There was no real direct way in or out, by car or on foot.

After I graduated, I still drove by everyday during my commute to college. I had heard the Middle School may be closing, with a new one to be built in its place. I figured they were only rumors.

One day I drove by on my way to class, and the Middle School was there. When I returned that evening it was gone. Nothing left, only rubble. In a little under six hours.

No Way to Know

New places, new scenes. Stepping outside of places that have already been explored thoroughly, these are outside the neighborhood. Outside the city. These are new.

New ground, new scenes. Memories still exist, as do ideas of gentrification and decay, but these are different. These memories are not specific, not mine.

New buildings, new scenes. What memories we have as people are not contained to one life, person or place. They spill over into others spaces, internal and external, and become part of the collective unconscious. It is a beginning.

No Milk Today

So, I used to have a backyard. It was set in the tow yard that is behind my house, and it was about six feet higher than the rest of the yard.

There was a big tree in it. I came home one day and the tree was gone. I figured "Well, I guess if it was dangerous then it's better to cut it down than have it fall on the house." Whatever.

The next day I came home, and the backyard was gone. I went in the house and asked my mother who had taken the backyard, and she didn't seem to know.

Come to find out, the landlord needed more space for his tow yard, so he cut off my backyard to make more spaces for cars. He ended up renting it to a landscaping and masonry company, and that is where all of the construction looking debris comes from.

The company would gear up for a big job, and flood the yard with things like large stones, manure and palettes of bricks - all of the masonry and landscaping materials one would expect to see in a stockyard - piled around my house. The yard would then empty out as they used the materials for their jobs.

As the economy has started to fail, the tide has slowed to a stop. Instead of waves that roll in and roll out, it has become a sort of graveyard in which everything is just sitting, stagnating. It is no longer a sign of any sort of growth or even change. Its just sort of entropy hell.

A Looking in View

Another semester starting, and a little less time to do what I want. I'm afraid of locking up, and starting to feel like I'm slogging in mud. Over the coming months, the format of this blog is going to expand to incorporate more text, as I will be including some of the written portions that lurk behind my photography.

There are some ideas that I have in relation to memory and my link to it through my photographic work. I will be posting the results of some of my trial and error recollections of the places I will be photographing, and delving deeper into why I am actually in the specific places I choose.

By doing this, I will expand the context my work exists in, and also frame the images I am making in a more intentional way. As the semester progresses, I hope that these memetic recollections continue to expand hand in hand with my images.

Chemical Tribe

It's been awhile, and its down to the wire. January is coming fast, and I still have too many things to figure out.

I've been mulling on presentation etc. and this is one of the ideas I have been working with.

I have some ideas/issues that remain unresolved, however, and I'm not sure what will happen with that.

End of the Day

So a little slice of Jarrod. One is my elementary school. The other is a cemetery. That stone wall you see in the one separates the two. I grew up playing in a playground that abutted a graveyard.

It was especially interesting the day there was a funeral for a member of the Hell's Angels, with rival Motorcycle Clubs in attendance. They assigned a member of the club to guard the schoolyard. My Mother was a volunteer at the school, and talked with one of the Hell's Angels for a while. He seemed nice.

Lost Cause

It's been a little while, so here are some more from my Backyardigans series. I have alot more of these, too many to post actually.

In January I'm going to borrow a page from a friend's book, and perhaps print all of them small to arrange in a large grid like manner... Not really sure yet, but I'm still working out the logistics.

It still surprises me, some of the junk I find out behind my house now. It seems to come in waves, presumably when the company is gearing up for a big job, I find more hazardous crap blocking my back door. There was a wind storm a couple of weeks ago, nothing major, but it looked like a hurricane had rolled through.

Now there's a storage pod for the top of a car. Where'd that come from, I wonder?