folks, recently.
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A handful of photographs I never got around to posting — until now. All but one was taken with the Hasselblad; the black and white photograph, with the Rolleiflex.
From top:
1. Adam | Bed-Stuy
2. Cody | Bed-Stuy
3. Mike | Nolita
4. Aunt + Mom | Barcelona
5. Jeremy | Chelsea
6. Nick | Greenpoint
And below — one more of Mom, not far from Park Guell, Barcelona.
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date night, central new jersey.
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Saturday night, J and I went to a supermarket that shall remain unnamed, mostly because my real name is attached to this blog and I was mostly-kindly asked to not take photos while inside the store but did so anyway and well, I’d like to return to said store again and again and again because the place is like a wonderland of great free samples and endless shelves of gyoza and yeah, J, you probably should’ve gotten that random package of frozen Korean-style morcilla, so OF COURSE I’m going to keep quiet and hope that next time I can take even better photos of the Saturday night crowds at The Best Supermarket in the States without getting kicked out or just plain yelled at and shamed into putting the Hasselblad back inside my bag. Also, Best Date Night ever.
(And yeah, I had a Wegmans while in grad school, so I know from supermarkets.)
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zona.
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On the grounds of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, NJ, is a wooded area with a few wide trails — nothing you could get lost in, but just big enough to feel like a proper midday excursion. With the Hasselblad in tow, as well as with too many film varieties to maintain any visual consistency, we set out after breakfast on a long walk, the quiet punctuated with the occasional woodpecker rat-a-tat in the near distance. Perhaps it’s because I’m in the middle of Geoff Dyer’s Zona, a meditation on watching and rewatching Tarkovsky’s Stalker, or maybe it’s because my own intrepid guide looked the part — but looking at these photographs now, there’s something much more focused, more determined, than I think we had intended. When we finally got to the ruins, did we find what we were looking for? In the bright midday sun, everything seemed much too obvious and apparent to be real, the answers at once right at hand and clearly not what they seemed. (Ruins? In Princeton?!). Tarkovsky would’ve been proud.
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recent polaroids.
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A quiet, restorative weekend away from home also yielded a crop of polaroids; the afternoon light was too good to pass up.
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the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie.
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OK, maybe not so Bunuelian in execution, but there was a dinner party, and maybe a bit of genteel conversation, and also a polaroid back for the Hasselblad, and a fair amount of rye, tequila, and vodka. Since Mike D was involved, there was also Fernet Branca, and maybe a foray into adventurous mixology. Poses were struck. Photographs ensued. And, not to mix my cinema auteurs or anything, but there was even a brief dash of color, Andrei Rublev-style. A wonderful, only moderately surreal, night was had by all.
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brunchtime in europe.
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Meals at my aunt’s house in France mirror the ones at my parents house when I was growing up, and the ones I still have when I come home to visit: a weird hodgepodge of French, Vietnamese, and English spoken at the table (usually all within the same sentence), with food to match the cultures of the languages spoken. Weekend meals in particular got the most cross-cultural action: always a couple of baguettes, always a pot of jasmine rice, always a plate of cured meats and one with cheese, and another one with butter (President brand, and salted, of course), and the random pots of meat — oftentimes a chicken curry, and while I was in France, a beef stew — leftover from the week.
My father’s also a fan of opening up a tin of sardines in tomato sauce (lately this brand), frying up the whole thing in a pan with some sauteed onions. In France, in lieu of sardines, we had boudin noir, freshly made and purchased from the local farmers market that morning. And of course some fried eggs — scrambled in the States, sunnyside up in France. While in France, we gilded the lily with some julienned strips of bacon atop the eggs, which normally wouldn’t be that much gilding, except that we had brought back some jamon iberico and chorizo from Barcelona that simply had to be consumed too, and well, you understand the gilding now, yes?
And wine. Can’t forget the wine.
I eat ridiculously well here in New York, it’s true. But there’s something about a family-style meal, with a gazillion things laid out on the table and conversations going every which way, in at least three different languages, and in a pace that I can only describe as being paradoxically both slothful and gluttonous — I don’t have those very often here. And so when I get a chance in indulge in a properly slow meal, with no other plans to hinder my enjoyment … well, they’re kind of wonderful and precious and all sorts of awesome.
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saturdays with mike d.
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Mike D. is probably the only person on the planet who tolerates the extension tube on my Hasselblad, which effectively turns the camera into a macro lens beast. The many drinks we had at Peels on Saturday afternoon probably also helped matters, as did their always excellent fried chicken sandwich.
We started the day, as is our new habit, at Char No.4, wolfing down poached eggs & grits; energized, we followed that up with some window shopping that turned quickly into actual shopping — you can see Mike’s new shoes in one of these photos (nice kicks, Mike D!). A jaunt into the city ensued, and then the photographed happy hour(s) at Peels. As the sun went down we wandered back into Brooklyn, where we finished up the day with one last purchase for me: a lovely pair of yellow sandals, perfect for a springtime that, in this mild winter, seems to be just around the corner.
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recent polaroids.
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I lugged the Polaroid back for the Hasselbald with me to Europe. Boy, am I glad I did.
1. La Sagrada Familia.
2. Birds-eye view from atop La Sagrada Familia.
3. View from our hotel room, around 5:30 or 6 in the evening.
4. Excellent mid-afternoon fare at Tapas 24. (Go! The staff there are very sweet and helpful, and the food is wonderful. The fried anchovies are a dream.)
5. Park Guell.
Below: On a blustery, below-freezing day in Geneva, the swans came out for a wintry dip in the lake.
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photo/shop.
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The first weekend I was in Switzerland, before we headed off to Barcelona, the temperatures barely rose about 15 degrees Farenheit. My cousin and I braved the cold anyway and headed into the old part of town, with my Hasselblad in tow. It was a Sunday, and by law all shops are closed, so between that and the cold weather, there was hardly a soul on the streets.
I thought I had a roll of color film in the Hasselblad, and snapped what I thought would be pretty wonderful shots of the city in the fading afternoon light. When I finished the roll and took it out of the magazine, my heart sank. Black and white film. Drat! And indeed, when I got the processed roll back from the lab this week, I knew that the images would most likely be less than ideal in monochrome. Ah well.
But! One lone image proved to be better in black and white than it ever could have been in color. Just steps into the old part of the city was a photo studio, closed for the day but with a great display window of images. What’s more, upon closer inspection, is the same guy in every one of those photobooth shots? A most curious photoshop indeed.
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ferney-voltaire.
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My aunt and her family live in the little village of Ferney-Voltaire, which is part of the greater Geneva metropolitan area but which is actually on the French side of the border. When I flew into Geneva the weekend before our Barcelona excursion, the area was still gritting its teeth through a particularly long cold spell; temperatures were in the low teens that weekend. After a botched attempt to go into town to take some photos — after an hour we couldn’t feel our toes anymore, and jumped back on the tram towards home — I wandered along the footpath behind the house for a few minutes with the Hasselblad. Then it was back indoors, where the temperature was much more agreeable and the photographs less susceptible to shivering hands.
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hong-an tran 