what i’ve got.
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The answer: not so much. (Though hey!, isn’t that a nice pillow I snagged from a yard sale recently? The couch is awesome too, though not mine, sadly. In fact, that’s not even my apartment. Confused yet?)
The other night while riding the subway home, I was reading David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, and found myself so engrossed by a particular passage that I nearly missed my stop. The specific details of the passage in question aren’t important here, as their potency is greatly lost out of the context of the larger narrative, but suffice it to say that reading those 4-5 pages was both exhilirating and completely debilitating, all at once.
I’d lost myself in the novel, a feeling I haven’t had recently with my own photography. To be sure, I don’t know if David Mitchell ever reads his own work and loses himself in it (and if he doesn’t, he ought to, because sweet jesus, the man can write dialogue like nobody’s business). But that feeling of being confronted with a vision, and even if only momentarily, melding with it to the point where, in the case of reading Black Swan Green, absolutely forgetting the artifice of the novel — I don’t have that feeling very often, even with most of the books that I love. W.G. Sebald and Mitchell are probably the only two writers with (from? by?) whom I have that experience, and even then it’s only a couple of pages here and there within much longer novels.
And it only happens sometimes with photography, where I’ll see a photograph, and just get so blown away by it that I forget that I’m looking at a [insert famous photographer here] or how wonderful it is that [insert talented amateur photographer here] was able to capture the light in such an amazing way. It’s rare that I see a photograph and stop thinking that it’s a photograph; in those precious few moments, I feel like I’m right there, surveying the scene myself. The most captivating photographs are those that completely envelop me, make me giddy as I imagine feeling the roughness of the stones on the wooded path, or the sounds of passersby.
And to be sure, I don’t know if any photographer looks at her own work and is able to step into that space so wholly. But lately, I feel so far away from the possibility of that sensation with my own work — and mind you, these are spaces and people and foods that I absolutely love. I mean, I fucking love that couch, and yet when I look at the photo, it all feels so far away. It feels like a photograph.
Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, and no one has a particularly happy relationship to their own work. I think, though, that at some earlier point I did feel much more at one with what I was seeing, post-developing. There was a point where, on occasion — not often, but still, every so often — I would look at one of my photos and there’d be an oh, fuck moment. A moment where I’d sigh a little bit, be a tiny bit pleased at what I had brought into the world — not just a photograph but a perspective. And right now, I want to get lost in that clarity of vision once again.
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the blues.
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–This past Sunday involved a mostly unsuccessful trip to the Ikea in Red Hook here in Brooklyn — something of an anomaly, since I seem to pick up at least one random houseware every time I make the trip to the store (how can you not? The place is designed with impulse purchases in mind). I did, however, managed to snap the top photo while wandering through the lighting section with my pal Mark. The bottom photo I took while in Los Angeles, down on Fairfax Boulevard, just before ducking into an early dinner with my mom at Animal.
Truth be told, I normally quite dislike photos with a lot of nice-day sky in the shot, mostly because the blues get that weird, washed out, well, bluesky tone. It turns everything sort of nondescript — no nuance, just that electric royal blue that always already is too bright, and offers little subtlety in the shadows. These two shots, though, I do quite like: the clouds + crane in the top photo, and the palm tree in the bottom one, provide nice contrasts against the skies above. Being indoors and/or out and about at 6pm probably helps, too, with avoiding the oftentimes photographic banality of a clear bluesky day.
sara roosevelt park.
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I’ve written about hanging out in Sara Roosevelt Park before, watching folks watching the handball players on the courts below. On Saturday, taking advantange of the beautiful weather and the need for a post-brunch stroll, Shannon and I walked up the length of the park on the Chrystie Street side (the east side of the park). Here’s a visual document of the walk, with the Leica and some Portra 400, from start to near-finish. Not pictured: the soccer players we may have stopped to ogle for a little bit. Just a little bit.
Also not pictured, at least not in this blog post because it would require words that I don’t have, mostly because I still don’t know what’s going on in front of Shannon, is this addition to the Backdrop Project, taken at the NYC Festival of Ideas. If anyone can explain to me why there’s all that … stuff … I’d be deeply grateful.
In proper weekend afternoon style, following our jaunt through the festival, Shannon and I then headed two blocks east to Marshall Stack, where we toasted our good weather fortune with some champagne … of beers.
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nose to tail.
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Last week in LA, my mother and I had a spectacular dinner at Animal, the much-hyped restaurant known for its over the top preparations of offal and all sorts of non-traditional meat parts (I think it was Frank Bruni who referred to fans of the restaurant as carniwhores). The meal did not disappoint.
From the top:
1. Grilled sparagus salad with pancetta dressing, fried soft-boiled egg, and parmesan. This started out the meal, and was the lightest thing we would have all night.
2. Left: veal brains with vadouvan, applesauce (yes, applesauce!), and baby carrots. I’d never had veal brains before. Oh man oh man, so good. The vadouvan was incredibly fragrant. On the right: sweetbreads with bacon, ramp dressing, and parsley. I never turn down a chance to eat sweetbreads, and while I’ve had better iterations, these were still *really* good. Even better, though, was the bacon — almost paper-thin, at once crispy and melt in your mouth.
3. The dish of the night: Julienned pig ear with chili, lime and a fried egg. This was kind of like the ultimate breakfast-for-dinner dish — the ears were shaved thin, then sauteed, so they had this great crunch to them, and paired with the egg, sort of like a hash brown. The egg yoke covered everything with an extra layer of richness.
4. Buffalo-style pig tails with celery and ranch dressing. Oh yeah.
How good was that pig ear dish? So good we ordered a second helping instead of dessert. No, really.
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And because I clearly have no sense of boundaries or restraint, I went at it again this week, here in New York, at The Brooklyn Star with my pal Donny. To wit:
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Yup. Bacon + jalapeno cornbread, followed by sweetbreads + hominy and fried pig tails with hush puppies. What? Don’t judge me! (The Brooklyn Star meal, was great, by the way. I probably shouldn’t mention that instead of dessert this time around, Donny and I headed to Best Pizza for a slice and a half order of garlic knots.)
Feel the need to detox from all that fried meatiness? Here are some photos of the restaurants’ interiors, the calm before the meat storm.
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See? It’s like that insanity never happened. Pig ear? What pig ear? Carry on.
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before sunset.
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One afternoon last week when I was in Los Angeles, I took the Leica to a little park and adjoining parking lot down the street from my parents’ house. It was probably another hour or so before the sun was going to set, so I thought I’d take a few photos in the fading light. Suburbia is such a strange thing when you live in NYC — so much space, so much stillness. So much available parking. Everything is so precise, tamed, deliberate. Cul-de-sacs abound.
A few days earlier, I walked — Gasp! Walked! My parents had insisted that I take the car to drive the three blocks, but I made a face and strolled out the front door — to a nearby Starbucks, a standalone model on far edge of a mini-mall that also had a Ross Dress for Less and a 99 cent store. After ordering my caf-half-decaf, the barista took a long look at me and declared, “You know who you look like? This actress, maybe before your time: Winona Ryder.” Made my day, in so many ways.
the mcnuggets.
I spent much of my LA vacation hanging out with my nephew and niece, Eli and Alia, aka The McNuggets. They are awesome. Getting a decent night’s sleep, or watching anything other than Curious George and Toy Story 3 on repeat was not in the cards, but no matter — I was excited to finally meet Alia, and marvel at how much Eli had grown since I’d seen him last, well over a year ago.
Oh, and the McNugget thing: my brother’s nickname is Mick, and when his wife was pregnant with their first child (Eli), my friend Brendan referred to the then-unborn-baby as McNugget. Get it? The moniker has stuck, at least among my NYC friends.
the backdrop project, recently.
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All photos: Leica M6 with Kodak Gold 100, which isn’t half bad, I have to say. It’s no Ektar, but for the price — under $3/roll — it really can’t be beat.
1. Andrew | Prospect Expressway overpass on 6th Avenue, South Slope
2. Shannon | Orchard Street, Lower East Side
3. Andrew | somewhere along 6th Avenue, South Slope
4. Grocery/Deli Man | South Slope
Below: On my flight out to Los Angeles, my rowmate — Jorge, as he would introduce himself late in the flight — and I were fortunate enough to have no middle-seat-mate. We used the empty seat to throw our various books, sweaters, and headphones for most of the flight; two hours before the end of the flight, we found ourselves using the middle tv screen to watch the replay of the two-day old FC Barcelona – Real Madrid match. Rooting for Barcelona despire already knowing the outcome of the game (damn you, Real Madrid!), we cursed the fact of Cristiano Ronaldo, then discussed the joys of visiting — but not living in — Los Angeles. I snapped this photo with the Leica as our plane started our descent into the city; it’s not quite a proper Backdrop Project photo, but it still somehow fits, methinks.
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PS. My dear friend Andrew, pictured in the top photos, is headed to Nicaragua imminently, and then to law school in the fall. Safe travels, sweets!
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ellen’s desk.
Meant to post this over the weekend, but I’ve only just now found a consistent internet source here at my parents’ home in Los Angeles. In any event: my friend Ellen Weinstein, an illustrator, was featured over at the blog From The Desk Of …, which showcases, yes, the desks of creative types. Ellen and her husband David Flaherty, also an illustrator, asked me to take film photos for the post. I took photos of their place for about an hour on a particularly sunny and bright spring day, and got to hang out with their pup, Fritzie, too.
Check out the post — it’s got the photos, plus a great little interview with Ellen.
As for Los Angeles: many food photos, as well as pics of my awesome niece and nephew, will be posted shortly. Though I have to say: it’s been rather nice, not having much access to the web. I’d forgotten how great consistently sunny days can be.
jet plane.
I’m leaving shortly for Los Angeles, my longest trip away from NYC in nearly two years. Two years! Crikey.
Am looking forward to hanging out with my family, maybe see some old friends, and of course eat some good food. A baseball game is in the cards, as is Pizzeria Mozza — in my top five US pizzas — and a lot of vegging out in front of the TV. What?! I don’t have a TV now, so the idea of 1,000+ cable channels is akin to sunbathing on a beach: infinitely, wonderfully relaxing.
I’ll post here and there if I get a chance, but I suspect that between the baseball, food, TV, and my wee niece and nephew, I might not have too much time on my hands. We’ll see. But Eleanor and No-Name are coming home with me, so I’m sure that many, many photos will be taken. In a few weeks, you’ll be bombarded with niece and nephew cuteness to the nth degree. In the meanwhile, enjoy, uh, me and my brother. We’re cute, too, right?
springtime in the darkness.
April hasn’t really been cooperating so far with the whole springtime thing here in the city, at least weather-wise. Damp and grey, mostly in the low 50s, not much to write home about. But if you look up, even in the evening, you can see evidence of mother nature nudging spring in, slowly but surely. Having your camera loaded with Ilford Delta 3200 speed film helps to capture the moment, in all its grainy, fuzzy glory.
hong-an tran 