EVERYTHING, IT’S NOT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHERS ARE CONSTANTLY UPDATING THEIR VIEWPOINT ON ENDURING SUBJECTS; we never make just one sunset, nor do we think that our first portraits have to power to define any person for all time. Rethinks become re-takes; one day’s verity becomes a later day’s uncertainty. In making images, we not only catalogue what a thing is; we also attempt to reveal what it no longer is as well.

What you see here is the first dedicated “record shoppe” I’ve stepped inside in many years, although vinyl itself has been “back”, if you like, for nearly a decade. During that time, I’ve seen many book or department stores and artsy boutiques launch new, limited record sections here and there, but have found few stores that are completely dedicated to evoking the spirit of the all-vinyl era of my youth….the wood crates, the album cover wall art, the overall hippie/head shop vibe. This joint, located in a comfortably funky section of downtown Ventura, California, met all the visual criteria for a poignant memory jog, and yet my pictures of it seem less than substantial somehow.

For me, record shops were my community center, neighborhood hang, local pub and church, meaning that, for that part of my life, I was bringing something to the experience that certainly wasn’t present in just the discs and black light posters alone. And, that being true, there would be no way to capture that feeling, or its lack, in a photograph.

Some banishments or changes wrought by time are easily measurable with a camera, while other times, our attempts to show how our attitudes have changed toward a given subject may not be mechanically recordable, however keen our emotions on the subject. I am now well clear of the allure of the long-playing record. And while I have an affection for a time when such things were central to my existence, just wandering into a record shoppe won’t absolutely me to make a picture of everything it isn’t.