SERMON FROM A TOPPLED PULPIT
By MICHAEL PERKINS
(FIRST OF ALL, a loving welcome to all our most recent subscribers. You are the nourishment that feeds this beast. Thankee.)
TO RESTATE THE TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT for anyone entering this movie after the first reel, The Normal Eye has never been a photographic “how to”, since the world at large is fairly overrun by technical experts who can offer much more qualified testimony than I can, on gear, or what makes it work. If anything, this little small-town gazette is more of a “why do”, a perpetually unanswered question on the motivations behind why we make pictures. I can only safely recount what has worked for me, and me alone. If something in my process sparks an idea for you, swellwonderfulgroovy, but my notes here are just diary entries, not preachments. You do you, and all that.
I mean, think about it.
I’d really have to have some nerve to recommend or prescribe anything for anyone when, a significant portion my work fits into a very fat “WTF” (Weirdly Troubling Fotos) folder, composed of stuff I myself do not understand, as if, looking at them long after I shot them, I’m actually reviewing the work of a complete stranger. I’d actually love to have a picture of my own expression as I leaf through this stuff, always with the same questions. What is this? Why did I think that would be a picture? Why don’t I remember ever having done this?, and so on and so on. Far from communicating some golden eternal truths to the world at large, some of my photographs manage to confound even me. Especially me.
I’m sure I’m not alone in this. You no doubt have some kind of WTF folder of your own, stacks of misbegotten, weird-ass orphan images that seem to have jumped, unbidden, out of your camera. How could you not? Creative urges are just that, urges, and ofttimes make no more sense than one’s decision to, yes, please, have a third hot dog. And so, as we go forward, I always like to pause a mo, to re-state that The Normal Eye is more of a journal (journey? journal!) than a blog. Over its fifteen years, it’s been the closest thing to a running testimony on where I’ve tried to go as a photographer, and as a person. It’s not a blueprint for anyone, nor a bread crumb trail to help you find your way out of your personal dark forest. It’s justa buncha pitchers, flavored by some random ruminations, with all the lucky keepers at the front of the stage and all the WTF detours as a painted backdrop. Cheers and welcome.
TUCKAWAYS AND TAKEAWAYS
By MICHAEL PERKINS
MY GRANDMOTHER’S NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS were separated by alleys that ran between the rows of the area’s back yards, and, as a consequence, I have only a few memories of her actually walking between the fronts of houses along the main streets. Whether it was her hardscrabble childhood in Ohio coal country or her lifelong belief that people were always stupidly discarding perfectly good stuff, she always walked to market, the local drug store, or various friends’ places by way of the alleys. And if there is such a thing as a Bargain Junk God, it spoke to her along these paths, and so, we children were accustomed to her dragging home various treasures over the years, from scraps of lumber to fixable umbrellas to an entire kids’ swingset, complete with “glider”, which we adopted as our own.
Years later, armed with various cameras, I tend to channel her a bit.
Because people continue to throw away perfectly good stuff.
Every time I shortcut through an alley, I find at least one thing that may be in the process of being chucked out, or moved to make space, or replaced by something new, or just plain forgotten about…things that can, on occasion, make neat little narrative pictures. Take this self-contained coffee “business”, for example. It sits behind a strip mall in Scottsdale, Arizona, giving off strange vibes about its history, a history that, who knows, may not yet be complete. Is it an operating wheeled cafe? Was it put out to pasture when someone had a better idea or a bigger budget? Is the trailer to be repurposed, sold, or just headed for the scrapheap? At this moment in time all these plot lines are possible, and all conjectures are equally valid or equally nuts.
The speculation continues. What exactly IS “native” coffee? Is it just a name, or an actual niche market? Is the window just covered up with wood for protection, or is it, as the term goes “boarded up”? Is the trailer merely being parked here until its next day of operation, or are all of the Native Coffee fans of the world plumb out of luck? Funny thing is, all that daydreaming is fired by exactly one hasty exposure, made out of my car window as I trekked through A Place I’ll Never Be Again for God Knows What Reason, If Any. A picture may not literally be worth a thousand words, but it is often worth a thousand “what if” guesses about what’s happened or what’s about to happen. Photography locks in moments and frees the mind to story-tell. It’s enough to make me wish that Grandma, whom, it should be noted, actually bought me my first camera, had dragged a Leica home down the alley.
Just once.
SKIN IN THE GAME
“Old Faithful”, the jacket that has accompanied me on more shoots than any other single piece of “gear”. 1/200 sec., f/2.8, ISO 100, 35mm.
By MICHAEL PERKINS
THE ONE PIECE OF “EQUIPMENT” THAT HAS SEEN ME THROUGH THE TRANSITION FROM FILM TO DIGITAL is not a hunk of techno gear. In fact, it has not directly figured in the taking of even a single picture. I was reminded of its amazing longevity a few months ago, as I was going through a 2002 shoot done in Ireland. Among my own shots was a pretty good candid of me, taken by my wife, as I crouched to line up a shot next to a road heading to the Ring of Kerry. And there “it” was with me.
In fact, it was keeping me warm and dry.
Context: I never took the plunge of the eager amateur and purchased one of those puffy, sleeveless photog vests, honeycombed with a zillion pockets, pouches and secret compartments, much as I never painted the words CAMERA NERD on my face in day-glo orange. Chalk it up to self-consciousness. I figured it was hard enough to blend in and keep people relaxed in a shooting situation without looking like a cross between a spinster butterfly hunter and a middle-school lab assistant. Call me vain.
And you’d be right.
So, a plain brown leather jacket. Gimme three good pockets and call it day. And thus it was that, for the next thirteen years or so, I have had “skin in the game”, skin that has survived exploded pens, leaked batteries, rotten weather on two sides of the Atlantic, and more scrapes, tears, and rips than I care to recall. It has also helped keep countless camera straps from inscribing a permanent groove in my left shoulder, and, here in the Land Of Incipient Arthritis, I appreciate that more than I can say.
Such service calls for a little respect, and so, in the name of the weirdest still lifes ever, I figured it was time for Old Faithful to pose for a portrait of its own. Originally I thought to lay it out straight, the way they show off famous duds at the Smithsonian. But what really caught my eye was that, texture-wise, it is almost six different jackets, from the glossy sheen of an old horse saddle to the frayed look of something that’s been making out with a cheese grater.
At the last, I simply experimented with a few crumpled waves of grain, as if the jacket had been hastily tossed aside, which, trust me, it has been, on countless occasions.
Best thing is, when I’m ready, it’s still there.
I’m not a big fan of good luck charms, but maybe some things protect against bad luck, and that’s no easy feat, either. Either way, me and what Kipling would have called my “Lazarushian leather” and I will keep signing up new missions.
At least until one of our arms fall off.
thenormaleye 