Tuesday, November 29, 2011

soixante-deux: All In How You Look At It

Holga
Fuji Provia
Uinta Mountains, Utah
July 2009

i stand here today
so much of a different human being
than when I took this photograph
almost two and a half years ago

it is such a strange feeling
how much life can change
and how quickly
it often does

an old friend said to me today
that so much of the past feels like
it simply
never
happened

and
i agreed
like a movie

however
if there is one thing I have learned
it's that
life doesn't have to be so hard

it is all in how you look at it

Monday, November 28, 2011

soixante et un: A Winter Weekend

Instagram on iPhone
Salt Lake City, Utah
November 25-27, 2011

1-2. Makena Enjoys Red Iguana, McGregor Makes Toast.
3-4. B&J Go Antiquing.
5-6. Steven Downs Takes Over The Ice Rink.
7-8. I Survive Winter. In style.

     And I thought this season would be a bore...

Friday, November 25, 2011

soixante: Life In An Instant

Instagram on iPhone
Salt Lake City, Utah
October and November 2011

1. New Place To Cook.
2. New Place To Rest My Head.
3. Girls Build Greenhouses. (Yes, my mother taught me how to use power tools. NBD.)
4. Brooke and Ian Support Film First.
5. Through The Seasons.
6. I Want To Be One Of Those Madmen.

     Never thought I would give in to Instagram. But alas, here I am. Certainly isn't a replacement for the real deal. But it's quite fun. Life in an instant. Capture and enjoy.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

cinquante-neuf: Killing Time

Holga
Kodak Tri-X
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
July 2010

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."

- Henry David Thoreau

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

cinquante-huit: This Is What Revolution Looks Like

Holga
Fuji Provia
Antelope Island State Park, Utah
July 2009

Get back into your cages,
they are telling us.
Return to watching
the lies
absurdities
trivia
and celebrity gossip
we feed you in 24-hour cycles on television.
Invest your emotional energy
in the vast system of popular entertainment.
Run up your credit card debt. Pay your loans.
Be thankful for the scraps we toss.
Chant back to us our phrases about
democracy
greatness
and freedom.
Vote in our rigged political theater.
Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless,
unwinnable wars
that provide corporations with huge profits.
Stand by mutely
as our bipartisan congressional supercommittee,
either through consensus or cynical dysfunction,
plunges you into a society without basic social services
including unemployment benefits.
Pay for the crimes of Wall Street.

...

George Orwell wrote that
all tyrannies rule through fraud and force.
But that once the fraud is exposed,
they must rely exclusively on force.

...

There were times when I entered the ring as a boxer and knew
as did the spectators
that I was
woefully mismatched.
Ringers,
experienced boxers in need of a tuneup or a little practice,
would go to the clubs where semi-pros fought
lie about their long professional fight records
and toy with us.
Those fights became about
something other than winning.
They became about
dignity and self-respect.
You fought to say something about
who you were as a human being.
These bouts were punishing,
physically brutal and demoralizing.
You would get knocked down
and stagger back up.
You would reel backward
from a blow that felt like a cement block.
You would taste the saltiness
of your blood on your lips.
Your vision would blur.
Your ribs,
the back of your neck
and your abdomen would ache.
Your legs would feel like lead.
But the longer you held on,
the more the crowd in the club turned in your favor.
No one,
even you,
thought you could win.
But then,
every once in a while,
the ringer would get overconfident.
He would get careless.
He would become a victim of his own hubris.
And you would find deep within yourself
some new burst of energy,
some untapped strength and,
with the fury of the dispossessed,
bring him down.

- Chris Hedges, truthdig

     Mr. Hedges again, yes. The man has a lot of important things to say. And I'm all ears.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

cinquante-sept: Miss B

Holga
Kodak Provia
Emigration Canyon, Utah
October 2011

"Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer."

- Jean de La Fontaine

It's rare. But it's real.
So grateful for this summer, B.
So grateful for you.


Visit me on flickr too.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

cinquante-six: You Will Find Me In Leaves

Holga
Kodak Portra
Emigration Canyon, Utah
October 2011

there is no present or future
only the past happening over and over again
now
so don't you stop
take care
     

Friday, November 11, 2011

cinquante-cinq: Better Than You Know

Holga
Kodak Portra
Canyonlands National Park, Utah
October 2011

One one. One one. One one. 
ONEderful.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

cinquante-quatre: Deadbeat Summer

Tanner Park, Salt Lake City, Utah
July 2011
Photos by Spencer Davis

These photos were taken by Spencer on what I'm pretty sure had to have been the hottest day of 2011 - a phenomenon that seems so distant just four months later. We rode our bikes from downtown SLC to Tanner Park for a swim, which is mega-uphill  in case you dind't know. I was complaining about the heat then, thinking I was going to die... Now I'm complaining about the cold, thinking I am going to die. Seasonal hybernation becomes more and more of a logical solution for me with every lost degree.

cinquante-trois: Regarder en Arrière

(photos byBransen)
Quelquefois,
j'aime regarder en arrière.

Friday, November 4, 2011

cinquante-deux: Stand and Fight For Life

Holga
Fuji Provia
Antelope Island State Park, Utah
Summer 2009

"I fight for my children. It is not about me. It is about them. The deep despair I feel over our collective inability to acknowledge, much less confront, the catastrophic dislocations ahead of us is offset by a fierce desire as a father to make sure I have summoned all my energy and resilience to defy the corporate systems of death that are exploiting human beings and the natural world until their exhaustion or collapse. At least, I hope, my children will look back and see that their father did not remain passive as the ecosystem was destroyed in the name of profit, and the world was reconfigured by corporations into a terrifying neofeudalism, a kind of totalitarian capitalism. At least they will see, I hope, pictures of their father being hauled off to jail in defiance. I resist not out of hate but out of love, a love for all the things the deformed culture of corporate profit finds meaningless and sentimental - children, lakes, mountains, trees and the song of a wood thrush deep in the forest.

The consequences of severe climate change are unavoidable. The freak weather patterns, the wild fires and tornadoes sweeping across Midwestern states, along with the drought and severe flooding in China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Australia, along with the soaring temperatures across the Earth, are upon us. And this is only the start. But what is most frightening is that the rapid and terrifying acceleration of global warming, which is disfiguring the ecosystem at a swifter pace than even the gloomiest scientific studies predicted a few years ago, have been met with collective denial and self-delusion. Global temperatures have already gone up one degree and begun the rapid melting of the Arctic. Every rise of one degree Celsius means a ten percent reduction in grain yields. If we stopped all carbon emissions today temperatures would continue to rise by at least a degree, perhaps more. A sudden epiphany would not save us from drastic climate change, large scale human migrations, rising sea levels, famine and endemic food shortages. Welcome to our brave new world.

The only viable option to save the human species from self-immolation - ending our dependence on fossil fuels - is ignored by the industrialized world's power brokers, who have shredded the tepid climate agreement made at Kyoto. The last thin hope for reform and reversal will come through sustained acts of civil disobedience and open defiance of the formal systems of power. It means getting arrested. This is the conclusion drawn by many of our most prescient and important voices, including Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben.

Working within the system to reform it has failed. Working outside the system to defy it may also fail. Let's be honest about this. The corporate structures of power are indifferent to the needs, rights or desires of the ordinary citizen - not to mention the planet - and have hijacked all systems of power from mass communications to electoral polictics to the courts.

It is understandable that a realist would despair. And if I was to retreat into self-absorbtion I would find a small plot of land where I would never have to hear another leaf blower, and find what comfort I could in my family, my books and the whispers and beauty of the natural world. But to give up is not morally permissable. It is to condemn, as Sitting Bull reminds us, the born and the unborn, as well as the flora and fauna, which Sitting Bull also considered sacred, to misery and death. We have no right to do that. We must stand and fight for life."

- Chris Hedges, American Author, Activist and Pulitzer Prize Winner

My photo show is tomorrow!
Visit me, visit me there!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

cinquante et un: We Are All In This Together

     
My dear friend, professor and editor of the Utah Planner (a publication from the Utah Chapter of the American Planning Association), Mark McGrath, featured this article about/by me and my photography in the latest issue. Having the opportunity to be Mark's student and getting to know him over the course of this year has been nothing short of a pleasure for me. I cannot put into the words the appreciation that I have for all of his support and encouragement. It came at a time when I needed it more than ever. And it truly meant the world.

It's just my usual banter.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

cinquante: Always an Adventure




 


Photos from Halloweekend (a Brooke-coined term). Not my usual kind of post, but I think these photos are to die for. Be it iPhone photos or not. Oh. And notice. I am Marilyn Monroe one night. Tatted Marilyn the next.

Always an adventure with us. Miss Marilyn fell down the back stairs at Urban Lounge twice in one night. The first time was somehow quite graceful. The second time... Not so much. I struggle it seems. I hear that ankle boots are actually the new black this winter though. I've had it on for one day now and have gotten so many compliments. Pretty sure I'll keep mine on just as a fashion statement.

I joined the injured ankle club. My eye doesn't feel so lonely anymore.