Writing Samples
When I was in university I took a course on photography. I had never tried to take pictures of anything beyond personal relationships, so this artform felt deliciously voyeuristic. In the 90s Windsor was gritty, authentic, and lovable. It’s where I encountered the magnificence of Detroit radio stations. There was only a slim slip of a river that separated our countries but the sound waves knew no border. Blues by the River and National Public Radio became my soundtrack to explore a city worn to tatters by the fabric of industry and the shadow of Detroit. Beneath it, if you knew where to look, Windsor revealed its precious ingenues. This pizza place, that place for Indian spices, here to buy olives and feta cheese, this block for stunning architecture in soulful decay. All of this was a photographer's dream in search of the real.
But none of it compared to taking these treasures inward to the darkroom. Mixing the chemical baths with patience and skill so it could conjur images was a quiet joy for me. I used to imagine the visions were coming out of the unconscious dream mind. First there was nothing but a white print in liquid and then it would start to get grainy, showing patches of high contrast until the lines grew toward one another and the subject was revealed. I loved flicking on the red light that would keep others out. Bathed in the red light of a comfortable sequence of making prints, I could alter the pace of time.
Remembering moments like this from my schooling bring back such fondness for me that I can’t help but think about your disenchantment with higher education. Perhaps it’s the difference between our childhoods. Me, growing up naive in a small town where the world suddenly opened up to me through learning compared to your experience of growing up with the digital world at your fingertips so that very little can surprise you.
You say you don't remember your childhood very well. What if I could conjur your stories like we are in the dark room together? Perhaps we can swirl the vignettes that have been captured, a few precious moments out of time in celluloid memory. We could thoughtfully bath them and slow it all down to see what emerges.
When we used film cameras, we were never sure if we got the shot. Sometimes the thing we wanted was blurry, or our angle was off. I am sure that some of our darkroom time will prove fruitless and some precious, but in our case, it is the ones where we blinked and missed it, these are the ones we need to revisit with more care.
