Pictures. What a crazy thing is a picture. A photo. An eye-moment. Caught forever. We take so many of them now. Some of us horde them. We send them up to space for safe keeping on server farms somewhere in the California desert. Even the blurry ones and the inappropriate ones and the ones with people we don't like anymore. I haven't really figured a system yet, for getting rid of the mountains of pictures. Actually, not mountains, since it takes up almost no physical space. Gigabytes. Terabytes. Mountains of Bytes.
I have a couple photographs of me as a kid. That's it. No home movies even. My memory of my childhood is somewhere in my gray mush, constantly changing or re-remembering. There's no video tape. It will never again be that way for a modern first world human. Save a total meltdown of technology, you will know eXACTLY where you were when you this or you that. And what you were wearing. And whether you were fat.
Segue. A photographer by the name of Courtney Mooney is capturing the "Souls of Lefferts" through a massive undertaking to document a neighborhood w/finesse and pizazz and a lot of megapixels. Actually she makes the photos the old fashioned way! A darkroom and all. In a statement that sounds vaguely like it comes from a Yogi she writes:
This project is for the Souls existing in the Prospect-Lefferts Garden community. Souls of Lefferts-- seeks to preserve voice and identity of those in our community-- to share individual and collective stories; and above all, the work is a call to learn from each other, and love the humanity of one another. All Souls are welcomed. All Souls are welcomed for a portrait, All Souls are welcomed to share, All Souls are asked to listen. All are invited into this Space to learn more about our individual and collective identity, as PLG.It's all happening at Tugboat Tea & Coffee, 546 Flatbush. The opening is January 30 at 6pm and it runs through February. What might you see? Check it out.
In saluting each other, we learn to know and love ourselves; the Souls of Lefferts is asking for that salutation.
1 comment:
Thanks Tim. This will be an wonderful show. We [PLG Arts] are actually hanging it tonight. The reception will be 6:00 to 9:00 on Saturday, with an artist's talk by Courtney at 7:30.
As a film/wet darkroom photographer I sometimes feel like I'm part of a dying breed, so it's really exciting for me to see a young photographer, like Courtney, use this medium. Actually, from what I read, it seems like a significant number of young photographers have done so; this makes me confident that film, photographic paper, and darkroom supplies will remain available.
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