NOTES
Considering the Dallas Shootings in a Bar with Strange Faces
In an ordinary bar in downtown Los Angeles with strangers. Photos from Santa Monica, Hollywood, Santa Clarita and the Los Angeles transit system.
Hollywood
It was the day after the Dallas shootings when eleven police officers were shot, five killed. I walked into a downtown dive bar in Los Angeles, sat on one of the barstools next to the gaming machine. I ordered a Blue Moon topped with a slice of orange and watched Maury Povich on the TV mouth revelations to astonished guests.
The room grew from a couple folks to a dozen or so, all apparently from different backgrounds. A Latin American woman juggled drink orders and come-ons from mens who were old enough to be her father. In the smattering of dialog that I picked up in that room, there was concern of the crisis in Dallas (the latest spear into the heart of America) as an old bearded man in a Hawaiian shirt ratted off his sexual conquests between here and Pasadena.
It was a hot day and I was drenched in sweat, trying to discern the streets of L.A., separating the cavernous, film reel decorated train stations between West Hollywood and the busy intersections of downtown. I was lost in a heap of thought, staring into the memory of gargantuan trees and the windless maze of train tunnels and streets that were not familiar to me.
We were all below, beneath the Mount Olympus of celebrities, recalling our misinformation of facts that too place during that dreadful week in America. Alton Sterling, Philandro Castile and those officers are closer to us in our struggle to adjust to the real facts of a crumbling society, and perched above it all, the faces of two presidential candidates with the audacity to lead a seemingly torn nation. But around me were flapping lips from different colored faces existing in harmony, drinking booze during a hot lunch hour. I knew that we were on the precipice of drastic action, a revolution on its way but when my chicken fingers and french fries arrived on a plate, nothing else mattered aside from the present moment.
Train Stations
Hollywood
Santa Clarita
Santa Monica and Venice
San Francisco and Sonoma Too
Onwards through San Francisco and Sonoma.
San Francisco, CA
A friend of mine had told me a long time ago, "You've got to get out to San Francisco. You'd love it." After hearing some of the recent reports of ultra-gentrification and busloads moving young techies from the city into Silicon Valley, I became concerned that I wouldn't have the right historical context to enjoy the city as I had hoped.
I had begun to realize that I had lost the stomach for the metropolis life and despite San Francisco being the most beautiful American city I'd ever seen, I was still craving the arid, vined hills of Sonoma from where I had just come as well as the gargantuan trees from that prehistoric forest where I enjoyed feeling small and inconsequential.
Sonoma, California
It was here where I learned that there is no longer a place for me in the big cities. I was preferring the vast vineyards with rows of vine that go up and down the arid hill; the West Coast domain of Bacchus, that craven of wine who sang the strong, loud song of debauchery bellowed from deep red-tinted lips from the old world where the marriage of agriculture and pleasure was consecrated. I was starting to appreciate, more than ever, the life of the villager or the small townie or the forest-bound hermit.
Sonoma, California
The beaches in San Francisco wasn't expected nor the beautiful vistas from hills where I could, on one side, see fog slowly reveal the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge and, on the other, houses edging nearly off the bluffs from which the ocean seemed to run to the end of the world. Out there, Japan, a long current separating continents but yet, despite the drama, there are parts of San Francisco that are quaint and private such as the pet cemetery beneath the 101 or the woods near Baker Beach.
After my first day there, I stayed in Berkley and desired nothing else but to leave cities once again to head south toward Santa Monica, and beyond that, one of the great deserts of North America.
Florida Obscura
An exercise in reflection on the roots of where I come from.
Whenever I'm back home in Florida,
I return to places that I'd visited in the past
and photograph them,
mostly alone,
to further understand the person I've become.
It's personal anthropology. The cloud of my thirteen years in New York City has cleared. Here in New Orleans, Louisiana, I almost feel retired, not from work but from a lifestyle that dictated the choices I made and the directions I've gone. It's suffice to say that I'm at a reflective point in my life and that the specter of my home state of Florida looms silently over my work as I continue identifying my personal style and future creative goals.
The photographs below are part of an exercise to isolate the common threads of my work. It happens easily because there are always subconscious elements that are introduced into my portraiture and topics of interest. Enjoy.
