Picking Up Where I Left Off

A fine art photograph that traveled from studio to exhibition and back again. Created in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans and recently shown at the Angad Arts Hotel in St. Louis. A reflection on process, attention and the ongoing life of artwork. By CB Adams of Qwerky Studio.

Back home again. Fine art photograph by CB Adams, created in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans using a handmade Mardi Gras head.

I arrived at the Angad Arts Hotel as artists were coming and going, work being delivered for the next exhibition while other pieces were being packed to go home. One artist was maneuvering an enormous canvas inside a hand-built wooden crate that filled the bed of his pickup. I admired the commitment in that scene — the scale of the work, the crate, the truck, the steady belief required to keep moving art through the world.

I was there to pick up a piece of mine from the previous show.

After around fifty exhibitions, this rhythm is familiar. A photograph leaves the studio with its own quiet energy, is seen in public for a time, and returns. The return has its own dignity. The work has been part of the world. It has gathered glances and brief moments of attention. It has lived elsewhere for a while.

This image was made during a visit to the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. I found a yard sale where a woman was letting go of a Mardi Gras head her mother had made in the 1960s. She spoke about it with affection and a sense of necessity. I bought it and spent the morning carrying it under my arm, making small scenes wherever the light opened an opportunity. The photograph came from that day. No thesis attached. It says something to me, and others may find their own way into it.

With time, I’ve come to understand my photography the way I imagine a theater-maker understands a production. You create the work. You offer it. People spend time with it. Then everyone goes home. The exchange has already taken place. In theater, applause marks the moment. In a gallery, it is quieter — a pause, a step closer, a longer look.

The question comes up: with everything happening in the world, does art matter? Each time I return to the studio, I find a steady yes. Art helps us remain human. It asks us to slow down. It offers a space for feeling when language is thin. It connects across experiences and across time.

So the photograph is back now. It carries a small history. And the work continues here, as it has before and will again. The seeing continues. The making continues. That feels like the essential thing.

For inquiries and viewing appointments, contact Qwerky Studio, St. Louis.

On The Line

There’s the making of a photograph, which is all about intent. Especially with composed photograph. All photographs are composed as the photographer intentionally decides to frame a scene, what to leave, what to leave out. Walking along with a camera, seeking something that catches the eye, something to document with a point of view. There’s also the photographs that are intentionally created — this is the approach to photo-making that I arrived at rather late in my photography life. Working in the makeshift Qwerky Studio, it was a revelation to decide precisely where to place objects within the frame was scary and exhilarating for someone more accustomed to the play-it-as-it-lays, documentary style.

I’ve also moved outside of the studio to make compositions in plein air. Such was the case for “On The Line,” part of my ongoing “My Life In A Dome” project — photographing the relics of my childhood, lovingly (perhaps obsessively) and assiduously packed away in my parents’ basement for decades. In one large tub, a plastic sacophagus, were my childhood, my American childhood, uniforms — baseball, football, and a pair of fringed “Indian” pants. All remarkably preserved and clearly not soiled from use. I wasn’t much of sports kid so those were new-looking. The Indian pants are still in good shape, but reveal how often I wore them.

Two things stand out for me with this photograph:

1. When I opened the tub after being given it by my Mother (she teared up as I loaded it and some others into my car, saying, “You have no idea how hard it is for me to give those up.”) I was astounded how — immediately — I experienced a tactile memory of how each of the uniforms felt on my skin. Like Proust’s “madeleine” I was almost overwhelmed with the way the fabric felt on my legs, my thighs especially. And in that instant — experienced almost every time I worked them them, as when setting up this photograph— the pants triggered a flood of involuntary childhood memories, illustrating the power of sensory experience to evoke the past. I was right back there, a boy trying on the expected uniforms of the day. It became clear that I was interested in romantic idea of the lone Indian, exploring the wilderness on his own, and not part of a team pursuing balls on a diamond or gridiron. I was — and perhaps still am at a certain level — the first and last of my own sort of Mohican.

2. I developed a box of 4x5 film that I thought had images of another project and instead had this one. I usually rush home and develop film soon after I shoot it. I like that rush. But sometimes things linger, and I should sometimes put exposed film away for a while. The experience of looking at something exposed two, or three or more years has a different aura, or feeling, about it. Such was the experience when taking the developed film out of the tank. Magic, as always. I wonder if perhaps all film should be delayed like this. I see the images so differently. Of course, the same applies to photographs I made and dismissed in the initial rush, only to “discover” them later as new-found “keepers.”

To make this photograph, one of many in the series, I knew I wanted to put them on a clothesline, the kind my Mother had when I was growing up. Air drying. I searched the internet and found a vintage clothespin holder, complete with old clothespins. I also drove around for weeks, peering into local backyards, looking for a clothesline. The yard I discovered had two types of clotheslines, and I made compositions on both. There’s even a white picket fence! I am fond of a couple of the shots, though none of them ever receive as much approval as I give them. I don’t care. They work for me.

Staring At the Sons

A son.

The holidays are officially over. We finished “taking down” the decorations and packing them into the storage room this past weekend. I also processed the last roll of black and white film from the portrait sessions with my sons the week of Thanksgiving. There may be a roll or two of color candids, aka happy snaps, which I made with a point-and-shoot camera, but these are the last “serious” photographs I made. Photography was definitely part of my overall enjoyment of the holiday. As I looked at the scans this morning, the experience was different. Their eyes were upon me.

A son.

I’m taking Nietzsche’s oft-quoted phrase out of its original context and meaning, but his phrase “When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back” came to mind. I thought that if I looked at their portraits long enough, I would stare back at myself. Somehow. And I did. I certainly “see” myself in my sons in terms of the physical and personality. I am reminded of Chuck Palahniuk’s assertion that “Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary” balanced with Richard Avedon’s aphoristic “My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.”

I hope that someday, somehow, even without me knowing it, they will stare at their own portraits and see me. “The Child,” after all, as observed by Wordsworth, “Is father of the Man”

The Photo Gods Giveth

My photo gods are awesome gods.

They giveth…and they taketh away. The are capricious and sometimes reward superstitious processes while making photographs and other times punish for no apparent reason. Such is the nature of the photo gods.

This photo is a case in point. I have recently been running a lot of film through two Soviet cameras. First, a Zorki 4 with a Jupiter 8 lens, and second, a Fed 2 with an Industar lens. Like others I read on the interwebs, I wish these two cameras could have wed. I like the Zorki’s larger viewfinder, in particular. But my copy exposes the film a bit low, so that the bottom is cut off and there is more space between the image and the top sprockets. I can live with that, just remembering it has this quirk.

More troublesome, however, is how ‘fiddly’ the Zorki is, especially after turn the knob on the shutter release to rewind the film. The rewinding works fine, but turning the knob back to the shooting position often doesn’t work as advertised. The film doesn’t catch and advance properly. It doesn’t stop when positioned to take a photo. I have found that if I rewind the film without opening the back, I can usually get it to catch properly. I sometimes lose the first few frames trying to reposition the film back to the beginning.

I encountered this issue when I took several shots of this funnel cake stand at a local fair. These were the first shots on the roll, and I noticed the usual Zorki post-rewind situation. I went through my perhaps superstitious routine of rewinding and starting over. It didn’t seem to work, and the light changed and so I though things were screwed. I also though I had set the exposure wrong.

I was pleasantly surprised when I developed the roll and all but two of the imagers were indeed hosed. There were two that were properly exposed and looked good. After scanning, I realized that the one ‘keeper’ shot I had hoped to capture, the one here, with the stand, the flag and an old dude heading for the porta-potties turned out.

I have been trying, somewhat unsuccessfully for years, to improve my gratitude. So, thank you, photo gods, for providing me with this shot. I will be humble moving forward, because the photo gods may giveth, but the take away in equal measure.

The Clarity and Charity of Time

I am not a patient person in general and definitely not a patient photographer. This is often at odds with the analogue, film-based photography that I practice. You might think that digital would be my thing, given my impatience. But no. I have to shoot old school and then practically run to the nearest darkroom.

Like Popeye, I am what I am. Yet, I am now involved in the long process of inputting, organizing and otherwise getting my photographic shit together while enjoying my new, custom-built computer, dedicated to my photo workflow. This means I have been viewing some long-forgotten scans. It’s been, well…eye-opening. It’s like I’m seeing some of this work with new eyes. And perhaps I am.

As I revisit this old work, new images now attract my attention. I still like most of the ones that originally got my juices going, but I’m finding some gems (to me, anyway) that have just as much merit and potential. I feel like a musician who is reinterpreting an old song. I’m thinking of my favorite version of Springsteen’s Born To Run; a very slow live version, not the album version. This is also like the advice that I received (and I still pass on to my writing students) about putting your piece of writing away in a drawer and then coming back days or weeks or even months — and it’s like you’re looking at something someone else wrote. Perhaps they (you) did.

This image is a case in point. I was shooting a light-leaky Agfa Isolette camera. Most of the 15 frames are shit. But a few from this sequence spark my imagination. This was lit with 100% golden-hour sunlight right in my own backyard. I think it has a David Lynchian quality.

Maybe I was channeling Lynch’s eye.

Monochrome Pentimento by CB Adams, Qwerky Photography.

This I Believe - On Artist's Statements

I’m not alone in fearing and loathing artist’s statements. I’ve written my share of la-dee-da and contrarian and tortured artiste and obtuse versions — usually at the behest of whatever exhibition or call for entry had requested or required one. I have come to realize, however, that they can and do serve a good purpose when written with the proper intent. They can be a way for others to understand, with limits, what a photographer is about, who he or she is.

My new approach to artist’s statements is to follow the guidance I received from a history professor at university. He was providing the standard by which he would be grading our term papers. “What do you mean,” he said. “And how do you know.”

I’m not going to present an artist’s statement here. I am, however, gong to say a quick something about this photo — why I like it and why I hope you appreciate it, too. I believe what “makes” this rather ubiquitous bench scene is, of course, the vines and other vegetation growing through it. For me, though, it’s the plucky branch extending from the left, like a feather boa (to this associative mind, anyway), that sets this apart from others like it. I also like the contrasting horizontal lines and patterns, and that sliver of the basement window.

So there. I said it. I made a statement. Talk amongst yourselves.

“Boa” From the Series Closer To Home by CB Adams

Isn't It Symbolic

Due to a mix up at the Gallery, my artist's statement wasn't included in Art Saint Louis's "Symbolic" exhibition. So I'm including it here: "A symbol is succinct, like this cross in the basement of a Spanish mission in Texas. Unlike its literary cousin, the metaphor, a symbol’s meaning resides not in explanation (if you have to explain it, you ruin it), but in its context. The artist’s challenge is to trim and trim and elevate the symbol within."

CB Adams at the opening of "Symbolic" exhibition at Art Saint Louis. The silver gelatin photograph, "Concepcion" is available for purchase, $275 at the gallery.