road trip

pinhole journal

arming kids with cameras is not a new concept....it was a "new idea" 30 yrs. ago when jim hubbard created "shooting back" in washington d.c. as a creative response to a creaky art program in the school system of  our nations capital...everyone  loves children's drawings , and everyone seems to love youngster's photographs as well...so raw, so fresh, ...

eniac martinez (see previous post) gave me a little book when we met in mexico..."Un Pueblo Toba" is a smallish handy softback book of photographs taken in the little village of Toba in Argentina....the "new" catch to this book is that the photographs were all taken with self-made pinhole cameras....so this is really down to basics....this unselfconscious work with the pinhole may be as close to authentic documentary as you  can get...

eniac and "camino real"

eniac was the name of the worlds first computer.....and mexico's eniac martinez was born at about that time, so his mother thought she would give him a name that fit the times....eniac definitely fits the times, but in a very traditional way....his powerful black & white imagery hearkens to an age of classic documentary in the tradition of manuel alvarez bravo and yet moves us forward to see his vision of mexico today... martinez has a new book....handsome and tactile......"camino real de tierra adentro" takes us on a modern day journey along the trade route that by 1598 stretched from veracruz to mexico city and then on up to santa fe , a distance of about 1500 miles....but, this is not a travel book....eniac uses the historical context of the "camino real" to give us rich imagery that digs deep into psyche of the "modern' experience.... our warm neighbor mexico is almost unknown or misunderstood by most americans.....to know mexicans and mexico you must go...not to the border towns where the worst of our culture gets blended with the worst of theirs....drive  south and discover the "real mexico".......mexicans may be the most self-effacing people on the planet...they have hope, they go to church and thank God for what they have , and then they move foreward in the best way they know how.... eniac martinez' panoramic work sucks you into the frame and let's you move around inside.....each photograph is a little adventure.....you never know where things begin and end....he does not tell the whole story.....he lets you invent the photograph's  reason for being..... try to find this book.....like mexico itself, so much work being done "south of the border", is unknown by americans.....human nature often dictates for us to look far away....the treasures of mexico and its artists are within easy reach.....thanks eniac, mi amigo, for your humility and your vision...

      

kim reierson

long haul truckers....we are close to them everyday....usually dangerously close....looming fast in the rear view mirror....who among us has not almost been killed by a long haul trucker??  and who can forget steven spielberg's first movie "duel" ??....in that movie we never saw the driver of the renegade truck, but he definitely scared the hell out of us who watched  steven's  USC student film..

now we get to meet him, or should i say, them......kim reierson takes us on a "long haul" in 150 pages of her recent work "eighteen" (b.olivia press)...no, that title is not her age, but the number of wheels on a long hauler....kim's dad was a trucker...but, he took her nowhere with him....no details necessary, but the guy really didn't have much to do with her...dad did buy her a first camera ...mostly though he was a pretty busy dude ....however, "blood is thicker than water" and kim dedicated her book to "mom and dad and the truckers of america"

one of these good ole' boys took kim 'cross country for two weeks hauling 40,000 lbs. of oranges one day and chickens the next....kim says "these guys haul almost everything we consume" and for her, something else....."he became the father i never had"

catharsis can be the fuel for photographers who need to be long -haulers too...all artists have an empty spot....a well that needs to be filled.....but perky, dynamic kim has got her act together...she has blended art and life.....i am sure that her mom and dad are proud...