Art and Science

First of all, sorry it's been so long. Also, my hair has gotten really long. It's expensive to maintain even with the "I have better things to do" roots look...which was according to my colorist sort of brazillian-super-model-vogue for a while so I was lucky, but it's phazing out. I have to get creative. Luckily, I shot a hair show for a fancy salon this weekend on trade. Whew. This shoot is loosely connected to Anne Reed. Shocker. Hopefully they'll let me give her a few of my cuts. Anne "the shit" Kellogg Reed has gotten me more work than anyone ever. Aside from shooting inside a closet, this job was good practice. There were 42 models lined up outside my closet and I had about 3 minutes with each one. Being quick and gentle is tough but I enjoyed it. "open your shoulders, softer in the eyes, think about the one person you really loved, look straight through me, more of that one thing you just did with your hands, i like that, that's nice, will you take your shirt off? it's warm in here, is that ok? that's better, cleaner, i think they'll like that."

Music Night

Music Night......my first apple pie of the year, Mennonite bread rolls, champagne, mexican hot chocolate with brandy, Ben's new guitar and the family band.

"Cake Walk"

The Salmon Run

Dad walks Justin around the tackle box at the Allegan dam.

Brother John Daniel, sleepin on the job. Too many St. Julian cabernet mini's.

Dad's favorite spot, "on and in the river."

God bless Ilford 3200. I love the grit. We make a pit stop on our way back to the city. Justin and my brother Dan looking like a couple of lot lizard body guards, holding their brand new Daisy 10 pumps from WalMart. It was my birthday so I bought myself a co2 powered bb hand pistol. But, now that I have my Illinois license, I applied for my FOID card. The big girl shooting range is on my bday list this year.

The City of David

On my way back from a job in St Joseph Michigan I take a 94 ramp detour. I see weird rows of tiny houses, private property signs, religious iconography and all other things interesting to a Miriam. It's The City of David, an Israelite settlement founded by two traveling LDS missionaries in 1902. In it's hayday, it had an amusement parks, a semi-pro baseball team, and over a thousand people living on these few acres of land. In 1912, things started to fall apart. The baseball team was exposed for hiring professionals and dressing them in beards, the law was after them for counts of abuse on several levels and in 1926, a member led the police to an underground chamber in the founder's mansion where they found him in bed with his harem of soon-to-be-ex-virgins.

Cottage #3

This is what I got busted photographing, now Jim's house. Jim was their groundskeeper for 30 years and he's still around. We sat and talked for a while. Since he can't do most of the things he used to, Jim sharpens things to get by. Anything that needs to be sharpened he can sharpen it. His business card reads "carbide rotor bits, steel circular blades, hedge blades, change blades, scissors, tin snips etc...."

If the City of David was still the community it used to be, "I'd join em," he tells me. Not because he believes in God but just because they were his family. They took care of him. They gave him this house to live in.

He shows me pictures and letters and brochures. Mostly from his his son who visited 3 years ago. His son is a nuclear chemist, working on the infrastructure of a facility in South Carolina that plans to recycle plutonium from nuclear warheads to create new independent energy.

Jim thinks he has a spirit in the house. He's lonely. I think he wants it this way and I think he knows he doesn't have any ghosts but his own.

Falling in Love Again

My Father grew up near Olney and our family still lives here. Here, there’s no shame in needing someone to watch the baby while you work a shift at the liquor store or borrowing your neighbor’s lawn mower. People trade steak tomatoes for homemade wine and hose their kids down in bunches before they come in the house from playing outside all day.

Most of the people here in Olney, Illinois don't know why I would want to photograph them. They ask what I'll do with the pictures and don’t know about blogging or value documenting their lives. I wonder if that’s because they are busy living them instead of being self reflective about how. They are disconnected from the pulse and the urgency of the marketable image or the image for sale. Maybe they don’t understand authenticity because they are too busy surviving to fake anything. 

Christopher Anderson says, “There are at least two kinds of photographic bravery: the bravery of those who risk life and limb to show the world the ugly truths of war and conflict, and the bravery of those who push themselves in long-term, intimate projects — confronting themselves while documenting their subjects. There is no hierarchy of bravery.”

Be brave. Be very brave.

county road # 327 southern, illinois

13 bikes in the front yard, i counted.

i stop home to check on grandpa and have lunch. i take him to walmart for his prescriptions and we hit the drivethrough before my second half of the day.
i'll go north till supper.

These are all taken with Pan F 50 35 mm film.