Around mile 6.

Everyone is away, nothing is doing, we are into August. The gallery openings and free booze are a couple months away, the blogosphere is awaiting the next Edgar Martins to grace the stage, and I have just completed week three of training for the NYC marathon.

Week four is a rest week, the idea is that your muscles get a chance to recover a little from the steady overload they have been experiencing the last three weeks, which culminated in a 16 mile run Saturday evening. See above.

In photography it feels like progressive overload all the time. The steady drum beat of what to do next, how to keep the little ship from sinking. But in August, you really can’t do that, no one is around to hear the sound of your one shutter clapping.

For a while I have been tempted to write in bold caps “PHOTOGRAPHY IS DEAD” as the headline to a post. Catch me in a bad mood and I still might. Still photography for me was the defining art form of the Twentieth Century. Do I need a degree to say that? You might even say that the moon landing July 1969 was the culmination of all that still photography could do, to relate the actual imprint (via another actual imprint) of man on a landscape. Somewhere in a vault at NASA, exists the actual frame that was exposed to the 1/500th of a second of sunlight reflected from the boot imprint of Neil Armstrong. He also shot the same patch of lunar soil minus his bootprint, the moment before. It shows a great presence of mind to understand that there is the moon “before” and the moon “after.” And more than film or video, still photography is the exact medium in which to contemplate this. There is the film “before” and the film “after” exposure as well. The silver salts are like the lunar soil. Grains recording our existence. Wow. Pretty existential.

You could also argue, and I will, being that it is August and there is nothing else to argue, that at that moment photography died and the moving image became paramount in the culture. It was already happening, in Vietnam, for example, the shootout as it were between still and motion, I think still imagery won that war, pun intended. But the moon landing as it was shown on TV around the world galvanized the power of the flow of images over the still. A series of stills from an alien planet in real time does not have the same power. I remember when the Mars landers started sending back panoramas for the first time, and while the NASA scientists were besides themselves in the control room, the line by line reveal of the  Martian landscape was pretty ho-hum to me. I have watched a scanner work too long to find what it reveals to be that exciting.

I know I would get a lot of argument over whether stills or film was the defining art form of the Twentieth Century. Motion pictures have shaped our culture enormously. But I feel as a pure art form the still image has evolved the most.

I think we are at the other end of the telescope now, looking back at photography and what it did and meant to us. I say this because almost all of the work I see now is essentially nostalgic, nostalgic of a time or feeling or place or process. Recently Todd Papageorge published “Passing through Eden”, a collection of images from his years wandering Central Park. The work is completely modern in conception, the unrelenting gaze of the camera making what the camera makes, photographs, but the publishing of it is essentially nostalgic. I have read that TP urges his students at Yale to contemplate working in this genre, the lyrical documentarian, camera in hand, and he says he gets no takers. I think that for photography, quote-unquote, this period in the late 60’s early 70’s was the ultimate period, the point at which art photography reached its apogee to borrow a space term. It is hard to get any better than the unblinking, unrelenting, rigourous exactitude of the black and white or colour images of Robert Adams, Arbus, Friedlander, Winogrand, Eggleston, etc.

This power comes from that sense that you are seeing the trace or existence of something real. Like the lunar footprint, or the image of Lincoln in the Smithsonian, you look closely and it feels as if you can touch reality just on the other side of the glass. But this necessarily limits photography to what actually exists. As soon as you admit fabrication, the power ebbs. And for me the last couple decades of photography have been bouncing along in the nostalgic, either borrowing from painting, or borrowing from the history of photography itself. Sort of like current Broadway musical theatre, a recreation of a long gone heyday.

As I said, we started this trek away from photography during that moon landing. The essential difference between a still photograph and a motion film is that one exists and the other doesn’t. You can hold a photograph in your hand, see it, understand it, confirm it’s existence. You can only apprehend a film, it exists only in your brain as the joining of 24 frames per second by persistence of vision. To see the physical film, there is no motion. It exists only in projection. And you can’t even hold one moment, except as a still, a broken fragment of the whole. This makes motion film the idea medium of what might be, of fantasy. Nothing is real, so it needn’t be. You might argue that the power of documentary film suggests that we still value the real in motion film, but I think we equally value being tricked in film, the willing suspension of disbelief, the surprise twist, the Kaiser Sose at the end. It doesn’t bother us in motion to find out it was all made up. But in still photography, it does. You feel let down. Edgar Martin’d.

Photography is dead. Slowly dying since the 70’s, on life support the last decade or so, I think you will see motion film (video) in many of the applications where the still was used formerly. And I believe the internet is the natural home of the video as print was to the still image. Stills on the internet are not as compelling as motion is. Bandwidth is the only obstacle, otherwise we’d be there now. With youtube, we mostly are there.

Of course there are those that point out that Radio didn’t kill live music performance (although how many of us now know how to play an instrument?) that Television didn’t kill Film, or Print Journalism, and that the Internet will not kill Print. But this does not mean that different mediums have not had to adapt to different, altered or reduced roles. What we are seeing now is the decline of the still image and print. I don’t see any way that it will have in the Twenty First Century, the impact that it did in the Twentieth.

But it is August. Ask me again in September.

edit: another take here on fin de siècle. My opinion, Talk was no George.

Back in the day story #16734: Encounter with Dan Winters. Shooting his opening at Saba Gallery for InStyle. (that will date this story…) Making sure to get pics of Sandra Bullock, and that guy in Speed 2. Whatshisname. Not really what I do. It was a hurricane outside, literally. But that did not stop Dan’s Fans from coming out. Obviously it speaks to how much people like this guy.

I thought of all this after reading about his new Aperture book here and the process of making it, the little cutouts, moving things by hand. (via Rob)

The other desktop

And all this relates back to-running-yes. I bought the book at the opening and indicated the picture I liked most, Dan explained that he was on a job somewhere and got up early to wander around the downtown to make some pictures. So that is how he signed it, “To Robert- Get up Early- Dan Winters”

This is week One of Sixteen in Marathon training. Gonna hafta get up early.

Various from Flyover States.

I am not opposed to providing prints from other work. Yeah the demand is that great…

UPDATE!:

Let the love flow! I wonderful generous First Donation from my friend Emmet Malmstrom…thank you!

Emmet Malmstrom

Three things to remember, this link, this number: 361112 and this name: Wright.

Team For Kids is the charity “leg” of the New York Road Runners Foundation dedicated to bringing quality in-school educational programs to 75,000 kids in NYC, nationally, and internationally. There are many reasons why kids are not getting enough physical activity today, even before the recession, and TFK provides:

• Training for teachers, coaches, field managers, and site coordinators
• Incentives for children to maintain attendance, sportsmanship, and achieve running and personal improvement milestones
• Entry fees and transportation for kids to compete in races and attend events with professional athletes
• Resources to establish programs in areas of greatest need-

This is what is going to happen: Robert will run the New York City Marathon November 1 2009. 26.2 miles. Obviously this charity appeal is self-serving: I really want to run this race, in this city, this year. 2009 is the 40th Anniversary of the race, and is going to be something extraordinary. I have watched from the sidelines on 4th Avenue many years, as I am sure many of you have, watched them all go by, and thought, I would like to do that. This is going to be the year.

One person inspired me to try running (again) last year and it comes down to that simple act, to inspire something in someone else. You (my family, friends, coworkers, random strangers…) have all responded with admiration, amazement and encouragement. I have even tried to get one or two of you to go out and lace up a pair yourselves.  Well now I am trying to inspire you to make a difference for someone else. Hit the TFK website link above, enter my New York City Marathon entry number “361112″ and last name “Wright” and make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE (yes!) donation to TFK.

Here is the deal: you can donate whatever amount you want. $26.20 is an obvious choice. But, for donations of $50 and above, I will make a print for you, you can select or I can choose, I will post some possibilities soon.

Now if someone wants to get a little outrageous, there are lots of options on the table. A portrait sitting with me, in studio or at your swank pad, the full kit, lights, backdrops, assistant, film or digital…Pet Photos are A-OK! Want me to snatch a lollipop away from your baby? Fine by me! Who needs jill-whatshername! Its all ON. Just give till it hurts:) Think about my pain running 40 miles a week folks…

So this is how we do it:

Go to this page and this is what you see:

now enjoy feeling good.

…Well…I did not get in to the NYC Marathon via the Lottery…where was that little puke “lil bit O’ luck when I needed him? Off working his combover for the NYS lottery I guess…

Soooo…the alternative is to wait until next year when I know I will get in because of the 9+1 entry system that I am 3 races away from completing. Or charities. The official NYC Marathon charity is Team For Kids-dedicated to alleviating childhood obesity by providing funds for access to physical education for those with little or no access.

I grew up with good schools, we had phys-ed, outdoors summer and winter! While I was not a jock by any stretch, I was a band geek, we had a great music program too, I do have a very detailed memory of wanting to die the first time we had to run four laps of the 400m oval. Plus our school had a long history of various all-school athletic challenges, one being the Harrier, I believe a 5k run through the streets. At least a great way to get out of class…

But I watched more than my share of TV, was addicted to Pepsi, and chocolate milk, but somehow managed to avoid what is called an epidemic now, childhood obesity. I believe genetics played the major role, but also our family eating habits were pretty conventional, meat and two veg as they say, and kids were allowed to go places on their own riding bikes, walking, running. I do not remember being strapped into anything resembling a car seat or stroller, perhaps I would not remember this anyway. It seems we shepherd our children everywhere now, from cars to strollers to buses. And just looking at my own lifestyle, the amount of time spent in front of a screen, I fear that our future is some version of Wall-E.

Sooo…floating a balloon here folks, I can register for RunForKids but I must commit to raising a minimum of 2500 smackeroos for them. Taking a page from Jen Bekman’s outrageously successful 20×200, I thought, why not do a print sale for RunForKids-50×50? I will produce a print (50 prints x 50$ea) and take donations via Paypal towards the charity. I’m not taking anything for the prints or the shipping costs, this is 100% charity. I have not done the research yet, perhaps RFK has it’s own payment system, however it gets done, ya’ll will get a print from me, have the pleasure of hearing me complain about training in the heat of August, and know that the money raised is going to make sure the ‘kids are alright.

Does this have legs?

Thursday will be my anniversary of one year as “a runner.”

I’ve logged 1000 miles, 5 half marathons, a bunch of 10k’s and one full Marathon (and one toenail). Here are some recent images from the Brooklyn Half Marathon-thank you to Emmet for loaning me his GRD2-only a little gatorade on it…It was a big ol PB-(that’s runner speak for Personal BEST) time of 1:43:58-carving a FAT 7 minutes off my previous best! Also forgot to post two weeks back about a new 10K time of 48:04 in the wonderfully named Healthy Kidney 10k in Central Park. Can’t wait for the Feeling Great Gall Bladder and Kidney Stone 5 miler…passing that one is a real relief-yuk-yuk.

That’s the sports, in other news-this week is the scene of high drama-the New York City Marathon Lottery drawing is wednesday-they notify you thursday. About 5600 of 57000 people got in last year, 1 in 10.  You will hear odd noises from office cubicles city wide guaranteed-the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat I am sure. Check this space Thursday, I’m not getting my hopes up, it was an outside chance this year, and I am guaranteed next year. Perhaps it is Philadelphia Freedom I will be hearing, not New York, New York?

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So the question-Will Photography ever make a comeback on this blog…stay tuned…

Featured Comment:

Wayne’s world of running photos

Thanks for the compliments! I’ve developed a “slow down” method, also a sense of where in the stride there is the least motion. Very occasionally I’ll stop, but I feel like I’m cheating the run. I’m using the yashica t4, it’s old and the autofocus doesn’t always work, so I often look down at the counter (which is a half-broken LCD, so 9 and 4 are the same) to see if a shot was even taken. I started using the chrome because at I bought kodak 400 “elite chrome” on ebay to see what it was like, by elite they mean terrible, so part of running photos was to burn through the film.

I’ve considered getting a digital for these photos, but I think there would be much more draw to stop and see what the photo looks like and take a few more frames to ‘get it right’ – the lack of good digital p/s is something that extends beyond running – but I need one that has a screen off mode. The ricohs are probably the best option, but a fixed lens would be better.

Last year I ran the marathon and I did not bring the camera – I had a water bottle and and ipod, the camera seemed like having too much stuff and there was a sense that I wasn’t taking the marathon seriously if I was taking photos. I think I might bring it this year. I run a lot of the same areas the marathon takes place in San Francisco, like I said on your blog, it’s strange how adding all the other runners, the people on the sidelines (love that reference – the fusco marathon!!) and the race stuff (water stops, signs, etc) changes the place.

thanks again for the blog, besides the running angle, it’s one of the more interesting photo-related blogs I follow…
Wayne

Wow I like that shameless self plug at the end.

Just got back from an AWESOME run.

Well that is the twitter joke anyway.

Big news is that I have a black toenail to report. I’m not going to photograph it for you, I will save you the displeasure. But according to the literature it is a mark of going farther and faster than ever before.

So in my previous post I said I had three times in my head, the holy cow, the wow and the good for now. Well I was firmly into the get’er done category, clocking a rain-soaked 3:49:10. I did negative split, I ran the second half 4 minutes faster than the first. But if you take away a two and half minute wait for the potty at mile 6 and a very congested and slow start, it was pretty much even-steven first-second half.

After the very slow start  (9:56, 9:09) I did manage to settle into my game plan which was to run 8:30’s for the half and then maybe 8:15’s for the 2nd half. Mile 6 was 11:09 because of the potty break. The splits sort of ping-pong between 8:15’s and 8:30’s all the way up to mile 17, and then I never break 8:30-ish from 18 on (8:33, 8:32, 8:34, 8:45, 8:56, 8:39, 8:37, 8:27!, 8:32-4:17). Make no mistake, I wanted to go faster…I would look at my watch and say ok legs, lets speeeeedup! and I would think I was going faster, but then I would check the watch a little while later and, nope, no faster! So I was like, “ok, this is it huh?” Mile 21, 22 and 23 were a negotiation, sailing into the wind, waiting for the turnaround, making sure I had something left so the finish was not grueling. And there were fewer people out on the course, although the volunteers were absolutely the best and I tried to thank many of them, what a long day for them, five or six hours in a steady rain. But then turning back with the wind, the last three miles were good, and watching the surf break on the beach for the last two mile sans headphones, listening to the waves was pretty good (awesome?). The last mile funneled into a gauntlet along the boardwalk and had more spectators, and then it was through the chute and trying to negotiate walking instead of running. It was over!

You really don’t get exactly what just happened. I think the course design with the two loops makes it difficult to enjoy the passage of distance. All of my long training runs were structured around loops early but an out and back finish, so that you have a sense of going “somewhere.” The scenery changes, you feel a progression, and getting closer to “home.” You really only got that on this course with the final turn for the finish, the long straight away along the seaside. The rest was turning turning turning. There was no sense of direction.

If you are reading this having googled NJ marathon, my recommendation is that this is a well organized medium sized marathon. It feels big without being big. The volunteers are first class, the setting is pretty good, and given good weather I bet spectacular crowd support. Do yourself a favour and pick up the bib BEFORE race day, it was pandemonium having to do that and check bags.

So, taking a couple weeks off to let things heal. The lessons come in two categories, one is training and race day management, the other is overall life lesson. In terms of training I now have a better idea what I need to do to prepare. You have to be very careful about the timing of when you peak. This is something of a mystery to me still. I almost think a week earlier might have been better. And whatever you can do to streamline race day is worthwhile: BIG shoutout to my friend Dave and Eileen who provided the pre-race pasta fest, overnight lodging and race day transportation in style in Dave’s orange Porsche Boxster-S. That’s what friends are for right? Impossible to do without.

In terms of life-lesson, I go back to an earlier post about goal setting. I didn’t start running to run a marathon. So having run one it is not the culmination of “something” necessarily. It is a byproduct of a disciplined practice. It kind of takes some of the fun out it, doesn’t it tho? I tend to see lots of things turned around though, a habit of mine. I’m not saying the event itself is not fun, it is. The rain certainly changed the character of the day into endurance however. Not pleasant to be thinking mainly about how to avoid hypothermia…the next one I run…next one…will be organized around fun I think. The enjoyment of actually being there. Now if I win the lottery and get into the New York Marathon then that changes a lot of things, that will be something of a goal, having watched so many over the years, to be in it will be very different. Sometime in June I will have the answer to that.

I remember, and my parents remember all too well, there was an evening in my twenties, in winter, where I had gone on the train into Toronto. I think I ended up spending all my money at the bar, and this was before ATM’s, I had nothing to get home on, all the way. The best I could manage was the bus to the end of the line, which was Pickering (in Ontario), which left a long walk from the bus station home, at 1am, in winter. Google says it is four and half miles, but it was nothing you ever wanted to have to walk, even in summer.

In the end it was enjoyable, if somewhat frosty. I was underdressed certainly, and the wind was pretty strong. That might have been one of my first long distance sojourns. Not long after I began cycling seriously and remember a number of 80km excursions, and one attempt at cycling from Kingston ON, home to Ajax, about 235km. I made it about 120km in the dead of summer, and had to stop because I couldn’t breathe in the humidity.  I was not really prepared for that kind of distance. My dad had to come and bail me out. On the return trip I had him drop me at the same point and I completed the distance back out of some need to cover that span. I would still like to do it some day.

Tomorrow I run my first marathon in Long Branch, New Jersey.

Thank you to all who have encouraged me along this path. You are on your own when you run but you are not alone.

In terms of results, they tell you to have three goals in mind. There is the shocked, amazed, couldn’t believe how fast it was time, the great time you had been planning on, and then the get’er done time where you didn’t at least blow up. So in terms of the great time, I think I can manage a 3:40 which for me would be a respectable time for a first marathon, including some hustle to get there. The course is flat so that is an advantage, and I have been training on lots of hills. Rain could alter the time either way, squishy toes might not like all the miles, but cooler means less work overall. Hard to say.

Anything under 3:40 and I will be flabbergasted. 3:45 is the get’er done territory. But there is beer at the end no matter what.

Don’t expect a race report Monday.

Maybe this will make sense at the end.

Some people set goals, some people attain goals, and some people have goals. I’m not sure I’m any one of those three.

That sounds terrible. And maybe I am forgetting or denying goals set in the past. For example a friend and I wanted to cycle down the west coast one summer. We did, more or less. It was not a goal, it was more like an ordeal, something you get yourself into and then have to negotiate to get out of. But you buy a plane ticket and basically you have to get there or not come home.

I don’t know that I ever set a goal of becoming a professional photographer. For starters, I did not know how you did that. All the compass points were in the form of book jackets and introductions, for example the Bill Allard book on his years becoming a National Geographic photographer. I got to thank him for that, by the way, last year, at a loft party at David Alan Harvey’s. He took the genuflecting well, considering. He allowed that that book had had a good response. Perhaps not what you want, it’s about the pictures isn’t it? Well, I like the pictures too. I think I forgot to say that.

I don’t know that I ever celebrated “becoming” a professional photographer. Does that still mean I am “emerging?” I have a copy of Joel Sternfeld’s “American Prospects, 1987, and on the back cover is a quote from Time magazine, it reads “Pictures that were once compelling oddities are now linked into an original meditation on the national life. It clinches the case for Sternfeld as an emerging American master.” (italics mine) I guess you can always be emerging, even when you get to be a master.

I do remember a job in the Bahamas sometime in 1999 or 2000 for W magazine where during a lunch hour break we were all in the pool and I was thinking to myself, “I should be really happy right now. Here I am.” Of course I wasn’t, I was beating myself up over the next picture or the last picture, or the next job or the last job, and feeling not secure about anything.

I don’t know that you get a triumphant moment in photography. THIS, HERE, IS THE ONE PHOTOGRAPH! FINALLY!  the headline reads. I feel like Garrison Keillor, reading the News from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children, above average. I should know, having a Lutheran pastor in the family.

Photography is not something that submits itself easily to goal setting. That said though, I think it is easy to deny yourself a payoff. Think of the piles of prints you have in boxes in neat little rows somewhere in your studio. And some people don’t photograph for others, they just do it for themselves. But I think sometimes they are not being honest with themselves, don’t we all do it for recognition of one form or another?

Which brings me to Marathons. In order to run one you have to train, you have commit to four months of work and more beyond that just to be ready. In January I half decided that I was going to run the Vancouver Marathon coming May 3rd. I put the mileage on the calendar, numbers I had never seen before, and wondered if I could do it?

Well the training is over, nothing that I can do now will make much of a difference two weeks from now. I couldn’t afford the Vancouver travel, but beautiful New Jersey has a popular seaside marathon in Long Branch. It is not the perfect first marathon. But the perfect is the enemy of the good. What is the point of doing all the training, all four hundred miles, without some painful payoff?

I know some people live by goals, by to do lists, by achievements. When you look at it backwards though, it makes more sense to me. The fact that you can put something on the calendar four months away and break it down to the quotidian, as a way of getting it done. It might apply to photography too.

Ok so this is strange, my bib number last week was 3924, this week it was 3923. Two weeks ago I ran 13.1 in 1:50:44. Yesterday it was 1:50:46. Groundhog day effect?

Course was a series of out and backs, it really screws with your feeling of getting anywhere. You just see a long stretch and doubling back. Side benefit is that you see the lead runners a couple times, and you get to see everyone behind you…

Brooklyn Half coming up in May. That will be the sub 1:50.