Photography and the Hydra

Father and Mother

Grandma and Grandpa

We all eventually need a break from, well, everything (or maybe that's just me). Unfortunately, we don't often get to enjoy such luxuries. I suppose that's a good thing about having a blog. When you get tired, feel uninspired, have other parts of your life interrupt your posts, there's always a simple solution: just stop posting. Whether it's a momentary pause or a permanent one doesn't really matter... Still, I've been meaning to get back to blogging for a while now, but what can you publish on a photo blog when you've virtually stopped making pictures? When I moved to Managua early in the year to organize the Miradas de Solentiname exhibitions, I stopped shooting. Planning the exhibits was taking up most of my time and though at first it hurt (quite literally, quite physically) not to be making pictures, I slowly began to realize that shooting the kind of pictures I wanted to shoot in Managua was something that required a lot of time and effort. Not only was I dedicating myself fully to Miradas, I had also been shooting straight for the past year and two months and teaching photo workshops five to six (sometimes even seven) days a week, looking over thousands of my workshop participants' pictures per month. In short, photography was consuming my life.

Though I stopped shooting, I was still dedicating myself to photography. I just wasn't behind the camera any more. I was sitting behind my laptop on a cluttered desk, a few feet away from my bed (a workout mattress on the floor), in a friend's apartment that was both home and office for several months. I spent most of my days indoors, especially during the beginning when I was writing project outlines, selecting photographs as well as emailing and cold calling anyone and everyone in Managua who might take an interest in the project. Everything was new, or rather, everything was a learning experience. I had never planned an exhibit before and just kind of jumped into it without giving it too much thought. I was also a nobody on a mission in no man's land. As I told some friends the other day, "My naivety saved me. My naivety was the only reason I was able organize all of the events. If I would have known just how complicated everything would be, I might have just given up." Come to think of it, perhaps my naivety wasn't the only thing I had going for me. In fact, compared to the incredible stories captured with such complexity and diversity by Solentiname's young photographers, my innocence was quite insignificant. I was incredibly proud of the photographs my "students" had taken and, more importantly, believed in their importance.That's why everything worked out.

One might argue that I'm just making excuses for not having taken pictures, that if you're passionate enough about photography you'll always make time to pick up a camera. Sure, I suppose that's true for anyone who believes that photography is the be-all and end-all, but that's not the case with me. I'm passionate about photography just as I'm passionate about a lot of other things, such as reading, writing, thinking, learning, walking, and spending time with my partner, family and friends. So, though I'm finally starting to shoot again (albeit with cheap point and shoot film cameras), I've been doing plenty of other things.

Which brings me to this post's pictures. Obviously, none of them were taken by me. They were all pictures of my relatives that I found buried deep inside of old shoe boxes, buried deep inside of overcrowded closets. For me, the force of these utilitarian portraits came in the betrayal of their initial purposes, in their metamorphosis into personal pictures, pictures charged with nostalgia, saudade, emotion, and imaginary memories. Funny how even static images change over time, isn't it? Anyways, it seemed inconsiderate to leave these pictures lost and forgotten where they had been for so long, so I started making them into simple, yet emotionally utilitarian objects: bookmarks. At least in this way they're closer to me. And I'm closer to them. And photography is more than just picking up a camera, it's like the Hydra - it's a many-headed beast.

Brother