"The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the street, the gratings of the windows, the bannisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning-rods, the poles of the flags. Every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls" Italo Calvino, The Invisible City
Here are a few more pictures from the Traces project. I have about another 20 to finish off and put up.
On my earlier post about editing for a selection to print up, many thanks to all who contributed. There was actually quite a wide variation in choices, but enough common ones that seemed to coincide with my own thoughts - and also a few which were consistently chosen several times but which I hadn't really considered. Plenty to think about. Though almost more helpful than that were the thoughtful commentary and criticism that many of you gave - there were some really useful gems in all that.
And Mel Trittin's comments were especially helpful - among other things she reminded me that in the "old days" you would just lay out a bunch of small prints and fiddle with them until they looked rights - well duh! I'm so used to ordering stuff into databases and digital asset management software (mainly from my work in museums and archives) that I had rather forgotten that simple way of doing it... So I printed up a bunch of playing card sized thumbnails on sheets and took them to the cottage with me, then got my two boys to cut them all out and then I got to shuffle the pack and play with them - K.I.S.S.
(Spandrel - 77th Street)BTW, these photographs haven't been added to the website yet - in fact the small jpegs for the web are the last stage in a somewhat laborious process as these start off as 400+mb scans which often grow to about 800+mb with the addition of adjustment layers which then slows Photoshop down significantly.
But I'd rather get all the adjustments done on the master files rather than working on several different versions and repeating the same things several times.
Lastly, I've got at least a couple of magazine articles in the works (fingers crossed) - one based on this Traces work and another on some of the Immersive Landscapes work - I'll keep you posted.
( Alley- 97th Avenue. Beaver Dam or Edmontonosaurus nest? My boy's are conflicted)P.S. - yes, there really is such a thing as an Edmontonosaurus...
1 comment:
What is an alley? A narrow semi-private road in between streets, providing access to garages, back doors, yards, loading docks, garbage cans, etc.
Usually invisible to the public, but known to the neighbors, alleys are simultaneously anonymous to passers-by and intimate to the locals. Because of this, the spaces around an alley are often more personalized and/or private than those facing the street.
The traffic is much lighter, and since they are quantized on a block-by-block basis, their microgeography often varies greatly. They remind one of the smaller streets and alleys of Atget's Paris, Bill Brandt's London , or Bob Thall's Chicago.
Tim's pictures tend to focus closely on idiosyncratic human gestures there. Micro-earthworks, seasonal touches, personal or eccentric things one could not put out facing the street, etc. I cannot help but get the feeling that these pictures are more like those of an interior, lived-in space than anything else.
My only comment would be that letting more pictures "breathe" would be to the good, and I notice that more of those appeared as the project grew.
--- Luis
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