bark abstract #3

Hard to believe I’ve been in this apartment for three weeks already, and in LA for a year. Time flies.

I’m pretty well set up for the rest of my stay in LA. My daughter and I went Goodwill and found a great table for my computer and scanner and stuff for about twenty bucks. She’s been wanting to show me the Ikea store for some time now, so we went there for a few things. I got a good chair for the desk, a bookshelf, and a few other small items. My biggest purchase there was a foam sleeping pad. It cost about sixty bucks, but it’s only about two inches thick and is easy to roll up and move. And man, is it comfortable.

So… I have a sleeping pad on the floor in one corner, my computer and books in another, a kitchen to cook in, and a bathroom and shower. Pretty much all I need, though another chair or two and a table to eat at would be good. I’ve never cared much for couches — they’re a pain in the ass to move around, and besides… I already have a place to sleep.

It’s a one bedroom apartment, and my daughter of course claimed that as her own. She loves to decorate and try out new things, and it gives her a blank canvas to experiment with. Pretty cool…

This photo goes back almost a year already, and is a detail from the same tree as my ‘eucalyptus trunk’ photo. Eucalyptus bark may look smooth and textureless at first glance, but there are some amazing patterns and abstract designs in it. Fascinating…

Beartooth Mountains

Alright then… I’m back and I’m situated in an apartment in Los Angeles. If someone would’ve told me a couple of years ago that this would be the case I would’ve just laughed. Now here I am. Sure beats living in the car though…

I got the few things I kept out of storage last week — books, my desktop computer, some kitchen tools. I hadn’t seen any of it for a year now, and I’m having a great time getting reacquainted with some of my books and with photos I’d forgotten I had. Just for old time’s sake I thought I’d post this one from a foggy snowy day by a lake in the Beartooth Mountains on the Wyoming/Montana border. It was done about 25 years ago, and the neg is long lost. This was scanned from the only print that exists of this photo, a work print I made back at the time. It’s a bit rough, but it will suit it’s purpose for this blog.

I’m also going to recommend a book. It’s one I picked up in a used book store in Missoula shortly before I left, and I re-discovered it the other day when I was unpacking. It’s a compilation of the working lives of well known documentary photographers like Mary Ellen Mark, Eugene Richards, Sebastião Salgado, and several others. I haven’t finished it yet, but I can already see it’s well worth reading. It’s called Witness in Our Time: Working Lives of Documentary Photographers. Check it out.

I’m also going to get back to my schedule of doing two or three posts a week here. My posting has been kind of erratic lately due to circumstances, but it’s time to get this show back on the road. Stop on by any old time and see what’s going on.

I have much to muse about this Saturday morning, but I also have much to do. I’ll keep it kind of brief. This post is mostly for those of you who have been following my escapades here in LA.

A little over a week ago I was looking at losing my phone and internet service, and facing imminent repossession of my car. I was literally hours away from both, and I was sweating blood trying to figure out how to stall what seemed inevitable. I was looking at true homelessness… the real thing… with no apparent relief in sight. I was as close to total collapse, and panic, as I’ve ever been in my life.

Things can change fast. Now, a short week later, my bills are current, I’ve put down a deposit on an apartment, and I’m signing the lease and moving in on Tuesday. February and March will be a bit of a scramble yet, but by early April I’ll be in a position to live comfortably without immediate pressure to find a job for a month or two. I can work on these sites that I’ve been struggling to keep going but have had limited time for. I can even buy a new pair of shoes. The last few days have been a blur of activity — I feel like I just took a week-long ride on a Tilt-A-Whirl.

I just spent the last eight months homeless in LA, living in my car. It’s an experience I’m not likely to forget, nor do I want to. I got a street level view into the dark underbelly of our society in one of the world’s major cities. There have been heartwarming moments, but much of it is very disturbing. The real LA bears little resemblance to what you see on Hollywood Tonight.

I can put more time and effort into these blogs again. They need the attention, and I can work on some of the things I’ve wanted to do but haven’t been able to. I’m also going to start going through my notebooks and putting together a journal of my months as an LA homeless.

I haven’t photographed it much for various reasons, but I plan to keep prowling the streets and to put together a series of photos of what I’ve seen over the recent months. Life on the streets goes on for many people. I don’t like to intrude on the private hell so many are going through, but much of what is happening deserves to be seen.

I’ll probably do that with my phone, both to give the photos the gritty look the deserve, and simply to be less obvious and intrusive. Over the next weeks and months one of my projects will be to put it all together in a book, maybe an ebook or an actual Blurb hard copy book. Or maybe on a blog. A simple blog — no sidebars, no clutter, just a series of journal entries. Maybe I’ll do all of the above. We’ll see.

Anyway… so much for brevity. My next post will be done from the comfort of my own apartment with a cup of coffee in hand. Just like it used to be.

To those of you who have been following me here I’ll just say thanks, more than I can say, for your encouragement and support. The recovery is underway. Stay tuned.

pj

I wasn’t planning on doing a post like this, but it was pointed out in a comment on an earlier post that it might be interesting for others to see what I would select as a few of my best images from the past year. So… with great gnashing of teeth, and for sake of discussion, here are four photos taken during 2011 here in LA.

palm bark

hinges -- koreatown alley

eucalyptus trunk

leaf abstract

There you have it. Four photos that I think worked out pretty well. Good?… not so good?… why?… why not?…

Say what you will…

limb and cloud

No, it isn’t upside down…

You all have a happy new year, and thanks for your participation on this blog.

homeless

We all have much to be thankful for. Not just on one long weekend a year when some of us gather for a feast of turkey, but every morning that we wake up.

I can’t help but wonder about the future of a society where the growth industries seem to be payday loans and car title loans… where selling plasma is seen as an income opportunity… where shopping carts are the vehicle of necessity for a growing number of people…

I hope your holiday is going well, but let’s not forget those, like this man, who are less fortunate. The line between comfort and catastrophe is a mighty thin one, and growing thinner for a lot of folks.

Philip Hyde was truly a master landscape photographer. He studied with the likes of Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Minor White among others. He went on to pioneer the use of color in landscape and wilderness photography. He loved the wilderness, dedicated himself to protecting it, and his intimate and moving photographs were a mainstay in Sierra Club books for years.

The Lumière Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia has an exhibit of Philip Hyde’s wilderness photography, and has put together a short video of his works with narration and commentary by his son David Leland Hyde celebrating wilderness. It’s beautifully done:

Philip Hyde from Lumière on Vimeo.

To find out more about the exhibit you can visit the Lumière Gallery. To find out more about Philip Hyde, his photography, and his dedication to wilderness, you can visit David Hyde’s fine site Landscape Photography Blogger. You’ll be glad you did.