Plywood Time

The city is covered in plywood. Everything in the process of construction seems to be surrounded by the swirling knots and grain patterns of a plywood barrier.

I'm interested in plywood as an assemblage of layers of frozen, visible time.

Photography is a meditation on the perception of time. Movement, any type of movement, fascinates me because it is an exploration of time.

A photograph of movement is a document of the succession of continuity. When photographed, a movement is shown the way it existed in a specific moment -- it was different both before and after the way we see it isolated in a photograph. Therefore, you can't consider the essence of movement without considering the essence of time.

Paradoxically, although movement can be photographed, it does not actually exist in a fixed state -- it is not an object we can return to.

I'm constantly seeking out examples of time other that movement: physical examples I can study for a period of time that isn't dictated by movement itself.

Of course this logically brings me to the study of plywood.

The Morning Walk

I've started a regular routine of morning photography again. The strong urge to resume doing this coincides, of course, with the darkest depths of winter here in Chicago. We've had a string of days with single-digit temps the past two weeks. Seems like the worse the weather the more I want to be outdoors with a camera.

It's great to have a dedicated period of time again each day for 'pedestrian' photography. I've been varying my route slightly, but the starting point is the Chicago Ave. Redline CTA station and the destination is my office in the Sullivan Center at Monroe and State. It's a fine walk of about a mile and a half with an endless variety of locations and situations.

Other things are happening as well...

I'm reading a new photo book: The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer. Really enjoying it because it is written by a non-photographer. Mr. Dyer offers a very fresh consideration of photography and it is interesting to experience it from his perspective.

Also, I now have a Flickr account. It seems that all of the news organizations and publications I pay attention to now have 'Flickr pools:' collections of images submitted by users that they publish online and/or in print. In fact, the image above was featured by both Chicago Public Radio and Gapers Block in the Feb. 19th edition of their webpages.

I'm grateful for this new avenue to share my images. I've always hoped my photographs would be something that people stumble upon rather than seek out, which is why having them published online is so exciting for me. Many thanks to both Chicago Public Radio and Gapers Block!