Making Water Out of Wine

I don't like to comment on my own images.  People who talk about the things they make are 1) boring and 2) not so well informed.  I watched a documentary on Joe Strummer last night called "The Future Is Unwritten."  I don't know.  It was pretty dumb and I felt pretty dumb watching it.  The director made a good attempt to create something artful, but I make documentaries, too, and know there is little you can do about the quality of the responses to the questions you put out there.  If you could, it wouldn't be a documentary.  And boy, there wasn't much to work with on this one.

I'll admit, though, that "No Direction Home" seems an exception.  The interviews with Dylan speaking out of character is worth the ticket.  Still. . . Dylan talking about his music. . . nope.

So I am loathe to say this about my own images.  It will sound dumb.  I intend them to be stilted and weird and not pretty at all.  The models do not come to shoot with me to get pretty pictures.  They have those in abundance beforehand.  I tell them that I will like most the images they will probably like least.  It is not always so, however.  Some of them love the awkward pictures best, and I am not immune to beauty.

"I have lots of pretty pictures.  I want to do this."

Or something like that.

"Naked girls and a guy with a camera.  What can be creepier," I tell them.

"Not much."

I'm not saying it makes things right or that it makes the images any good.

I'm just saying.

I tend not to put some of my favorites here because they are a bit more edgy and provocative than the others.  They are much less pleasant if any of these images can said to be so.  Probably not.  But here is one today.  She is a nice woman with a new baby, a social worker with a degree from a good university. She did not think this would be a beauty shot.  She saw all the images as they dropped from the Polaroid camera.  She is writing a book about the "marvels" of her life.  I hope she gets it done.  She has stories to tell.

But all of that information doesn't help make this a better picture and all this talk detracts from it.

People who make things shouldn't talk about them, I think, but sometimes I have the hillbilly's desire to turn gold into silver.  Or steak into hamburger helper.  Or something worse.