mug shots

i’ve been doing a lot of work in my darkroom lately in my basement. this has caused me to come to two conclusions:

1. the traditional wet darkroom is a very very expensive place.

2. it is also very time consuming.

i first learned photography through the shooting of black and white film. its something i have always held onto, even in the advent of digital photography. but more and more, i find myself leaning towards digital instead of film. there are more nights than i would like to admit that i find myself coming home from work, and while there is a nagging urge to run downstairs and make photos, there are more concerns or more pressing matters higher on the list of “things to do,” or i am simply too lazy to go down to the basement, set everything up, and get the whole process going only to break it all down again when i’m done. there’s a huge difference between that and opening one program on a computer.

laziness has caused me to fall way behind on my developing. i have about 15 rolls of film waiting to be printed. and once i make the prints, then what? i have no way of scanning them to my computer, except for cheap and outdated negative and flatbed scanners. i consider it almost insulting to put all of that work into making a print, and then suck the life out of it with outdated technology. id rather not even scan them in at all. and i’m not going to pay to have them all scanned, i’ll go broke.

so here i am with stacks and stacks of prints in boxes and shelves. really, whats the point? but then again whats the point of digital photography either? for some reason i have this nagging feeling that there has to be a purpose behind what i’m doing rather than just “cause i wanna.” but really, thats all it is. im not working towards an exhibition. or a book. or print sales. im just doing it for myself.

the other night i was making prints of a roll of film from a certain favorite local hospital of mine, andit suddenly dawned on me- i wanted to try something different. so upstairs i went to dig through my box of “artifacts”- things i have taken from some of these places- and i pulled out a 3 inch stack of little 2 inch by 4 inch envelopes. each was stamped with a 6 digit number.

these were mugshots for inmates of a local jail which i had taken about a month ago. each envelope contained two negatives, one front shot and one facing sideways.

and i began printing the negatives, one after the other. the negatives are from the year 1947. they had held up surprisingly well through the years, considering they are 60 years old and were sitting in an abandoned building basically exposed to the elements and temperatures.

each face appeared in the tray of developer, one after the other in rapid succession. they were all basically shot in the same fashion, same exposure, so i was able to shoot them right through the enlarger without making contact strips in between.

as i watched each weather face appear in the chemicals, i found myself wondering what these men had done to place them in the jail, trying to draw conclusions from their appearances. naturally this was basically impossible. but still, it was interesting to wonder.

some of the eyes were completely dead. some faces had huge scars running from eye to jawline.

one mans face was completely burned and melted from a fire. this was the most disturbing of all. what in the world could he have done???

anyway. i still have tons more to develop. i would love to share them, and i did in fact show about a dozen of them to some explorers i was out with yesterday, and they were as amazed at them as i was. but its not really the type of thing to be thrown out on the internet. chances are these people are now dead, but still. its not really ethical.

thats another thing that gets me. staring at these photos, i am looking at someone who is probably now deceased. that is something that has always amazed me about old photos for some reason. looking at a photo of someone who no longer exists.

who i was vs. who i am.

the longer i stay at this whole photography thing, the more interesting i’m finding it is to view photos over time.

when i revisit locations, i find that i often gravitate to things i have shot before for obvious reasons- if they interested me the first time to come over and work with them, theyre probably going to catch my eye again. but i find it interesting the different way i may approach something the second time around. some of these things i was fully aware i had shot during my last trip, i was curious if i could make it look different this time.

this past saturday i visited a new england hospital i first visited about 10 months ago. ive noticed looking between the two sets of photos that i also process my photos differently on the computer. im keeping them less saturated.

this post is slightly self indulgent and naval gazing, but when i think about it, just about every post in this blog is. but based on the subject matter i am filling this blog with, my thoughts on photography, my photography, my explorations, etc- i guess it’s kind of hard not to be.

self-indulgence is something i continually wrestle with, to the point where i am so concerned with coming off as full of myself that i end up have zero self confidence altogether. but more on that in another post.

anyway.

the only equipment difference in these photos is that the ones from may of 2007 were shot with an 18-55 f3.5-5.6 or something to that effect nikkor lens- the kit lens that comes with a Nikon D50. now i am shooting with i believe an 18-50 f2.8 nikkor lens, far superior in quality and barrel distortion to its predecessor. the difference is like driving a 1979 honda civic and a 2008 mercedes benz, in my opinion.

may 2007

march 2008

set up nearly the same except i clipped out that light doorway on the left. colors are completely different. completely. much less saturated in my newer shot.

may 2007

march 2008

first time i came up real close on that sink, and the barrel distortion of the cheap lens is very obvious in the top of the doorframes. this time i pulled back more to show more of the room but still cropped and centered it so there was still somewhat of a sense of symmetry. and once again, much less saturated color. i think i used to pump up the saturate meter in photoshop’s raw software. i can’t remember. even now i sometimes give it a small bump if a photo seems like it needs it, but only 5 or ten points.

this isn’t an identical shot, but it is a shot in the same room. and it’s of the same chair, which has migrated to the other end of the room. that always creeps me out very slightly when i revisit a place and things have moved. i am well aware its from other explorers posing and setting up their shots….but its still very strange to leave a place and return a year later to find all of the furniture and objects have seemingly grown legs and moved about the room, when this place is supposedly abandoned and dead, for all intents and purposes.

may 2007

march 2008

completely different colors again. less green. first shot is too empty in the foreground also. i’m not saying the second one is a completely success by any means, but i like it better than the first one.

of course, the famous theater.

may 2007

march 2008

i’m not sure how i feel about this one. i think the warmer pumped up colors actually work to the photos advantage in the first one as opposed to the second one. im not completely sold in either direction.

and finally, the violent ward.

may 2007

march 2008

i think i might actually like the composure of the first shot better. i do like the second one. but when placed side by side….the second one is much busier in the center hallway section than that first one. and i think the quieter composure of the first one may work a little better. the symmetry of the doors in that first one definitely does work better.

oops. moving on.

man, i havent posted on here in quite a while. i dont even know why. partially laziness. definitely laziness. but whatever. maybe ill back post some stuff to fill in the blanks a bit. im not sure though.

ive spent my past two weekends exploring an amazing building at a hospital i am otherwise very familiar with, having grown up in its footprint. its always been a place that has held a special place in my heart because of this. i can remember being younger and having my dad driving me to my soccer game, cutting through the grounds since the campus was so massive, and there being 15mph signs on the roadway because “patients on roadway” or something to that effect. that fascinated me.

and some of my friends who lived especially close to the asylum were instructed that if they heard a whistle, everyone had to go inside and lock all first floor doors and windows, because this meant a patient was missing.

then when i was 19 and in college and my friends and i would pile into my car and drive to the complex, driving past the endless amounts of abandoned buildings, fogging up the car window glass in dead silence, straining to see if we could see anything inside of those dark windows. then security would suddenly appear behind us and follow us out of the complex until we were back on a main road, silently warning us to keep out. at the time it was a thrill.

since then i have entered the few but beautiful buildings left on the rapidly dying campus multiple times, every time leaving satisfied, but never fulfilled. i always wanted more.

the building sat at the epicenter of the campus, beckoning me with every visit. but i never got near it, knowing that the center portion was still in use. i knew people who had entered, but i didnt dare.

then i heard there was an open door. surely this was too easy, i thought. so a friend and i approached said door early one sunday morning, and to our dismay, someone must have located it and locked it. after walking around the entire back portion of the building and somehow not getting caught by police, and nearly getting run over by a white engineering pickup racing around a blind corner, we decided to attempt this one another day.

that day came 2 weeks ago. i was forever trying to make plans with a friend to approach this building, a friend who had been there before, but she lived far away and kept pushing off plans. then i was trying to meet up with another girl who made quite regular visits to the building, but nothing was working out.

fuck it, i said. lets go.

so like the ninjas we arent, my friend and i parked, walked about a half a mile in plain view, and entered.

and then i realized i didnt have my camera memory card.

luckily i had my manual film slr loaded with black and white film, so i shot sans digital that morning.

while i regretted not bringing my memory card, i was still ecstatic to be in such a beautiful building i had been dreaming of entering for so long. it was disheartening to see the state of the outermost wings, with roofs seemingly comprised of pickup sticks. ready to collapse at any given moment. many of them already had. water was everywhere. this is not savable, i thought to myself. such a shame.waste of a beautiful building.

the closer we moved to the center portion, which is still in use, the less decay there was, and the quieter we had to be- sometimes a makeshift wall was the only thing separating us from the people on the other side. im not sued to exploring partially active buildings.  this definitely messed with my nerves. all someone had to do was open that door, and i would be standing right there in the wide hallway, like a deer in headlights.

we only explored half of the wings that day, the mens side. but i loved every inch of it, and a week later returned with another friend, this time checking at lest 6 times to make sure my memory card was in the camera.