William Hodges Bathroom
The three brooches on the left are by Warwick Freeman.
Next are Grape Hyacinths. Then a selection of soaps.
Most significantly of all, the fluffy daffodils. Until two weeks ago I scorned these. I only believed in the simple story book ones, King Alfred I remember. But then going to the Farmers Market here in Invercargill, held at Southland Boys High, the school that has produced more All Black captains than any other in the country, I am told. Over two weeks I changed my mind about the daffodils. Suddenly, I’m appreciating the fluffies.
The black bottle on the right is a bottle of Armani Code.
Te Anau Again.
This is the only mountain photo that I took when I was in Te Anau a week or so ago.
It was taken on maximum lens length from the main street. The camera is a Canon, not expensive. $800 I think. It does however have an image stabiliser which helps. And the quality of the glass is good.
File Management
Today I have been organising into folders on my computer, some of the photos that I have been taking digitally over the last few weeks. Here is one that I don’t want to delete just yet.
Diane Arbus said in an interview that the photos that don’t quite work are vitally important. If it is not understood why they don’t clear the bar then we may be condemned to repeat them. Reading this was a very important step in my photographic education.
This photo I took about 3 weeks ago, walking home in the dark once the shop windows had lit up. I must have passed thousands of possible photos over those evenings yet among the few that I paused before, this is one. (three times)
For two or three years I’ve noticed this book. In the library and in bookshops.
However, I didn’t on those occasions go any further, such as borrowing or buying it.
While in Te Anau last week I did buy it and with feet up, found myself intrigued. Inventively put together as if has been written by an autistic boy, Christopher. Christopher works on mathematical puzzles in his head as a way of relaxing. Fixated with the dangers of making assumptions, he recounts this joke:
There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don’t know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train).
And the economist says, ‘Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.’
And the logician says, ‘No. There are cows in Scotland of which one, at least one is brown.’
And the mathematician says, ‘No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown’.
I’ve cleaned up this image, which appeared below a little, via Photoshop. It had a few
spots on which made a difference out of all proportion to their actual size.
Like the spots on my face when I was an adolescent. The back of my neck was a favourite target as were the inside of my thighs, although most particularly my armpits. At high school my face felt, in my imagination at least, like one big running sore. I exaggerate a little I admit, but not too much.
Buoys
In the two and a half months since I’ve been working in
Southland, I’ve noticed again and again, buoys floating in the water.
The very top one is part of a whitebait rig and is floating in a river.
T for Taxidermy
I didn’t know what to make of this photo. At first. 3 weeks ago maybe or more this was. There was something in this wall arrangement over a mantle piece with a long solid wooden formal dining table below. Something registered on my geiger counter. I definitely heard the clicks, which is a good sign. I would like to see a life size print. A photographic replica perhaps.
For 15 years I’ve been gnawing away at the idea of a photographic Alphabet Book, but how these books work as you dig deeper into the linguistics of it, is very very complex, far far more complex than i though when I first blundered in.
There has been a long association of photographs with albums. I almost prefer photos in books to photos on gallery walls. I like being able to retrace my steps whenever I like hence my tenacity when it comes to this project.