Topic: long-term projects

[snewbery]

In the spirit of expanding somewhat the ways we show examples of work here at filmwasters, I'm opening with some images from an ongoing project (shot on film), and invite others to do likewise.  This is a project I've not yet made public except in bits and pieces on my blog, it's never been exhibited, and I haven't yet begun to explore what its audience might be.  You can read about the motivation for the project here:

                                   http://www.sheilanewbery.com/merchant_statement.pdf

I started it before the financial crisis in the US flooded into mainstream awareness---and into Main Street experience. It seems relevant now as an ongoing witness of a certain kind of economic extinction. It was inspired in part by a book by Bill Evans and Andrew Lawson called A Nation of Shopkeepers (Plexus, 1981), a beautiful work that portrays not only individual shopkeepers but the unique character of the storefronts they occupy (in the UK). Some of the interiors depicted, and contraptions used for running the various shops, are remarkable: oddly beautiful for those of us who haven't seen a great variety of 'tools of trade'.

So, here are a few images from my own (American) series of artisan merchants/shopkeepers, which is focused on the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live. I don't really know how to interleave texts and images in this interface, but I can supply brief identifying text in another post if there's interest.







[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[Diane Peterson]

these are truly beautiful images..

[gregor]

Great! I like this series and an admirable project to take on.

I have one that I've been working on over time up here in Seattle, thats somewhat similar, and is focused on independent booksellers.  I started more or less with a documentary methodology, but have recently switched gears and am trying to approach it through the booksellers eyes, rather than mine.  Having owned a small independent, and being pushed out by the large chains, I think I can pull it off with the new direction I'm going in.

[hookstrapped]

I like, and am interested to see more.

[snewbery]

Thanks, Diane, hookstrapped, gregor.  A propos of your remark about your project, gregor, here's Peter B. Howard (below), probably one of the most successful independent booksellers in the country. His shop Serendipity Books has been around a long time in Berkeley. There's a wonderful, acerbically witty Key to Serendipity written by antiquarian  Ian Jackson that purports to divulge (to the uninitiated) the `key' to finding books in Peter's heaped stacks. Each year there's a booksellers' feast at Serendipity (or maybe it's biannual, I forget) in honor of the annual ABA meeting in San Francisco---and that's quite an interesting gathering (the feast, I mean). Wonderful faces and an amazing assortment of remarkable individuals. A dying breed.

Maybe you'll share some of your project work with us, gregor....?


[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[gregor]

His shop Serendipity Books has been around a long time in Berkeley.

Nice shot !

I used to live in SF, before moving to Seattle, and spent many hours in his shop as well as Cody's.

As I work through my project I'll post some images.  I think I put one in a weekend thread some weeks back !

[snewbery]

gregor, here is the author of The Key to Serendipity, one of Berkeley's great, idiosyncratic men of letters...

[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[original_ann]

Wow... I'm so touched by that portrait of the Button Man. 

[astrobeck]

these are great !!!
.  My two favorite things ...books and photos- you have a winner here.

[snewbery]

Wow... I'm so touched by that portrait of the Button Man. 

What you say really warms me! Thank you! I've always loved that portrait...

The button man, Vince Sortile, turned out to be contemporary with and former classmate of another subject whose shop, Jack's Antiques, has been in business under the same management for over 40 years. (About which I have another story that I'll have to post at some point.) Vince was the son of a green grocer, but, as he put it, his heart wasn't in it. He started buying up button stock from five and dimes going out of business around the country in the mid- to late-80s (during the savings and loan crisis here in the US). I think he may  have the largest button collection in the country at this point.  The shop is tiny---really almost a hole in the wall---and the impression one gets on walking in is that of stepping into a sort of time capsule, crammed with exotica.

[Janet_P]

These really are wonderful. It's a great project.
How do you approach the people you photograph? Do you visit them more than once? I'm really interested in how you achieve such intimate shots.

[vicky slater]

Ditto, Janet, Sheila, a great project and wonderful work.

What strikes me more than anything is your strong personal style, these really could only be your work.

Things change without you really noticing, I was thinking today how much my town has changed just in the time i've lived here, but how often you don't document the ordinary because you don't think of when it might not be there....at the moment my neighbour is in hospital, and unlikely to pull through, and he and his wife (in their 80's) have lived in the house next door for nearly 50 years, the nicest nicest man, and i often thought i should take their picture but never did. i'm really glad for all the portraits we take, and those small shops will probably close when the owners retire, this project is a way of appreciating them now.

Hopefully you'll post more as you go.

[snewbery]

Thank you, Janet & Vicky (!!)---to answer the questions Janet poses: yes,  I do visit more than once, and if I'm dissatisfied with what I did the first time around, (photographically) it may be several visits. The results are not always 'intimate' exactly, and I'm not sure that I'd characterize that as a goal---though I think I understand what you mean; I try to start with the way people interact with the objects around them. I remember seeing a series of pictures by Lee Friedlander that struck with me for their curious grace---the portraits of working people in the Factory Valley series. I've always loved these pictures---they're full of motion and invention and curiosity. Clearly he's partly in love with the gadgetry, the machines, but I think the way each figure animates the machinery and is animated by it is what gives those photos their uncanny vitality. 

Vicky, a number of the shops I've photographed are now closed---and I just learned that one of my subjects died not long ago. Suppose I should have been less surprised than I was when I heard this...

[gregor]

gregor, here is the author of The Key to Serendipity, one of Berkeley's great, idiosyncratic men of letters...

This should be a really great project based on your images !

Here's one of mine. Mine will be a combination of environmental shots of the booksellers as well as portraits of the booksellers in their shops, with accompanying text/testimonial on what it takes, sacrifices made, etc., to run an independent bookstore.

[Sorry, image deleted during forum software upgrade. Please re-upload if so inclined.]

[Skorj]

A tremendous project here, and similar to some of my work in Japan, so I feel a great empathy toward the process and the subjects. Button guy is pretty damn near perfect.

A part-time project of mine has been to capture motorcyclists: Hot-Wheels.

As always, the longer you run a project, the stronger you can make it. Dropping out earlier work, to replace with others. This is what I often do anyway. Thanks for the thoughts. Skj.