Progression

I keep seeing patterns that match, that meld, flowers turning into bees and leaves turning into lightning. So I had to put them together, somehow.

This cinematic slideshow is an attempt to show something like what happens in my head. The pageant that is “creation.” This one is all photos shot in North Georgia.

Working in a new medium is confusing and exciting, and puts you on shaky ground. Let me know how I did.

Tunnel to Nowhere

I didn’t grow up in Bryson City – my husband did – so it’s not really my story to tell. But you can look it up.

Outside town, there’s a “Road to Nowhere.” Which leads to the Tunnel to Nowhere.

Which, when you grow up in a small town, feels like the whole town is a tunnel to nowhere.

It has been the scene of devil worship and high praise for intoxicants since at least 1979, just like deserted structures across the nation.

I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, which I thought was a small town at the time. Didn’t know much then.

Has something like 30,000 people, or it did, which is at least 10 times the size of an average village in many countries of the planet.

Used to think that a small town was doom. That the only way it could and should lead was out.

But now that I live in a VERY small community, less than 3,000 people, I find that I like it. And the difference is: When I was 12 years old, I cared what people thought of me.

[More photos from Bryson City are in my photoblog entries for early July.]

Flag was still there

People are usually surprised when I say that the 4th of July is my favorite holiday. I don’t strike them as a flag-waver, I suppose, and they wonder why my favorite isn’t Christmas, or maybe Thanksgiving.

The Chinese invented fireworks. When I came back from living in China, I cried while I was standing in line to vote – thinking of my friends in Beijing.

In Dubai, where you can get thrown in jail for criticizing the monarch, they have a full-blown fireworks show every night of the month-long Shopping Festival.

Sometimes you have to leave home in order to celebrate it.

[More fireworks in the July 3 entry "Same Time Last Year" on my photos-only blog]

Roadside stand

Seems like you always see the prettiest flowers when you’re driving along at top speed, late for a meeting. The trick is to remember to go back to that place right away and shoot it.

First it was the fire pink. I didn’t know that’s what it was – I just saw the intense red flowers along the side of a gravel road as we flew by. As usual we were running late for our Master Naturalist class, so we didn’t stop. Then I saw them again along the side of a road near our house. That time I was with a friend, so I didn’t want to ask her to pull over.

But I went back there to shoot it. That’s what got me started on shooting weeds.

Same thing with trumpet creeper, day lilies, woodland phlox…

Mickey, our instructor for Master Naturalist class, says that a weed is just a wildflower that’s out of place. I reckon he’s right.

There’s a lot of development in North Georgia, bad economy or no, and a lot of woods and fields getting ripped up for houses.

We don’t even know what’s being lost.

[All photos in this entry were shot in public right-of-way along open roads in North Georgia.]

Street Legal

There’s a new online literary journal, CeLLA’s Round Trip, which happens to have published one of my photos from Dubai. My photo’s called “Street Legal” and it’s on page 34… but page through because there’s plenty of eye candy. (I haven’t read it yet so can’t vouch for the writing…)

And notice the nice, virtual format of issuu.com. It’s a free online magazine publishing service, so if you’ve ever wanted to be a zine publisher, here’s your chance.

In honor of this publication, I put up a special gallery at Baraka Images. This gallery will come down eventually, so check it out now!

Meanwhile, here’s another sample.

(In case you can’t read the sign, it says in Arabic and English, “Celebrate the joy of togetherness – Celebrate shopping!”)

Togetherness, indeed.

I do miss the irony that is Dubai.

Cambodian invasion

I have been looking at my old travel photos,

and the Cambodians

began to march

out

from the prints and

into my office,

my house,

my yard,

popping up everywhere.

I found them in corners

and on shelves,

in the weeds

and in the limbs of trees, waiting

at the window or

staring at me

from the porch.

I photographed them

because I could not answer their questions.

Anderbo.com does Afghanistan

I can’t seem to leave Afghanistan… I keep working with those photos, from 2002-05, because the depth of meaning they have for me seems to elude the actual image.

Anyhow, six of them are published today as a photo memoir, “Afghanistan Blues,” in Anderbo.com, a New York online journal whose editor, Rick Rofihe, is an impressively energetic guy. Just talking to him on the phone for a few minutes made me tired. In a good way, of course.

The journal doesn’t do much photography, and also doesn’t do hyperlinks, but otherwise worth a look. Check it out.