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Health & Fitness

Zenmartini & The Keepers of Light: The Things We Leave Behind

Thoughts about images and some old photos of my own. Please send my your photographs and let's get a discussion going about taking pictures.

Mnemosyne

I often think the reason I take pictures is because of my father. One of the few memories that I have of him is his letting me take a picture with his twin lens reflex. He stood behind me with his arms wrapped around mine showing me how to focus and press the shutter. I took a picture of a ship in the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island.

I remember that time in such detail because it is one of the few memories that I have of him. He died of lung cancer just a couple of years later. And sadly I only have three pictures of him. I remember pouring over a stack of photos my father took on the last trip he made with my mother to Montreal. Little square prints with scalloped edges and washed out color. There were no images of him save for his shadow holding the camera in one. I tried to imagine what he was thinking at the time or what he had done right before or after the image was made. I know I was hoping to get just a little more out of that particular lost moment.

A few years back the former Mrs. Zenmartini and I went to an estate sale. I usually find these sales morose. Probably because an estate sale represents the end of a life or way of life. Strewn about are the usual tables full of kitchen utensils, glasses, records, books and frames. If one gets to the sale late in the day, the neat rows of items are usually jumbled about and what’s left is a sort of reverse natural selection. Those remaining items are the things that nobody wants that have no perceived value. And always amongst the items left behind are boxes full of pictures and photo albums. The estate sales people know that no one wants them. They are usually found in a hall closet, the basement or out in the garage.

And there they sit until the day everything that no one wanted is thrown out. Those pictures meant a lot to someone`back when it took a week to get your prints from the drug store. Pictures of the babies, the newly weds, the party celebrating a birthday. The images made to capture an event that once had meaning now orphaned without context.  And, of course that makes me think of the images that I make and what will become of them. We take so many pictures now. In 2011 there were 140 billion photographs on Facebook. Can the thousands of images we take personally every year mean as much as the single Daguerreotype of a son gone off to fight in the Civil war?

I wonder about the life and meaning of images. Maybe, because looking at those unloved images soon to be gone forever or at the ones I take today, it is hard to know what in life is important.

ZM
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After I saw Antonioni's "Blow Up" I knew I had to be a photographer. Mostly because of swinging London, Verushka and wearing turtle necks. It just seemed so cool. Below is a link to a list of documentaries about photographers. Not shooting Twiggy in a mini skirt but inspiring none the less,

http://petapixel.com/2013/07/01/the-big-fat-list-of-documentaries-about-photography/

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All but 2 of this weeks photos are from the 1970's.

1. Michelle and Cameron

2. Self portrait with angry girlfriend in taxi on Park Ave. South

3.Waiting for Lisa Mandeltort

4.Two gentleman on Broadway

5.23rd and Madison

6. 86th Street crosstown

7. Dotty who fell down at the parade

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