It has been requested that the Gloucester Clam report on more of the day to day goings on in our fair city. That we move past our current beat of intoxicated shouting and wiener jokes. Time to get serious and do some real journalism. To facilitate this, we welcome aboard Staff Photographer Stevens Brosnihan. Stevens received his Post-baccalaureate certificate and Masters Degree in Fine Arts in painting and drawing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During his three-year tenure at SAIC he took full advantage of The School’s renown inter-disciplinary conceptual framework of competitive heuristic post-structural indifference. Which is a real thing, I guess.
Stevens’ first assignment was to cover Beeman Elementary School’s incoming Kindergarten Orientation on Wednesday. Fresh faced youngsters taking their first step on a long life of learning. The future, personified in lunch boxes, smiles and held hands. He assured us that with his art school background, he was the perfect man for the job.
This is what he gave us.
We are confused. Where are the kids? How hard was this? In a short text exchange Stevens chided us as boxed-in literalists, asking us to let the images speak for themselves. We argued that they looked like REM album covers from the late 80s we would see when we were a DJ in college and we don’t know what hell those bastards were talking about either. Since The Gloucester Clam is nothing but a media outlet with highest possible standards, we demanded a detailed explanation.
He sent us this:
The camera I chose (the 1930 Welta Gucki) is from photography’s youth. I felt it was perfect to reference the vitality and naive simplicity of children in an unfamiliar setting.
The camera is unfettered——no meter to gauge its surroundings, an uncoupled viewfinder like a child’s fresh, uncluttered take on life.
The 46mm film is hard to come by, so I rolled my own from a bulk package of 1983 Kodalith ortho, type 3 that I saved from a friend’s flooding basement. It was originally intended for newspaper halftone reproductions and can be coaxed into rendering continuous tones by using the wrong chemicals when developing it.
In life and in art alike, the child speaks and is unfazed by trivial parameters such as what is ‘correct.’ Choosing the developer was easy: a dilute ascorbic acid (vitamin C) based formula for 10 minutes at room temperature. I don’t use a thermometer and my darkroom was chilly today, so I let kept it in a few minutes longer. It felt right.
As I approached the school, the thought of photographing the actual children seemed irrelevant in the face of the power of nature. So instead I wandered into the woods and met a beautiful pile of compost.
The immensity of its potential seemed to poignantly and overwhelmingly speak of the future. It would become the future, from which gardens will take root. Much like the gardens of the mind these children have, ideas spreading forth like so many seedlings planted in the sweet April landscape.
The horizontal lines in the compositions are scratches likely caused by tiny specs of corrosion on the film path of the camera. Much like these children will have tiny specs of corrosion in their minds as years grow them wiser, more hardened, and less naive to the injustices of the world.
There you go folks. Kindergarten Orientation Day at Beeman. Thank you, Stevens.
Why does your photographer have two last names? On the lam? Witness protection?
Enquiring Minds want to know…
Ah, the perpetual struggle between photographer and editor…
The brilliance of this post takes away some of the sting I feel at not landing the job of staff photographer.
It also makes it quite clear that I’m not qualified for the job. Or what I now think the job is.
Oh we have a place for you here. Don’t you worry.
This is also really good for Mr. Stevens; photo credits like this really help to get his name out there.
We told him that this kind of stuff in his portfolio is better than actually paying him.
If money had been mentioned during our negotiations, I would have walked out of the interview. The rush of emotion and pride that swelled in my heart as Jim benighted me with the 12 inch, goat fat encrusted, rusty chef’s knife, confirmed that I was entering a realm of intellectual purity with a renewed fealty to the arts.
I forgot about the goat knife.
The symbolic traditions of the Gloucester Clam are both mysterious and hold tremendous power. They harken to a time when man and nature were both at odds and one simultaneously. The goat-fat smeared knife predates Leviticus and the solo cup predates Buzzfeed’s ‘lobby wedgie’ trdition
Lies make baby jesus cry.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/martindelvecchio/14303217912/
oh that was the baby jesus?now i feel extra bad about warping his tiny mind.
But the power of the goat-encrusted knife belongs not to the Clam but to the Duckworth:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/martindelvecchio/14119309280/
SPORTHORSE CAUGHT ESSENCE OF PEAVEY SHE SHOULD KEEP CLAM PHOTO GIG.
http://gloucesterclam.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/download-4.jpg
SPORTHORSE NOT PHOTOGRAPHER, BAD EYESIGHT LIKE PEAVY. SPORTHORSE ALREADY HAVE ENOUGH TROUBLE SEEING FAR BLUE LINE FROM SECTION 309.
mr. del vecchio. its true. i was there for the swearing in. it was magical! do you believe in magic? i do. total cream dream for stevens.
“Goat” (that’s the comment)
So it was Dowd who stole my knife?!
Okay, I am a hardcore photographer myself. As such I understand the banality of what I do in the eyes of the outside world. So though I might be tempted to expound to my viewers about the walnuts I scorched in a charcoal fire, later to boil and concentrate the acids their husks contain and to use it to develop my 1934 Verichrome Bantam 828 film in a hollowed out fish head, I don’t. Nobody cares, and more importantly, it doesn’t make any difference if your images just suck. Excuses like “My camera is so ancient it defies convention.” translate into “I’m neurotic enough to waste oodles of time seeing if I can make fire with two wet sticks.”
If you want to make images to please yourself and be impressionistic, knock yourself out. When someone gives you an assignment with a goal in mind, break out the post 1950 camera and a fresh roll of film and shoot like you know what you’re doing. Don’t print the shots that look as if your shutter went off accidentally and say: “You just don’t understand ART!”
i think you missed the joke.
Initially, I admit yes. But thing is, I know people like this, which is why I found it totally believable.
I consider myself more a soft core photographer, but I really need that fish head recipe if it’s not too dear.
Stevens wins.
Stevens wins.
I learned a new word at the Bat Mitzvah… “oy”… I believe it is appropriate here no?
I think your stop bath is leaking out of your fish head. Do not eat the cod cheeks until after your darkroom session. That was a hard lesson to learn since Dektol makes me hungry.
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