Days With My Father is a touching photo journal by Phillip Toldedano, who photographs and narrates his father’s last years alive. He’s able to capture his father in altering states due to his lack of short-term memory, which means he cannot register where he is or even the fact that his wife has passed away. It’s a beautiful set of photographs and stories that will leave you in tears, and I definitely recommend taking a look. Toldedano has finally published a Days With My Father photo essay in book form, which you can find here. I plan on buying it soon.

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This is my best friend Jamie (left) and her younger sister Casey (right). It’s the first photo I’ve taken of them in a while, which is odd considering I photographed them for three straight years in high school, using them as models for every project I was ever assigned. I took this one at their dad’s house last night. It feels weird to call it that, because growing up–and I practically grew up in that house, rather than in my own–I always called it “Jamie’s house.” When we left for college, it became her parents’ house, and after the divorce, just Howie’s house. Of course, going back there it still felt a little bit like we were 7, and her mom came by to visit as though she still lives there, and a lot of things just haven’t changed. Some of the furniture is gone, there’s only one dog, and Kyle (Jamie’s youngest sibling) has morphed into a teenager with a deep voice that none of us recognize, but we also spent the day uncovering old notebooks, pictures, and maps from our witch-hunting days.

I don’t know if I’ve written about this yet, but Jamie and I once believed our third grade teacher was a witch, and so we spent the majority of the year whipping up potions made of bleach, coffee, and other such things in an attempt to melt her (we read too much of the Bailey School Kids books back then). We even wrote spells–none of which seem to make any sense, though we were pretty proud of them at the time. I won’t embarrass myself by reproducing any of them here, but I assure you, they’re rather unique.

After joking about what we might find yesterday, Jamie pulled out a vile-looking bottle of brown liquid and glitter that was sealed off with wax. I tried to convince her that it was a memory candle gone bad, but her mother just looked over at me and said: “Lauren, you know this is some shit the two of you concocted–you guys were fucked up.” No one but Jill could sum up our friendship quite so accurately…

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I’m late with this post, and although I don’t seem to have much to do these days I haven’t slept since yesterday and I’m feeling anxious about nothing, as usual. I’ve managed to finally perfect my list of resolutions, though, and this photo is one of the 52 self-portraits I’m supposedly going to take this year (I once attempted the 365 project and made it to day 3, so we’ll see). The editing here was simple enough to do, and the main difficulty I had was actually posing for the shots – the last clone I added in was of me pulling my hair up, a last-minute decision that replaced another clone sitting on the left side of the couch. I shot this one by mistake, but I soon realized it was the only shot that added depth to the image. All the other clones are posed in alignment with the couch, as I was more focused on the actions of each clone, making them look in communication with one another, etc. than anything else. So, I went with the random back-turned, hair-fixing clone. Once I finally replace my ink cartrige, I’ll print this for one of my journals – I promised myself that by the end of the year, I’ll compile the entire 52 weeks project into a 2010 book (even though I have 2 unfinished journals still to work on from previous years).

And now for the resolutions in their entirety (well, minus some others that I’m not going to post):

1. Read 50 books – my standard challenge. I’m on my third book of the year, having just finished Wasted by Marya Hornbacher and The Freedom Writers Diaries with Erin Gruwell. The second I enjoyed (despite my concerns about its authenticity and racial implications), and the first I’m not sure I’d recommend (seems like she wrote the memoir prematurely), though the parts that irked me the most were admittedly due to personal bias.

Also, I’m going to figure out why my booklog isn’t working so the books I read will actually show up somewhere on this site…

2. The 52 weeks project – explained above (Flickr group: here).

3. Finish the journal I’ve been “working on” (read: watching collect dust) and start my 2010 book.

4. Work on some of my eating habits and remember to take my vitamins/calcium… doc says it builds strong bones, who knew?

5. Sleep.

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These photos are from this morning, when the Westboro Baptist Church — the hate group known for protesting Matthew Shepard’s funeral and soldiers’ funerals around the country — came to campus to picket outside of Rutgers Hillel. Almost everyone on campus was anticipating their visit, so Hillel has been rounding up different religious organizations, queer organizations, and music groups on campus for the past couple of weeks to help organize a counter-protest in the form of a rally against hate. Despite the rain, it was a huge success — the a capella groups, the unified diversity speeches, and the mass amount of cheering drowned out the WBC completely…

To begin with, there was a lot of debate surrounding the WBC’s visit and how our community should respond. Immediately I thought of Romaine Patterson’s Angel Action and the impact of such a creative and positive response to the WBC… some wanted to merely treat it as a joke, others wanted to throw a dance party noiseout, and still others wanted to completely ignore them, believing that to be our safest bet. Thankfully, Hillel put together a very well thought out program that took attention away from WBC rather than emphasizing their visit, which I hope makes an impact on those who argued against any sort of recognition of their visit. For one thing, it wasn’t practical — regardless of whether or not anyone organizes around the WBC, signs like “God hates fags” and “the Jews killed Jesus” and “thank God for dead soldiers” generally attract a lot of attention. One way or another, a mass of people would have circled around them, and when the WBC has the chance to provoke unprepared and unsuspecting bystanders, they take the opportunity to attack and then sue them for their engagement, alleging verbal and/or physical attacks. The fact that their entire organization is built around verbal and visual displays of violence doesn’t seem to have any bearing on the outcome of these lawsuits, which usually result in funding for the WBC. Thankfully, we didn’t run into any such problems, and all in all, I’d say the event was a complete success — in fact, I only have one photo where the WBC is actually visible, because the 1,200 participating supporters of Hillel completely blocked them out. They gave up fairly early, but our rally continued.

A lot of people, I think, are actually glad that the WBC came to Rutgers. If nothing else, their extremism provides us with a unique opportunity to build alliances between groups of people with a long history of dividedness between them, and I hope that sense of unity will stay with us.

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In seventh grade, I broke my leg pretty badly. With one fractured tibia and a screw in my ankle, I ended up with a cast that reached all the way up to my hip and a wheelchair to prevent any further mishaps. I was allowed to use crutches at home, but the doctor told me it was too dangerous to go out without a wheelchair, as my leg couldn’t handle any stress after my surgery. This proved difficult during school, even with the ramps (we measured them once during a math project — the angle is so steep it’s technically illegal). During gym and other activities I couldn’t take part in, I was brought to the library, where I sat overlooking a tiny courtyard that could see into classrooms across the way. A teacher of mine joked that it was the exact plot of Rear Window — that a murder would soon occur and I’d be the only one to notice it, all from the confines of my chair by the window.

It wasn’t until this past year that I finally watched Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I saw it in my Writing & Photography class — which, of course, was the class that inspired the photoblog aspect of this site. Anyway, I finally began to feel like the voyeur in the film when I went to the top floor of my apartment building to take some photos the other night. I first went up there with a friend on the fourth of July to watch the fireworks (it totally beat going to a park or some such thing — the view is so great from the 12th floor that we were able to see 11 different displays in nearby towns). Later on, I decided to take advantage of the view and bring up my camera.

Luckily no one at the restaurant across the street could see me, so I didn’t look like a total creep. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with these images just yet, but I’m thinking of creating some sort of time lapse video, as I’ve got a number of different pictures with the same view as well as access to that photo spot for the rest of the summer.

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Chapter 4 of the Cotton speaks to photographing mundane, everyday objects that we might normally pass by, like my teapot that sits on the windowsill in my dorm room. The subject of photographing the mundane reminded me of Irving Penn and his idea that “photographing cake can be art,” speaking to the way we photograph images rather than what we photograph. An artist can capture anything and make it worthwhile or beautiful, regardless of whether they are photographing some sort of decisive moment or a simple piece of cake.

What I find most interesting about the type of still life photography shown in this chapter is the inclusion of a human element. The hint of a person having been there makes it human without people being in the photo. This photo of my mother’s Shabbat candlesticks, for example, doesn’t include her in any way. Not even so much as her hand appears in the image, but the candles have obviously been placed there and lit by a human being. It doesn’t say much about her precious Gary Rosenthal candlesticks (or how angry she was when she saw I had touched them), nor does it explain anything about why they are there or who they belong to. However, it does imply some sort of human presence, and from that the viewer can feel connected to it.

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Photos from the party that adhere to more of the “artistic” standard rather than the personal show less of that Kodak type of emotion. This photo I took of my cousin (second cousin once removed, I think?) pictures her not smiling, glancing back at her mother who is only partially present in the image, and her cousins, who are also cut off. As a family photo, it might not make the album, but it was decent enough for me to upload to Flickr…

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In one example, Barthes notes that photographs can reveal certain genetic features or similarities that we never notice. This brought to mind one particular image of my family from about 9 or 10 years ago (I think). My great-grandfather — we called him Pop — was still alive, and he was standing behind my dad and my little brother, the camera getting a profile of each of them, one behind the other. It wasn’t until I saw that picture developed that I realized they all have a distinctly similar nose. Unfortunately, the photo is sitting in a cabinet somewhere in my house, so I’ll have to wait until next time I’m home to find it.

I recently took a photo of my friend Dan at the drag show we host in our dorm once a semester, and it had a similar effect for him. This may not be quite what Barthes was talking about — the resemblance is probably due to the fact that Dan is wearing his mother’s wig, dress, and make-up — but it’s interesting how similar drag queen Dan is to mama Dan. Especially since it’s RJ, to his left, who seems to have been favoring the outdated jacket and plump, middle-aged woman type of style. I’m not sure what that says about his mother’s style, but either way, as soon as I put the picture up on Facebook, RJ and I marveled at the familiarity of Dan’s feminine side.

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