notation - part 2

why do i bother really with worrying about bathroom door at strange places? its not like i am sitting down on the toilet and reading a newspaper... just taking a piss. yet i am most concerned about making sure the door is shut and that i can control its closed status, with a lock or my foot. what would happen if someone walked in? would i be embarrassed?  would i even care? would they? still i do it as if a force of nature an instinct compels me to do just that. protect my privacy that is not really there when i stop at a roadside to take care of business.

lost in translation

I was going to make a real post today, but i wont. i did have some things to say but i guess its better to shut up.

I went to the Die Antwoord show in the Royal boston oct 26 2010 and did not take one picture

Tess did take some fucking Awesome pictures! check them out!

where to start..? it is always the question, from the music i listen to and makes me think about my place in the world? maybe with my actual place in the world that makes me think about my place in my own life? or with tess that sometimes puts it all in perspective?

i cant run away form the whole of the things that re my life any further than i can throw them (which maybe quite a distance but the world is a small place as we so often happen to say to ourselves and then to others, in pseudo amazement of how small it actually is and how strange it is that we forgot all about that fact since it happened all but the same with the same amazement and excitement a few days ago...), and still they will always fall right back on my head. the multitude of facts that i am trying to encompass with my thoughts has no real center, or base starting point, thats maybe why i am having such a hard time actually talking about it. maybe thats a good place to start, having trouble talking about what i have clear thought about and talking endlessly about shit i know nothing about and have absolutely no connection to. I had my first second year MFA crit 2 weeks ago. i got creamed, and i said nothing of importance, i heard little things that i understood, or otherwise were relevant to the discussion and not personally implicit of me. but i still got creamed. i dont know what my photos are about. i am not so sure i am that interested in them anymore. and i guess more so after the crit but also before it i think that these photos are super boring. i havent made interesting photos in a while now. a meeting with shai kremer, that made me feel a little better and gave me a gleam of hope, was mainly based on the fact that materials from israel are strong because the emotions involved are strong and painful. pain and brutalism is a good thing universally and this type of content is always int resting as it most usually over takes any visual qualities a photo might have. i guess the same can be said about pretty stuff. that being said, it is true talent that can make pretty photos that also have proper material content that is as powerful as its visual quality. this led me to a lower lever of issue i am dealing with which is unavoidably - israel. when i was in israel i felt like i was just a guest. even before i actually moved to the US. i was in the wrong place as much as i can imagine a trans gender person feels he is in the wrong body (interesting to find many other similarities between that and what i think about my predicament). now that i am here i know i was right, israel is not the place for me to live in. i go back many times to the what ifs of israel i had left behind, and the what ifs if the future should i come back. some of them are appealing, but that always ends with the problematic fact that any opportunity is located in israel and will require living there. i was brought up in israel, and i learned to live my life there. when i am here i am incompatible for that reason. it does not matter that my mother is form here and that i can speak the language. i am a foreigner, the thing i always said i will not be and all kinds of zionist jews said "you will be a stranger anywhere you go israel is your only home". they were half right. this unrelenting connection that refuses to let go, follows me all the time. there is a constant comparison of life here and there, food here and there and so on. and comparison like any other "empirical" study can be interpreted from any point of view to suit its causes. all kinds of connections i thought i had here were personal and existed only in the provacy of my solitary life, i am finding more and more that they do not exist any more, some just dont apply to me any more and the rest are not avilable any more since they cannot be shared.

every few days i get up and feel like a can run a marathon but the energy soon dissipates and i am left with the same dreary feeling of worthlessness as before. unset future is a simple thing to deal with, uncertain goals, or even not having any is harder to deal with. guidance is something i am missing, especially the kind that i need to give myself.

Inputs

America smells like a damp stairwell, like a cold fall night with firewood smoke in the air that makes you feel almost as if you are in someones house sitting by the fireplace. america smells like fresh clean carpets and recently oiled floors where the air is light and crisp.

gas stations

Bezalel Academy for arts and design Jerusalem Israel website steals unnamed photographers photo

Behind the departments logo, the banner shows a grid of small images. this is a photo of the wall in the bezalel photo department lab, on the 7th floor. all the photos are from the Hulun excursion, a 3 day field trip in which the entire photo department was hosted by the city of Hulun, culminating in a big photo exhibition at the Digital media center of the city.
this are photos i shot on that trip but were mostly of friends and behind the scene. this from a time when i thought i wanted to be a photojournalist, wait, i still want to be a photojournalist, but in any case, i thought i was all cool and that all the photo agencies had weird ideas about photography and how to do it, not to mention the names of the companies, like BAU BAU, or Zoom 77, Magnum and so on.
each photo has a caption, depicting the scene in accordance to the wire standard but the second sentence always made a reference to some philosophical topic related to art or photography such as the meaning of full frame printing..they were all signed with pseudo names and mock agencies, such as Barretta 9, or Tapuz 500.
needless to say this did not go down favorably with the other poeple in the department, especially those in the pictures, and even more so the teachers and professors who were photographed.
eventually i took all the photos down to make room for other stuff i wanted to put up there.
i cant remmember if i ever took a picture of that wall. still its funny this is the background for the departments logo (on a random rotating stock).

Fashion in the afternoon

behind

why bother

 2008 Onlyville RI

2010 West Rroxbury MA

Masterbatory

pffffffffffff.

18 10 10

When  i feel i know everything there is to know about something, i will know -  i am truly an American.

2010 post mortem in the footprints of the Gaza war

miss be having

 angel hand in frame.jpg

antennas face.jpg

Another tribute to Shai kremer

Idol worshiping is a bad thing. having idols is not good either. but this guy, who at one point i was not sure if he is  seriuos or not, but prooved me wrong before i even met him. this guy so profoundly inflounced me somtimes unconsciously and sometimes directly came to RISD for a lecture. this was not only a intresting but was alo very encouraging to go on am make more pictures. to make a statement that is clear and direct and to make good pictures that are absolutely nice. since 2007 me and weissa looked at his website and talked about it about him and his work. then when i was here it was clear to me that concrete had somthing to do with it and i did this.
now it is time to revisit that and i found that on that same week i shot a tribute to shai kremer X2. this is the other one. now knowing about it of course not looking as his amona pictures untill much after this picture was shot.
in any case a real talented guy, and a nice guy at the same time. really a rare thing.
i hope we meet again.

Aloftness

retospective - Gaza War 2009

 ktziot gas station

 ktziot gas station

 road 40

 kmehin

 desert winds rehabilitation center

 bisnam air force patrol

kibbutz aza

kibbutz aza

 ashkelon

 road 40

 shikmim farm

 mevo hama

 road to mitzpe ramon

road 6

The israeli desert is radioactive. between a nuclear reactor, radon contaminated underwater reservoir every roll of film i had that went through that area of the world has some kind of aberrations most i cant explain.
i dont need a Geiger counter - i have films to prove it.

artifacts and other facts

non of my 4X5 plates are sharp.
the scanner makes the negatives look even less sharp before manipulation.
but here is a moon, and a seagull at maximum res.

Honk activist festival march in Cambridge

free palestine walk in Boston

back logs

understatment

conceptually fallible design

I got fired. i got caught doing somthing i shouldent have done.my penance is useless since i failed to act in real time to avoid the implications of my actions. i am kinda like tom cruise in top gear who wrote checks with his mouth his body couldent cover, i needed to realize and liquefy collateral i had in possession but had no moral value to sustain it with. it does not matter. i have dealt with much more then i can imagine anyone else has, after all i am a small person with little in a big world with big money. bottom line - i suck. i could have done better but i did not, and now i am right back where i started.

questions and answers