The Gaza flotilla event (tickets 1+1 courtesy of google translate)

there are some things you just gotta love. like poeple who are definitely smarter then you. or times when you can lough really hard but there is no one there to listen to you, and ask you "what are you laughing about?". those times that the imagination is surpass by reality like a race car flying by an american train (or education). those are also usually the same times where you dont know if you should laugh or cry. the answer is most definite, the truth is far worse then what you can see.

10 comments about the situation (Where is yoel markus when you need him? actually who needs him...)

1. I went to photograph something and came back with good pictures of all kinds of things i did not go out to shoot.
2. Medium format is fun, easy, cheap and looks good.
3. I need to make more notes while i am shooting. i wanted to remmeber all kinds of silly things of stuff i did not shoot or stuff that i now cannot even remmeber i wanted to remmeber.
4. It is getting cold. pretty much too cold to just go out and shoot.
5. Along side getting cold it is also getting dark really early, so unless i let go of my eithan shouker methodology of "when it is cloudy the entire sky is your lightbox" and accept some silly shadows there is very little day time to shoot.
6. Time passes really quick. sure we can mesaure time real acuratly with a clock and say that it is only moving one second at a time, but the moon is fading in and out faster then i notice, days are passing by and even within a day the hours seem to just wash away like water in to the drain in the sink.
7. I am finding it hard to prioritize my life, what should i give more time to? school work? if so then what part of it? relaxation (see Mr. Jones in the fast lane)? relationship?
8. This will be the last week we will be getting the Boston Globe to our door, after about 3 months of getting it 7 days a week. there have been long streches where the paper never even left its bag before heading out to the recycle bin. all of a suddenthis week i am finding that i am reading a few articles every now and again. most definitly not a justification, however this was my last connection to the actual world (after i stopped opening israeli news sites due to extreme bowel reactions).
9. This semster is all but over. i have shown work twice and will show work one more time. bith crit coordinators spent about 30 minutes last week explaining to the MFA class all about how we should be working even harder then we already do, and how they have absolutely no time to give us outside of class, and that they will not be available until next semester. this is after the long and moving talk from one of them earlier this year about how i should use the availability of the faculty as a resource that RISD has to offer me.
10. Resources are important, i have too many of the useless kind and not enough of the kind that actually gets you somewhere.

Now I know about Eric Tabuchi

After looking at the few pictures i shot over these few weeks, i found many that i like alot. none have much to do with each other, or with my project for that matter, but still i like them. some of them are of darker, later hours of the day with longer exposures, and the others are under the sun on a cloudy day. its funny niether of them came out the way i though they would when i took them. the long exposure ones have lots of light, and the lit ones have hard areas of shadows. still this going around made for a pleasant advancment to nowhere and revealed new things that i want to photograph. i am not sure what it all means. i wish i could ask poeple like frank horvat, and eric tabuchi to explain my work for me, actually thats exactly what i want poeple in my risd class and the faculty to do.
in the mean while i can play some tetris.

Who is Joseph Schulz?

Twenty one similarities and differences between me and Noah Kalina

1. Noah Kalina has a Mamiya RZ67 so do I.
2. Noah Kalina has a digital back for medium format camera - I do not.
3. Noah Kalina has a Yashica T4 Super (as most cool poeple do) - I have a Nikon 35TI instead (as does Miki Kratzman)
4. Noah Kalina periodically takes pictures of his desk and posts them on his blog - so do I
5. Noah Kalina drives a 92-93 honda civic. his is gray with a white door - i also drive a 92-93 honda civic but mine is white with an off color rear left quarter.
6. Noah Kalina has a Canon 1D(?) - I have a canon 5D.
7. Noah Kalina is consistent in what he does - i am not.
8. Noah Kalina makes interesting videos that comment on or document his life - I do not.
9. Noah Kalina has a fluffy cat that bothers him when he sleeps - I have 2, one is not fluffy and is blind, the other is fluffy and has one eye.
10. Noah Kalina gets paid to be a photographer - I do not.
11. Noah Kalina has been taking a picture of him self every day for a daily frame project since Jan 11 2000 - I have been taking a picture every day for my daily frame project since Jan 1 2006 (i am rarely in the pictures).
12. Noah Kalina takes tons of pictures of hot naked girls and girls in their underwear - I do not.
13. Noah Kalina knows alot about lighting - I think i know alot about lighting but in reality i do not.
14. Noah Kalina shoots sharp pictures with crazy desaturated colors that are always filled with light - I do that very rarely, when i do the negatives are filthy.
15. Noah Kalina's bigger camera pictures are full of light, the small camera pictures are genius - mine are neither.
16. Noah Kalina's small camera pictures are insightful over and over again - Mine are only sometimes insightful.
17. Noah Kalina takes pictures of himself having sex through a 8000$ thermal imager - I do not.
18. Noah Kalina documented the construction of his new all white bed and bedroom - I did that too but mine is all black.
19. Noah Kalina flies alot and makes cool pictures of that - I do not.
20. Noah Kalina uses a non directional off camera strobe - i do that sometimes.
21. Noah Kalina is Noah Kalina - I am not.

Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, December 2006 the missing booklet Project

The house in Newcastle NSW

Me and John (?)

The House parking slot

from google maps (the art gallery marked with the A)

from the Newcastle city parking map - the grey area is Precinct 4.


once, i was hired by the bezalel photo department to clean out an old storage room and over summer break.
Me and Moti the lab tech met for a few weeks every morning hauling dumping piles of crap that has been laying there for more then 20 years. boxes and crates filled with papers, from budgets to floor plans for a new building, 80's film samples and prices from ilford and agfa, dozens od old enlargers endless piles of crap. in one of the boxes, i found Dr. Hanan Laskin's old Rolodex box. in it were contact info card, all the way from people like Dr. Michael Langford to Bruce Davidson. under the Lee Friedlander page was a little Black and white print, a picture of a dog running through a park in winter, and on the back the inscription in hebrew: "לחנן, שנה טובה, לי" (Hanan, Happy new year, Lee) and folowing Lee's new address in paris and phone number.
This was worth more then anything i was being paid to do this stuff and as this rolodex was going to the garbage i took the more interesting names out and posted them on the department bulletin board and kept the print. i had just gotten a small blue notepad to keep close for logging the daily frame project as the notebook i was using untill then was way to big to carry around, the print went in to the back cover binding of that little blue notebook.
the notebook lived in my domke and went where ever i did go. so was the case when i traveled to Australia on December of 2006, to attend the wedding of my Cousin who was getting married in Sydney. as i was going to australia and i wanted to do that any way, i was going to hire a bike and ride it for the few days i had free after the wedding. though this is not the place for the story of my bike ride itself, i did ride the bike from sydney with a goal of reaching Brisbane, but ended up riding about 5000KM in 10 days and not reaching Brisbane but instead meeting new extremely nice poeple to ride with almost every day and staying in some of their Homes along the way.
One of these poeple was this guy, i am pretty sure his name is John. he was on his way to his sisters house in Newcastle, NSW. riding on a Suzuki R750 with a polished frame, throwing the occasional Willy and Burnout.
He had told me he had been in a car crash some time before and hurt his back or neck.
Of course i took down his email, and contact and we parted after a long party night in Newcastle.
Upon returning to Israel, My house was broken in to and the bag along with all my cameras and other gear andd the blue booklet was stolen. the burglar was kind enough to dump a ziplock bag with all the films form the trip and the memory cards as well. what a nice guy.
but the booklet was gone. the freidlander print was gone, and so were all the contacts from the trip.
now - i have tried to do this soon after i returned, using google maps to find the exact house number of this guys sister, but there was no street view of newcastle back then and i could not do it. i used to remember more or less where the house was in relation to the regional art gallery, but as time went by that memory faded.
using the photos and the newcastle city parking zone map i was able to narrow down the search zone to a 4X5 block area.
i havent gone trough all the streets yet but it does not look promising.

Any one recognize this guy? the plate number? the house? the street?
I will keep this blog posted with my results.

Steve Mann is my new Hero - Mathematical Photography, Light-vector painting, computational photography

Photo By Tess Scheflan

Photo by Me

Its all about relational asthetitcs. i take a picture of something, for face value.other poeple make a picture with surplus value.
History, like in the case of Noam Chomsky, diverts, most of the time, from the path that knowledge lays down for it. counter surveillance, and anti government from a thoughtfull an inspiring point of view often outweigh factual events and theories that came before or lie behind them by the same exact poeple.

another way to die

almost a complete waste of time.

Vegan Photographic Film

Art. 2010 

Foliage. 2010

once i had this dream. i would go out with my 4X5, shoot some stuff and come back to my lab, develop all the film, scan it and print it or maybe contact it. this would be just like a digital camera but with film in it instead and i will have full movements. so then i went out and did it. the more complex thing to do was the same thing but with 35mm as it takes more time to shoot so many pictures before you can unload the roll and develop it.

now all of those things are a reality. here it is then. art and fall from the other day, here today.

RISD - Why am i in grad school?

some questions are not real questions demanding an answer, but rather are designed to evoke some emotional response, or a thought process. so why am i in grad school? not a very good question. mostly since there has already been a pledged investment of about 100K $ in it. does it have any more meaning then that? does it even need more then that? if there is some kind of purpose based on advancement of any kind i have not seen it yet. even if i wanted to learn how to be an american, or an american artist, how to behave in a strongly political motivated society, this would not be the place to learn. if i wanted to learn about photography i should have stayed with the good old Dr. Langford. all too bad he is dead and Joel Sternfeld has nothing to do with photography anymore.

Why are you in grad school? what have you learn? in a pile, put it down and show me all you have learned and what you assume to accomplish with it.

Mt. Monadnock New Hampshire

  
 
 
 

minimal compact

2010 

2005

Veterans Day Parade Boston 2010

 

a few weeks after we moved to boston we decided to get the boston globe delivered daily to our home.
this for me was in a way a reaction to the big information deficit i had experienced since i stopped reading israeli news online, something i have been trying to do even before we left israel. so what do you do in the morning, if there is no newspaper, or online news to read? the book i am reading (on its a rarity thing) is not suited for all hours and moods of the day and so among other reasons we got the globe. the globe is not the best newspaper, and having early work or school hours meant i did not have time to even go through the front page and tess for some reason did not take much interest in it either (there should be a separate post about how the boston globe is a really boring newspaper with awful printing...) and it would be just left in tis bag or not even brought upstairs.
in the wake of the transition, tess had helped me open a facebook business account for a project i am trying to run. this led to the facebook page being open constantly on my browser as it was an important contact with clients. this business aspect of it faded soon thereafter. it was now just open and i would go over the latest post of the "friends" of my business. spending time to actually look at what poeple do there and follow links, spy on the occasional friend i have not heard from in years and your average voyeurism. but the truth is that i fucking hate it. i dont want to be a part of it, i never did, and today i realized that i was participating in it just as if i was really a person there.
i closed the facebook tab.
fuck, i am such a looser.

There is a reason (for some things)

attention

details.

Metallica

all this film. it all came a few days ago along side a stupidly big roll of paper (113cm = 44 imperial inches), from which i have already made a few stupidly huge prints that are no good for any purpose and would probably be even less usfull for crit on tuesday. in the mean while i have stocked up on the soon to be extinct Fuji Neopan 400, i have 5 rolls of 120, and 5 rolls of 35. i already have a few Neopan 1600 left, i am not sure what i will use them for as this is no longer being made either. i dont want to sound like one of those lamo flickr old film users and russians who think bad film is cool... i am using all this film as it comes along, i dont think i am saving any for a special occasion. i also got me some more TriX400 (go miki kratzman) and a few delta 100. i hope this will not last too long, as i am shooting less then i want to.

calculate your position

More daring is the thing to be. other then that i am just as useless.

far beyond driven

options.

Joel Peter Witkin (the Jerusalem Boston connection)

this really is not a post but a test. as i did not really want to post anything today, least of all with any words.
the more i think about it the more i notice that most of my friends who had any sense installed in them by their parents left Israel. going back to israel, even thematiaclly with photographic work is silly and makes me sick. the only real problem is that my options here are not so great. there are few and far apart violent militarist landscapes, and even where there they are pretty. for the mean while - archive.

What is green?

Things are bad, but in totally different level.