The Carterets slide into history.
Photographs by Terence E.T. Spencer, 1917-2002.

Rain Pool, Powell River B.C. 2005.

6 images get the boot, 7 new ones arrive, over at the site.

Sensitive Artist

I am a sensitive artist.
Nobody understands me because I am so deep.
In my work I make allusions to books that nobody else has read,
Music that nobody else has heard,
And art that nobody else has seen.
I can't help it
Because I am so much more intelligent
And well-rounded
Than everyone who surrounds me.

I stopped watching tv when I was six months old
Because it was so boring and stupid
And started reading books
And going to recitals
And art galleries.
I don't go to recitals anymore
Because my hearing is too sensitive
And I don't go to art galleries anymore
Because there are people there
And I can't deal with people
Because they don't understand me.

I stay home
Reading books that are beneath me,
And working on my work,
Which no one understands

-words and music by King Missile.

"I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings (Because style is violence and I am not violent)."

-Gerhard Richter, with a slightly more strident take on the subject.

"A few months ago, an art critic asked me about my "signature style." Well, this question startled me. I've never thought in those terms. My work from the seventies, which to this critic exemplified my "signature style," was made by me in response to certain questions and problems I needed to pursue. I never thought in terms of style. The style was a result of my exploration."
-Stephen Shore

My best friend Jim Affinito went to New York City in 1991, and all he sent me was 12 letters, 61 postcards and 146 black and white photographs.
Click to enlarge.

Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight.

The John Hinde Studio was hired in the late 1960's to produce a series of postcards for Butlin's Holiday Camps, a popular getaway for the british leisure class. Using large format cameras and large casts of real vacationers, they produced something remarkably similiar to todays large scale gallery photography.
Some of the British Holiday Camps still exist. In fact, our friend Katherine recently returned from a trip to England during which she had the chance to stay at one.
"British Concentration Camps is more like it." was her only comment.

Broken Flowers.

An unexpected and long overdue late masterpiece from Jim Jarmusch.
The film has a shaky, mannered start, (like most of Jarmusch's good films) but becomes more relaxed and involving as it moves along. The most welcome surprise is the beautifully understated directing style, completely devoid of the usual winking irreverancies that have kept Jarmusch's talents as a director restricted to the "cult classic" section until now. That he has managed to make his most coherent, and simultaneously befuddling , film to date all in one go is impressive.
On first viewing I admired two things about the film above all else:
1. The film is about a road trip, and in movieland we all know what that means. Endless shots of beautiful, semi-deserted highways through which our protaganist will drive while cool music plays on his stereo. Jarmusch keeps the music, but ditches the scenic highways. What he replaces them with is real roads and the real traffic that flows along them. This subtle difference doesn't really call attention to itself for the most part, but it's there and it's crucial. You will probably first notice it as a strange, dissatisfied feeling that begins to gnaw at you during the driving scenes, as if the cuts are coming in the wrong places. Semi trucks especially seem to invade the frame in an uncomfortable and disorientating way, or more to the point, in a way that is recognizable as being very similiar to how driving on today's roads actually feels. The unexpected novelty of this is compounded by the enevitable follow up realization: Why had I never noticed the obvious "clearing of the road" artifice in road trip movies until now? Look closer and you will see that the entire film is suffused with this kind of seeing, what Baudelaire called "the painting of modern life," or to put it less eloquently-an acknowledgment of the current face of the world, and a search for beauty and meaning within that world, rather than a denial of it's presence. From the downloaded "Mapquest" papers that Bill Murray grudgingly totes around, to the cookie-cutter townhouses that he nervously visits, the elements of this film are bits and pieces of the world as it currently stands.
2. Somehow, all of the characters in this film (and there are quite a few) steadfastly refuse to fit into the stereotyped boxes that we unconsciously prepare for them when they first appear on screen. They remain highly individualized, unique human beings, despite their obvious eccentricities, until the very end. As more and more characters appear over the course of the film, the ability of Jarmusch to sustain this kind of ambiguity becomes all the more admirable.
The knowing "Jarmusch" wink, that smirking post-modern shrug that says "This may all mean something, but I'm not telling." is absent from "Broken Flowers." In it's place is something I found much more rewarding. A compassionate questioning of contemporary life, a life that Jarmusch, for once, finds interesting and compelling enough to present with a straight face.

White Shark/Aborted Surf Session, Garapata beach, California.

I've recieved a few requests to see this photo since I mentioned it a few months back in regards to Susan Casey's book, "The Devil's Teeth." Thanks to Jim Affinito, local surfer, for the image.

Allah O Akbar!/God is Great!

-courtesy Anodyne.

Reading in the Tent, Haslam Lake Trip.

Breaking news:
We will be moving out of the Blackpoint cabin on December 1st. and relocating to Victoria, B.C. so that V can attend Comosan College. Needless to say, this place has enriched our lives in countless ways, and it feels painful to leave it, but V cannot get the work or schooling she needs up here, and so we go.
Thank you to everyone who visited us here over the last year and a half - especially Kyath, Luke, Rainbow, Miranda, Cody, Jen, Chad and Jim. We feel lucky to have been able to share this place with you.
As of today I will no longer be posting my photos on this blog. There is now a full website devoted to them here. I will continue posting text and miscellaneous images after the move, but the tone of the blog will no doubt go through some changes as we attempt to re-acclimatize ourselves to urban life.
To everyone who has kept up with my scattered attempts to convey what it is like to live up here in words and pictures, thank you. Special thanks to regular readers Chris Brayshaw, Jim Affinito, Kyath Battie and Ben Chatwin.
The year and a half that I've spent in this place have provided me with more memorable experiences than the entire decade leading up to them.

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

-Paul Bowles