Moving day, 2011

Anyone living in Boston or the immediate surrounding area knows the hell that is the transition from August to September. Our scholarly legacy is also our curse. The academic year ropes the massive student population into a cycle of leases that begin on September first for the foreseeable future, unless they manage to get lucky and find a nice, affordable apartment with a non-scumbag landlord and good roommates. That trifecta is near unattainable.

This year I was finally able to achieve that holy grail of post-graduate living and bask in the glow of staying put. It was nice to step back and observe the chaos.

Always more questions.

I think I have managed to find some direction for a new project. At the very least a problem to be solved, and idea to explore.

How do you capture this state I find myself in? What moments can I pluck out of the world that will embody a feeling of constant in between-ness? Can a collection of photographs convey this vague feeling where you can't start anything serious, even though you want to, because you don't know what you want from the next fifty or so years, or how to get there if you did, without all the obvious, self-involved tropes?

For now, I'm going to try and find places and spaces that are between. Astroturf carpet in an urban alley. Old patriotic wallpaper on its way down. A rug with petrified cat shit. What have these places been, and what waits for them? What can they tell me about where I am now, and how do I proceed from here?

Hilly

Mission Hill: My home for five out of the last six years.

Home is such a subjective word.

The telescope in the basement

I went down to my family's house on Cape Cod a couple weekends ago. It used to belong to my grandparents, and was passed down to my mother and her three siblings when my grandmother, Janice, passed. My grandfather, Dave, started work on a small addition to the house before he died. The telescope was made by my uncle Steve, and is certainly at home in this engineer's basement.

 These were the only two photos that came out at all, and they are still a bit underexposed. I still wanted to share. I'll probably be back soon to try again.

Forcing it can work sometimes

Fish Oil Fog is a project I started a week ago with a friend. We tasked each other with doing something creative every day - something fairly specific of our choosing. My first post over there explains the project a little more in depth.

For at least the rest of March I am making a new little sculpture out of things I have in my apartment - or wherever I find myself. I've been having fun, so I think I can call it a success for now.

A senator's death - A year and a half later

Ted Kennedy died on August 25, 2009. Two days later his body and family made their way from Hyannis Port through downtown Boston to the Kennedy Library in Dorchester where it would lie in state until the funeral in the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Mission Hill on the 29th, a beautiful church in a neighborhood populated by mostly college students and low-income families. It was strange thinking about President Obama, former presidents, Congressmen, and foreign dignitaries soon converging on my small, mostly unnoticed neighborhood while I watched the funeral procession from the balcony of the Old State House.

The media was camped out in front of Faneuil Hall all day while people gathered to watch.

Workers pause to watch the train of hearses, limousines, buses, and police escort Kennedy's body to the library.

Friends or relatives wave to the crowds gathered to express their affection for the late senator.

Old Flood, New Scanner

Many parts of eastern Massachusetts flooded in March and April of 2010. It wasn't anywhere near catastrophic as Australia's recent floods or the infamous flooding that seems to happen pretty regularly in the middle of the country, but the marshes much of this part of the state are built on lend themselves to similar, if less dramatic, scenes. Unfortunately, this was all I could capture as the waters began to recede.

In Tewksbury, the Shawsheen River tore apart this bridge that was underwater the day before I reached it. It has yet to be repaired.

This house is right next to the river. It didn't fare too well. The owners seemed resigned to simply cleaning it out and letting it go.

I'm pretty sure the bottom of the garage door signifies the highest water level. It would have lifted up as the water rose.

Many thanks to my brand new, refurbished Epson v700. May it scan many more negatives, and not get abused by hundreds of photo students who don't know what they are doing.