CHANGE AND ATTACHMENT: THOUGHTS FROM TUCSON

I am in Tucson, sitting outside in clear dry air and brilliant sunshine, hearing birds singing in the trees.  In a few hours there's a plane to catch back to Toronto (via a stop in Denver's surprisingly dreary airport, alas!) but for now I'm loving the feeling of warmth (even in the early morning it's soft and warm here) and the unfamiliar southwestern scents in the air.

Last night we gave a talk and slide-show at the Center for Creative Photography.  It was fun and very engaging, because the audience and the venue were terrific.  We love being invited to university events; the people who come are generally very curious and interested in wide-ranging discussion.  And so it was last night.  (We also had the deep pleasure of seeing old friends again: John and Tilly Warnock, whom we know from Laramie, now live here and came to the talk.  Fabulous to reconnect with them.)  

Thank-you Tucson, and Arizona U, and in particular, thank-you to Cass Fey, who has taken great care of us throughout the planning and our time here,  and to Britt, whose idea it was to invite us in the first place.  

We had the usual messing around with projectors, of course.  Cass kept her cool, and finally the third projector, not without some last-minute hiccups, did a wonderful job (though needing the occasional manual adjustment to the auto-focus, thanks to a patient student intern!). 

Now that projectors are not being made any more, we know that our days of showing slides are numbered.  And we know, too, that for people in charge of these events, the end of slide- shows will be a relief.  Digital projection is now the standard and feels less tricky to everyone but us! 

BUT:  I love the way light passes through film and arrives on the screen.  I love the idea that the film, that actual piece of film, was exposed to the light in, say, a village in India, and has travelled all the way to, say, an auditorium in Tucson, so that light can pass through it onto a screen and project an image of that woman's face, or hand, or...  It's magical.  And somehow I can't get as entranced by the idea of an electronic image being brought back, tidied up, and re-projected.  It's perhaps a childish attachment, my love of the concrete thing-itself?? Nonetheless real for all that!

I am sitting outside here in Tucson, using my laptop, thanks to a cafe with wi-fi.  Lovely and lucky to have technology, that makes communication portable, and the whole world accessible. I am grateful, truly.  But I can't help mourning the passage of older technologies, like slide projectors...  Life being made easier, in other words, isn't always life being made better, right?  

Perhaps the important thing to remember is that we do have choices.  For example, I can choose to write with pen on paper; I don't have to be typing and looking at a screen.  I don't have to feel enslaved by the computer.  If I do, it's up to me to shift the way I relate to it.  

Similarly, if I am prepared to travel with my own slide projector, I can go on giving slide shows. And on the other hand, if projecting slides places too huge a burden on others, I can scan the slides and show them digitally.  The trade-offs are there, each time, to be weighed.  

The main thing I try to remember about this tech change, (and other changes and challenges too, of course) is the old rule: no complaining!  no self-pity!  Figure it out for yourself, I say to myself (frequently, these days).  Change the way you do things, if you can; roll with it when you can't; and try to do it all with grace...

LIVING & WORKING WITH IMAGES

A grey drizzly day. No seeds or starts in the ground yet (our last frost can be as late as mid-May in downtown Toronto), but the ground is dug up, darkening in the soft rain, and looking expectant! I should get the snow peas in this week ... hmmm

It's perhaps predictable by now that these posts I'm writing weekly (more or less!) almost always seem to start with garden and weather updates. What is that? I wonder. Could be that old English thing of beginning conversations with the weather? I prefer to think that it's a way of anchoring where I am, what environment I'm in as I write. I know I like to picture where friends are when I am talking to them on the phone, or when they send an email. That's perhaps because my imagination is not abstract, but works with images, just like my memory.

How do we store these images? Somehow the brain sifts and sorts, by story and context, I guess. All that mental "muscle" will presumably start deteriorating with age (must have already, let's admit!). But there's still a remarkable amount in storage, and accessible.

I've been reminded of all these questions about memory and image in these last few days as I've been pulling photos for a talk and slide show at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. Jeff and I are speaking there this Thursday, April 24. We're delighted to be invited and to have a chance to see the Center. The images we'll show are all from the Indian subcontinent, from India as well as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan. They glow on the light table as I look at them, each a reminder of the art and beauty there is in everyday necessity in the subcontinent.

As I troll through our slides (yes, we are showing slides rather than skanned images), peering at them through the loupe, each one I look at (really it's more like looking "into" the image) transports me to the place and moment when I "made" the photo. And I know which ones are Jeff's without looking at the label because I know I didn't take them. How is that possible, to remember each one so confidently, after all these years of photographing? The brain is a remarkable gift! And it all happens without conscious effort, this storage and recall.

The same cannot be said for the process of organizing digital images (originals or skans). And that is the task that lies ahead in these coming months: Now that my cousin Jennifer Read has set me up with books and patient instruction, it's up to me to develop reflexes and work my way into feeling comfortable and somewhat confident working with Photoshop and Lightbox. Argh! is my reaction right now.

I'm going to work with my laptop (the little Mac that I am writing on right now), but, on Jen's advice, with a large screen when I am doing photo correction, and using a hard drive connected by a firewire (the laptop is a little small so it's better to have the space on the hard drive for working with these layers of image, etc). The raw photos straight from the camera, and also the tidied ones, need to be stored on another hard drive for backup, and also on DVD's. It all feels cumbersome, as anything does when we have no reflexes.  

I've also been very encouraged by what I've heard from Barcelona-based Jeff Koehler, who writes imaginatively and engagedly about food and is a fine photographer too. He's the only person I know of who works in the same way we do. (Check out his website at www.jeff-koehler.com and his first book: La Paella; his second, which should be fabulous and useful, exploring unsung corners of the Mediterranean through couscous, pasta, and rice dishes, is due out this fall.) He has just switched to digital, last August, and already seems to be well launched. He too uses the firewire with external harddrive to sort and work on his images. I'm so grateful to have his advice too, because it gives me some confidence that I will eventually make the transition without too much crazed-ness!

So here goes!