Chris D'Amore Photography [008]
A Protracted Analogy About Harvests and Jigsaw Puzzles
Hello friends, old and new!
In celebration of the 8th edition of this newsletter, I made it so that it shouldn’t take more than 8 minutes to get through, but please, stay as long as you want. I’m currently in COVID isolation, so I’ll be sending another edition with mostly photos when I can get to my negatives (both the photographic ones and the ones you hope to see on a PCR test).
The Protracted Analogy About Harvests and Jigsaw Puzzles
Our wonderful garden beds are full of weeds, aside from one tomato plant and two basil plants whose seeds persevered through last winter. We didn’t have time for the garden this year, but it’s fitting that late summer has been a time of harvesting in a different sense.
After doing this photography thing for a while, I have found there are phases in which different aspects of it occur. There are times of creativity when ideas are flying around so fast, I don’t even know what to do with them. These usually lend themselves to piecing together collections and book ideas from my archive or even just brainstorming people/places/things I want to photograph (in an unruly Notes app list). There are times when I can’t even imagine picking up a camera. I try to use these moments for housekeeping, researching, scanning, archiving, making sandwiches, etc. Then there are times when there’s an inexplicable drive to collect moments out in the world. This basically entails taking a camera with me everywhere I go, checking off that list of photograph ideas, and picking up lots of other random images on the way. This is the “harvesting” phase; the amassing of the archive.
Admittedly, I’m oversimplifying the process a bit. It rarely happens in a linear fashion, and there isn’t some magical, efficient flow to it. There is plenty of life to live outside of it, and of course there are occasional moments of self-doubt and aimlessness gumming up the works. I explain it this way to emphasize that this phase of collecting photographs, even without a direct purpose, is a really exciting one. It’s like going on a scavenger hunt for jigsaw puzzle pieces, but the result is whatever weird concept you want it to be instead of a Thomas Kinkade painting. The concept doesn’t even have to exist yet! Figuring out what to do with all of those pieces (that creative phase) comes next, and I already have some ideas. I won’t share them yet because the thing about ideas is sometimes they’re dumb (like most of the Home Alone films after Lost in New York), and you just have to let them sit for a while.
Until those ideas and concepts materialize into something cohesive, I’ll be sharing many of these newly collected photos. A friend once described our respective style of photographs as “slice of life” stuff. It has been a busy summer, and I’m excited to share some of the slices of it with you!
Recent News & Shameless Plugs:
I’m now a resident artist at The Art Center in Dover, NH, a space run by Rebecca Proctor. She is wonderful to chat with and is there most of the week, so feel free to stop by and check out the rotating gallery as well as my space. I have some prints, postcards, and books for sale there too! (Also, you might as well get a burrito from Dos Mexican Eats while you’re in the building. *chef’s kiss*)
My shop is chock-full of magazines, prints, and more waiting to be whisked away by your hard-earned money. Or by a barter of some kind. Let’s talk.
And finally, if you know someone that might be interested in this newsletter, please send it their way!
Sounds From the Studio (what I’ve been listening to while editing/doing layout/etc.):
Note: This last one is from a film photography podcast, but this episode would be interesting to anyone. It features Imran Nuri who traveled 48 states in a few months asking strangers for life advice and taking their portraits.
Archive Dive (a random photograph picked via number generator):
Sent from my COVID-addled brain. Please excuse any typos.