Up in the Top Bits (cont.)

This is a continuation from my recent trip to Orcas Island. The work shown here was made with a digital Fujifilm camera. Part One features work shot with 35mm film. Read Part One here. 

I’ve been watching more movies from India lately. There’s a popular style of film referred to as “masala movies” and it’s been incredibly fun to explore the gigantic catalog. (The term comes from the spice mixture found in many types of Indian cuisine.) It’s almost inaccurate to call it a “genre” because, as the term implies, these films are loaded with a mixture of themes from multiple genres. Melodramatic romance, absurd action, and insane comedy all have a spot in a masala movie, often with a 3 hour run time and 5 musical numbers. They’re maximalist and visually insane in the best way possible.

There’s one, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (translation: This Youth is Crazy) that provides one of the best lines about the philosophy of travel I’ve heard in awhile. For context, it’s a romance about two people from different backgrounds. He’s an aspiring travel journalist, and she’s studying to become a doctor. The free spirit versus the by-the-books academic.

As the first act of the film is ending, the two leads are having a “will they/won’t they” on a mountainside and she confronts him about his priorities. She asks him what he wants out of life. At first, he says “adventure”, which, sure, works fine. But he then corrects himself and says something far more thought-provoking. He wants “madness”.

That’s such a better answer! Is that not what we all secretly want from travel, to go just a little bit insane in one way or another? We don’t go anywhere new to “find ourselves”. Are you kidding me? I know exactly where YOU are. You’re in that weird noise your air conditioner makes, or in that pile of laundry you keep moving from bed to floor and then back to bed. You’re running late or running behind, and yet you’re still wedged into a fleshy frame that is both under your complete control and failing you at the same time. I know where you are because you’re like me, and a psychological respite in a land you don’t recognize doesn’t sound so bad after awhile, does it?

My definition of madness, in a photographic sense, is good ol’ depersonalization. It is seeing something (a rock, a person, a Pontiac Bonneville) that pulls awareness out of my body and into the something inside a viewfinder. The scene isn’t something to preserve so much as something to excise, a strange abscess I am compelled to carve out with a lens. Don’t let the pretentious surgery metaphor fool you. It’s a messy process, but an involved one, and with that involvement comes something resembling purpose.

I visited family in Bellevue before traveling out to Orcas Island. This is from their balcony. This was the only photo in this set that made more sense in black-and-white because the most colorful element in this photo came from the yellow lines in the parking lot (bottom right). Even without color, it’s still an incredibly hectic composition, but I enjoy it for that reason. There’s still things I notice in this photo that I didn’t see when I first made it.

There’s a lot of looming going on in the Pacific Northwest. The clouds loom overhead, a volcano looms in the distance, and the tech industry looms in its own special way. That industry isn’t confined to Seattle or Bellevue, but it’s certainly more “there” than anywhere else I’ve been. Climate Pledge Arena is the perfect metaphor because it’s an impressive structure no doubt, but you get the impression that it’s burrowing into the earth, anchoring itself to both the city’s future and your future.

Back on the island. It’s worth mentioning that this is a wooden carving and not an actual orca calf. I mention this only to preface the fact that I love stumbling upon objects like these. Any scene without an obvious explanation to it is just nauseatingly addictive to me and I will fit it into a photograph whenever I can. Of course, I am still curious about what this could be from, but I don’t need to know, and frankly, neither do you. Curiosity tastes better than exposition.

The sky was overcast this day, so the surrounding forest darkened as my field of vision left this clearing. I thought it served this creature well to keep it in the middle of the frame. Making photos in dense forests is a lot like shooting green tv static. It’s visually noisy and you either aim for the patterns of leaves or hope no one behind you walks into frame when using the trail as a leading line. Having a firm, monochromatic anchor really felt like a godsend.

The town of Eastsound reminds me of the mountain towns I used to pass through on ski trips. I studied business in college, and these towns were always interesting to research because they technically support local customers, but their economic goal is not - outwardly - to make money from locals. It’s the tourists, the passers through, the one-time purchasers who are staying for a few nights, that get their needs appealed to in these towns.

You’re probably familiar with such towns. Maybe you’ve visited one. Maybe you’re staying in one right now. Maybe this newsletter popped up while you were desperately searching your inbox for the coupon to that bakery your friend who visited last year told you to visit. You know, the one on the corner of Central Ave. and [Local Plant] St.

I would never say all these towns are the same, or that they don’t possess inherent uniquenesses. Even if they were all identical, that isn’t important. The importance is in supporting “the local thing”, whatever it sells and wherever it may be. You are a guest, after all. These towns all have their own character, but urban planning, economic demands, and social imitation almost force these towns to rhyme in small ways.

The most prominent characteristic, I think, is an obvious one: to the unfamiliar visitor, there’s no office complexes. There’s never any 2-5 story business parks with gate codes and shared bathrooms and fridge clean-outs every other Friday. I’m not complaining, but it’s fascinating to be presented with this removal of something that occupies so much of our time. It’s pleasantly deceptive, like a mall or a car dealership.

Where does a “genuine” photograph come from in locales like these? I have two answers. The first is any scene that reminds you of a place’s realness - things that affirm an existence in society. Honest objects.

A dumpster full of recyclables waiting to be emptied is honest. A fan in front of a kitchen door keeping the air circulating for the cooks is honest. These things are understood to have purposes, and to see them is to remember the interconnectedness between the real world and the world temporarily occupied on a vacation.

The other source of “genuine” photography is more important, and that’s anywhere that gives friends and family a reason to take pictures together. These photographs can allow us to remember that we exist in the eyes of each other. That will always mean more than any waxing poetic I can cough up here.

The antidote to madness is not sanity, it’s community.

Thank you for your time.

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