Graeme Mitchell Photography

Portrait: Emily VanCamp

friends, locations/travel, portrait work | March 2nd, 2009

The actress, Emily VanCamp.

emily_vancamp_stbarts_feb09
photo: Emily VanCamp, St. Barts, Feb 09. © Graeme Mitchell.

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St. Barts, London, Home, Vorticism, Away, Love, Great Books

art, literature/reading, locations/travel, other artists | February 28th, 2009

Got to shoot in St. Barts for 5 day, a friend’s wedding. Amazing time.

Also read Beckett and chain smoked on the beach. No, not Camus, but still…

shooting_in_st_barts
yay

Then to London for some of their fashion week parties, meetings with mags. Tried to spend time on the street shooting, but the streets of that city: stoic (read, snore), so I began to wonder if there ever was a seminal London street photographer? Other than the bit of work Robert Frank did (in Wales?), but I couldn’t think of anyone…? Anyone?

robert-frank-london-wales
photo: from the book Robert Frank: London/Wales, © Robert Frank.

Then home, I hit Penn station out of Newark on Monday eve rush hour and the train station was like firecrackers going off everyplace, felt remarkable to be back in the crazy. Never satiated with that, never ever. Gluttonous for the madness.

IN THE STATION METRO
By Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

(That’s a well known imagest poem that was part of a one of the more short lived art movements dubbed, Vorticism, which also had it proponents in photography. The photography bit. though ambitious in theory, was to not such great effect I think. The best part was what it was called, Vortography, which would not be, I imagine, an easy moniker to live up to…yeah, in retrospect, the name may have been the origin of the movements failing.

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photo: Vortograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn

).

Update, I just confirmed a job on the W. Coast for next week, fly out today, so I’ll be gone again for a week…maybe two. The blog goes neglected again. Golly.

I guess in the meantime, cruise to the newsstands and take a look at Katie Grand’s (formerly the force behind POP) new mag, LOVE. Maybe not amazing yet, but most certainly promising.

love_mag_issue_1
photo: cover of first issue of LOVE magazine, Beth Ditto, photo by Mert and Marcus.

That or – going back to Beckett – read his trilogy if you haven’t. I’d tried twice and never made it much further than Molloy, but I guess I’ve come to a place where I can read it and be absorbed by it, absorbed. Someone said once, I forget who, that you really can’t read/enjoy/understand the greats until you yourself have lived for awhile, lived the things that the books are about. Not that I’m old and wise, gawdnoiamnot, but suddenly the long long winded Russians seem exciting and Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the close of Ulysses seems, uhhh, doable. I do hope by my 40s I’ll be able to get to Finnegan’s Wake, and even develop the patience for poetry.

[...]you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have caried me to the threshold of my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

-from The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

That takes me to a different world. Yes it does.

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Umatilla, OR.

family, literature/reading, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | June 5th, 2008

If you drive fast straight east from Portland for approximately 3 hours you’ll pass within about 9 miles of this place. It’s the kind of place that conjures absolutely nothing in the imagination. It’s a desert of sorts.

“Human existence being an hallucination containing in itself the secondary hallucination of day and night (the latter an insanitary condition of the atmosphere due to accretions of black air) it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death. -DE SELBY”

Epigraph from The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien.

photo: Umatilla, OR. © Graeme Mitchell 2008

photo: A Road to a Prison, Umatilla, OR. © Graeme Mitchell 2008

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Bolivia Photographs

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | February 11th, 2008

These many photographs are from a trip I took recently to the Alto Plano of Bolivia to visit my sister, Erin, who lives there.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

photo: © Graeme Mitchell, 2008

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Where I grew up

locations/travel, still & 'scape work | December 21st, 2007

Over the years I watched as street lights were added.

Funny how easily we adjust. I can’t remember what this town was like growing up, or what memory there is is like a dream I remember having but can’t remember what it was about.

All of a sudden I have the notion that much of what we take for granted is vague.

photo: Canby, Oregon, Dec 2007. © Graeme Mitchell 2007.

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Covet, Spring ‘08

commercial work, fashion work, locations/travel, on set, technique/process | September 25th, 2007

Some snaps Covet’s creative director, Tara took whilst we shot her spring ‘08 line. It was hard not to feel a sadness there at Coney Island; neglect was apparent, and you could see that it’s long life was coming to an end. There was also a mood of bitterness, nostalgia and heartbreak amongst the proprietors, people who’ve lived and worked there their entire lives, and who were now watching the boardwalk fall into disrepair.

On another note: Tara did a great job on this season, some great pieces to photograph!

Location: Coney Island, NY.
Hair: Sarah Potempa w/ Wall Group.
Make-Up: Kehla.
Assistant: Aaron Modico.
And a big big thanks to J.T. at Cha Cha’s on the boardwalk for staging the shoot.

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Las Vegas, NV.

friends, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | September 9th, 2007

You try so hard to displace the place in order to understand it or to make it more an obtuse phenomenon than the ugly actuality it is, that it is so perfectly; you do this in an attempt to justify or excuse it philosophically. But it takes heavy amounts of drink, drugs, regression just to make it bearable let alone excusable, seeing through eyes that won’t focus b/c in this place they don’t need to focus – focus is actually discouraged. It’s the premise of a child’s ball pit in the back of drab and tired fast food restaurant in the middle of the desert; it’s this premise expanded infinitely: padded surfaces, rounded corners, a cattle pen. Just when you attempt approach at clarity, some sort of recognition or disconnection, it dissipates, the clarity that is. It’s like running in a dream: the harder you try the heavier you become in a foggy futility. And there’s not even any redeeming giddiness or hopeful moments of expression, at all.

It is void.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A Road Trip, Part 3.

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | July 30th, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A Road Trip, Part 2.

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | July 30th, 2007

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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A Road Trip, Part 1.

family, locations/travel, still & 'scape work | July 30th, 2007

My brother, his girlfriend, and I recently drove from Washington Heights NYC to Canby, OR. (thus my absence here) on an impromptu trip home to settle some destitute and surreal family matters. Bittersweet, so to speak, as the trips ultimate reason became a faint yet ubiquitous backdrop to the otherwise wonderful time we had. There’s much I’d like to share about the trip, from becoming friends with my brother again to getting intoxicated in every state we passed through, but I feel like this is neither the time nor the place.

Less talk more pictures, right?

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007.

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Lumber Mills (2 of 2).

locations/travel, still & 'scape work | March 9th, 2007

1 of 2 is here.

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Lumber Mills (1 of 2), or I miss nature.

locations/travel, still & 'scape work | March 9th, 2007

As usual I came upon these while looking for something entirely different amongst my humble little archives. My first sentiment was that I really miss nature and the damp fortitudes of the Pacific Northwest, my second thought was I should put them up here, b/c even though they’re pictures I’ve since rejected they are nonetheless of places not many people get to see – much like the Dammasche series (here and here).

I’m not in the mood to write much, so the short of it is that these are some pics I took in 2004 as a personal project shooting the lasting steam lumber mills of Oregon. I wandered from the project, but I still wish to go back and photograph the dwindling remnants of the timber industry. It’s the lasting remnants that in my mind symbolize a simpler time and way of life. This is a purely romantic notion – a silly one at that- and I’ve no shame in fostering it. Really, it’s so fictionalized in my mind, stills almost don’t do it justice; it’s the kind of project that warrants doing the director-moving-pictures kind of thing.

My biggest ambition is that these might inspire a daydream in you…

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Avedon’s Studio

locations/travel, on set | December 9th, 2006

If you’re shooting in NYC and need to rent a studio, consider Avedon’s old studio. It is neither particularly big, nor is the location fun, but neither of these qualms can possibly deter from that auspicious cyc.

I can imagine Avedon brooding around those halls alone, rife with anxiousness, looking at the board of dimly illuminated work prints riddled with his corrections…possibility and history weighing upon him…

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Dammasche, or a now defunct mental health hospital. Part 2.

locations/travel, still & 'scape work | December 2nd, 2006

See part 1 here.

Again, these are Dammasche.

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Dammasche, or a now defunct mental health hospital. Part 1.

locations/travel, still & 'scape work | December 1st, 2006

I shouldn’t be showing these pictures b/c they’re old, not very good, and I fervently rejected them along with most everything else I shot short of 5 months ago. The thing is, that people are intrigued by them and are always asking to see more of them. I only ask, if you’ve wandered here not knowing me, is that you see my official portfolio. Not self-promotion, only that I’d be bummed if you only saw left-overs.

But I digress.

They are malady. They are Dammasche.