Graeme Mitchell Photography

NYC Journal 57

nyc journal | September 2nd, 2008

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 56, loners.

nyc journal | August 12th, 2008

You know, I thought it incredulous to think that each of us isn’t all alone.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 55, August

nyc journal | August 11th, 2008

August, the odd-ball-bastard month in NYC, chalk full of near contradictions and almost mysteries.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 54, two years

nyc journal | August 10th, 2008

This month marks my second year working on the project that was casually given the working title of NYC Journal.

At this point (not to suggest any sort of point has been achieved at all) the experiences I’m having and the things I’m learning while working on this are foremost, while the pictures are a by-product of those experiences, or maybe a cataloging of them.

And with every added photograph I get the odd yet unmistakable feeling the less complete it all becomes.

Like questions leading to bigger questions.

Scratching hard at a surface.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 53, and on letting go

nyc journal | July 24th, 2008

The act of letting go is a courageous thing b/c it is contingent on an honesty that is often brutal and seemingly dangerous. This relinquishing of control (or the illusion of it) is not to be confused with acts of self-destruction, as it is often those who seem bravest in their recklessness that are grasping tightest…(suicide (figurative in this case), someone once offered, is cowardly). No, what I’m speaking of is a less superficial and more difficult motion that is manifested externally more subtly than one would think. Probably b/c it ends up being a paradox. The further you commit to it’s uncertainty the more capable you may be to survive. But, again, this honesty I think is probably one of the great difficulties in life. Self-deception is a great infirmity of humans, a thing we are terribly crafty at.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2008

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NYC Journal 52

nyc journal | July 23rd, 2008

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2008

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NYC Journal 51, and why the Siesta

nyc journal | July 9th, 2008

Summer’s humid-hard-hot-haze, and between 11am and 5pm the light is as ugly as hell. That’s why.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 50, Coney Island on a Fri 13th

nyc journal | June 23rd, 2008

I’m not prone to superstition, but for some reason the shutter on my F3hp was hanging up all day so half my shots were ruined, grossly overexposed on the right of the frame. It worked fine the day before and it worked fine the day following. Ghosts, jinxes, or the gawds being rude on this ominous date, I don’t know but odd regardless.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2008

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NYC Journal 49, w/ a partial consideration on the “why” of any one picture

nyc journal | June 23rd, 2008

It is mostly a desire, an attraction, something that has-to-be-had, and not logical at all – not initially at least - no, rather, gut level, very fundamental…not any different than say sexual attraction or moral conviction. Though, it’s more muddled than that, less intact if you will. B/c the process is something that is at times fought for with great stress, but at other times something that wells up uncontrollably and spills-over. So it is a balance of opposites. If the moment was a man, he’d be deeply meditative while shuddering with a mania, he’d be both courageous and meek, loving and loathing…all the while brimming with a deep conviction that what is happening is necessary. Not in a sanctimonious way, not at all, but most certainly in a stubborn way.

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 48, and 1 plus 1

nyc journal,still & 'scape work | June 4th, 2008

B/c it is seems to fit the pattern of how everything is here right now: palpable disconnect. It’s terrible in many ways…maddening actually. When I watch people on the street, on the subway, sitting on the park benches, driving their cars, living life, following the traced lines that seem to have been set out long before them, when I watch this it makes no sense; they’re all unfinished; they’re fragmented outlines that were never put in order. It’s as though a fog has settled over that which is usually inferred, that which is usually taken for granted. I don’t know when one plus one didn’t equal two anymore, but I’m not confident it does. It’s like we’re on a deep superlative bender, but without the feeling good, just the psychological tremors and quakes and underpinnings of disaster…this could be a matter of projecting…but I don’t think so. I’m not getting this across very clearly, am I? But, listen, it’s has me worried. Even these simple little pictures, this record of someday what was, seem to have become slippery, so to speak, as if they’re without reason. My only reaction is resistance, a push to take them out to some other limit. B/c sometimes they’re all I can hold onto. The continued study of a ____, at whichever end of the spectrum it exists. You’d think it would exist at some end, right? That it’s a sort of maximum. Doesn’t strike me as something that would be subtle.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 47

nyc journal | June 4th, 2008

Finally time to get back on those grit-dusted-streets, back to itchin’ that itch, back to not backing off.

Shoot the lights out, as my good friend Garett suggests.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008

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NYC Journal 46, and characters

nyc journal | March 28th, 2008

My room faces the Hudson and some nights the wind comes across hard and cuts in and through my windows and howls at a pitch you can’t imagine until you’ve heard it for yourself, seems like hell’s own machinery, and its cold rubbing up against the kind hiss plus drip-drip-drip heat of my old steam radiator. Kind of ominous and it re-inspires brooding thoughts from earlier today that people are all characters, types, prearranged narratives…old news, which I guess Shakespeare covered centuries ago and Foucault decades ago, but still the consistency and predictability of said characters is stunning. We are stereotypes. We are cliches. We’re not, despite what has been suggested to us, very unique at all.

Honest to God this disappointments me as much as it does anyone. Inspiring contempt and compassion at the same moment, the thought is surprisingly remorse, and rightfully so, but there’s more to it b/c then after all I think there’s the capability of one, even while understanding that their entire being is completely obvious, to at some point muster some authentic action, to create some new thing, to manage out of their fragmented self an entirely distinctive new fragment…something new to add to the pool of fragments – ad infinitum. And, this, I suspect can happen on large and small scales, like little tremors or like fundamental alteration of the paradigm.

The thing of it is, the point is, at the end of the day, history or gawd or some memory of reckoning, these forces will only remember acts, not intentions.

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NYC Journal 45, postcards

nyc journal | March 28th, 2008

More postcards to you; imagine them stamped with bold yellow comic font “Greetings from New York City!”

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NYC Journal 44, and a letter to you

nyc journal | March 8th, 2008

It’s been so very linear here lately, with hairy heads down, with seriously forged lines of direct direction, with every motion seeming to be endued with an ineradicable notion of progress. Eyes and hearts and lives are set on that glittering goal, that green light manifesting distant across the bay, burning like a cold soft brutal gem. Naturally, you can imagine that all disruptions are frowned upon; relaxation and imagination are intent-full…inefficiency at some point even became efficient…still, sometimes, even with that, I stop strange on the corner, like a rock dropped in a fast shallow stream…and when I look close a heavy thing fills my chest as I see most self-awareness – of which there’s plenty – smothered out buy a mix of obsession, hope, and a group-wide conviction that the purpose is absolute. You know, I can’t help but think this momentum is not innate; think that there’s the possibility of a whole lot being tremendously let down at some point… A student of history might know that this movie’s been played before, or might not…I don’t know. Yet, we manage to elude or maybe reconcile disappointment, b/c what is innate is the ability and skill to convince ourselves of anything to satiate our basic motives. For good and bad.

Anyway, the point I wanted to tell you is that I considered our savior and our ruin probably reside in equivalent qualities. Hope you’re well.