Faun's flesh is not to us

nor the saint's vision

We have the press for wafer

Franchise for circumcision

 

(Ezra Pound, 1920)

 

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In reality, for us in this age of ours, the mass is `in form' as an electorate in exactly the same sense as it used to be `in form' as a collectivity of obedience - namely, as an object for a subject - as it was `in form' in Baghdad as the sects, and in Byzantium in its monks, and elsewhere again as a dominant army or a secret society or a `state within a state.' Freedom is, as always, purely negative. It consists in the repudiation of tradition, dynasty, Caliphate; but the executive power passes, at once and undiminished, from these institutions to new forces - party leaders, dictators, presidents, prophets, and their adherents - towards which the multitude continues to be unconditionally the passive object. `Popular self-determination' is a courteous figure of speech - in reality, under a universal-inorganic franchise, election has soon ceased to possess its original meaning. The more radical the political elimination of the matured old order of Estates and callings, the more formless and feckless the electoral mass, the more completely is it delivered into the hands of the new powers, the party leaders, who dictate their will to the people through all the machinery of intellectual compulsion; fence with each other for primacy by methods which in the end the multitude can neither perceive nor comprehend; and treat public opinion merely as a weapon to be forged and used for blows at each other. But this very process, viewed from another angle, is seen as an irresistible tendency driving every democracy further and further on the road to suicide.

 

(Oswald Spengler, Decline of the West Vol. 2, chapter 12, 1923)

 

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You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly

A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic

 

(Robinson Jeffers, 1925)

 

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I grew up and still reside in the Los Feliz-Atwater-Hollywood, Burbank-Glendale nexus of Los Angeles, ie. the area centered by Griffith Park. My photos are mainly document of that area and L.A. in general. All that stuff is geotagged, so you can best explore this photostream through the map.

 

I began developing my own b&w film in October 2008. The sequential roll numbers denote films processed at home. (Excepting roll #1: shot at the Griffith Observatory and developed in high school photography class, 1997.)

 

I record my exposure settings for each shot as best as I can; these are alternately determined by my camera's TTL meter, my sense of the light, and the exposure value system as described on the ultimate exposure computer webpage.

 

Personal objective: to develop skills at documentarian black and white still film shooting and processing. I like black & white film because it was the visual documentary medium for much of the 20th century and employing it today helps annihilate the perceived and largely illusory distance between then and now. Monochrome does something color never quite does, instantly transforming the quotidian and making the familiar strange.

 

My best shots are neither here nor there.

 

I hope you get a kick or a laugh out of something here.

 

Principal armaments:

 

#1: Pentax Spotmatic II SLR (35mm) with a modest complement of m42 lenses

#2: Yashica Mat 124G TLR (120, 6x6)

 

Music: Richard Thompson, Charlie Parker, Pere Ubu, Shiina Ringo, Amon Duul II, Bach.

 

Books: Oswald Spengler, James Jones, Norman Mailer, Marshall McLuhan, Mencius Moldbug, the Bible.

 

The medium is the missed age. Digital delenda est!