Where I'd Rather Be

U.S. Route 66, Santa Rosa, New Mexico, November 2005

Right about now, it is late afternoon in Southeast Minnesota, yet fog still permeates the air, as raindrops slowly pound the snow and ice still on the ground.  The days lately are like something out of Hobbes's Leviathan: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Yet, looking at this snapshot I took on Agfa's gorgeous Ultra 50 print film, I am taken to an oasis promising not just sun and sand, but lovely lasses with long legs lounging around the swimming pool.

Garish: The Cutting Room Floor

U.S. Route 52, Cannon Falls, Minnesota, June 2009

Companion image to the preceding, taken on the way home.

Garish: The Cutting Room Floor

Provincial Highway 22, near Gerald, Saskatchewan 
June 2009

Form meets function meets form. Nature and agricultural architecture meet on this slope in rural Saskatchewan.  I enjoy photographing in Canada.  When walking onto property owned by total strangers up North, I have yet to meet paranoid landowners, asking the ubiquitous annoying question, "What are you doing?"

Which is very nice, because while I usually have some sarcastic comeback while in the United States ("You see this thing here I'm holding?  It's called a camera.  See, what you do is you point it at the subject you want to photograph.  A hole in the camera opens, and an image of the subject is captured on film."  Part of my shtick is pronouncing the key words very slowly, as though I were speaking to (in the words of Rahm Emanuel) "f***ing retards."  How I've lucked out by not being brutalized by local and state cops (particularly in Texas) is a testament to either the Due Process clause of the U.S. Constitution, or just plain dumb luck (I suspect the latter).

However, in foreign countries, I am always on my best behavior.  I've only had one incident remotely approaching a run-in with police in Canada (Mexico is another story), and good manners have always pulled me out of a potentially awkward situation.  

On the breezy June day I took this photograph, a gracious Russian immigrant farmer greeted me graciously, and she and her husband gave me a tour of the family farm -- from the back seat of their four wheeler!

Garish: The Cutting Room Floor

Roadside Taco Stand, Nueva Rosita, Coahuila

December 2004

Two things about Mexico that I really enjoy are their dearth of homeowners' associations and the lack of attorneys running around making small business owners remove copyrighted material from their shingles.

Thus, it is a nation in which you can find houses everywhere painted in kelly green with Pepto Bismol pink shutters, and such eateries as Speedy Gonzalez Tamales and the Beavis y Butthead Hamburguesas stand (at which I ate the best cheeseburger I had in years, by the way).

My favorite of all was this misspelled taco stand, named in honor of Jim Henson's enduring and engorging creation, Miss Piggy.  Unfortunately, these lunch wagons and snack bars are mostly closed during the winter, so I had to eat dinner up the road, at Foghorn Leghorn's Pollo Frito.

Rediscovered Negatives: Los Colores de Coahuila

Stations of the Cross, No. 8

Santa Maria de Guadalupe Church,

Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, c. April 2000

Even the shadows in the Santa Maria de Guadalupe Church, built in 1958, follow the building's Cubist architectural forms.  In this sculpture, depicting Christ's visit with the daughters of Jerusalem, Jesus's humanity is simply depicted with grace and beauty.

Cien Ojos

Cien Ojos (100 Eyes) hails from the coastal city of Murcia in Spain.  Mónica Lozano Mata, a professor of photography at the University of Murcia, assembles a daily compendium of photography websites, news, other blogs, competitions, exhibits, books, and magazine articles from around the world -- and especially Spanish photographers, with an emphasis on photogs from Murcia.

While I generally, as a rule, do not seek out the work of other photographers, Lozano's blog draws me in with its clean design and intriguing subject matter.  Especially appreciated is the appearance of yours truly in yesterday's edition.

Rediscovered Negatives: Los Colores de Coahuila

Santa Maria de Guadalupe Church, 
Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, c. April 2000

While I wouldn't mind leaving a legacy comparable to that of Garry Winogrand, hopefully part of that legacy will not be leaving more than 2,500 rolls of film undeveloped by the time of my passing.

At present, I have around 100 or so, and I am currently sending off my C-41 35mm to the lab for development.  The first roll came back today, and it was an old roll of the Agfa Optima II 100 film I had shot in the Mexican frontier city of Acuña.  

There are a few excellent shots on the roll, and this photograph of a friar's statue is my favorite.  It is quite difficult to take natural light photographs indoors on slow film, but the Agfa films of the past decade captured the color balance beautifully, allowing a full tonal range as well.

I miss Mexico.  It is where my photographer's soul resides, particularly in Coahuila, where the drab monotony of the caliche is relieved by building after building painted in lush primary colors.

Garish: The Cutting Room Floor

State Highway  30, Dodge County, Minnesota, May 2009

Selecting the final images for my upcoming book, Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids, has been an arduous -- and humbling -- undertaking.  

From over 2,500 original photographs, the process of narrowing the selection to the final 91 images to be published was difficult, to say the least.  Although I have been working in print media since 1988, all my previous labors were concentrated in magazines or newspapers that published weekly or monthly.  Pressing deadlines had a way of excising the inessential with hardly a care.

But when you make a book, especially your first, all your creative impulses come to the fore and result in... an unwieldy mess.

Every photograph is like your own child, and cutting those apron strings to beloved pictures is not unlike the proverbial death of 1,000 cuts.  

The first cut was the easiest: 2,500-plus photos became 437 in one day.  

It was the subsequent cuts that became tedious, grueling even:  Never having put together a book before, I went into the project thinking, "Oh, 437 pictures -- we can fit that into 120 pages at roughly four per page."  So, I commenced retouching and restoring 437 photographs, one at a time, in Photoshop.  With the assistance of photographer Laura Klecker (who also assisted with the first two rounds of editing), it took almost six months of patient and steady labor to fix them all (and if you've ever scanned and retouched a 108 Polacolor print, it can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to more than an hour, because of the dozens of tiny imperfections the development process leaves on each print).

Then, 437 became 263 -- another two weeks.  

263 become 150, and then 91.

From time to time, I will be publishing the ones that got away: Sentimental favorites that stood well on their own, but didn't quite work well with the others, as a whole.

But, if you've ever read my report cards from grade school, you'll read that I didn't work well with others myself.

Book cover design for "Garish"

The multitalented Deidre Adams designed this highly-saturated dust jacket cover for my first photography book, Garish: Roadside Color Polaroids, to be released later this year.

The book will feature a main portfolio section of 80 original photographs, taken between 1988 and 2009.  I started this series, captured on Polaroid's 669 and 690 films, quite by accident -- when traveling I always carry my Colorpack III instant camera, so I can make postcards to send to friends and family.  Over time, I realized I had grown a sentimental attachment to the camera and the process, and a unique way of expressing my affinity with the oddities and overlooked artistic masterpieces found along the highways of North America.

With an essay by writer John DeFore, this is one book that belongs on your coffee table!

More to come....

Welcome to Robert Jones Photo

Hello, everybody. I created this blog as a companion to my website, www.robertjonesphoto.com.

Check here often for updates on my blog articles at Conservative Punk and Liberatchik, newly-published photographs, and my latest photo documentary projects.

I will also be using this blog for sacred cow tipping, re: the art and fine-art photography worlds. Let's just say that I won't be speaking of Ansel Adams, Nick Brandt, and Susan Sontag in hushed, reverential, tones.

Most importantly, I will be updating readers on the latest developments on my book project. Please stop by often for the latest news.