Vaya Con Dios 2023

Was gonna do one of those end of the year recap things but then I got a vacation from social media for Christmas. Not complaining, it was rather nice, but it may have interfered with the proper timing for such a post. That's never stopped me before, so here's to a year that's no longer here!

Never been one to hang much meaning on particular dates, so my resolution for this year is the same as always, to not keep any resolutions. Have a sneaking suspicious that the sense of pass/fail that comes with making resolutions makes them that much more difficult to keep. I'll do it when I do it dammit, the calendar can kiss my ass.

It is customary around here to greet the new year with gunfire but this year they took it to a new level. Some folks just up the road were letting off automatic weapons and managed to shoot down a power line, which landed on an SUV and set it on fire. With all that, what do you even need fireworks for?

Since this is ostensibly about photos I should probably talk about one or two at least. Was reading about the early days of photography recently and back when they were still trying to decide if photography counted as art there was a fad (style?) known as pictorialism. It's a bit fuzzy, both literally and figuratively, but this photo of grape hyacinths reminded me of the soft focus that's a central element of pictorialism.

My background is in history rather than photography, was doing some digging into Louisville's history last year to see if I could combine the two. Discovered that there was an abandoned cemetery in one of the more bourgeois neighborhoods that had been 'recycling' graves for decades and possibly more than a century. It was abandoned when word got out in the 80s so I had to go for a looksee.

History is the art of cataloguing the dead. That got a lot more personal and visceral for me when an employee walked into a downtown bank and opened fire with an AR-15 back in April. Checking mass shooting off the bucket list wasn't on my agenda but when it happened I had to go document it. One of the heaviest and most surreal experiences of my life, beautiful spring day and I'm standing with some newsies talking to bystanders and taking photos a few dozen feet from where several people had just met a violent end.

Sometimes history is loud and burning dinosaur bones. Louisville hosts the annual Street Rod Nationals and the roar of the big blocks was hard to resist. If photos had a smell, this one would have that particular scent that comes with a carburetor running rich, a nice mix of combustion products and unburnt gasoline.

Started a Red River Gorge project last year, ended up going down there five times but each visit just made me realize how much more I had to do before I'd be 'done.' That's half the fun though, 2024 should be good for pulling the various bits together into some semblance of a coherent whole.

Somehow I seem to end up taking an inordinate amount of photos of folks I detest, going to have to lean into it and make my next project a 'Hostile Portraits' sort of endeavor. This Selfie with Street Preacher is from Pride, which is always a good place for hostile portraits.

Got to scratch 'Meet & Greet with Westboro Baptist' off my bucket list in December and it was incredibly underwhelming. Probably for the best, the city's response to them ended up making for better photos anyway.

Went on a two week quest road trip in search of the American Dream back in October, the first photo and these last two are from that adventure. Still trying to interpret the results from that, soon as I do y'all will be the first to know.

St. Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque made for quite a time, which was keeping with the general theme of 2023. That's probably enough hot air for one year, so I'd better get out of here.

May your 2024 be better than the year before!