Mamiyaroid 17.5

Unreality of Memory

Readers! I’d like to share your favorite phone photos for my New Year’s Day newsletter so please send me your favorite with a short caption. Just respond to this message and I will get it.

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On one of our early dates G and I somehow got talking about where we were on 9/11 and he said he was actually down in the Financial District because of a temp job (he was then a graduate student in philosophy) and he said he “saw things he shouldn’t have seen”. I have this memory of finally getting an A train after walking uptown from the Flatiron Building (where I then worked) and the only other person in my car was a business man covered in ash. I believe I saw this but I don’t 100% trust that it actually happened, especially since I was alone, and can’t ask anyone to verify for me.

Today I recommend a book, The Unreality of Memory, by my friend—writer and poet—Elisa Gabbert. The first essay in the collection, “Magnificent Desolation,” discusses disasters like the Titanic and 9/11 and finds new ways into these events. “It’s the spectacle, I think, that makes a disaster a disaster. A disaster is not defined simply by damage or death count; deaths by smoking or car wrecks are not a disaster because they are meted out, predictable. A disaster must not only blindside us, but be witnessed, and re-witnessed, in public.”

In my lifetime, so far, 9/11 was that lingering disaster, but I wonder if the pandemic will overtake its place in conversation, thought and memory. It’s not like 9/11 where you can watch falling man over and over and over and over, but it’s seeped into everything. Then again, if you went through my Instagram feeds on my personal and instant photography accounts, aside from the masked portrait, you might not know it’s happening. How long will it linger?

Elisa’s writing is a bit like Sontag in its depth of thought, but Elisa lets you see how she thinks and that’s a gift to her readers.

When I was still very much learning portrait photography Elisa modeled for me and I took what would become one of her author photos. I used my digital fuji x-pro2 and a friend of hers retouched the photo she uses on her book jacket in Photoshop, but I also used my canon elan 7 and tri-x film and here is an outtake, Elisa laughing, one way I like to see her in the rare instances I get to see her in real life.

canon elan 7, kodak tri-x

And I asked Elisa to send us a phone photo:

“I started going through the photos on my phone and got so overwhelmingly sad, I had to stop, so I decided somewhat arbitrarily to choose something I'd taken since March -- I haven't taken very many photos this year, since my view is mostly the same. This is a photo from a friend's backyard, in early fall. The sky through trees is my favorite sight, especially at dusk, l'heure bleue, when the trees start go pure black/silhouette. Here the sky is an unusual color, most likely from smoke.”

Elisa’s other books are: : L’Heure Bleue, a book of poems, and The Word Pretty, another essay collection, all worth reading.

Until next time…

Adalena

I love to receive comments and questions about photography and cameras!

My email: adalenakavanagh@gmail.com

Instagram: @mamiyaroid (instant/film) @5redpandas (personal)

Twitter: @adalenakavanagh

Also, if you’re thinking of buying Polaroid film for the first time, here is my referral code, which gets you 10% off, and I get some reward points.

Original photography prints: adalenakavanagh.bigcartel.com (I change out the shop every month of so. If you see something you like, let me know, I’m happy to make you a print.)

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-Adalena Kavanagh