Sea Calling

Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me -Moby Dick

Today, weather permitting I will continue to experiment with my newly acquired Twin Lens Reflex Camera. I will be Driving out to Prout’s Neck, a tiny little peninsula town on the coast of Maine. I have been extremely lucky to have spent a part of every summer since I was born out in this place. We have a small house there which has been part of our family since my Grandfather was 4 years old in 1917. It was originally built by a Sea Captain as his summer house when the small town was nothing more than a hill on the coast. It came into my family later (when there was apparently some money in the family, all evidence of which has seemingly dissipated since).

If you can avoid the locals, this is a wonderful place to be.

There is something irresistibly mysterious and comforting about the ocean. I think it must be my lifetime of growing up next to the ocean that makes me think I could never live without it. Certainly I could see myself leaving Maine one day, but I could never back myself into some trapped place more than an hour away from the coast. I don’t know if it is just the site of it that keeps you at ease, or the feeling that at any time you could just get on a boat and escape but I have learned to love the sea for one reason or another.

These photos by Joni Sternbach are of surfers as well as the beaches they surf on. Counter to the impressions of surfer culture this work gives a feeling of the quiet harmony the ocean provides. They are similar to the work of Sugimoto in the sense that visual simplicity can create a great deal of drama.

Blackbird Fly

I’ve had a really intense urge to make new photographs lately but have not been able to wrap my mind around what I want to shoot.

Going out with the old DSLR has kind of lost all the original magic it had when I first discovered it.

Projects and bodies of work are what give me that passionate drive. Lately however, I have been uninspired, tired and distracted.

A distraction from my distractions is exactly what the doctor ordered.

I bought a new camera and it came in the mail today. I needed something fun and easy to get my creative fix.

This is the Blackbird, Fly … A little Japanese masterpiece. I went out today to shoot my first roll. After being out for about 20 minutes a rain storm spoiled my fun, but not before I got some cool stormy shots. I love this little camera.. and I have not even developed the photos yet. Everything about it is a toy. It is small, colorful, plastic and fun. I feel like a kid on Christmas with a renewed love for photography. Hopefully this little toy will be the gateway to finding some new inspiration. I am excited to be working with film again, there is jut something about the process that is so satisfying to sink your teeth into. It is less fleeting and more enriching.

I find this to be such an exciting machine for it’s simplicity. I love it in the same way I love a bicycle. It is entirely mechanical. No batteries required, only the little ingenious mechanisms.

Ye Shoulders of Giants

The oldest memory I have is being a small small child and riding on my uncles’ shoulders. My uncle my father and my grandfather walked on the rocks on the ocean under a full bright golden-orange moon. The image of that moon, so large and reflecting off the pitch black ocean lives on in my mind so vividly to this day.

This past Thursday after returning home from a visit to the doctor I was told my Grandfather Arthur W. Kuschke Jr. after 97 years had passed away peacefully in his sleep. The world has truly lost a giant of a man. The wisest, kindest and most inspiring individual I ever had the pleasure of knowing. The effects of his life will be seen for years to come. As a young child I saw my Grandfather as a wizard and a king, there was no doubt in my mind he must have been the oldest person in the world. There are so many amazing things I was able to learn from him. I have never known another Human to have such a deep connection to the natural world around them. It was always inspirational and refreshing in a technological media based world to gain some both small and massive piece of insight from him. Maybe it was the names of all the ferns on the path ahead, or the different songs of the birds in the trees. He has a deep understanding of the natural and spiritual world that we no longer possess in the age of fast paced media and technology.

My grandfather used to read to me on summer nights. We would read Tolkien and the OZ books by L. Frank Baum, or my personal favorite “The Adventures of Uncle Lubin”, which tell the heroic story of a man on a quest to rescue his nephew from a wicked bag bird. Uncle Lubin went to the ends of the earth, the bottom of the sea, and even to the moon to rescue his beloved nephew.

He worked as a librarian and studied religious theology. He was one of the founding members in the Orthodox Presbyterian church and worked to keep it free of corruption up until his final days.

I remember the awe of looking around his study. So many amazing relics and treasures. precious stones, feathers, pine cones, maps, books, paintings, photographs…

I have a wonderful peace with me in the time of my Grandfather’s death. I thought I would find myself regretting not having gone to see him one last time when he was ill. Of course I could beat myself up and think I could have called or written more often. But we kept in touch in his final year. I enjoyed many conversations with him. I spoke to him on the phone just a couple days before he died. Most of his speech was just slurred emotion but he managed to get out a few words. I told him we all loved him very much and he only could manage to respond with a happy sigh. I then continued my one sided conversation to explain that I was out of the hospital and feeling much better, I said I was in good health again, and he replied “I’m in good health too”. I couldn’t help but laugh and smile. Despite being two days from death he was absolutely correct. He had an amazingly healthy heart for a man of 97. Doctors were astounded by the condition of his body.

If I can live to be half the man he was I will have truly lived. And it is only by standing on the shoulders of legends like him that any of us can ever aspire to be great men.

Truly a Giant.

Healing Power

Do You Realize – that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize – we’re floating in space -
Do You Realize – that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize – that everyone you know someday will die

And instead of saying all of your goodbyes – let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It’s hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn’t go down
It’s just an illusion caused by the world spinning round

This past Saturday on a beautiful summer night I had the pleasure of seeing the Flaming Lips in concert with some of my closest friends.

I again find myself having neglected the pages of this blog. It sounds cliche but life really comes at you fast. The last few months have been full of some of the biggest changes in my life. My existence has been put into perspective yet again. The neatly stacked blissful bits that occupy my life and keep me in perpetual lack of appreciation have been pulled out shaken down and strewn about this year.

The small independent company with which I was employed for the past year was bought out by a larger company. I kept my job but not without some very stressful changes. I still find myself grateful for the employment and truly blessed in a time of continuous economic turmoil.

I was rushed to the hospital after a long period of feeling very ill when I had some pretty severe internal bleeding coming from my intestines. I was in the hospital for 5 days hooked up to an IV and managed to just barely avoid a blood transfusion. A CT scan and colonoscopy revealed severe inflammation and ulceration on the walls of my lower intestines. This was nearly 2 months ago and still there has been no confirmed diagnosis. The first instinct and still the most likely suspect is Crohn’s disease. The images the doctors retrieved were text book examples of how this disease manifests, and along with my symptoms they were comfortable telling me there was an 80% likelihood of Crohn’s. A biopsy taken during the colonoscopy however came back negative for Crohn’s disease. A follow up genetic blood test also came back negative for Crohn’s disease. These tests are not always 100% accurate and perhaps the disease is still in such an early phase that these signs have not fully manifested yet. There is a chance however that this could be something else.. A very rare fluke infection.. or something else who knows. All I know is I can be grateful for the love and support I have had from my friends and family. The stomach pain and anxiety caused by the steroids I am on are very difficult to deal with. It is hard to imagine having an incurable disease although at this point I am prepared to accept it. My perspective has changed again and I am truly grateful for what I have. I know look to the healing powers of music, photography and love of other human beings.
I seek to gain healing from loving rather than belng loved, and understanding rather than being understood. It is amazing how physical pain is reduced through an emotional output.

Perspective

I was lost yesterday trying to find a friends house, I was driving aimlessly through a town I had not been through in years. I made a turn and looked up to find a street sign that read “Blackstrap Rd.” This was the road my grandparents had lived on when they were both alive. I had never arrived on this street coming in this particular direction. I spent years coming to this place as a kid but it had been about six or seven years since I had been back. I realized where I was and turned the car around to go back and take a look at the house. We have all had this experience before and it is always both melancholy and profound. I stopped my car and pulled over to look at the house. It was hard to resist pulling into the driveway and walking in the front door like I had hundreds of times. It was bizarre to think of strangers living in this house my grandfather built. Someone else sitting at the head of the table and eating their dinner in the place where he would sit, and we would eat. The house was both untouched and entirely different. Each detail was exactly the same, the color of the paint, the rock wall that ran along the front of the yard, the strange and interesting rocks that I used to climb on and jump off of. The place itself however, felt entirely new and different in some way. Of course it was smaller.. or looked smaller. This phenomenon of growing up is fascinating. Why do we return to old places and find them to be so much less grand than we remembered them? The massive expanse that was the setting for years of play and outdoor exploration was now simply a lot with a yard. Do we have this experience because of our change in perspective? When we are very small, do things just seem bigger because we occupy less space? Or does our perspective of the world cause it to shrink as we gain a greater understanding of it. As a child the universe seems both massive and small. As we grow and learn, our immediate presence, our place in this world, or our understanding of it is put in perspective. The world no longer consists of our town, or our planet, but we understand we are a grain of sand in the vastness of space. Our biological connections to each other are dwarfed by our atomic connections to the cosmos. We have a greater understanding of limitless connectivity. It was amazing that looking at this old house which had lost its warmness could trigger such emotion. This all may seem cliche, as an idea but it is timelessly moving. My fascination with shift in perspective has played a large part in my work as a photographer. There is a visceral element of photography that time and time again queues a sense of nostalgia even if it is on a sub conscious level.

Two Thousand and Ten Regrets and Resolutions

The solutions and ingredients that make up our adequate lives need constant agitation to create the best reactions.

Summer has dissapeared entirely since I last posted an entry in this blog. Due to popular demand however I am making a New Years resolution to start making it active again. My day to day life has become completely re-occupied with many new endevours and struggles. Some of them exciting some of them miserable. It has been over half a year since my time at Alfred. I have adjusted to the post college life for the most part. This past weekend for the new year I was fortunate to see about 20 of my closest friends all of whom I met in school. It was refreshing to see everyone, hear what they were doing, and see how they had changed or aged in just a year or two. We were all returned to the state of mind that occipies one entering thier first year of college. For one weekend we were all care free and had no worries again, only to return to reality at the end of it all. Seeing all these friends opened my eyes and gave me a fresh breath of air. I had a feeling of being awake and alive as I was pulled rapidly out of the day to day doldrums that have become the quickly passing time I occupy. Some people’s stories inspired me, they made me feel very young again and filled me with worrysome yet hopeful emotions that there was still so much to be done. Others made me feel grown up, they made me realize how fortunate I am to have as much as I do, a job, a good place to stay, friends I can see every day. Most of them are living in New York City or the surrounding area. I am overwhelmed by an urge to move closer to these friends but continue to tell myself I cannot legitimize such a risk.

My biggest regret of 2009 is not taking every opportunity I had. I sat by and watched as too many application dealines drifted by, opportunities to meet up with old friends were missed, even chances to make money doing freelance slipped away. I want to become more actively involved in my destiny this year. I have settled into a far to comfortable state of being. I conjure up too many negative reactions to the risks I might take and choices I might make, I fear new beginnings, I loath awkwardness, and I hate rejections. My motto this year will be. 2010: Grow a pair.

Classics

The summer has provided me with some leisure time to read. I decided that I neglected far too many books in my childhood because reading didn’t seem nearly as important as anything else I could occupy myself with.

I recently finished Jules Verne’s 20,00 Leagues Under the Sea.
what an amazing story it turned out to be. I always assumed it was just another fiction adventure story with nothing beneath the surface.
The characters are all incredibly dense

Verne was way ahead of his time scientifically speaking. In the mid 19th century he wrote stories about under water exploration with submarines and diving suits/scuba gear etc. as well as rockets to the moon. The surprising part is how dead on his predictions were in terms of the engineering and the physics of the crafts and equipment.

Also, captain Nemo is instantly one of my favorite characters of fiction, a tragic hero to the end.

Also this summer has provided me with many new musical discoveries

Killer Krakatoa

Twelve hundred feet above the tranquil waters of the Sunda Strait in Indonesia rises this deadly child of destruction. One Hundred and Twenty Six years Killer Krakatoa slumbered in mischievous silence. This deadly new giant is has been Christened “Anak Krakatoa” – the child – of the violent mother who blew herself to pieces in 1883 and taking with her 36,000 lives. Now the fiery mountain stirs again.

Invisible

Earlier this year I made this post http://joelkuschke.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/regression/

My interest in body painting and causing the figure become one with their surroundings goes beyond an aesthetic appeal. This interest first started four years ago when I collaborated with an artist and friend of mine, Alison Miller. http://www.alimillerstudios.com/

The concept and project was all hers. I simply provided a new context for it through photography. The piece was called Regression, based on Alison’s interest in the roles of childhood and adulthood, as well that that transition and what happens in between. The concept becomes even closer to me now that I am a part of a “real world” outside the college. It is easier now to understand why people later in life become so depressed at times. We give up the things we loved from our youth simply because we feel we should, or because society says we should. Are our minds really prepared for such a drastic transition into adulthood.

Chinese artist Liu Bolin, tells this story of fitting into a society in a different way. Rather than a whimsical world and the nude figure representing innocence (or loss of innocence) Liu sets his portrayal of society in fitting urban environments and becomes entirely “invisible” When we are children the world seems to be all about us. Our concept of the consciousness of billions of others just like us is not fully developed. And our feeling of being alone despite being surrounded by those billions is something far from sight.

Freedom Machines

This blog has been alone and empty for too long. Summer brought so many new challenges and anxieties. I have been working at least sixty five hour weeks while simultaneously attending interviews trying to find a real job after the summer. I have been feeling overwhelmed by my own future. I usually find myself embracing my complete lack of concrete plans and accept it as an exciting and open ended chance for exploration and discovery. Day by day the summer has started to weigh me down. Back to back 16 hour days have started to leave me in what almost seems like disorientation. I punch out, go to bed, wake up and punch in. My Sundays off are a glorious day of Freedom.

A few months ago at school my bicycle got stolen. It was devastating. I rode that thing everywhere. It was only a $200.00 Schwinn but I loved it.

On Sunday I bought a new bicycle. I ponied up and got a really nice one figuring I will need it eventually for commuting. After all, I don’t have a car. The weather on Sunday was absolutely perfect. I rode the bike out of the shop and took it around the entire back bay and eastern prom of Portland. It was the most liberating feelings of freedom I have had in some time. My passion for the freedom that comes with a bicycle all returned in a flash supplemented by the inspiring new bike paths I had never tried in Portland. Bicycles are ingenious and perfect machines which have stood up to the test of time. These simple man powered feats of engineering have survived through the steamy and metallic industrial ages and pushed into the wirey buzzing digital era where they remain for the most part completely unchanged.

I recently started to go back and look at some of the lore of the bicycle. The engineering milestone that made the bicycle possible was in innovation of tubular steel. The bicycle was born in a time of rapidly flourishing technology and industry. People in the west were living relatively comfortable lives. The bicycle acted as a machine which could literally embody the principals of the freedom citizens sought out. The way in which the bicycle was advertised in fascinating. The bicycle first found popularity and widespread use in France. At this time illustrators and designers such as Arthur Mackmurdo and Aubrey Beardsley were pioneering the art nouveau style of illustration which would come into massive popularity used by artists such as Alphonse Mucha. The bicycle is one of the objects which was displayed to the public in the style of art nouveau. The whole premise of art nouveau was a style with a curvy flowing sexiness which acted as a rejection of the rigid decor of the past. It is interesting to think about the reasoning behind using this style to market something like the bicycle. The bicycle in a sense also acted as a rejection of the past, especially for woman. It embodied a new found freedom. Susan B. Anthony commented on the bicycle, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” The bicycle was the point that helped woman’s rights activists finally achieve the rational dress movement, which liberated them from long skirts and corsets and other restricting garments. It seems that with the sensual ad campaigns and notions of equality the bicycle was much more heavily marketed toward woman than men.

THE LIBERATOR!

The advertisements themselves are some of the most beautiful art pieces in history.




The Original Michelin Man

With over one billion bicycles in the world they serve as the most commonly used source of transportation. Completely green and human powered Freedom Machines. They make us healthier and Albert Einstein swore by the intellectual benefits to the bicycle. He claimed to have made his major breakthrough regarding the theory of relativity while riding his bicycle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” -Albert Einstein