Johnny Autry

© Johnny Autry

Johnny Autry wrote me an email recently, relating to some things I've been writing about here. I clicked through to check out his work, and I'm so glad I did. These images from his series City Magic are so striking and cinematic. In this series, he's created a beautiful atmospheric portrait of Birmingham, Alabama.


© Johnny Autry

I'm especially drawn to the first two I've posted here, but the third – a beautiful scene overlooking Birmingham – hit something visceral in me. I've never visited the central Gulf Coast, though I grew up in the South, so some of his pictures seem both familiar and strange. It makes me think about how certain landscapes are like a language you learn from knowing a place. Maybe that's part of the magic of landscapes – the kudzu in the image below takes me back to road trips through North and South Carolina throughout my childhood. It's funny how something as simple as a type of foliage can trigger memories so easily.

I was considering this same idea recently when I went to see True Grit. It was largely filmed in northern New Mexico, a landscape now immediately recognizable to me, and one that carries a certain weight from personal experiences. While walking out of the theater, I couldn't help but wonder where I'd be the next time I watched the film, and if it would always bring me back to my time in New Mexico.


© Johnny Autry

Don't miss Johnny's other images – visit his website for more. I look forward to following his life and work via his blog.

Go West, Part II

Jason and I are moving to Portland, Oregon at the end of next month.

There have been a lot of tough days in trying to get this figured out. I'd like to write about it, but not today. Today I just want to keep looking forward – or maybe I should say, westward.

I don't regret coming to Santa Fe, but a year here would have been plenty, and two years got to the point of misery. With hints of spring on the air and the promise of an open road in a matter of weeks, I feel lighter than I have in a very long time.

Here's to a new chapter.

Go West

Lately, Jason and I have been watching a lot of films and documentaries about artists and writers who were part of movements in the 50's and 60's. Howl and How to Draw a Bunny, films about Allen Ginsberg and Ray Johnson respectively, are two recent watches available on Netflix Instant.

It's easy to wax nostalgic about a time you were never a part of. It's easy to imagine Ray Johnson hanging out with Rauschenberg or Warhol; to laugh at images of The Factory covered floor to ceiling in tin foil; to envy how dirt cheap apartments in North Beach or Greenwich Village were back then and how, though they lived on little, it seemed possible just to be an artist.

It's probably pretty obvious how much I crave this sort of community; volunteering at Review Santa Fe counted for 3 out of my 4 best days of 2010 (it was a rough year... but still). I've spent enough time in strange corners of the world and now I want back in. More people, please.


Photo by Matt Nuzzaco

Separately, and yet related: there's something going on in California. You see those people in that beautiful picture up there? All photographers. I know and know of so many great-people-who-also-take-pictures living in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and they all seem to know each other through varying degrees of separation. Best of all, they make work together (the Phoot Camp crew is a pretty prime example). There is a constant crossing of Flickr stream paths and discoveries of "Wait, you dudes know each other?" among the photographers I know. It's happening everywhere the more connected via Twitter and Facebook we become in terms of the larger photo community, but since my giant fucking I-need-major-life-change Sauron-style vag-eye is focused intently on the west coast, California is starting to seem (in a dreamy idealist sort of way) like a fucking photonerd lover's playground.

And I do love y'all.

Lately I've been waking up every morning with my eyelids glued to my withered eyeballs and my throat sore from the soulsucking aridity around me. So, the above combined with the inundation of ocean-and-palm-trees photographs that have been streaming my way from various sources recently, is enough to make me want to throw some shit in the car, hit Interstate 40, GO THE FUCK WEST and never look back... except maybe at sunrise.

That's my shit-feels-shitty escapism talking, but genuinely all I want is to fix my broken life. In doing so, I will remember that good people are a good priority to have. Now if I can just figure this community shit out for real.

Forth and back

I was going to hold off on posting anything until I actually had something to say, but according to my referral logs I've been spotted. !!

I'm moving my blog from Tumblr back to Blogger, and its proper home at pinkelephants.org. I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but had just enough domain troubles I didn't want to deal with to keep me procrastinating. At first Tumblr seemed a little more freeform, but later it started to feel claustrophic to me. So I'm back. For (pretty much mostly until someday in the eventual future it isn't) good.

As for why I've been quiet: I'm going through one of the most confusing and frustrating periods of my life, to date. There still isn't a lot to say right now, but I sure as fuck hope there will be a lot to say soon. In the meantime, I'll be over in this corner trying not to implode.