on my back

and thankful for reading to keep me distracted.

 for the first time ever, i was  physically unable to take photos this week. i have put out my back and that combined with the tendonitis in my right arm...well, lifting my camera was and is arduous.
to be honest? i am just not in the mood.

(well, except for the photos from friday night, at a certain friend's bridal shower...but we will not be discussing those photos...)

so, the only upside of this whole week was a bit more free time to read. the act of sitting is terribly uncomfortable right now, so i got to lie around and catch up on some blogs and people's postings from their various social medias.

and the weirdest thing happened.
two of the photographers who i find inspirational collided on another photographer's blog. very weird.

max s gerber wrote about two of his recent encounters with photographers, who happened to be tony fouhse and timothy archibald.
he writes and shares photographs of these two photographers and a little about his relationship with them, one new and one not. there is just something i find entertaining when a photographer photographs a photographer.

and when they happen to be two people who i follow ( in the online sense of the word...not the weird stalkery kind of follow ) closely...well, that is just cool. and warrants sharing.
and i may have been a little jealous of mr. gerber.

tony, if you have not already seen his photographic work, is someone you should know if you think about why you take photos.
whether or not you *like* his work is irrelevant. he makes you think about what he is seeing and shooting and sharing.
and the cool thing?
he walks you through his process openly, questioning as he goes.
his work is all about truth, truth in what he feels and believes, truth in how the image is created ( and how untruthful that can be sometimes in searching for the honest ), truth in how he feels about the world around him.
i liked max s gerber's observation of "the guy is whip-smart, dedicated, and just crazy enough to do brilliant work". yep. that pretty well sums it up.

(i am wondering if tony is rolling his eyes if reading this. sorry. )

and just a note about what tony is up to. he recently put a call out for fans of his work to help fund his ongoing project with stephanie, called *live through this*.
they responded and the first part of the project reached it's financial goal. it is a go.
but that is just the beginning.
donations can still be made, supporting a second trip (hypothetically, as tony himself states ) with the same rewards ( can not think of a better term...) as the first round of donations.
yep.
you give him money to continue his project, and you get updates and even prints. it is a pretty sweet deal.
i already have a small collection of fouhse in my house and his work always raises discussion. always.
support art, get art?
love it.

and timothy archibald...
what can i say?
this man's work stopped me in my tracks when i came upon it a few years ago.

many people photograph their children.
photographers are no different.
but not all photographers photograph their children honestly.
you know what i mean. always clean, always happy, always perfect.

that is just not reality.

others feel that there is more beauty in the imperfection of childhood, but not just the umbrella of childhood...in the imperfection of the actual child. because they are not perfect, for whatever that word means.
it is the very qualities that make a child different that makes that child so spectacularly beautiful to their parent. and frustrating.

and in his collection, echolilia, timothy archibald is both father and photographer and his son...well, he is just eli in all his wonder.
this series is a collection of photographs sharing Eli's world.
it is much more than that...but i want you to discover it for yourself.
i can stare at these photos for hours. i see my kids in these photos. hell, i see me in these photos. i see a parent's struggle and i see a photographer using his medium to survive something really freaking hard in his life. i see innocence, confusion, love...so much here.

read this interview timothy gave to colin pantrell. It answers many questions about the photographs, the whys and the why nots. the why nots are infinitely more interesting.

this is not a "concerned photography" project. not a project about autism. it is just life.
and you can find the book, echolilia, here.

so there you have it.
the things i eat up when i am flat out.
thank you max s gerber for making my week a little more tolerable.
thank you tony for being a little bit crazy?
thank you timothy archibald for being a dad who photographs. or a photographer who dads. i know, they are an indivisible reality.

and in case you missed the links peppered through...here they are


http://www.msgphoto.com/latestshot/
(i love his handwritten notes under his photos and his gaffer taped backgrounds)


http://timothyarchibald.blogspot.com/

http://www.timothyarchibald.com/
(check out his after school special shots )


http://tonyfoto.com/drool/