Sugar - Outake

I should probably explain something.

Before polaroid had become defunct, I had acquired a spectra polaroid camera from a junk store for five dollars in perfectly new condition. Living in a shit town, film was remarkably scarce and damn near impossible to find. Not to mention expensive. And I am, and always have been, fucking broke. Even when I didn't live in a shit town. That whole starving artist thing is bullshit. Especially when your thing is analog photography, and the film for it costs more then you've paid for food that week. So when I could get ahold of some film, I was highly covetous with the shots. I wanted to get the most mileage out of the shots I had available to me (usually twenty in a pack of two cartridges.) so not only would I spend time conceptualizing the shots with crude drawings in notebooks of my vague, oft. not completed ideas for the shots trying to keep in mind my limited funds, (moths flying out of wallet) but also I hadn't known anyone like minded at the time that this particular picture was taken, that could either take the shots I had conceptualized for me of myself as the model, I had no one adequately suited to model in them either. You try asking a complete stranger in a strange town to model possibly semi nude for your polaroid photography. It really doesn't come off to people as well as you might think. Not to mention, I didn't, and still don't own a tripod. So after I had gotten an idea of what I wanted to do (by obsessively pouring over advertisements and spreads in the back issues of Vogue, for the most part, and watching -alot- of movies. I'm not even kidding about how many movies I've seen and would like to forget about. I favored the golden age of hollywood. This is what I did instead of succeeding in life) Propped my camera up on something eye level, pulled attractive pieces of whatever out of my closet and house, (leading to the fantatical rat packing and rag picking with a jealous religiousity for pleasing aesthetics and dirt cheap prices) and headed out to my backyard, or rooftop to utilize the natural light and blue sky backdrop. You can probably guess I have absolutly no lighting and flash is, for the most part, just awful. I'd pull out my note book, and a list of shots I wanted to complete the most, with what I had available to me (not very much).
My method of analog photography was probably more complicated then it should have been, rendering the alleged inherent "simplicity and honesty" of polaroid photography completely meaningless. I brought more then one camera to get the shots to be goddamn sure I got the damn shot one way or another. I approached this with an inexplicable determination. However, my already cheap digital camera was destroyed by my sister in a hysterical fit of rage, so I used falling apart Miranda, with a severely scratched lens. I would set one camera up on a self timer, right next to each other, or stacked on top of each other, or I'd swap the camera out. don't ask me to detail how I did that, like I said, inexplicable determination. I don't really understand it either. However once I conceptualize an idea for a shot I can easily accomplish, I'm not at rest until I complete it, and my photography is not at all what I would call my most passionate means of artistic expression. At any rate, I would set the timer and run in front of the camera just in time to awkwardly struggle out a striking pose and pleasing angle. I'm sure, you've already guessed, those ten shot ideas usually didn't pan out, because one shot leads to another when you're trying to get THAT shot or you get the blurry contortion of your body and hair if you don't make it in front of the camera on time. Thats how I get MY jollies, folks. I have hundreds of analog shots I've taken that I've never uploaded simply because I don't have access to a scanner, and I'm too lazy to go out and find one. This photo is an outake of my polaroid sugar. This shot earns the disnction of my favorite among what I have done in Jerry rigging junkstore cameras and the rag accoutrements of the pearly kings and queens reflected always in the bleary renditions that results in my photography. Theres no disappointment in that. See how creative you can be with cheap costumes and cameras. This was the single golden moment I have taken on two analog cameras at once, at only slightly different angles. I have never bothered to upload this one, simply because I hadn't been interested in the shot that wasn't a polaroid. This one has come to be my choice of the two, a decision almost four years in the making. I could be said that this picture, in this entire series, and their not-polaroid counterparts marked a turning point in my understanding of life in photography. I developed a passionate love of abundant bright, living colors and outlandish alien scapes, and creating them in the post edit. People are my subject. That is what I find beautiful and interesting. In what I write and what I shoot. They have always been my first love and infatuation. I love those that share a love of the anxieties and these people I call my family. I never liked doing black and whites. in fact I still hate to do them. Color denotes the life in something like rose on the cheek. The living have color. Though I don't deny an admiration of black and whites, to my perception, it is without life and missing feeling. The black and white to me is the hard wires and bone structure of the shape of those creatures and landscapes of this world, thats caught, devoid of breath devoid of color of the cheek and the lip and the skin and the eyes. Black and white is uniform, color photography is a garden, and that garden should be the garrish arrangement of a revolving primary color wheel. But I'm not that interested in the reality of living. What drudgery. I like the lavish nature of delirium. Its the way things should be. I'm just being honest.

Enjoy.