On Wednesday morning of the Rebirth Workshop experience, I woke up a bit tired (as Rachel and I had managed to stay up much too late talking the night before) and intrigued about what the next few days were going to be like…
We met the group in the chapel… and we received our first assignment. Will (my dear friend and mentor, particularly in the area of pushing myself artistically) gave us one hour to wander around… iphone or point and shoot camera in hand (I cannot tell you how much I hated the point and shoot I was handed… I missed my iPhone desperately!) and create two images. We were not allowed to delete. We were not allowed to take three images or 12 images or 100 images and choose our favorite two. We were not allowed to enhance, crop, or adjust the images in any way. (Maybe when Will sees this post he will send me my two images, as I turned them in directly from the borrowed camera, and I don’t have them to share with you).
I found it interesting to suddenly be forced to NOT shoot. I had the hardest time exploring the grounds, because I wanted to document all of what I was seeing, but I also wanted to have the perfect two images to turn in. I found myself torn between wanting to quickly take my two photographs so that I could go back to exploring with my camera, and spending the entire hour searching for my images, and then photographing them. Finally, my desire to not “waste” photographic time and opportunity won. I found two images that I felt good about, framed them, shot them, and turned them in. Then I went back out with my camera to do a bit more exploration.
I did go back to one of the image locations and tried to retake it with my “real” camera. The framing is different, but this’ll give you an idea.
I was kind of on a hunt for crosses… both of the images that I submitted had crosses hidden in them in some way, inspired by this image that I had photographed the night previous…
I also found a few other crosses…
Fairly quickly, our hour was up. We headed back into the chapel to see what Will and Chris and Sarah had for us next. I was somewhat surprised to realize that the next part of the exercise was for all of the images to be projected anonymously, and then, as a group, we were to look at the images and say what we felt the images said about the photographer. This was not an attempt to analyze hidden meanings within the images, but instead to try to learn something about the photographer who captured the images. As we went through the images, I had pretty serious questions about the whole process. It seemed a bit like that time in college, when Nathan and I conspired against our English 102 teacher, and when time came to submit a poem analysis, we really submitted poetry that we had written ourselves, claimed it was by an unknown author, and laughed our heads off when she told us our analysis was wrong. How can we ever know what someone else was feeling or thinking when they capture an image??
And then the first of my images came across the big screen. And the group begin describing me. Not my image. Not what they knew of me. But me. It freaked me out a bit, I’m going to admit. No one had seen the images that I had produced for the assignment, no one knew I was the one who had taken the image on the screen, and when we shared later, everyone was shocked that I was the one who had photographed them. What does this say about me… I wonder? The images showed them not just my accomplishments as a photographer… but also my struggles and desires as a person. Shocking.
Rebirth Lesson #3- Cynicism isn’t really that cool.
Rebirth Lesson #4- Be transparent. You think you are already, but that’s still just the you you feel safe sharing.
(loved the light on Kevin during the image discussion… his baby girl, Eden joined him for a portion of this session, and was such a good girl!)
After a break during which Chris was very patient in helping me load the film cameras that I had brought to play with (a Holga, a twin lens, and a Horizon panoramic… no film has been developed yet, so that’ll be a post for some day in the future), Rachel and I headed into downtown Clarksdale to do a bit of exploring. We had been given free time to go and experience the location, and to photograph whatever might capture our attention. I didn’t really photograph a lot during this time, rather, I just enjoyed taking in the location, sharing and thinking with Rachel, and just having time to recharge and refresh.
Rebirth Lesson #5- Sometimes you don’t have to shoot.
(here are the only two images from downtown that I took with the digital camera)
As Rachel and I headed back towards Shack Up, we got a little turned around. (Sometimes my sense of direction isn’t awesome.) While driving through different parts of town, Rachel was sharing some of her journalism background with me. I was really challenged by the idea of photographing strangers, because the idea of approaching someone and talking to them out of nowhere was completely terrifying to me. I tabled that idea at the time, under the pretense of our “need” to get back. I made excuses, and said maybe I would make myself do it the next day. But by the time we had arrived back at our Shack, I had already come up with a million reasons why I was not going to be able to photograph a stranger during my time in Mississippi.
Dinner time was nearing, and the light was beautiful. I decided to spend my last few “free” moments capturing some of the textures that surrounded me… as well as grabbing a few images of the other workshop attendees.
One of the huge afternoon activities was working with wet plate photography. It was really cool to watch everyone at work…
The weather was spectacular… Someone was out napping on the lawn, and the Swan family had congregated and were enjoying a bit of relaxing in the sun. Very adorable.
The evening ended with dinner… and a conversation with Mr. Lee McCarty, owner of McCartys Pottery (in business since 1954) about business and art. It was inspiring to listen to him talk about his passions… his wife and his art.
The two things he found most important to the success of his business? 1. Be kind to people. 2. Keep regular work hours.
Interesting.
Rebirth Lesson #6- Be kind to people. Keep regular work hours.
Part 3 coming soon… with images from our evening hangout at Ground Zero Blues Club.
-amber
by amberholritz
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