James Cockroft

Polaroid Week (4) – Nuttin Special

For my last Polaroid Week pack, I went with good old Color 600, fresh and in the new packaging (featuring a thin foil bag inside the box instead of the box lined with foil and a foil tear-strip at the top).

Good times.

Polaroid Week (3) – Ice Cream for I scream (2)

As yummy as it sounds, ice cream is not the answer to all of life’s problems. It might be the answer for some of them, but, really, I do better with regular, strenuous exercise.

Alas. I have no interest or motivation at present, so let’s have some Ice Cream… Polaroid Originals Ice Cream Pastels, that is.

Polaroid Week (2) – Ice Cream for I scream (1)

Really, the Spring 2019 Polaroid Week was fine, as weeks go, and I had a good time shooting Polaroids as I always do. My rampant negativity stems less from photography, than from a creeping sense of futility and inability to imagine any sort of positive future, from a personal, where am I going, what is happening, standpoint.

When shooting Polaroids of nothing at $2.25/shot is the high point, well, Mr. you need to take a long look in the mirror.

If only I could stand the sight of myself.

Polaroid Week (1) – a Deep Sea Dive

I should subtitle my entire Spring 2019 Polaroid Week “Expensive Snapshots” or “Wasted” or “Move On: Nothing to See Here” or “Testing… Testing… Testing… (No One Receiving).”

Enjoy!

Keld Helmer-Petersen – ‘122 Colour Photographs’ (Errata Editions)

Back in January 2019, Blake Andrews called attention to a sale on remaindered copies of Errata Editions’ Books on Books series at Powell’s. As of April, it’s still running, though options have shrunk quite a bit.

I don’t recall what all I picked up. I didn’t go crazy, for sure. But Keld Helmer-Petersen’s 122 Colour Photographs was one…

Joyce Tenneson Cohen (ed.) – ‘In/Sights’

In/Sights: Self-Portraits by Women, came up in (if I recall) a thread on Twitter about female photographers and under-representation in Photoland.* Published in 1978, the year I was born, In/Sights is a collection of 125 photographs from 66 photographers, selected from over 4000 submissions, solicited, culled, put together, and Introduced by Joyce Tenneson Cohen, with an afterword by Patricia Meyer Spacks.

Some of the photographers in In/Sights are well known. With my limited knowledge, I recognized Eve Kessler, Elsa Dorfman, Marilyn Szabo, and others, and given that the vast majority of the photographers were working professionals or instructors, and almost all have MAs or MFAs in photography, it’s a shame (on me, for sure, and likely also on Photoland) that more of the photographers that appear are not more well known today.

Jason Fulford – ‘Contains: 3 Books’

Long time, no review, huh. Apologies. I’ve been busy and lazy, in roughly equal measure.

Anyway.

Jason Fulford‘s Contains: 3 Books is exactly what it says it is. It’s a silver box-within-a-box that holds three books: Mild Moderate Severe Profound in a burgundy cover; I Am Napoleon in crosshatched green; and && in grey, with handwriting on the front that reads “The Tower & the Abyss/Agony & Epitaph/Feminism & Psychoanalysis/Trust & Violence/Surfaces & Essences/Symbolism & Creativity/I & Thou/Eye & Brain/Structure & Reversions/Knowledge & Infallibility/Hope & the Future/Language & Myth/The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious/Evidence & Inquiry/Ego & Instinct/Psychology & Religion/Playing & Reality/Genes & the Mind,” which I assume is the full title, hence &&.