Double exposure project 2008

I would like to open this post with this remarkably moving commentary regarding Proposition 8 from Keith Olbermann. It speaks for itself.



On Sunday I took Wilshire down to Vermont after a hearty IHOP breakfast. There I jumped on the Metro downtown and rode to USC.

I embarked upon my ride with eyes so lovely I could have flown. I passed a car blasting Ice Cube's It Was a Good Day, and with the 'Hog between my legs, on a beautiful grey empty Sunday, I felt as if the world could have ended and I would have gone smiling all the way into the fire.

I did not go for my alma mater, I was there to revisit the landscape of my past. Most specifically my past with Samuel, who occupied four of my five years at USC. My intention was to retrace our steps, shooting over whatever Sam had shot on his travels across the Atlantic. In the end twenty-four frames could not possibly contain a history of youth.

My most exciting reunion, however, was with the rooftop of the building I lived in when and where I met Samuel. In the fever of nineteen, we fled to the roof to escape my tyrannical roommate and smoke pot.

The building is an appalling eyesore, created without any imagination or logic or even efficiency. It is small and cramped, and the floors of the apartments slope. It appears as though none of the fixtures have been changed since the building was first erected in the fifties, and the walls are sticky with years and years of cheap repainting.

I climbed the stairs, the stairs that my sister and I had dragged all my belongings up my sophomore year. I had entered as a student exited, and I was immediately hit with the smell of the industrial cleaner that USC sloppily washes all of its housing in. As I landed the third floor, I almost expected my roommate to come lurching out of my old apartment, and I felt the anxiety leap in my throat as if I were a kid again.

One more flight and I was on the roof, the door strangely un-secured, unlike all of the other rooftop access doors at USC. I ducked under the railing and discovered that some cheeky kids had done what Sam and I should have done back then.

The place had been transformed into something crudely whimsical. The fan pipes were painted in bright preschool colors, and amateurish graffiti depicted a heart and planet earth and a red squid.

The sun was just setting, casting everything in honey, and a November wind nipped crisply at my fingers. Dried leaves lay scattered across the roofing and the same chair that Sam and I would take turns sitting to smoke in was still there, terribly abused by the weather.

I shot half of my roll up there, so enchanted and so lost in reverie, I did not intend to, but the film clicked and rewound itself before I even noticed.

Roll shot, I took a seat, and reminisced, wishing I had a joint to smoke in reverence.























I consider these among the most successful.

After shooting I immediately had my film processed and printed at QuickPix in the University Village. I was not only impatient, but it seemed fitting. He had been preparing to close shop, but stayed the extra twenty minutes for me.

At one point he called to tell me the film had been double exposed. I said, "Yes, that was the point."

When I went to retrieve my prints he asked if I was satisfied, commenting on the glaring framelines. I said that it was all part of the project.

It wasn't until I came home today and looked through the photos once again that I realized the significance of the procedure. One of the many life lessons I learned this summer was that you cannot control life. You can guide your destiny with the choices that you make, but life is truly unexpected. Nor can you control love or the people you love.

The images cannot be controlled. The art is in the unexpected. In throwing caution to the wind, there are good results and there are bad results. But you never know unless you take the chance.

In these photos the landscapes of the past, the landscapes of the far away, and the landscapes of two different lives meld into one.

In this time I have come to love Samuel in a way I never could have before. It has been four months and nine days since I was last in his presence. I have come to realize that he is the only one I will ever love, and I am happily resigned to this fate. It is partially self-determined, I agree, but when I envision my future, it just seems far more satisfying alone.