While You Were Here

So much for posting regularly.

The past couple of months have been unproductive – at least as far as the film is concerned.  Failed attempts to get to Toronto to meet/interview my grandmother’s first cousin, the longest living member of the Marx family (I will not say oldest – at 92 she is adept with email, maintains a sharp wit and is likely to read this); assorted technical problems, and a photographic diversion have allowed me to ignore the mountain of tapes lurking over my shoulder.

I have often heard people say things  like ‘embrace the failure’. Ok. Here’s a hug:

I had been struggling to figure out how to shoot the documents in my grandmother’s archive. Intent to avoid filmmaker rehab for “Ken Burns’ Effect” addicts, seductive pan-and-zooms are not on my menu.  To help me see these documents, letters & photos better, I decided to photograph them in their boxes, stacked and banded together in all their messy glory.  The image at the header of this blog and on my home page are from an earlier, similar effort.  I have returned to this idea in the last couple of months, shooting more stills and the result is a series of photographs that stand on their own, an archive of the archive, documents of documents of.

At the end of March I worked with artist Katy Martin to learn about how to produce archival pigment prints of these images with the intent to eventually produce a series for exhibition in conjunction with (or separately from) the finished film.  I wasn’t looking for another project but I am excited about realizing these images.  As for whether or not they helped me figure out how to shoot the documents, letters and photos for the film, that’s less clear.  But, I’ll say yes.