today was really excellent.

First, the issue of continuing the project: i have decided, for the
meantime, to stop walking. this is more than anything because i have a
thesis to write (remember?) and i was so focused on walking that my
timeline got past me. this is generally a problem of the school schedule
vs. the rest of the world, but i also took getting busted as a sign. i
have what i am going to get from walking for now, and perhaps i will
continue later. i hope this doesn't disappoint anyone. oh, and i'm going to take a few site visits to some spots of particular interest in the next few weeks.

But today was really fantastic.  i went out art-making with daniel cheek, one of the artists for this project.  Mostly I have found folks by sending out calls for artists, but I must have found Daniel when I was looking for Martinez artists because he used to do work on Martinez (and Benicia) and the oil refineries there.  He told me that his work is largely about things that are not native, things that struggle to survive in the landscape.  This exceptional landscape was part of his attraction to the project.  Oh, and he likes choo-choos.

Dan shoots with an 8x10 camera, which I'd never seen in person before.  It looks like this:

all old-fashioned like, with the  big adjustable bellows-y part.  And a black cloth for putting over your head to see the image.

The way it works (which I didn't know until today) is that the film itself is 8"x10" and that's why the whole camera is so awesomely huge.  It's also what makes the images come out in really beautiful detail.  Also, you see the image in the viewfinder upsidedown and backwards!  So the whole idea of finding the image is, I think, really different. 

So we started off in Emeryville, on the walkway above the tracks.  I hadn't really thought about the "up" dimension so much before, so that was the first way that having someone new around totally challenged my perspective on the tracks.  It's actually a pretty cool spot.

Most curious to me was a man up on the landing who was there with a digital camera and a walkie-talkied.  He's a train-watcher.  He goes up there about once a week and watches for trains, and then catalogs the ones he's seen in a scrapbook.  Like a birdwatcher.  Once again, people love trains.  And I want to know why.   

Also, I find this fascinating.  It makes me wish that as part of my fieldwork I had gone out more often, even when I wasn't walking, just to spend time by the tracks.  I bet I would have found lots of people doing interesting things.  (In fact, this was another situationist stunt, a contrast to the derive -- they would just hang out someplace like a train station all day long just to see what would happen.)

Also, Dan and I had been talking about how he got interested in this project, how he was really into trains as a kid, Lionel set and everything.  I asked him why children love trains so much --  "I don't know," he said "maybe because they're big and powerful." 

It takes Dan a while to set up each shot, which is also interesting.  So we chatted a lot.  And waited for trains.

They're really different passing beneath.  Really beautiful to watch.  The landscape is different.

We crossed over to an older pedestrian bridge and shot from there too.

We also had an interesting conversation about what it means to curate something like this.  Because I have never curated, nor taken any instruction in doing so, I'm sorta' flying by the seat of my pants.  I have secured a place for the show, though I could use a few more artists.  Anyone know artists in Richmond?

In any case, the real meat of the conversation was about race in the art world.  How I am working with mostly white artists, none of whom I fault for being white artists, but how I might do things so that wouldn't be the case in the future.  It's a tough one, particularly when you're sending out calls for artists and just hoping someone responds.  He works in an art gallery, and describes the same problem.  I would really like to open up the conversation on this topic.

Next stop, Emeryville's Shellmound street.  This is a particularly interesting and problematic place, as it was a Native American burial ground and now it's a mall.  There has been some uproar about it over the years, but the economic interests won out.  And it's certainly one of many spots like this in California.

We went up on top of a parking garage to shoot, once again up.  So much new perspective.  I also found this hole in the fence to the tracks:

Holes like these are definitely a "type," a category.

Then we left E-ville, and off to the Oakland station by Jack London square.  It took a while to find a shot, but eventually Dan got the station with a train and a car and some condos, and and and... The thing about a large-format camera is that you're able to shoot so much in one image. 

And while Dan was setting up a shot, I got to take a photo of myself in the reflection of his viewfinder.  :)

I also noticed this sign.  (It's worth clicking to enlarge.)

Funny, this drive for 'placemaking' in cities.  When the area was just waterfront warehouses, it wasn't a district with special signs.  When the warehouses are converted into fancy apartments, however...

In my neighborhood (Temescal) I was just told in a neighborhood newsletter how we feel more like this is a place because there are flags on the lampposts identifying the neighborhood.  I didn't notice the flags.  And I moved here because I like the *feel* of the place... not the idea of a feel.  Certainly an interesting problem. 

So last photo.  (Dan can only carry around so much of this film at once -- each one comes in a heavy folder.)  We had seen these carts at the station earlier, an object of total fascination for me.  Like they re-built everything but kept these. 

I love them.

The last stop of the day after we ran out of film was the cemetary in Piedmont, right near my house.  I was surprised I had never been there. It's really pretty amazing.  Dan showed me this grave:

It belonged to Charles Crocker, one of the railroad robber barons.   At once interesting and a reminder that I don't know as much about railroad history as perhaps I should or would like to.  That has taken a definite backseat to the other work I've been up to.  And the reading I do never even feels done. 

Comments

[Irrelephant]

I find it utterly cool that your friend is out trainspotting with a camera that looks like it could well have come from the same time-frame as the first steam engines!

I've been quietly lurking for a while, a friend of mine who knows I'm a big trainfan led me to you just at the time you got busted for your very neat project. I finally got prompted to comment when you posed the "Why do people watch trains" question, and frankly I've not got an answer. *s* I'm going to have to sit and ponder that one for a while, and see if I can't come up with a good answer for the both of us.

Best of luck on the thesis!

[freelance writer jobs]

I think that it was even better!