Yours Truly Presents: Holly Miranda
March 29, 2010
For all Mankind
March 16, 2010
This segment of Al Reinert’s film, For All Mankind (1989), is astoundingly beautiful in an array of ways that need not be (and perhaps can not be) explained.
In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary For All Mankind is the story of the twenty-four men who traveled to the moon, told in their words, in their voices, using the images of their experiences. Forty years after the first moon landing, it remains the most radical, visually dazzling work of cinema yet made about this earthshaking event.
The film is set to a soundtrack by Brian Eno.
Loop Sessions — Early March
March 14, 2010
I spend all week in the Loop nowadays. It’s wild and I’m tame as of yet. My time down there will no doubt change me—I’ll grow, I’ll shrink, I’ll come to love some things and hate others. Being in such a dense and busy place like the Loop teaches me a lot about myself and slowly shapes my worldview.
I take my Leica every day and go for an hour long walk during the lunch-hour. North, South, East and West—each has a distinct flavor—I’m pretty much in the middle.
My ambition is to post a lot of work in the coming months. I want to look back at the archive as it grows and see how I’ve grown. I process the film at home in the kitchen (I’m working on enhancing my comprehension of the zone system). My goal is to make rapid strides in understanding how to make a perfect negative and how to produce a dynamic print from it. My guess would be that in half a year of shooting during lunch, I’ll come out with a dozen photographs that have legs to stand on.
Lizzy Hazle and I, (she also works in the Loop) intend to create some sort of limited-edition publication/print-package/thingamajig that will evolve out of time spent working in the Loop and perhaps more specifically on Wabash Avenue. There is a madness down there, which is sometimes also serene and we think it’d be nice to capture a bit of it in order to share and look at more closely.
But as you know, talk is cheap so I guess only time will tell–
01. Miscellaneous Zone Tests
02. The Windy City
03. Credit Moves the Modern Business World
04. The Chicago Board of Trade
05. Kinzie Street Railroad Bridge
06. The Universe Inside a Lobby
07. Noon-time Glider
08. State Street
09. New Line Tavern
10. In Between the Lines
Happy Birthday Lizzy
March 8, 2010
Happy 24th Birthday Lizzy! You can really sing along with Neil Young now. Here’s to seventy-six more wonderful years!
+ www.lizhazle.com
Leica M3 — New Zeiss Lens and Artisan & Artist Strap
March 3, 2010
You should have seen my face when the UPS man rang the bell this afternoon. It was already a nice day — the sun was shining, I had gone for a bike ride, and Spring was in the air. I hugged the two packages like a kid on Christmas morning. You will see a lot of new black and white work in the coming weeks. I’m processing film at home in the kitchen now, and with this new Zeiss 50mm f/1.5 C Sonnar, I will be shooting mostly with my Leica M3.
The leather strap was made by Artisan & Artist out of Japan. Such fine craftsmanship by both Zeiss and A&A. I am 25% Japanese and sized similarly to an average Japanese man. The A&A strap fits as if it were custom made for me.
What joy to be found in perfectly made tools! They permit us to create the work that gives our life meaning.
I’m as happy as a clam (big smile).