A Quiet Evening At Home with Death and Theda
August 9th, 2009
I’ve been busy since I got back home from my visit to New York. But I’ll try to catch you up a bit now.
First, whatever you do, don’t use Delta to fly out of JFK in New York. I like Delta in general, but their terminal at JFK airport is horrible beyond words. It took me an hour and a half to get through check-in and security. The vast majority of that was check-in at Delta. The terminal was complete pandemonium. Absolute chaos. A huge mob of passengers, almost no organization or signage. People all around me were crying and screaming because they had missed their flights. The Delta workers were doing their best to help, but there was no way they could overcome what has to be the worst managed and organized terminal I’ve ever seen anywhere in the world. I’ve already written an e-mail to Delta to tell them I won’t fly with Delta through JFK again until they fix that mess. I asked them for a response. That was Wednesday. I haven’t heard anything from them yet.
The last time I stayed with Dave Rudin in Brooklyn I was able to use someone’s unsecured wi-fi to get on line with my laptop at his place. Not this time. Lots of wi-fi signals, but all secured. So I wasn’t able to easily do blog posts while I was there.
On Monday in addition to our trip to MoMA that I described in my last post, we went to B&H and Dave introduced me to a friend, Dean Lavery, a fine photographer who also works at B&H. Dean told us that he had heard that Adorama had just gotten in a shipment of the last run of Polaroid 600 film to come out of the factory before it closed. So we took the subway to Adorama to see if it was true. Sure enough, they had the film, but were asking $20 for a pack of 10 exposures. I am working on a little Polariod project that isn’t quite ready…but I’ve shot up all my film. Still, $20 a pack was just too much for me. Instead I bought one of the new Fuji instant point and shoot cameras and a bunch of film for it…and paid less than just that much Polaroid film would have cost. I’ll try to finish the project with the Fuji camera and film.
Yes, I do shoot film now and then.
Dave and I finished off the day Monday with a trip to the Strand bookstore and dinner at the Washington Square Diner.
Tuesday I was on my own since Dave had to go back to work at his job. I went to the NY Public Library where, “under the lions,” I met the beautiful and charming Claudia of Museworthy. What a treat it was to meet and talk with her. We sat in Bryant Park behind the library and talked for several hours…moving from time to time to get away from the jack hammer crew that seemed to be following us around. I love Claudia’s blog. Now I know that the author is just as lovely and charming as her words would indicate.
After Claudia had to leave for her evening modeling job I walked over to the International Center of Photography at one corner of the park and spent a couple hours looking at the Richard Avedon exhibit. Well worth a stop if you are in NYC while it’s up. I do have to say that, while the prints were certainly of high quality, I didn’t completely agree with the decisions about how they were printed. Of course, I know that the norm for fashion black and white is high contrast, but in many of the prints there seemed to be so much contrast that there was very little detail in the blacks. Often the black areas just became a large black shape with no detail at all. I have to think this was intentional, but I don’t think it was particularly effective, nor was it a good example of what a black and white print can be. But the photos are excellent, even with that print quality. And I had to enjoy that there was a great series of photos Avedon did featuring a fashion model and a skeleton.
After the ICP closed I went back to Bryant Park and sat for a while, checking my e-mail with my i-pod touch on the free wi-fi there. Then I caught a subway to the upper west side where I met my good friend Diana Diriwaechter for dinner and a long evening of good conversation.
Then the long, uneventful subway ride back to Sheepshead Bay and Dave’s place. And up the next morning to go to JFK and enter Dante’s Delta Terminal. Death returned to Ohio with me in my checked bag, which, once again, was not opened by TSA. Damn!
So, with that segway, we’ll return to Death and Theda. We had a good time with Death. As you can see, Theda feels right at home with him…or maybe he feels right at home with Theda. I’ll share a couple more from that part of our shoot and get to a few somewhat more serious photos in my next few posts.
Theda Playing Chess With Death:
Theda Cheating Death:
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