Dennis Fox’s Weblog

Last weekend I took part for the first time in an annual local event, Brookline Artists’ Open Studios. My BAOS blurb said this: “Photography from abstracts to photojournalism, recent Israel/Palestine focus.” In addition to the more-typical art-lovers who wandered by, a number of visitors told me they were drawn by the Israel/Palestine mention. Some of them stayed a long time, talking about the politics behind the photos, asking about my impressions, and watching parts of a slideshow I set up alongside some of the prints. Those who stuck around seemed pretty much on my political wavelength.

Even those who came without Israel/Palestine in mind seemed to take the photojournalism in stride. I wasn’t sure how this would go, here in heavily-Jewish liberal Brookline where, as I’ve noted over the years, Israel’s faults just aren’t on most town residents’ radar. Indeed, a few BAOS visitors left quickly after glancing at my wall. Israeli soldiers tear-gassing nonviolent Bil’in protestors wasn’t what they were looking for.

I showed other photos, too, in somewhat separate spaces - abstracts, portraits, landscapes. Listening to two days of positive feedback about these was very exciting, especially since I’ve never shown my non-I/P work like this before. I even sold a few prints and photobooks, tempting me to try to do more so I can upgrade my camera equipment and software before my next Middle East visit.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestine, photography, photojournalism

Those of you who like my photos might want to look at the new (still short) list where I brag about where they’ve been published, exhibited, or used in other ways.

The list doesn’t include all those people who simply link to my photos from MySpace or other pages without asking permission, giving me credit, or linking back to my site. I learn of this when my website statistics show lots of hits from various sites around the Internet, where I then discover a photo of mine being used as background or to make one point or another. Every time someone looks at those pages it registers as a hit on my photo site, but the viewer never sees my site and doesn’t know that’s where the image comes from. I find this annoying.

Most attention has focused on my photos of Israel and Palestine, as in the currently running Dialogue on the Wall exhibit in Minneapolis. I’m glad these have proven useful for a variety of organizing purposes. That lets me combine my various artistic, political, and even academic interests. I hope to do more of this.
Still, I like my apolitical subjects, too. I become fascinated by things I stumble across, and have been experimenting with different strategies as I try to improve my skills.

Here’s one I took the other day of a muddy San Miguel River running by my cousin’s house in Colorado. One of many.

After a month off from blogging, it’s hard to decide where to begin. So first a comment on my bus and train travel.

To visit friends in a few different places, I took a bus from Boston to Cincinnati, then the next week to East Lansing, Michigan. A few days later I took a train from East Lansing to Lincoln, Nebraska and then eventually another one back to Boston. The bus part especially made me feel very old, very white, and very middle class.

The U.S. public transportation system is poor in general, and my first extended bus-train trip in at least a decade reminds me how bad it is to get from one city to the next. The majority of bus passengers along most of my route were African Americans and, leaving Boston, students. At 56, I often seemed to be the oldest person on the bus. On the trains, though, old people were everywhere; when we boarded in Chicago on the way home, the announcement telling passengers over 62 to board first drew what looked like almost half the people in the waiting area.

Bus schedules are better than train. I would have done more of the trip by train instead of bus — being able to walk around during the trip is worth the few extra dollars — but the routes were too circuitous. There’s only one train a day in each direction through Nebraska, reaching Lincoln at 12:30 am westbound and 4:30 am eastbound. Four of the five trains I took (with connections) left and/or arrived late, a couple of times more than three hours late.

Food was a problem in almost all the many bus stations I spent time in. Sometimes there wasn’t any except for a few vending machines, and when there was a coffee shop of sorts it wasn’t catering to people who care much about what they eat. That might not be so bad on a short haul, but for long-distance it’s a drag.

Trying to sleep was also a drag, though both the bus and train were better than trying to sleep on a plane. Train seats especially are more comfortable than airplane seats, with a lot more legroom. (I’ve never been in a sleeper car, which cost a lot, so I don’t know what they’re like.)

Despite my food and sleep complaints, I had a good time. Here at home I rarely spend a day just sitting and reading, but on this trip that’s pretty much what I did. Talked to a few people on and off. Watched the scenery go by — not as exciting as on the trips I took long ago through mountains and desert, but interesting enough.

In both Michigan and Nebraska, the train stations had pamphlets asking passengers to fight cuts in train subsidies. From what I read it looks like schedules are destined to get even worse, and both bus and train travel is likely to become even more inconvenient (Greyhound has also been cutting routes). The further decline of Midwest towns and small cities may be the result — not being able to take a bus wherever you want may not bother people who can afford to fly, but even if the poor can afford a plane ticket they still often need a bus to get to the nearest city with an airport.

In a society that really cared about such things, public transportation would be a lot better.

I’m headed to the West Coast again. The flight left late, and now, a couple of hours into it, there’s still almost four hours to go.

For the past hour or so I entertained myself by leafing through every page of the Sky Mall catalog that United has thoughtfully placed in every seat pocket. The cover promises “over 500 new products!” I turned the page from electronic gadgets to security doo-dads, from office furniture to pet houses, from swimming pool toys to massage tables. Most of the time I stared in amused disbelief at the golf accessories and pampered pet products and hidden video cameras . Who would buy that innovative new tie rack that conveniently holds 76 neckties? Or that pop-up hot dog cooker, just $49.95?

In between my sneering, of course, I found a few things I myself could force myself to buy if I had the extra cash. I’m not completely immune to the consumerist lure; this is, after all, a G4 iBook I’m writing on at the moment. But the catalog’s obvious pitch to people with scads of extra money clarifies how class-based our economy really is, and how easily people with money become accustomed to finding a product to rid eliminate every inconvenience. Flying offers an experience where disposable income is assumed, from the in-flight shopping to the airport stores to the ads for ever-more-expensive vacation paradises.

Bus, the other end of interstate travel, offers a different experience. My May bus-and-ferry  trip from Portland, Oregon to Vancouver Island took a whole day, long enough to remind me of my long-past coast-to-coast bus trips. Bus travel reveals different assumptions — people with limited funds, bus stations with junkier food, dirtier bathrooms, inconvenient connections. Still, I’ve always liked it — the slower pace lets you see where you’re going, the tired passengers are more varied and often pretty friendly, you get to see the drivers pay attention to the road. And now that passengers can’t smoke, the actual journey is no more uncomfortable than flying (though still not as pleasant as taking a stroll through a train).

I expect to do more bus travel later in the summer and fall; it remains a great way to make a lot of stops without expensive one-way plane flights. I’m looking forward to it.

But maybe first I’ll get one of those travel cushions Sky Mall is selling. Could come in pretty handy, after all.