The view from the seventh floor of where I live. I’ve been busy making paths with the steady beat of new routines for this new future. I am tired as anything, but I swear this is better than waiting. I will get better and ideas, for my camera and our eyes, are just crowding my head. So be kind, fate be kind to me. The lost & found project is going to continue this year, please be patient, all is worth waiting for. The year is just beginning and I am still existing, here is proof.

tomorrow I am boarding a plane that will take me back to new york and I am more than ready to go. the future is waiting there for me. I have nothing to lose now after this summer. and you ask me where home is and I can only tell you how it is, the closest place I can call home now, is new york, the place that got me lost from the start. I travel in circles, but they are wider with every lap around the track. the other day, I lifted my traveling feet to look underneath and found wisdom in every wrinkle.

fall two thousand and eight, let it play.

one small step forward for one small photographer.

Ahhhhh Mega-Zine is an online zine run by Joshua Heineman who I know through flickr and it features photography, writing and all kinds of art. It is a small magazine, but I believe in the work that’s put into it and the beauty that artists/writers contribute to this publication.

Ahhhhh Mega-Zine No. 4

jessica grady
anne lai
sarah meadows
summer pierre
b.t. shaw

DOWNLOAD ISSUE

The Austin Secret Photo Show was filled with light rain, but people hung around and stuck it out. Bands still played and candles stayed relatively lit. I wish I had more time during it to just sit back and enjoy, but I guess that is just how it is when you are one of the two running the show. I couldn’t have done it without andrea, so I am so glad we found out that we were in the same city, what can I say? Coincidence, perhaps.

I estimate 100-200 people who came through the cloudy night and brought flashlights, fun and talk. There were moments when andrea and I were just looking at each other thinking “it’s working, it worked, it’s happening!” and a calm contentment swam over to me. How I embraced those moments, because I have been so beaten up about this summer and what has happened that the show made all the doubt I had about living there disappear. All that work, of course, of course, worth it and more. Will see if I can find some photographs of the show that people took and everything. We were busy honeybees working and making sure the show was going smoothly.

//

So one online zine and a show that I dreamt up with a friend. I have been questioning for a long time whether I am ready to show/publish my photographs or rather when I will be. Going to one gallery to the next makes me wonder about my own work and seeing other photographers around the same age showing and submitting images to all kinds of places keeps the question very much in mind. I am 19 and somehow feel so immensely old.

I want to be very careful, make sure my photography fits with the gallery/publication and be completely sure and satisfied with my work. All in all, I just don’t think I will be ready to show at a gallery till I graduate from school. I mean my “style” is still up in the air, though this summer I stepped back and could make out a faint trail, where I could see one thing that led to the next, one coincidence that followed a previous occurrence, one image that created another and one project that formed after one ended. The view ahead gets clearer with every forward movement and I hope to see something pleasant whenever I am meant to see that view with all the clarity in the world.

Will write more later, this could be longest post so far.
13 days till I board an aeroplane to new york and everything will be just fine.

it’s all happening. 14 photographers, 3 bands, 1 night under the austin sky. this must be the peak of summer before it all rushes to September. let it play.

and the words just jumped onto the image after seeing robert frank’s photographs for his daughter. I have lived in that house for ten years and I don’t want anything to do with it anymore. it’s time to accept that home is a feeling people attach to a physical space, so where to next?

I’m throwing a little something with a friend before I leave Austin, if you’re in this pretty city, come join in on the fun, August 16th.
We are accepting submissions too,
spread the
word.

INFO.

For days I stopped taking care of myself, lost in confusion and felt truly alone, but I’ve been turning to the sunlight that has surrounded me all this time, the faces that I know so well, each giving one another bits of wisdom and beauty. We’re young, we’re hurt, we’re naive, but we’re trying.

Watching the sun set with the headlights on, seeing each other’s faces disappear under the waves, walking through the austin scenery, cooling off at the freezing barton springs, losing ourselves on the movies screens, letting coffee slide down our throats and sit in our stomachs, exchanging long rambles in the mail, etc. etc.

Though I miss you and wish things were very much the other way, I don’t want to lose myself into a black hole waiting for you and when I said that, my dear friends came to help pull me out. I once told you I was surrounded by such sweet souls and I was not lying one bit. hope you are well and that you will keep your word on staying friends, because I am reaching out to you, and just so you know, if you ever ask, my answer is yes.

Many thank yous to you all know who you are.

I’m sorry I use my heart instead of my head, you know me. I don’t want to fight you, so now we’re just friends.

I woke up early and took two buses to Progress Coffee, a place I’ve been meaning to revisit for the longest time. I went to clear the rooms in my head, open birthday cards, count my blessings, try and playback the past nineteen years, etc. etc.

The month of June came so quickly and beautifully that when it left me, it was more like a dream than anything else. This is the most perfect window that I’ll ever have the chance to rest in. It hangs a rectangular piece of light upon the opposite wall, just above my bed every evening at around 8pm. I sit in the light and watch the sun set, I sit in the light and sift through the day’s motions, I sit in the light and clear the rooms of my head making space for tomorrow.

I’ve been 19 for four days and I don’t feel any wiser, in fact everything that has happened so far has made me feel more like a child. In June, you told me where to run, the direction of home that was waiting for us, then July came, I turned 19, you decided no, and September disappeared and January went too.

I’m pouring all hope, all energy into August into a project. A newfound friend and I are going to organize a pin-up photo show…outdoors in Austin’s summer air. All I can say is: string and clothes pins, tea lights, flashlights, lanterns, tentative date August 16th, 2008 and it will all be good and fun. This is something I need to keep myself busy, to continue making this city my home and to take my dreams and make it happen. The beauty of moving on, the beauty of falling out of it, to realize it is time to wake up and start the day, thank you for June.

I just spent $122.60 on three tickets for Sigur Rós at The United Palace on September 18th, 2008. Please come in September, I don’t want to sell your ticket in the end and sit next to a stranger. Why do I feel as if we are falling apart, four days and counting, don’t make me wait like this. More photographs will come, next post will be in six days, count on it.