Jack (Evans) Lives Here

The Beeverman

Today's post is dedicated to my friend The Beeverman, who is recovering from heart surgery. We have differing tastes in politics and religion. He doesn't surf. I don't understand why a $20K hi-fi would sound that much better than a $3K lo-fi, (especially given the abuse our ear drums have suffered at the hands of live music over the years). Yet, we get along just fine. Get well soon, mate.

Monochrome Monday (wet darkroom)

Strange Days

It's the middle of the day in the middle of summer and it's so dark I have all the lights on so I can see the keyboard. The rain has been non-stop for ever. It seems. A part of my old tin roof is leaking. Intermittently. But I am dry. This is Australia. Bushfires and floods in the same week are standard.

The poor weather has motivated me to once again arm wrestle the digital demons that rule my little laptop. Most of the time I don't understand the digital realm. It has its own logic and pecking order. A truce has been settled and the 11001101 army allow me to log into my own blog. Well I didn't buy my blog but I have visited it for awhile and I do feed it type and pixels. So it's mine. Like Granite Bay is mine because I have visited it for 40+ years.

Ownership is an odd concept around here - especially on Australia Day, which we just had. One of my friends once said "we don't own the land, the land owns us". Her family has been here for thousands of years. The rest of us came here on boats some time in the last 200 years or maybe even last week.

When I whinge about crowds on all manner of crafts, my friend will gently remind me that Australia ain't the same as it was 250 years ago and the crowded surf point is a metaphor for the country. We all arrived here on all manner of crafts. Hoping for a better life. There's ample opportunity for aggro selfishness or for sharing, for being well mannered or being rude. 

Happy belated birthday to Australia. Here's to a better life for all of us - traditional owners, long term locals, fly-in-fly-out miners, wage slaves in the city, battlers in the bush, aliens in UFO's, nature spirits, new migrants and refugees on leaky boats.

(materials used in today's blog were sourced from Germany (cameras), Japan (cameras, film, scanner), USA (film), Great Britain (film), Australia (images, food, electricity, water), China (clothing, analogue camera), Brazil (thongs), Switzerland (watch), New Guinea (coffee) and the whole earth (air))

Ozzie Ozzie Day-1

'stralia - 

17000 km of surfable coastline

a lot of it at the edge of desert

Australia Day-2 (Ozzie)

"TOP PRIORITY FOR IMMEDIATE BROADCAST
SEVERE WEATHER WARNING
for Heavy Rain 
For people in parts of the Wide Bay and Burnett, Southeast Coast and Darling
Downs and Granite Belt districts. 
Issued at 4:55 am on Tuesday 24 January 2012

Synoptic Situation: At 4am AEST, an upper trough extended over the southern
interior of Queensland. The upper trough is expected to remain slow moving today
while intensifying a little further into Wednesday. Moist NE winds will
otherwise continue to extend across southern Queensland today.   

Heavy rain which may lead to flash flooding is expected in areas southeast of
about Bundaberg to Goondiwindi today; initially developing on the coast and then
spreading inland during the day. 24 hour rainfall totals in excess of 150 mm are
possible. Locations which may be affected include Hervey Bay, Gympie, Toowoomba,
the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Ipswich and the Gold Coast.

In the 24 hours to 4am AEST, Bribie Island and Boreen Point received 119mm and
107mm respectively. 

A Flood Warning is current for coastal rivers and streams from Rainbow Beach to
Redcliffe and adjacent inland catchments. 

Emergency Management Queensland advises that people should:
* Avoid driving, walking or riding through flood waters. 
* Keep clear of creeks and storm drains. "

source: Queensland Weather Bureau 24 January 2012

Monochrome Monday (Lefty)

Serendipity

I suppose I have neglected to post much bloggage about the body surfing element of the brine experience in the last couple of years. Laziness? Lack of imagery? Maybe it's too special and too much fun to try and package up, break down, over-analyse? I have caught gazillions of waves with just my feet and hands over the years and I don't recall it being hassle (apart from my lung capacity) like board surfing can be on crowded days. And really, some days are just more body-friendly than board friendly.

So it was serendipity when three seemingly unconnected images crossed my path this week. Working on the mono one from WA last week (top), I received a cracker from a mate's session a few weeks back and then I came across the trailer for the body surfing movie Come Hell or High Water (Patagonia/Keith Malloy). Serendipity. Have a wet weekend.

Yeah!

Big Corey Harris-Wilde from the too much fun collective patiently modeling between "sets" on a flattish day in the Indian Ocean.

Yeah

Back

After watching the sun set into the sea every day, I'm back to where it rises from the sea. Bags are unpacked. Photos are barely sorted. Until tomorrow, here's one to mark for the east coast calendars.

Image above courtesy Camera People 

The 2012 Bleach Festival runs from 11 to 17 February between Elephant Rock and Snapper Rocks. Support these artists, writers, filmers, photogs and musicians, as they thumb their cooperative noses at the GFC. Complete blurbs, bios and banter at the Bleach website.

Image above and below from the Bleach website.

Wednesday Wordage (wandering westerly)

The plan for today:

land some pixels in cyberspace

percolate coffee on a gas stove

(well, reverse those two)

wash old timer body

scrape sharp object

across lathered face

taxi it to airport

spy countryside

from 400000 feet

tap toes to the Stones

and the Stone Roses

land on the other side

of this Oz island

hire a car

experience The West

back in a week

peace

textish tuesday (heat wave)

Text #1 "We be stttin in the sun for last 20 minutes. Bus peeps getting edgy. 4 buses in front not moving. At least I have music. And air con. Hope you have better luck with the computer man"

Text #2 "saw the Morning of the Earth article after you told me. Mentioned Nat & Mark Warren but nothing of Queenslander MP!!"

Text #3 "Beautiful day. Crystal clear and flat asa tack. P came down yesterday and didn't take board off roof."

Text #4 "Do you have my copy of Ocean Rhythms? Can't find it anywhere"

Text #5 "Shot some iPhone video as the bus cruised through the cultural wasteland that is The Valley"

Text #6 "Happy New Year guys. I'm DYING here. Didnt get to be until 6am,,,having a bit of the hair of the dog now...hopefully it helps."

Monochrome Monday (so many passwords)

Queen Mono

"Unearthed by John Maloof in 2007 at a local auction house in Chicago, Maier is only now beginning to be recognized as an iconic street photographer from the 40’s, through the 70’s. A body of work that spans not only the US, but the globe, Maier took more than 2,000 rolls of film, printed over 3,000 photographs and produced more than 150,000 negatives representing the street life and architecture of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the American Southwest, as well as destinations as far off as Manila, Bangkok, Beijing, Egypt, and Italy.

Invested in her bird’s eye view of the people who made industrious cities thrive and pulse, Maier captures gentle and poignant moments between parents and children, the disenfranchised and forgotten, in a country on the verge of social and political upheaval. Maier recorded historic landmarks and their demolition as developments were built to replace them over decades."

Images by Vivian Maier (RIP). Copyright Maloof Collection, USA. Text from Maloof Official Maier site.

US West coast exhibition at Merry Karnowsky Gallery US East Coast exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

"Maier’s ability to grab the right frame at exactly the right moment, with elements of lighting, movement and essence all aligning, is revealed in the remarkable fact that she seldom shot more than one picture of the same moment in time. An intensely private person who kept most of her work hidden, Maier also created a series of homemade documentary films and audio recordings that have yet to be released to the public.

Having worked as a nanny most of her adult life, Maier was described by those she cared for as “a free spirit, but also a proud soul,” - “a quasi Mary Poppins figure.” She was, in the accounts of the families for whom she worked, very private, spending her days off walking the street taking photographs most often with a Rolleiflex camera. At the end of her life Maier became impoverished, but several children she had cared for pooled their money together and paid for an apartment and other necessities in her later years. Unbeknownst to them, a storage locker that contained a slew of negatives Maier had secretly hidden away was auctioned off due to delinquent payments.

Maier died in 2009 at the age of 83, before the extent of her legacy had been fully understood or revealed.

The Maloof collection is comprised of roughly 90% of Vivian Maier’s work, which has been meticulously reconstructed, archived and catalogued. The collection consists of 100,000 to 150,000 negatives, over 3,000 vintage prints, hundreds of rolls of film, home movies, audio tape interviews, original cameras of Vivian Maier, documents and various other items."

Long May You Run

"Rollin down

that empty ocean road

gettin' to the surf on time"

from Long May You Run by Neil Young 1976