Casa de Punk: ARI ON FILM

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ARI ON FILM

Everyone is throwing away professional film cameras like crazy so I picked up an almost new Mamiya 645 on ebay for around 500 bucks. For non-photography dorks, numbers like 645 or 6x7 refer to medium format film sizes. So the camera shoots professional film that is 3-4 times larger than a normal 35mm negative. I shot these photos of Ari to test it out and made some quick scans. I don't have a light meter yet so I guessed the exposure. Despite all the snapshots out at night I'm really only interested in posed portrait photography. I like the psychology of someone posing for a picture that represents them. It's much more interesting to me when they know the camera is there.

I'm gonna try and do some good stuff of Ari. At times, I'm tricked into seeing him and his job as glamerous on some level. Maybe that's because I work with him and he has a lot of personality. Of course it's not very glamorous to clean up after messy idiots all day and he certainly doesn't see it that way. "I'm not a hero, I'm a coward," was his remark yesterday. But being down to earth and introspective instead of being on permanent summer vacation in fantasy camp takes bravery too. Ari used to be like (in a macho-manly way I should add) those proverbial girls who sit around complaining that all men suck instead of addressing their own problems that keep making them a target for sucky men who pray on vulnerable women and keep them under-appreciated by the good guys. He had excuses for everything like he can't make friends or date because he gets soooo nervous. Now he's come to realize that nearly everyone has this nervousness and most of us have forced ourselves to overcome it. His problems are largely his own fault and, ironically, the fault of really nice well-meaning religious people who babied him and let him get away with not having to grow up; his mother smartly tried not to baby him despite her obvious instincts to do otherwise and seems like an amazing woman.

I guess it's not news to say this but, given the GI Joe cliche of bravery that the media tosses around, I bet most men asked to name the bravest person in their life will mention a woman first. Ari would probably say his mother. She somehow scrambled to get enough money and food to raise 5 children after her husband was suddenly murdered, not to mention other things you can only imagine. For me, it's my girlfriend in college and, as I think about it now, almost all the girls I've dated. My college girlfriend had an alcoholic father and an unbelievably sketchy step-father as a kid, two other girlfriends of mine were sick and nearly died when they were young, and two more are dancers and went through what sounds like a hellish experience of rejection and demoralization in school. But far from remaining beaten down they emerged from all these things wise and strong. They're the first to cry for others in a tragedy and the first to persevere through it and not let it ruin them. To be vulnerable with your heart on your sleave, down to earth about yourself and your problems and yet bravely face the very emotionally treacherous world we live in with no shield of bullshit...and to do all that and still be a happy upbeat vibrant person who's wonderful to everyone around them is an incredibly brave and impressive thing. Certainly more than these people you meet who seem brave at first but turn out to be hiding in a manichean fantasy land and derive all of their strength from their own ignorance. Ari is an amazingly cool and brilliant guy and very few people know him well enough to really know that that's true. His job is in juxtaposition to that, as far as he's concerned, and maybe that's what ultimately interests me so much about watching him work everyday. I'll take some real and properly exposed and lit pictures of him sometime soon and we'll see what I come up with...what images define him or, perhaps intentionally or even humorously, don't.