Revisions/Reconsidered

I'm showing a pair of sample images that I have reconsidered in this era of the pixel. What began as a series of objects photographed on a lightbox in the 1990s, with a 4x5"view camera using film,  I am now finding has an alternate existence in the digital realm.  The new images were always there, it just required new means through the tools of technology to find them.  Jim Staub_November, 2018

             

Chalk on the Walk - The Artist and the Spectator

Pasadena, California has a great number of arts related events, in addition to many galleries and museums found within the city.  One of the more popular art events is the Spring, once known as Chalk on the Walk and now, The Pasadena Chalk Festival. It has been going for over 20 years and grows in size each year with participants and spectators. I went to one of the first modest chalk events, so I can vouch for the event's thriving success of the present.

With the volume of people at the Chalk Festival it is always a good chance for the street photographer in me to exercise capturing the interactions and elements that come together to make a well timed image. The artists are caught up in their open air concrete 'canvas' chalk works. The observers are there to see the artists in their focused passion of creativity. The photographer is there attempting to catch the interplay between the forces chalk brings together... in approx. 90 min. of meandering.

Jim Staub, 11-2-18

The People's Provisional Property

My experience with the Pasadena Rose Parade goes back to 1967 when my father parked my brother and I at a busy corner of the parade, and went to work policing the parade. It was a long stay standing in one spot that day. We had a Kodak Brownie camera and maybe snapped 3 pictures.

In 1972 I took a 35mm camera to the parade, while in a college photography program,  and began a  annual study of the Tournament of Roses that has continued to the present. No longer stationed in one location, I roamed the parade route, new areas at each parade.

Documenting this annual event has provided me a chance to observe the habits of people who assemble for that brief time along the parade route. I have been intrigued about the means the public arranges themselves for optimum viewing prior to the advancing parade.  It could be atop ladders, cars,  motorhomes... or, arriving early and marking off a sector of the sidewalk with chalk or tape. The city of Pasadena paints a blue line on the street to give the public a boundary line not to cross during the festivities.

Below are a number of examples from several recent parades of what I have come to term, The People's Provisional Property. Hmm... that's a bit stuffy.

Thanks for looking. Jim Staub, May - 2018