Organic Photography

Did the little engine that could have a name? One of my former students encouraged me the other day (or merely commented on my facebook update...I choose encouraged) and mistakenly quoted Thomas the Train in reference to the little engine, but it got me thinking. Did he/she/it have a name? The reason it comes back to me today is that I could seriously use some motivation right now. The whole concept of the little engine is that it finds self-motivation and makes it over the hill. My motivation level is low. If it were blood pressure I would be brain damaged. I am just finding it harder and harder to make this work. It isn't so much that I don't believe in its potential, but it is more negative and, I worry, arrogant than I wish it were. Who am I to judge? As discussed in a previous blog, I also suffer from a lot of the ailments that I admonish, and I greatly dislike the era of post production we are in that requires unattainable standards of beauty. And yet I not onl...

There are some curious new phenomena I have been seeing in the world that seem directly related to my final project. I am a little concerned, actually. I am not certain if these help or hurt my point and my show. I will certainly be able to use this for the final document, but I am not sure what the statement really is in relation to where we are, what we are doing, and how advertising is starting to use the same mechanism that I am using. Thoughts? This popped up on my Yahoo account: And I saw this one on TV earlier this week: Gillette Commercial .

After a recent class and committee meeting one weekend, I realized that too many of my images were "domestically gender themed." (I don't know why I put that in quotes seeing as how no one specifically said that, but that is the consensus.) The suggestions about how I could counter this in the photography ranged from dressing up as a man version of Ren to only showing Ren in traditionally male roles. The odd part about each of those suggestions is that I think the gender issue becomes more at issue because it would appear as though I was only concerned with showing inequalities with gender. Another suggestion though, one that I had been mulling over but wasn't sure of, was to introduce a second character. The reason for this being that he could actually be male and he could drive home that this project is not about women's issues, but American issues. Especially if the two characters suffer from some of the same mallady's, which would be narcissism, vacuousnes...