Ramey 1993

I've been going through my old black and white negatives and scanning some of them into my computer.  I have thousands, so it means looking through lots of contact sheets and identifying the ones that, for whatever reason, speak to me. I then (carefully) pull them out of their plastic holders and drop them onto the glass of my scanner.  It takes some time for them to scan, so I wait patiently and try and remember to file them correctly so I can find them once they are in my computer. In years past, I would print the images out in my darkroom, then(heavily) paint over them with oil paints.  Now, however, I'm looking for something different, but, I'm not sure what that is.

I'm not taking many photographs these days.  I have the feeling when I pick up my camera that I've already taken that picture, already seen how that particular thing would look as a photograph. In looking through these old negatives, I'm impressed by just how many not very good photos there are. The quality of the photograph never really affected the painted photo that followed since the paint changed the nature of the image so much.  Underexposed, overexposed, dirty negative--as my friends liked to point out, it didn't really matter since I was going to paint over the photo anyway. However,  there are some quite wonderful ones which have never been seen.  I may have to see what I can do about that.

The Father Book 1997

 

"As a young man, he found it difficult to pull himself together"

 

  "During his middle years, he kept to himself"

 "As he aged, he felt the noose growing tighter and tighter"

Relationships with fathers can be problematic.