National Park Umbrellas.

Ok, and it can't really be called a series-- I only have two photos-- but here's some fun images of umbrellas taken at national parks to close out this slightly odd week's photos. Maybe it's just the rainy patches we've been having in Cape Town that inspired me? Either way, hope this weekend is sunny-- for you, and for me.

Pictured above: Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
Pictured below: Machu Picchu, Peru.

National Park Signs.

Compared to the photographs of restrooms I showed yesterday, these photos of National Park signs make for perhaps a more normal series on the mundane side of travel and tourism. Sometimes I liked the signs for how they added a layer of visual meaning through which to interpret the site, like at the Grand Canyon; sometimes I liked the unusual iconography, like at the Bayon at Angkor; other times I was just struck by an odd phrase, like at the Valley of the Kings, or at Mlilwane Park in Swaziland.

Pictured (from top): ‘Grand Canyon Vista’ at Grand Canyon NP, Arizona, US; ‘No sitting on Balustrade’ at the Bayon at Angkor, Cambodia; ‘Look at the Glory of the Ancient’ at Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt; ‘Fish Poaching is Stricly Prohibited/ Keep Away from Waters Edge, Crocodiles!’ at Mlilwane, Swaziland; ‘No Visitors Beyond this Point’ at Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe.

National Restrooms.

In looking through the archives of photos I’ve taken, I often see recurring themes develop. Often I’m conscious of these trends; I like to take photographs of certain colours, say, or of modernist architecture in unusual places. Sometimes, however, strange themes occur within my work without my having been aware. Like, for instance, these images of National Park toilets. Looking over them individually, I can recall why I took each individual photo: I liked the offbeat composition of the outhouse and boulders in Joshua Tree; I was caught by the pattern of light inside men’s room at My Son; I was amused by the way the ablutions at Great Zimbabwe were made to mirror the historic architecture of the ruins—but looked at as a recurring theme, it comes off a little strange. This isn’t exactly a regularly recurring subject of mine (there are, after all, only five such photos between a period from 2003 to 2008)—yet still frequent enough to warrant notice. The best explanation I can provide is that one of the larger themes I explore in my photography is the more mundane aspects of travel and tourism—and thus these images of themed National Park restrooms have found their way into my collection. Does that make it seem any less odd?

Pictured (from top): Voortrekker Monument, Pretoria, South Africa; Joshua Tree NP, California, US; My Son, Vietnam; Tikal, Guatemala; Great Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe.

Motel.

The new title banner comes from the above photograph, taken of a beautiful old motel in Northern Arizona. In searching for a new banner for Primitive Culture, I was tempted at first to use an image from Southeast Asia to reflect my current locale, or of Africa to reflect my favorite continent. But there was something about this old motel sign that I loved, so in the end I went with something a little closer to my origins. On my last big American roadtrip, I collected photographs of desert motels from all over California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. Here are some of my favorites.

Gila, Arizona

The two on the left are from Las Vegas, NV, the other is from Hollywood, CA

Amboy, Mojave Desert, CA

Albuquerque, NM

Albuquerque, NM

Street Art.

When I was fifteen, I went to Europe with my parents. I remember arriving at a formal garden in Spain, and being so disappointed that all of the sculptures had been vandalized, and covered with graffiti. I had wanted to take photos, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to get a single shot of a pristine sculpture. Looking back on it, I wonder: why did I want to?

Much like I've learned to photograph billboards, I've also grown to like taking photos of street art. By street art, I mean graffiti, tagging, and sticker art (am I using the term a little too inclusively?). I mainly take photographs of street art for the same reason I photograph billboards- I like the combination of flat graphic elements in a real setting in a flat photograph, I like the way that graphic design interacts with the real world, etc. There are, of course, some questions that this photography practice raises (example: can a photograph of art also be art?).

The above photographs are from Los Angeles, and below are some photographs of street art in Copenhagen, Cape Town and Beirut. Part of the reason I take these photographs is out of an appreciation for the street art itself. Beyond that, there's a graphic element to the photographs I like- especially in the below photo of Copenhagen, in which the arrow on the street echoes the shapes on the wall. I think another thing about street art that draws me is its living quality. This may be a ridiculous comparison, but it reminds me of San rock art. I remember reading that in some sites and on some rocks, they would find rock paintings spanning from different centuries. Though done centuries apart, the pieces were set in conversation with eachother- one artist would respond to the work of another, and change the meaning of the original. In a similar way, street art is often layered, and often set in conversation- both with the work of other artists, and also the building and neighborhood in which its done.

Copenhagen, Denmark

Cape Town, South Africa

Beirut, Lebanon

Copenhagen, Denmark

Billboard photography.

I've always struggled at photographing cities. In part, I had been trained that I should crop out all 'unsightly' elements when planning a photographic composition. I took this somewhat severely, and would attempt to photograph streets and buildings so that they did not contain crowds of distracting people, signs of traffic, telephone poles and their mess of wires, and advertising billboards- the elements of a city that make it a city, basically.

This generally created very dull photos. More recently, I've been trying to strategically include those elements in my photographs. I think working billboards into the compositions has been most challenging. I've tried a few methods, like using the structures of billboards for visual or thematic contrast with the scene, or to give a sense of time and place to the photograph.

Halab, Syria

Hollywood, CA

Beirut, Lebanon
West Hollywood, CA

Maputo, Mozambique

Downtown Los Angeles, CA

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

I'm attempting to included billboards in my photographs for a few reasons. In part, I'm interested in the way that art and graphics interact with our lives, and the way that advertising creates a visual intrusion into the landscape of the city. I'm also interested in the flat, graphic nature of photographs- I try to emphasize this by including flat elements in the photograph against a shallow background, like the Air Zimbabwe billboard, which merges with the building below it against the backdrop of the sky.