Personal Surveys

Providence

The Photo Comp

Little Essex Street

Personal Calibration

52 Sundays

The Crosses of the
Northern Neck

Personal Calibration

For Christmas, 1995, Jill gave me a point and shoot camera. I had been living in the New York City area since 1981 working as a photo technician, photographer's assistant, and catalog photographer. Often I wished that I had a camera with me as I went about my daily routine. Once, on West Fourth Street, I observed a roach dragging a lit cigarette butt across the sidewalk. Now I carry the camera with me at all times. Personal Calibration is a result of the raw data that I was able to collect as I went to and from work, ate in restaurants, drank in bars, wandered around the city and rode the subway.

Some of the things I have been able to to ascertain and judge are: Only men sleep unprotected In public. People of all races go missing. Gin is my liquor of choice. African American and Latin women have fancy nails. What was once a technical miracle is soon a piece of crap. The Psalms are very popular. If you see your image on a TV, you are drawn to it. Sometimes, briefly, New York City reveals its true nature. In that brief instant it shows itself for what it truly is: a swirling, chaotic maelstrom. All New Yorkers subconsciously understand this. We are able to lay only the thinnest veneer of reality between us and the storm, so as to be able to conduct ourselves day to day. We need to ascertain, we need to rectify, we need to standardize, we need to adjust. Those who cannot find sleep or heaven.

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