Picture Notes

Partisanship?

I made this photograph several years ago when the house and the senate were both controlled by the republicans and at that time it had no further significance and didn’t even think about any political symbolism. But today there is a new wind blowing and I like to think of this air as cleaning out some of the stale smoke and anthrax dust that has been surrounding and choking up the country for the past 7 years. I feel a shift, a minor earthquake, a change in the economic fortunes of the country, an expansion from the narrow minded thinking that has stolen our resources and sent our money to foreign lands and I see a political landslide, a new reality in the political fortunes of many who will be sitting on the wrong side of the aisle during the next election.

I like this kind of change, it’s refreshing and invigorating. I also like to use old fashioned words like invigorating and conundrum, words that you find on packages of cough drops. So carry on America, make the world love you once again by electing a minority or a woman - take your choice but please leave the old white men out of it, leave them wondering what happened.

This is what I like most about digital photography, being able to use parking lot lights for lighting. I realize that this really isn’t much of a photograph - it’s just a bicycle locked up on a railing in front of a fast food place. It’s about 5:15 pm during the winter and I’m walking home from the metro with my digital camera. I like the confusion though and the negative space and the shapes that are created with the metal and in the middle of all this visual noise there is an orange diamond with instructions.  It’s kind of an over the top snapshot. Anyway, here it is. Another day in the suburbs. What a funny word, suburbs. It’s an old word - [Middle English suburbe, from Old French, from Latin suburbium : sub-, sub- + urbs, urb-, city.] suburbium is more fun to say.

I’ll get back to more faces next.