Keith Johnson Photographs

The beginning of it anyway; a day that falls midway between the Ides of March and April Fool’s day.  what can that mean?  March remains the cruelest of months.

SWC/M 1997-2009

Today is the first day in 33 years that I do not own a Hasselblad.  My good friend for 12 years produced a mess of pictures has gone off to a new home in Austin, TX.  Although emotionally attached to the idea of film and to the venerable Hasselblad name, dropping it off at FedEx today only brought relief knowing that it is going to a good home and that picture making is not (necessarily) camera specific.  It was kind of like dropping your kid off at school.  I have to say: the camera had soul.

As a result of this transaction, a Canon 5D Mk2 will be the replacement (not sure about the soul part) and with it will be pretty big files made through good glass (Zeiss 25/2.8) and I won’t be scanning negs and cleaning them for hours.  I can live with that.  Not much soul though.  Lots of buttons.  Batteries, too.

Life moves along.

David Taylor has a show at the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, CT.  The exhibition is photographs and video installations entitled Frontier/Frontera looking at the border between Mexico and the US.  A document through the eyes of a somewhat neutral but impassioned viewer of the land and the people on both sides.  Regardless of your political position, the work shows us something about us.  I was particularly taken with the video work with three multiple monitor installations.  The museum is a marvelous jewel of a pocket museum with about ten galleries of first rate current work, including Taylor’s.

I have heard a bunch of terrific guitarists but boy can Elliot Fisk play.  We saw him last night at Yale at their annual Guitar Extravaganza.  He is Segovia’s last student and played baroque to contemprorary with three ovations in two hours.  That boy sure can play.  Do not miss him if he comes around again.  He is a world traveler extraordinaire.