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Wave of Nazaré
From an inspiring visit to Nazaré, the fishing village about two hours north of Lisbon and during the winter months, world famous host to Big Wave Surfing championships.
Ice Scream
I’m not particularly picky when it comes to gelato. Fact is, I can pretty much enjoy just about any flavor and taste as long as it’s not rum or eggnog. Adding rum to gelato (or ice cream) is as bad as putting pineapple on a pizza or using canned tuna for a pasta dish. Culinary blasphemy, I say. If I had to choose one single flavor, I’d pick pistachio any day of the week.
In Lisbon, there’s an American fellow named Larry. Larry’s from New York where arguably some of the best gelatos can be bought, in no small way thanks to all the Italian Americans living there. Larry moved to Lisbon about four years ago to start an artisan gelato business. He’s got a couple of places now and judging from the line outside his Popbar parlor not too far from where we live, Larry’s doing just fine. His Popbar‘s pistachio gelato on a stick is phenomenally tasty. Gelato on a stick, you ask? Yup. Pretty neat, huh?
As I’ve been told, the main difference between gelato and ice cream is that ice cream, as the name implies, is made with more cream than milk. This means it’s already been fluffed up quite a bit and is filled with a lot more air (about 50% more) and contains more calories. Gelato, on the other hand, is made mostly with milk, which makes it denser and allows it to absorb more deliciousness from whatever flavor you use, all the while being less fatty. According to Larry, pound for pound, gelato is a much better deal for both your palate and your wallet.
So, if you’re in Lisbon, check out New York Larry’s Popbar. It’s another fine reason to visit this gorgeous city.
Resurfaced: Marvila
Captured this Resurfaced piece on my way to Lisbon’s art district Marvila.
The Swedish Hoarder’s House
From the somewhat related, like second cousins, documenting the Swedish Hoarder’s House yesterday morning was an intriguing albeit challenging experience, physically and mentally. It was my first, firsthand hoarder’s house, but I feel I’ve captured my visual impressions in both still imagery and filmed footage.
Resurfaced: No Doubt Nr 473
Generally speaking, I have my fair share of doubts. I think it’s part of the creative process, the evil twin or, the nagging parrot that tries to convince you of the utter irrelevancy and/or unimportance of your artistic expression. It can be a good thing, though. A necessary filter or gravity to keep the work as grounded as it should be.
I rarely feel any lingering doubt about the Resurfaced project. The work feels so real, tangible, accessible, and profoundly simple for it not to be worthy of the time I spend on it Much more so than any other art project in recent memory.
Scum
Short with my phone during a walk along the beach in Vejbystrand yesterday. Just couldn’t resist the jiggling foam (or, calling it “scum” instead of “foam”).
Resurfaced: Swedishness
Here’s a new piece that reminds me of a strange word: Swedishness. What does that even mean? It’s an old internal Ikea-adaage, but I honestly don’t know what it refers to anymore. It seems to be harder to locate new Resurfaced Artifacts. Might be the time of year, or, the fact that the surfaces I capture them on are constantly evolving as new material is added to them.
Arrived in Scandinavia late/early last night. Gusty air currents yanked the plane up, down and sideways. The cockpit crew settled us down very smoothly on the tarmac at Kastrup. Train to Malmö ran on time and by 01:30 am I was in bed. After nodding off a few times during the flight, I struggled a while before falling asleep. It’s going to be a windy, cold, sunny and busy day in Malmö.
Resurfaced: Under the Bridge
Captured this layered artifact (and a few others) for the Resurfaced series under a bridge in Lisbon, quite unexpectedly. Then again, this happens all the time. When and where I least expect to find something noteworthy, it just appears.
Resurfaced in Trafaria: Ancient Volkswagon Bus Type 2
Here’s another interesting find from my visit to Trafaria the other day. A VW Transporter Type 2.
If you’re my age, or, at least thereabouts, there’s a decent chance you’ll remember the old VW bus like the one above. There’s a new, all-electric model available these days, but from a design perspective, I think it looks shallow when compared with the original. I’m guessing the above abandoned VW Transporter Type 2 was made sometime in the 1960s or 1970s.
The house where the bus was permanently parked was in itself intriguing. I couldn’t determine if someone was still living there or not. There were some telltale signs that the building wasn’t completely deserted, but through a side window into what I am guessing was just one of several bathrooms, I saw a dove or pigeon walking undisturbed on the black and white tiled floor. Near the VW bus were two other vehicles, but both were entirely covered with tarpaulin.
In my younger years, I might have climbed the fence and walked through the house to see if there were any salient clues as to why such a beautiful house had been abandoned.
Resurfaced: Trafaria
I spent the better part of a sunny day in Trafaria, the same small town where the gigantic storage silos are and where we took the ferry to Lisbon a few weeks ago when Elle visited. It was my second visit to Trafaria and I was determined to investigate if the town had something more to offer me visually than what I had seen during my first visit. Turns out it did. Not in an overwhelming way, but still, I did locate and capture few Resurfaced artifacts which made the excursion worthwhile. Like the piece above.
Resurfaced: Plates in Algarve
I have no idea why someone (or, several people) decided to place a plethora of dinner plates on a concrete wall somewhere outside of Sagres in Algarve, Portugal. It’s one of life’s many unsolved mysteries, despite consulting Google about this interesting installation.
Resurfaced: NFT Nr 333
I just barely comprehend what non-fungible tokens (NFT) are and the concept seems so abstract, that not grasping how it works makes it feel like the generational gap is widening. At what point do you just shrug and let stuff like this just go? My gut feeling is to keep my mind lean through learning and understanding. But jeez, sometimes (often) the virtual world can be so fluffy and hallucinatory. Like being on some psychoactive drug and taking all the craziness you think of during a trip dead seriously.
Anyway, here’s a new piece for the Resurfaced series, aptly titled, Resurfaced NFT Nr 333.
Resurfaced: Layer Cake
Things are unusually topsy turvy right now. We’re somewhere in the midst of this thick, multi-layered, gooey cake packed with wants and wishes, needs and hopes. Everyone is pushing in different directions and though we’ve long known of the cake’s inedibility, new layers are continuously added. Kinda like the above Resurfaced image.
Trafaria
Shot today in Trafaria, a tiny, tired hamlet with a surprising amount of beautiful old houses and art deco buildings near the ferry to the Belém district in Lisbon where we ate the year’s very first lunch.
The big building behind the café shows a partial view of the giant silos at Trafaria Port Terminal. According to the owner Silopor’s website, the monstrous facility has a storage capacity of 200,000 MT and can dispatch up to about 10,000 tons of various agriculture products per day by road. It’s an ugly-ass eyesore for sure, but as a backdrop for this shot, I think it fits pretty well.
Oh, the old dude sitting to the right outside the café in the foreground was still quietly nursing a beer, when we returned three hours later.
Parting shot: 2021
Here’s an artifact captured from a wall somewhere in Porto, Portugal. I found it right outside a big and busy art gallery where hundreds of paintings were hanging side by side, absurdly close to each other. When I identified the part of the wall that intrigued me, I realized how much more interesting it was compared to anything the gallery was exhibiting.
Well, another tumultuous year is coming to a close. A year, like most, full of ups and downs, ins and outs. I feel both worrisome and optimistic about life. Conflicted as usual.
Creatively speaking, it’s been another remarkable year full of some fairly steep challenges and hard-fought accomplishments. Receiving acknowledgment from a few choice peers as well as the Swedish Art Council for my Resurfaced series was certainly an encouraging highlight of 2021.
The reportage-style book I produced for Sliperiet Gylsboda, the cultural center deep in the mystical woods of southern Sweden during the spring and much of the summer, was both challenging and awe-inspiring.
The commissioned films starring Lennart the Sausage Dog were both fun to produce and financially welcome.
I typically don’t make new year’s resolutions. But I do make anticipations or, at least a few solid predictions.
• I have written several short stories during 2021and I will make a stronger effort to publish them in 2022.
• My book about everyday surfers will be published in 2022. Somehow.
• An exhibit and possibly a book about my Resurfaced project will be completed by the end of 2022.
• I will return to my music experiments sometime this forthcoming spring or summer.
• A studio or ateljé with my name on the front door will be opened sometime in 2022.
Christmas Stuff
If you think about it, whether online or in a store, shopping has long been something we all do to entertain ourselves. I’m not talking about actual necessities for survival. I’m talking about stuff.
We buy stuff because we feel we deserve new stuff. We buy new stuff because we think new stuff might make us happier and feel nicer about ourselves. We buy new stuff because we’re tired of our old stuff.
We buy new stuff because we are bored and because our kids are bored and because we are bored with our kids.
We largely buy food that makes us feel better, that satisfies our urges more than our physical needs. Interestingly, we allow our tastebuds, not our whole body, to decide much of the stuff we eat and drink.
I don’t know about you, but I believe our poor planet is in a bit of a pickle. Earth is coughing up thick phlegm from the dense smoke our crazy addition to new stuff creates. Including “Christmas Stuff”.
#consumerbehavior #environmentalchallenges #planetearth #ecofriendly #ecommerce #fcktheplanet #phlemg #savetheplanet #stuff #christmasstuff
Provocative Art
The writer and novelist Joyce Carol Oates has summed up what I’ve long thought about art:
“My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.”
I completely understand if the Resurfaced project is provocative to some. I didn’t intend it to be, but if that is the takeaway for some viewers, so be it. Compared with much of my more traditional work within photography and film, be that commercial, editorial, or anything I’ve produced in between either category, the artifacts I capture in the Resurfaced series, at home, and during my travels, continue to challenge and intrigue me.
Resurfaced: Iberian Shuffle Nr03x
Another artifact from another visit to another terrific resurfaced repository, namely, Lisbon, Portugal. One of many intriguing things about this project is how each time I return to a place where I’ve found an interesting surface, there’s likely been several new posters, stickers, and, announcements posted on them.
My old Telefunken HIFI system
When I saw this old German record player in a hotel room, it reminded me of my all-in-one stereo system from Telefunken.
In the States, all I owned was a tiny transistor radio with a corded, mono earpiece. But when I moved to Sweden in 1978, all of my friends, at least my male friends, had their own stereo.
I was living with aunt Lillemor and her fiancé Karl-Erik at the time, and I think some friend of theirs donated the all-white Telefunken HiFi system to me. It was really wide and had a ton of knobs and levers. It also came with a hefty clear plexiglass cover which if you didn’t close slowly enough, would come crashing down and make the needle on the record player jump two or three tracks.
I never used the built-in cassette player much, or, even the radio. I did play the few LPs I owned back then quite a lot, one being a picture disk version of Peter Frampton’s “Frampton Comes Alive“.
I don’t really miss not having a record player and I’m definitely not glamorizing the old cassette era. What I do miss is listening to entire albums instead of randomized playlists. Especially thematic albums.
Carefully Curated and Corrugated
I notice them. And they notice that I notice them: the folks that look at me as I look at the walls and utility boxes to see if there is something interesting, a potential and undiscovered resurfaced artifact, on them. At some point, I will need to document these occurrences.