Last year I spent some time in neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro that could be described as depressed. Because of government incentives to clean up the criminal activity in these neighborhood (favelas in Brazilian Portuguese), their internal landscape is slowly changing. Will the change be good or bad for the people of the favelas? Personally I don't know. Getting rid of the criminal gangs here is obviously a step in the right direction, but there is a social vacuum created by the elimination of the current power structure there. It is clearly a social experiment work in progress.

The slide show below is a compilation of images I took over a month last year when working on a project in the favela and a neighborhood just outside of one. The music is Tom Waits' Talking at the Same Time. The full size image slides can be found here: http://www.borrowedlightphotography.com/Art-and-Photo-Stories/The-Neighborhood/21178945_SqQdSq

THE MACHINE IN MY GARDEN

There’s a Machine in my garden, and it is definitely not the one that Leo Marx wrote about. It’s been silently rusting & weathering in the right back corner by the fence for decades, never thinking but always knowing. All its delicate pieces are gone now, what’s left is the rough evidence of its strength clad in a seductively rich, dark, flaky red cloak. It can stare down any invader; its self -assured gaze never wavers. Why from its front gate it can even see the red cows in the pasture across the pond.

Years ago, The Machine would gobble acres of wild grass and spit out neat cubes of dried hay, identical in every way.Conformance, after all, was the key to survival back then. Also, the grass stretched to the horizon giving it an endless task to complete. There were no limits and there were no consequences until, one day, it stopped in this small god-forsaken corner of my conciousness. It grew comfortable and didn’t move; it just waited for something to happen.

The Machine waits for a chance to rise again and conquer new unruly fields. It has an analog memory that stores its processes in thick coils of corroded steel.And those coils know that the simple life is the happy life and that only the weak snivel about seasons and the future. The Machine exists for the NOW and always has, never moving quickly but always moving deliberately, building momentum by the mile and becoming increasingly difficult to stop until a total breakdown steals its power. It never ever changes (except for those annoying tiny parts falling off damn it!).

However, as The Machine sits and waits, the fields change. Now they are fewer, richer, more rational and disciplined. The fields work with the newer digital methods of exponentially increasing complexity and elegance to achieve a tenuous balance between machine and nature. The field is now infinitely responsive and no longer needs the brute discipline of The Machine. Sadly, The Machine can no longer move.It seems that the tiny missing parts were critical to its purpose. The coils tight with potential have no vehicle for release. Even sadder, The Machine doesn’t know it cannot move. Reality is no longer a part of its existence.

But rust is.

Bones

There are the bones of giants that can still be found along the Road to Nowhere.
They are the bones of an ancient race that disappeared billions of nanoseconds ago.




They are the bones of a world of bright neon.




They are bones of faded yet imposing stature.




They are bones upon which once hung messages of importance.




They are bones that once bludgeoned those messages into our small and weak perceptions.




They are the giant remnants of an analog world, a world that was replaced by the age of the digitals. But they continue to impress.

Seawillow Road

The summer of 1971 sure seemed like an electric technicolor wasteland. It was Texas hot and dry and I was a teenager then, that time of freedom when you know both everything and nothing at once. It was a time of aimless mental wandering along a bright and dusty way lit by confusing flashes oversaturated Polaroid colors because, in 1971, there was war, a deteriorating environment and an uncertain economy. Lots to think about.

Even in a small and unknown place like Seawillow, the music of that time resonated with a naive, pure energy. Songs like Babba O'Reilly were about those BIG issues. And for some reason, the music I liked best seemed to also describe a journey. Maybe some answers there? But back then, the road ahead seemed loud, exciting, bright and uncertain, mainly because it was.

The summer of 2010 sure seems like a wasteland of another color. Seawillow Road is now mostly forgotten, but still Texas hot & dry. Not much changed on this road except that it is paved... mostly. It's a little less dusty, a little less bumpy and the colors have faded revealing the darker toned clarity of black and white and beautiful shades of grey. And it is not less interesting.

It is a way slightly more organized and guided by a map crammed with chaotic memories that defy cataloguing. I am wandering still, but maybe with a little more purpose. All I really know is that the landscape hasn't changed that much and the music I hear as I travel describes a richer path traveled by Miles and 'Trane.

But the echoes of Baba O'Reilly still resonate.

Tropical Heat

Tropical climates have weird and wonderful light. That weirdness, combined with a relentless heat, tends to translate

into the wonderfully vibrant colors typically used on everything from shirts to signs. On a recent trip to Mexico, I was impressed by the use of color on buildings,

especially the small workaday ones like corner bars and restaurants. The strong colors and light inspired me to create this series of photographs celebrating color and heat.

Or maybe it was just the tequila.

There's a Shark in my Garden

This is my garden. It exists in the crack of time between dusk & night.


It exists in many places in a single moment, quiet with muted colors and gentle warm breezes and more than a few scary things. It reminds me of an old Japanese story about sushi.

Once there was a Japanese ship's captain who fished for sushi fish of all kinds. The fish he caught were put in a large tank of fresh seawater on his boat.



He cared for them carefully and fed them well and they had a good and safe life on his boat. He sold his fish to a restaurant, but the owner of the restaurant complained that his fish were bland and the customers were not satisfied. The captain thought about this. On his next voyage he caught his fish and cared for them carefully.



He also put a shark in their tank.



The fish swam vigorously and only the most clever and creative outwitted the shark and survived. Ultimately, their individual fate was the same as their colleagues, but they were remembered for their tastiness.



Maybe I need more sharks in my garden

Arcosanti

In 2007 I made what was, for me, a pilgrimage to place I had studied years ago in architecture school: Arcosanti. One of my professors had been spent a few months working there in the late '60's



and he had told us about the rise of a theoretical city in and of the desert; a place that was a mind meld of architecture and ecology.

Paolo Soleri first envisioned Arcosanti in the late 40's or early 50's. The idea of arcology (architecture+ecology) was born in the heyday of mid 20th century urban sprawl. If you are not familiar with Paolo Soleri's ideas, a good source of information is arcology.com. My overly simplified short version (at least as I understand it) is that Soleri's idea of the city is based in creating extremely dense urban environments, called arcologies, through a complex miniaturization of



infrastructure that would necessarily include both passive and active systems. This results in a city that, theoretically, requires only about 2% of the land area of traditional cities of similar population. This frees vast amounts of land to either remain in its natural state or be cultivated to feed the urban population.

A great theory, but difficult to apply in a practical way given our then and now technologies. Even though there have been tremendous technological advancements in the past 50 years, advances that would seem to help move arcologies from theory to practice, not all apply. For example, advances in wind power generation may not be what Soleri had in mind because of the sizable land area required to generate meaningful amounts of power. However many of the advances in solar energy technology have been in the miniaturization and increased efficiencies of collection devices that would seen to align with the theories of arcologies.

Even more important than the technology, however, is the need for the urban form to be organic, sensitive to nature and in tune with the cycle of the sun and seasons



to afford maximum efficiencies that such densities require. Without the proper orientation to nature and artful manipulation of form and space an arcology would be all but impossible.



At any rate, it's better to read what Soleri himself says at arcology.com.

The photographs here represent what I saw in December of 2007 at Arcosanti. I was impressed by the theory and that people could actually pull off a practical demonstration of such a complex theory. Arcosanti is a real place where people live, make things, build, socialize and they have done so for decades. It seems sustainable, but clearly there is much work to do. I'm looking forward to visiting again to see how both theory and place continue to evolve.