Camera Setting

I've been drawing cameras for several years. Old cameras have a "thingness" that makes you want to pick them up and operate them. Irresistible. I remember on one of my trips for Skiing magazine, taking an old Rollei compact with me. It was built like a very small tank, armored, impregnable, to keep the light out I guess. A lot more cumbersome to ski with than my small new model Zeiss. Naturally I took b/w photos with it, trying to imitate the classic German ski photos of the 1930s.

This drawing is one of a series of Settings. The title is fun. I would take assorted objects and arrange them as if they were a place setting at a table, as if I was preparing to eat them. Delicious. This drawing appeared in The Believer.

I am not a Camera

There is a stairway up to a public balcony on a church opposite the Radcliffe Camera, giving you the best view there is of Oxford. The sweep of the High, the spires of All Souls, the narrow streets, glimpses of grass-carpeted quadrangles hidden away from the foot traffic. But it is the Camera that holds the attention. A baroque church dome divorced from its boring liturgical parts, or maybe a church built for one person. I've never been inside, but a photograph taken from this ground level perspective greets my eye when I wake every morning. It is my favorite building in Europe, but most people I tell about it think it is a one-hour photo shop somewhere in Boston.