Off On A Tangent / Ignoring The Photograph

I was driving home a few minutes ago thinking about how I was going to pull off writing about a photography exhibit when Todd would have already posted a picture of I knew not what. The pictures that I took tonight are on that old fashioned stuff, film, nowhere near ready for posting on the web. Most of them are still in the camera on a half shot roll.

Momkette was thrilled that this picture was posted, and ecstatic that I wasn't planning on writing about it because neither Monkette nor I can remember who that guy was wearing the black outfit, or where it was, but I do have vague recollections of thinking that it'd been years since it was fashionable to put metal venetian blind slats in the chain link fence fabric like that. Of course Monkette just likes to see herself featured here on the blog.

Tonight was the last Friday of the month which means the monthly "Jazz at MOCA" concert outdoors on the plaza next to city hall and in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum was open also. Frankly I wasn't too impressed with tonight's jazz group. To my uneducated ear it seemed that one or another of the instruments was off key much too frequently to ignore. Another problem was the occasional screeching feedback from the amps. After an hour of that I decided to see what MOCA had to offer. A good decision it turned out!

It was a photography exhibit by nearby Barry University's master degree candidates. The work was mostly all conventional black and white images, shot on traditional black and white film and printed on traditional gelatin silver enlarging paper. Amazing, huh?

Lucrecia Diaz showed some 16 X 20 images of people from the Key Biscayne police and fire departments. Summer Wood chose to go small with photos of perhaps 6 x 6 inches shot with Ilford Delta 400 120 roll film. You could see the entire negative and a bit of the film around the image, which is how I know which film was used. This printing style is common with 35mm negatives but I don't recall ever seeing it done with 120 roll film before. The third person who worked in a conventional manner was Thomas Daniel Burnkel, who had some almost abstract images of melaleuca trees, an Australian tree that has taken over large areas of the Everglades.

The other two photographers were too off beat for my tastes. One had multiple little square B&W prints glued to curved sheets of aluminum. The other consisted of wooden boxes constructed of random scraps of unfinished plywood mounted on the wall. A "window" on one end let you look inside, but I still haven't figured out exactly what we're supposedly looking at.

MOCA is on 125th Street between N.E. 7th and 8th Avenues. Free parking is available on lots to both the east and west of the museum. The show runs through May 11. Check out some great traditional black and white photography if you're near the area.

Councilman Scott Galvin read the above and emailed me "cute! I shared it with Bonnie Clearwater :)" Bonnie is the head honcho (honcha? honchette?) at MOCA.

As we read Scott's email Monkette suddenly piped up "Isn't that your cousin Larry Shapira? Don't you remember a few months back when he and Margie were down visiting some of her relatives and we met up with them for brunch?" Maybe I'd do better if it was MY head that was stuffed with cotton.