So this is what one does having finished finals and has nothing to do, no reason to go to bed early, but also guilt over just staying up late and watching movies: recycle homework!


I'll get more into the particulars of highlighting this flash of a semester. I'm feeling more mechanically inclined than creatively at the moment so I'm going to get started on something I told myself I would do once the semester was over: translate my photo projects for my French class and post them here. 


Photography, you ask? French? Why yes. That's exactly what I thought. This unlikely pairing of a college course that blessedly fulfilled grad requirements were responsible for bringing to life one of my favorite college courses to date. 


Remember how 2 years ago I bought myself a DSLR camera to justify my summer exile to the states? And remember how I was going to take classes and learn how to use it so that when I finally went abroad I would be able to use it to take fantastic pictures? Well the truth of the matter is, I didn't really learn how to use it until I was pretty much forced to. I'm sure that doesn't sound familiar at all, right?

I know I've mentioned my critical theory class from last class that I loved. This photography class was taught by the same teacher and not only did it force me to get comfortable with my camera and with the idea of pretending to be all artsy-fartsy, but it gave me a fantastic introduction to the history of photography and photographic discourse. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sensing a nascent hobby here. Possibly a new obsession. Which means, naturally, that you can expect to hear more from me on this account. If you hear from me, that is.


So this was my first project. The assignment was to write a short cohesive essay with 5 equally cohesive and well sequenced images. I didn't know where to start or how to use my camera so my friend C gave me a concise tutorial and took me to a warehouse next to the train tracks behind our neighborhood that would have been a breeding ground of boxcar children dreams realized amongst other more likely troublesome games and fantasies had I actually grown up here. It was night. Snowy. Muddy. My friend kept saying how "beautiful" everything was and I kept trying to figure out what he was talking about and if maybe in his vocabulary "beautiful" was synonymous with "cold", which is definitely not the case for me. The result was the 2nd image. It didn't necessarily inspire this essay. The photo that inspired it (a shadow of a fence) didn't make the cut. But it was a start, a start to looking at things the right way, which we also talked about in class. 


Victor Hugo said: "When a man understands the art of seeing, he can trace the spirit of an age and the features of a king even in the knocker on a door.” 

Of course it sounds better in French. As does my essay. But I'm going to share it so that I can share my journey of learning to understand the art of seeing:

The word 'train' can evoke a variety of images, memories, feelings. Didn't our lives begin with toy trains in our hands, regardless of whether we were a boy or a girl. There are trains that encircle the Christmas trees of our childhoods, trains at the zoo, at Disneyland. As children, we dream of trains, without really 

realizing that, for most of us, trains aren't really a part of our everyday life. Once we have grown up, trains represent not only an era that is lost but also a childhood, equally passed, equally lost.  However, while still young, was it this sense of nostalgia that drew us to those trains. Or did that joy come from the anticipation, the discovery that physical displacement offered us? 

In France, among other countries, this joy is still experienced although it might be rendered banal by daily necessity since the French actually use trains to get around. Looking at the trains in France, you might look for this sense of nostalgia embedded in things past but you would end up stumbling inevitably upon modernity, or rather, a current usefulness. However, if you were to look at the train tracks you would find the traces of voyages which date back perhaps hundreds of years, seeped in this sense of nostalgia in spite of a current use of trains in France and despite a rare and more commercial not at all personal use here in the United States. All the same, don't train tracks also summon those impressions of anticipation, of movement forward, always forward? The word "track" (in French 'chemin', which means 'path') itself isn't a static word; movement or change, rather, is implicit in the word itself.

I particularly wanted to capture the same ambivalence and the same impressions evoked by the train tracks that find themselves projected on my daily path. A path with, I admit, is often marked by a whistling of trains. 

For those of you who want the original French, le voila:


Le mot "train" peut évoquer une variété d'images, de souvenirs, et de sensations. Nos vies n’ont-elles pas commencé avec des trains à la main comme jouets, soit fille ou garçon ? Il y a des trains qui encercle l'arbre de noël de l'enfance, des trains au zoo, au Disneyland. Enfants, on rêve des trains, sans se rendant compte que, pour la plupart d'entre nous, les trains ne font pas parties de la vie quotidienne. Une fois que nous avons grandit, les trains nous représentent non seulement une époque perdue mais aussi une enfance perdue. Pourtant, dans notre jeunesse, est-ce que c'était ce sens de nostalgie qui nous attirait aux trains? Ou, la joie venait-elle de l'anticipation, de la découverte grâce au déplacement physique?

En France, parmi d’autres pays, cette joie est encore connue quoique peut-être rendue banale par une nécessité quotidienne puisque les français se servent des trains pour se déplacer. En regardant des trains en France, on chercherait peut-être ce sens de nostalgie mais on finirait par y trouver plutôt la modernité, ou au moins l’utilité. Mais en regardant les rails on trouvera les traces des voyages qui datent parfois des centaines d’années d’où provient cette nostalgie malgré un usage courant des trains en France et malgré un rare usage plutôt commercial et pas du tout personnel aux Etats Unis. Les rails de chemin de fers ne rappellent-t-ils pas tout de même les impressions d’anticipation, du mouvement en avance, toujours en avance ? Le mot « chemin » même n’est pas un mot statique ; un mouvement ou plutôt un changement y est impliqué.

Je voulais surtout capturer la même ambivalence et les mêmes impressions évoquées par les rails de chemin de fer qui se trouvent projetés sur mon chemin quotidien. Un chemin qui, j’avoue, est souvent marqué par un sifflement de train.