local sights

I took these photos late last year, in and around central Virginia. It’s mostly Charlottesville, but there are shots from Lynchburg and Richmond as well. The square format isn’t an edit; I used my Yashica-D camera which, despite its age, takes to color film very well.

An advertisement in Lynchburg, Va., taken with Kodak Ektar 100.

A Richmond laundromat, taken with Kodak Gold 200.

C&O Restaurant in Charlottesville, Va. Taken with Kodak Gold 200.

Gus’ Custom Tailoring in Charlottesville, Va. Kodak Gold 200.

Fitzgerald Tire in the Belmont neighborhood of Charlottesville. Ilford XP2 Super.

An ice machine. Ilford XP2 Super.

Los Angeles

We went to LA last summer and true to form, it has taken me almost six months to get all the photos edited and developed and edited again. Here is a curated selection of the shots I took there, all made either on film with my Leica M4-P or digitally with my Leica M10-D. I confess to taking some real touristy shots but, listen, I hadn’t spend more than a few days there before this year, so I indulged my most touristy instincts!

Downtown LA | Leica M10-D | M-Hexanon 50mm f/2.0

Downtown LA | Leica M10-D | M-Hexanon 50mm f/2.0

Hollywood | Leica M4-P | Ilford XP2 Super | M-Hexanon 28mm f/2.8

Hollywood | Leica M4-P | Ilford XP2 Super | M-Hexanon 28mm f/2.8

Santa Monica | Leica M4-P | Kodak Pro Image 100 | M-Hexanon 28mm f/2.8

Santa Monica | Leica M4-P | Kodak Pro Image 100 | M-Hexanon 28mm f/2.8

still impressed by this iphone camera

I have the iPhone 14 Pro Max and I’ve been trying to use the camera as much as possible, not as a replacement for my more traditional cameras, but as something for quick snapshots or just to test out a particular kind of shot. I’m not a fan of the software processing, but as far as the output straight from the sensor goes — which you can get by using the “ProRAW” setting and an editor like Lightroom — I am very impressed. You won’t mistake these shots from a large sensor camera or film, but there is still an impressive amount of detail and sharpness and even a little character. Here are some photos from the past week that I took with the iPhone and like quite a bit.

The Lyric Theater in Waycross, Ga.

Abandoned gas station near the North Carolina border.

Oahu

I was in Hawaii for a week on a teaching residency. When I wasn’t occupied with students or with my own work, I did as much exploration as I could. I took photos using proper cameras, but I also used my phone quite a bit. Instead of sharing the phone photos directly, however, I edited them and printed them on instant film using an Instax Wide printer. I then scanned those prints, for an effect that makes the original photo look like it was shot on film. It’s kind of cool I think.

ego trippin’

Josh Marshall on Elon Musk:

Most of us know what it’s like to be caught up in the moment. In a moment of tense confrontation or ego injury it is natural to pull tight to those who are there to defend you. Some of this is simply human nature. But with the likes of Musk and Trump it operates on a qualitatively different and more explosive level, the consequence of an innate narcissism, an ingrained sense of grievance and entitlement and the unique dynamics of social media. Of course, their power and wealth make their meltdowns vastly more consequential than yours or mine.

Probably not a good thing that we have a social and economic system that rewards extreme narcissism and sociopathy.

Antisemitism as cartoon-ideology

John Ganz:

Antisemitism is sort of an obscene graffito scrawled on the bathroom wall of bourgeois society. But it also has something of an air of mystical hocus-pocus and the direct, graphic power of occult symbols, like say, the swastika. Like cartoons, it is also plastic: shapeable and moldable to new conditions and subject to limitless morphological variation. Fans of other simplistic renderings of society will have a tendency gravitate to the world of antisemitic vignettes as providing more vivid and pornographic kicks.

There is a reason that almost every conspiracy theory tends to migrate back to antisemitism. It is, in many respects, the ur-conspiracy of Western modernity, always ready to assert (or reassert) itself under the right conditions.

Harrison Ford’s Last Truly Great Performance

Josh Spigel on Harrison Ford in The Fugitive:

It's especially a shame to think that Ford could've gotten so much more credit for his work as Richard Kimble. Here, much more than in other recent films, you simply get to watch the lead character think a lot. Kimble has to rely on the kindness of strangers for much of the mid-section of The Fugitive, both before and after he's shaved off his beard and colored his hair to alter his appearance as much as possible. He speaks softly and infrequently here, only using as many words as he has to. Whether he's speaking with the woman renting out a room to him, to a one-armed convict he hopes is the one he tussled with on the night of his wife's murder, to a friendly colleague of his (a young Jane Lynch), to a pushy young ER doctor (a young Julianne Moore) or to Gerard himself, Kimble's introverted. It suits Ford well, as we get to watch him slowly piece together what happened to Kimble, why it happened to him, and how he can try to right this series of wrongs.

Ford really does elevate this film with a wonderfully nuanced performance that does so much to sell what is otherwise a somewhat convoluted story.

Andor is good →

Adam Serwer explains why:

When I say politics, I do not mean that Andor is a liberal or left-wing show. It can be read that way—one can see the echoes of the issues that animated the George Floyd protests in the show’s portrayal of Imperial law-enforcement agencies cracking down on dissent, or in the Imperial prison that has debt clocks in every cell. What I mean is that the series attempts to imagine an internal politics of class, culture, and ideology that motivates its principal characters and fictional institutions.

You can think of Andor as one of only a few attempts to put the political economy of Star Wars on screen and unlike previous attempts, this one really works.