This is Laura. Yesterday we braved the cold along with Michael to take some photos in the snow. Laura owns a ton of vintage film cameras that don’t work (though I suspect some still do). She doesn’t have any winter clothes despite being from Chicago. And she’s probably the first “Faces” person I’ve done that was more excited about the Polaroid popping out and seeing it than I was (and I was pretty excited).
Laura is an incredible photographer who I was very happy to meet. The first time I saw her photos, I thought they were so good that I might as well just quit right then. After finding out that she’s only been doing it for a little over a year, it pretty much sealed the deal.
Before I get in to it, I just want to give a couple disclaimers. First of all, I don’t claim for this list to be a “best of” list. It’s my favorites of the year. Of course I do think that some of my picks are objectively the best music from the year, but I realize it’s difficult to separate my subjective tastes, let alone the fact that I have not and could not possibly listen to all the music released this year. The second disclaimer is that I wanted to put more thought in to this. I started giving some albums a second chance that maybe I originally only gave a cursory listen to originally. But time kept passing, and it’s already 2010, and there’s no point living in the past. I want to move forward and get this list out of the way. I’m just already so excited about some of the music being released in 2010, it just makes trying to figure out what I liked about 2009 kinda lame. So, having said that, I could probably have made a list I’d be more happy with in terms of ranking and such, and I wanted to include my favorite song from each album and have it streamable via Grooveshark. But that is all too much work considering I’m not getting paid for this. So here it is, my top 25 albums of 2009.
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
St. Vincent – Actor
Volcano Choir – Unmap
Mew - No More Stories / Are Told Today / I’m Sorry / They Washed Away // No More Stories / The World Is Grey / I’m Tired / Let’s Wash Away
“…it’s a way of saying something without having to say something literal. To say something that can be both abstract and simple. I get a bad feeling when people talk about ‘capturing’ something with photography. That way of thinking seems lazy and false. For me it has much more to do with the impulse to pretend or to remember something creatively. Seeing something real and wanting to imagine how that real thing would be if it were a fake thing. Alienating and distancing. Putting the artifice of a lens between myself and reality. Forcing the present into the past, and so on.”
Soon after taking Allison’s portrait for my Faces project, I asked if she’d be willing to do a test shoot with me. I’ve been wanting to do a shoot at Cheekwood for months since I’d seen a photo by Kate Pulley on Flickr. Lately I’ve been inspired a lot by photos like that. Photos that are somewhat surreal, unsettling, eery, but also magical. And then there was something about Allison. It’s one of those things you can’t quite put in to words about a person. She had this look, this “aura” if you will, that I just felt like would go well with the photos I had been trying to develop in my head. And so I asked her to do this shoot. Allison was a pleasure to shoot with and was willing to go out in the cold and the threat of rain to get the photos.
Mamiya C33
Kodak Portra 400VC
Fuji Provia 100f
Polaroid SX-70
Polaroid “Fade To Black” Artistic Time Zero
This is Aaron and Lindsey. I went to college with both of them. Aaron is starting an organization called Ensigo, which will fight to break poverty in developing nations through music. He let me hear some of the initial tracks of musicians from a developing country paired with a musician from the states, and it was blowing my mind. Definitely keep up with Ensigo and everything they’re doing. Some incredible things just might be happening in the years to come.
