are, bure, boke #2

The Japanese Provoke photographers’ slogan “are, bure, boke,” or “rough, blurred, out-of-focus” applies to many of my images. Some of these effects are intentional, more are not. Many people would dismiss these simply as “bad pictures,” but another view is possible:

Photography is painting with light! The blurs, the spots, those are errors! But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting … If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you’re doing worse than anyone else in the whole world.
Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý

New York City, January 2011

Marathon, Texas, 11 April 2014

These photos were taken in the context of documenting the journey from Austin to Marfa, Texas, for one of the Ex Situ project’s events. #1 depicts our late friend and colleague Lesley Stern, author of among many other books and essays The Smoking Book and Diary of a Detour. Lesley said she loved this picture. #2 found its way onto the cover of Karen Engle + Yoke-Sum Wong’s Feelings of Structure: Explorations in Affect, a collection that was closely linked with the Ex Situ project.

Mexico City, February 2018