Dreams really do come true!



In May of 2009 I posted a far fetched wishful list of qualities for a dream digital/rangefinder hybrid camera. I assumed it was purely fanciful thinking on my part... that no one would actually take me seriously and build it! Well, if I didn't know better I would think that Fuji product engineers were reading my blog, because the newly announced Fuji X100 comes frighteningly close to my wish list, and at less than half the price I was expecting to pay for my desires.

I'm saving my pennies from now until the expected release date of March 2011
Nice to see a local show dedicated to silver based darkroom prints...



PHOTO 612 presents
SILVER
Open Reception October 10th, Sunday
1:00 - 3:00 pm

Artists include:

Stephen Hammond, Ted Adams, Julia Blaukopf, Larry Fink, Dani Bogenhagen, Genevieve Coutrobis, Stephen Perloff, Orville Robertson, Kass & Eric Mencher, Michael Penn, Sasha Phyars Burgess, Amie Potsic, Sarah Bones, Christine Foster, Dave DiDonato


Photo 612
612 Station ave.
Haddon Heights, NJ 08035
856.429 2304

The Gallery is open by appointment

Photo 612
Road Trip!


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1.Philly to Duluth, Minnesota with canoe and dog, via I-80 west to Chicago, then north through Wisconsin to Superior and Duluth to Highway 61.

2.Rendezvous with Spirit of the Redtail for a week of portage camping in the wilderness of Boundary Waters Canoe Area in and around Brule Lake

3. Return to Philly via Thunder Bay, Ontario and Trans Canadian Highway 17, for a complete circumnavigation of all five Great Lakes!

Two 1500 mile drives separated by a week in the wilderness. This will be my fourth trip to Boundary Waters, but I have always returned the same way I get there, which is a mostly hypnotic and uninteresting drive on Interstate 80, with the exception of Wisconsin, which is a beautiful state to drive across. This is the first time I will return by way of Canada and the northern coasts of Lakes Superior, Huron, and Ontario.

Lot's of film in the camera bag!!
value city department store. 2010

Another failed attempt at recycled usage of retail space abandoned during the great recession. This is the facade of a Value City Department Store in Southampton, Pa. My image of the same building from another viewpoint is below. I love the design elements used in this structure; they provide the fluidity and movement in my photograph.




Value City Department Stores filed for bankruptcy in October 2008. This location was vacant for some time until it was leased to a bargain book seller. The entire interior space was filled with hundreds of tables of books with seemingly no organized method of inventory management. It drove me nuts the one and only time I went in there because the entire store was as random as a garage sale. The facade as shown above was covered by an enormous vinyl banner that said Bargain Book Warehouse (or something like that) That venture lasted about a year and the building is again empty. Back to square one.

Value City
no smoking. 2010
AP Photo

Welcome to the Sucker House!

PHILADELPHIA(AP 9.23.2010)Six years after the state Legislature legalized gambling, Philadelphia is set to become the largest U.S. city with a casino.
The opening Thursday of SugarHouse Casino, Pennsylvania's 10th casino, comes after years of community protests and delays. Now, casino officials expect thousands of gamblers to attend the first official day of business at the casino's 1,600 slot machines and 40 table games.

"We can't wait to welcome all the players," said Wendy Hamilton, general manager of the casino on the Delaware River waterfront. "The fact that this was a four- to five-year process, it makes it all the more exciting."
The casino conducted test runs of its games on Monday and Wednesday, with the proceeds going to charity. It is scheduled to officially open to the public around 1:30 p.m. Thursday, after getting a final go-ahead from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.

That will make Philadelphia (population 1.55 million) pass Detroit (population 910,000) to become the nation's largest city with casino gambling.
double down 2010

This building was a long time auto dealership in Southampton, Pa. The dealership went out of business in late 2007 and the building sat vacant for about two years. In early 2009, the property was completely refurbished and big signs announced that a used car dealership was soon to open. The new business opened in late 2009, with lot's of shiny high end "pre-owned" vehicles on the lot. Within three or four months the place was closed, the vehicles gradually disappeared, and the building is once again vacant. The newly installed landscape plants are beginning to wither and brown. I can think of no better photographic analogy to the economic stimulus package we were duped into buying from the shady used car salesmen politicos. The wheels have come off and the engine is stalling, and no amount of smooth talking will fix it.
Cloning of the Already Born

To try and make this difficult point, I originally titled the book Suburbanization of the Mind, changing it later to Freewayization of the Mind. Both titles were attempts to suggest what was happening to the way that we think and understand information in the television age; our minds were being channeled and simplified to match the channeled and simplified physical environment- suburbs, malls, freeways, high-rise buildings- that also characterized that period(and continues to do so today). This effect would take place, I argued, even if the violence and sex shows and the superficial comedies and the game shows were all removed from the medium, because the process of moving edited images rapidly through the passive human brain was so different from active information gathering, whether from books or newspapers or walks in nature. As a result people would become more passive, less able to deal with nuance and complexity, less able to read or create. People would get "dumber", and have less understanding of world events even within an exploding information environment.

Jerry Mander
In The Absence Of The Sacred (1991)
In These Hard Times
Photographs by C.H.Paquette (2009-2010)



5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Hand made Photo Book
Ten Images from In These Hard Times Series
Archival Pigment prints on Matte paper
Edition of 50
Signed, numbered and dated
$20 + $3.25 shipping







let nature take over . 2010