As the name of this blog implies, I am an Army Brat.  Technically I ceased to be a military dependent when I turned 18 and I had to turn in my beloved military dependent I.D. card.  But as most of us former "army/ air force/ marine/ navy brats" know, we never lose that association.  Ergo, I... am an Army Brat.

One Christmas in Oberursel Germany, where we were stationed (Camp King) my parents gifted me with my first camera.  I was ten years old.  The camera was a Kodak Brownie Fiesta.  It came loaded with a roll of VP-127, Black and White Verichrome Pan.  All these Brownies shot 127 format film.  I fell in love with black and white photography when I got my first set of prints back from the base PX.  Wow.  It really works!

 

It was this camera that enabled me to chronicle my years living in Germany.  Visiting West Berlin.  Linderhof.  Neuschwanstein.  My extended German family.  My own family.  My first years back in the United States after we returned.  That little box was amazing.

Here is one grouping I took when we visited Neuschwanstein, when we spent our summer vacation in Garmisch Partenkirche, 1967:

 

 

I learnt a few things during this trip.  One of them was the value of hanging over a balcony or a precipice.  Another is being at the right place at the right time.  I just happened to be on that particular street in Garmisch at 5pm on the day the cows were taken down from the mountain meadow and led back into town, to their respective owners.  An hour later, an hour earlier, the day before or the day after, I would have missed the "cows coming home"!

The years went on, I began to develop and interest in photo history, and was immediately impressed with the timelessness of black and white photographs.  Those Matthew Brady photos didn't look any older than...my own!  It seemed that as soon as colour was tagged to an image, a sense of a date... something that exists between two parenthesis of time... limited the photo in my mind.  Colour = Time.  Black and White = Timelessness.  A photo of the grand canyon taken by Alexander Gardner in 1879 looks exactly like the photo that Ansel Adams took on the same spot 70 years later!  Unless there is something that ties one to time, like a Model T Ford, the trail of the jet, obvious emblems of civilization, I sense an eternity of timelessness.  No parenthesis.  No limits.  Even the classic Hill and Adamson photos feel contemporary to me, the portraits of Julia Cameron could have been taken in 1940 instead of 1860!  To date a black and white, I have to look for clues.  I don't have the same sense with Colour.  Colour spells Latter Days.  Modern.  Recent.  Even autochromes from the 1890s look like folks dressed in Victorian era costumes, not day to day dress!  It looks almost fake.... as if I am being deceived.  The same photo in black and white releases me from that tension.  It's believable.  Not because black and white implies age or vintage, but because of it's timelessness!

 

So, when was this photo taken?  The only way you would know is by the cars.  Unless you are intimately acquainted with Park Avenue, Winter Park Florida.  It could have been 1930 or 1990 otherwise.  Unless you knew that the Colony Theatre became the Colony Gardens Plaza in 1981.  The photo was shot in 1982.

As time went along, I picked up a Pentax K-1000, which opened up a whole new world of photography to me.  I also put together a dark-room.  I needed to be on both ends of the process.  The concept of freezing an image in time, the concept of the Latent Image, the concept of pausing and preserving a view, a scene, the natural reaction of silver salts to photon energy, gathered and focused by a lens, the intersection of Art and Science- forever had a hold on me, and still does!

The above photo is my first darkroom set-up.  By the time this was taken in 1983 I had been shooting 35mm Panatomic, Plus-X and Tri-X pan for some time.  I had taught myself the basics of Photography.  And this Blog launches from here.

Let's see where we go.