the list of now

You know what I love?

Blurry photos taken from a moving vehicle.

I’m serious.  I love being a passenger with a camera.

I love taking pictures of whatever is outside the window when we are stopped at a light.  And while we are in motion.  I love the underside of bridges, all covered in graffiti that you can see from train windows.  And I even love the flares, sparks and trails of light you catch if it’s dark out, on the highway and you trying to take pictures anyway.

I figure there have to be more people out there who also love blurry (and non-blurry) passenger photos.  I searched around on flickr and found some beautiful photos, but no groups that specifically noted photos were taken as a passenger in a car, train, boat or aircraft.

So I started my own tumblr.

the Passenger Project

If you want to participate, please send photos or links to photos, your name and the location, date and any other details you want in the caption to:

thepassengerproject@gmail.com

or if you are on tumblr, go ahead and submit something! and I will post or link it up.

I saw the film Control over six months ago when it was in the theaters in NY. Apollo Mark and I saw it on East 12th street and then walked out into grey, but shiny-rainy winter streets in NY and it was perfect… it was like the amazing black and white perfection of the film followed us outside.

I actually didn’t think it was a perfect or even great film on the whole. I thought it was too long, I didn’t love the screenplay or progression of the plot. Much of this probably has to do with the source material that it was based on, the memoir written by Deborah Curtis. (I wanted to see more of Ian’s struggles with fame, aside from the “Homelife Ian vs. Rockstar Ian” struggle, but that the most essential part of the story for her and so that makes sense.) However, it was impossible not to be entranced by Sam Riley’s magnetically tense acting performance as Ian Curtis. He was amazing.

It was also impossible not to be in awe of every blessed gorgeous shot of this film. It worked -even excelled- as art and that more than made up for the lack of storytelling. I recently read that Anton Corbijn was a photographer before a filmmaker and in fact, he had photographed Joy Division in the late 70′s.  I am not even slightly exaggerating when I say that if the entire film consisted of nothing but a fluid slideshow of stills, accompanied by music, I still would have paid to see it and been riveted.  Seriously, that pretty.

Anyhow… in between the DVD release and me having time to blog, two other bloggers beat to me posting about this film, and did it in much better form:

Go to fourfour to see TONS of stills from the film that demonstrate the pretty factor. Come to think of it, several of these stills would look great as little framed posters on my office wall…

Go to Austin Kleon’s blog to read his notes and see his sketch-mapped notes on Control and the Joy Division documentary that I have been meaning to Netflix. He also posted a clip of the real Ian Curtis performing Transmission on the BBC.