Chris Bickford

September
22nd
2008

Surf/Life

I’ve been wanting to do a project around the surf culture on the Outer Banks for years: something that captures the essence of lives spent following stormclouds and obsessing about wind forecasts and tide timetables to catch a few hours of good swell…something that expresses what it feels like to live on this strip of sand and be involved in a perpetual conversation with the forces of nature at their most basic and elemental.

There are better places in the world to live if you just want to surf–Hawaii, Indonesia, Southern California, Costa Rica…the list goes on and on, and many denizens of the OBX will spend large portions of their lives chasing waves in other parts of the world. But most of them come back, not so much for the surf, I don’t think, as much as for the personality of the place. Not the culture, for there is little of that here. I’m talking about the personality of the spirits that inhabit this place: the wind, the clouds, the sand, the seagrass, the stumps of driftwood, the weathered cedar shakes on houses that could tell some killer storm stories if they could talk.

The surf here is unpredictable, to put it kindly. The sandbars shift after every big storm, necessitating a never-ending vigilance for the “new spot.” We remember past years in terms of where the good sandbars were. Laundromats, Buccaneer, the north side of Avalon Pier…to the casual observer these places would not seem remarkable, indistinguishable bits of an endless stretch of straight beach in either direction as far as the eye can see. But to guys who live to suf the Outer Banks, each spot has a different personality, and every sandbar is unique and always changing.

Tide, wind, and storms are a constant source of conversation, and hurricane season brings an added sense of anticipation–which more often than not ends in disappointment, as the storm heads inland to drench Florida or batter the Gulf Coast, or gathers speed and peters out once it hits colder water. Generally there’s plenty of swell, between the nor’easters, the offshore low pressure systems, and the named storms in the fall. It’s the conditions that are elusive: a prevailing northeast wind in the winter makes for sloppy seas, a prevailing southwest in the summer can keep the surf about ankle-high for weeks on end…the perfect combination of good swell, a light west wind, and a good sandbar at low tide haunts surfers’ dreams here like visions of the holy grail. But it does come, and plenty often. You just have to look for it, and the more you look, the more you find. And in the meantime you can surf the sloppy stuff or bust out your longboard when it’s knee-high and clean as cut glass…

It’s hard sometimes to do a project in your hometown. The demands of the day, or social obligations, or just plain laziness conspire to keep projects like this on the back burner forever. Add to that the fact that when the surf is good, you usually want to surf, not take pictures. But certain sacrifices have to be made for the sake of art…Life is so difficult sometimes, these decisions that plague mankind: surf or take pictures, surf or take pictures…

The following photos are sketches more than anything. I’m trying to get a sense of the palette of the project. This summer the surf has been particularly flat, and hurricane season has so far not produced anything epic. The few good days we’ve had, I’ve been working, or out of town…or surfing…But I’ve managed to get a few photos that hint at how I’ve been imagining it. Black-and-white, moody, a little nostalgic…the sense of how the Outer Banks was “back in the day”…again, that’s something that haunts us all as well. In some ways, it’s always back in the day around here and not much really changes, other than the sandbars. Drive down to Pea Island and points south and it still looks the same way it did when Blackbeard roamed this coast. But at the same time, there is a pervading sense that it was so much better around here ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. Back when great beachfront bars like Atlantis and Papagayo’s and the Carolinian were still around, and up-and-coming bands made regular appearances. When the locals ruled the roost and tourism was still centered around couples, young families, and small mom-and-pop oceanfront hotels. When there was plenty of construction work to keep every surfer and fisherman employed year-round…when the road to Corolla was still just a sand track. Old-timers will tell you that the fishing was so much better, and that you couldn’t dip a bucket into the ocean without filling it to the top with giant jimmy crabs…and some will even boast that the surf was better. All the good storms go south now, global warming maybe…

But enough of that. I’m not sure how literal I’m going to get with that sense of nostalgia. Right now it’s enough to just get out there more with water camera and swimfins, and see what happens. But at least, at last, I’ve started.

September
20th
2008

Towers of Light

This past September 11 marked the 7th anniversary of, well, September 11. I happened to be in New York with not too much to do on that day, so I made a visit to ground zero to pay my respects to the dead. I almost wish I hadn’t. The site was still barricaded, fenced off, surrounded by police officers. There was little fanfare to memorialize the day, other than some people singing Jesus songs and passing out fliers saying “Prayer works miracles”…a hip looking couple was slouched on the wall of the church across the street, lazily holding up an “Investigate 9/11″ sign…tourists were gawking through the fences to get a glimpse of the rubble, craning their necks and climbing up the steel mesh to get a better look…and various kooks paraded through the crowd carrying signs ranging from “The End is Near” to “Write-in Paris Hilton for President”.

It was, I suppose, an apt representation of the mood of our country in these times: desperation leading to a triumvirate of sad reactions: religious extremism, paranoia, and smug apathetic absurdism…Seven years later, and we are still uncertain as to how to move on in the wake of that tragic day…

As night fell, however, a different mood began to infuse the city, no doubt inspired by the re-igniting of the “Tribute in Light” installed to honor those who lost their lives in the attack. Suddenly, from everywhere in the city, you could see the twin towers of light piercing the sky, and suddenly, we were all in it together. Somehow there was hope, a sense that, though it may be taking longer than any of us may have anticipated, we are rising from the ashes of that day. The light of our collective hopes and dreams seemed to be represented by those two towers of light, piercing through the solid rock of the city and into the heavens. It was a magical night, a perfect fall evening, with a cloud cover that stopped the two rays of light in mid-air, as if they were indeed ghosts of the departed towers. In a small park by the river’s edge in Williamsburg, a quiet group sat watching the Tribute in collective awe and reflection. None of us said anything to each other beyond simple pleasantries, but we all felt the power of this communal act we were involved in, the act of watching, remembering, and dreaming of a better future.

As I walked through the night to the source of the lights, from Brooklyn across the Williamsburg bridge, through Chinatown and the Financial District, past Ground Zero to the Battery Park garage, that ghostly feeling became even stronger. Thousands of particles of the ever-present New York dust that hovers and floats above the city without our ever noticing were illuminated by the Towers, turning rubble and waste into a flock of angels, dancing heavenwards towards that hole in the sky.

For some, it still feels like yesterday. For all of us, I think, time seems to have taken on a different character since 9/11, as if some portion of every day since then is still the day after. It may always be like this, at least until our generation passes and the catastrophic events of that day live on only in video, photographs, family histories, and apocyrpha. But out of every tragedy arises hope and new beginnings, and the future of our country may depend on how, when we are through with our grieving, we move on. We can choose to move on in fear, paranoia, extremism, or apathy…or we can move on with hope and vision, and honor the dead by creating a better world for the living.

April
20th
2008

Crescent City Blues

A couple of weeks ago I went down to New Orleans, following some hunches and thoughts about Carnival towns. I’d been reading a lot of literature about the Crescent City, some Andrei Codrescu, Tom Piazza, Lafcadio Hearn, etc…and the more I read the more intrigued I got about the whole New Orleans mystique and how it might relate to the work I’ve been doing lately. The funky soup of Spanish, French, Caribbean, African, Native American, and Southern American influences; the histories of licentiousness, voodoo magic, free black communities long before “emancipation”; the 300-year tradition of Mardi Gras and the Carnival spirit that expresses itself year-round in second-line parades and celebrations for just about anything that can be celebrated; the almost-religious devotion to food, with a language all its own: po’ boys, beignets, mufalettas, crawfish, gumbo, file, jambalaya; and of course, the music–the jazz, the funk, the blues, cajun and zydeco, the dancing in the streets…

Then of course there is the precariousness of New Orleans, which somehow adds to its allure: its relationship to tragedy is more real and more raw than any other city in America, even New York. The water that threatens to swallow New Orleans–either from the north over the banks of the Mississippi, or from the south in the form of great tropical cyclones–is at the same time the cause of its incredible stew of influences. The French came down the Missisippi from Arcadia, the slaves came on boats through the straits of Florida…The Spanish had a direct line from New Orleans to Havana and from there to all points beyond…

As I read and pondered, there just seemed no end to the peeling layers of strangeness and allure that lay inside that crook in the Mississippi. So with my last remaining bits of free time and money before the spring wedding season kicks in, I booked a room in a little guesthouse in the Marigny Triangle called the “Bohemian Armadillo”, and flew down.

For better or worse, events in my personal life and issues with my health turned this trip into more of a retreat than a project. I rented a bike and rode out to Bywater and the Ninth Ward to see the wreckage of Katrina, still very present almost two years later. I bought a leatherbound journal in the French Quarter and nearly filled it with thoughts about life, career, relationships, the future. I got my tarot cards read–twice–by a guy named Norman in Jackson Square. And I spent a lot of time sitting in the doorway of my place, which opened into the street, just staring out and wondering what the hell was I doing with my life…My new friends at the Armadillo, Rachel and Maia, took me out for a fun night on the town, and kept me from getting lonely. Unfortunately, nothing could keep my mind from spinning into a deep sad place where I could do nothing but weep over lost love, and know all too well that I’ve nobody but myself to blame for it.

But I’m not done with New Orleans. I believe I’ll be back next winter, for Carnival, Louisiana style, and hopefully I’ll have more time and more presence of mind to explore deeper, make more friends, and get a firmer grasp of the whole thing. The visual elements have already taken root in my mind, and though it’s not my best work lately, I found a few photo moments that hold promise for something bigger. And I think, if I can just keep my head together, it could be some interesting work.

April
2nd
2008

Venice Impressions

Water, design, decay, light, and shadow…the visual attractions of Venice are a synthesis of human imagination and construction, the unrelenting forces of nature, and the slow creep of time that fuses them together into strange and new art forms. You could spend a lifetime exploring the patterns of decay on her walls; or studying the reflections of buildings, boats, and people in her waters. City of the past, city of the future, city of shameless commerce and collective fantasy…City of ghosts and dead-end alleyways…city of moss and damp, city of fog and monuments. Tawdry and magnificent, overexposed yet forever mysterious. The act of photographing Venice is, like Carnival itself, an attempt to enter into the dream of Venice. These images, culled from hours of aimless wandering, represent some of my favorite dreams.

March
18th
2008

The Glory of the Republic

My friend and colleague Edoardo Luppari, with whom I worked this past Carnival season in Venice, has a lot of interesting things to say about his home city. He sees a sort of yin/yang duality that allows Venice to be at once a very public, spectacular world city; and at the same time to be a private place full of mystery and secrets. He equates this to the Apollonian/Dionysian “masks” that we wear in different states of being and interaction. On the Apollonian, daylight, “public” front, Venice displays the elegant façades of the Palazzos lining the Grand Canal, the grandeur of Piazza San Marco, the impressive beauty of its waterfront promenades. This is the mask which says, “We are mighty, we are beautiful. Come bask in the glory of the Republic of Venice.” It is the face of politics and commerce, and nowadays, of the everyday tourism of Venice. Then there is the Dionysian face, the face of the night, the face of dark alleyways and labyrinthine passages, of private rooms and private activities. This is the the mask which says, “Do not follow here for fear of getting lost. These corridors are only for the initiated.” This “nighttime” face is the face of mysteries and masquerades, of bacchanals and secret trysts, of gambling and general licentious behavior.

In truth, these two faces of Venice are more mythological and historical than they are real. The reality of a city that exploits its storied past with an ever-increasing homogeneity of mask shops and vendors of tourist art cannot escape anyone who visits Venice with even the slightest of critical eyes. Along with countless other victims of modern tourism, Venice has become a tawdry vendor of its own mystique, selling souvenirs of a place that truly exists only in the collective imagination of those who dream her.

But Venice has always been a place that exists in the imagination as much as, if not more than, in reality. People come to Venice to pretend, to play make-believe; to don the mask and imagine they are living in some other time; some grander, more beautiful time; some more mysterious, licentious time, when there really was the possibility of outrageous goings-on…as if by the wearing of capes, gowns, and masks, they might be able to take one step closer to the magic and mystery of Venice, might step into the dream and live it, might actually feel the hearbeat of Carnival that exists within all of us, but which we in modern times seem unable to find, hard as we try.

Well, enough theorizing on Venice and Carnival. It is a complex and endlessly fascinating subject. All of this, however, is by way of explaining the following photos, which are representations of the “daylight” mask, the mask of Apollo. They are from the opening ceremonies of Carnevale in Venice, the “Flight of the Angel” and the “Parade of the three Marias”. A short bit of history, as I understand it:

The Flight of the Angel was originally called the “Flight of the Turk” and involved flying a man (the symbolic “Turk”) on a zipline from the top of the Campanile in Piazza San Marco to the ground in the Piazzetta. Once he hit the ground, there was a ritual slaughtering of a pig, which involved certain taboos, such as the slaughtering blade cannot touch the ground, et cetera. As far as I can surmise this was a kind of “scapegoating” ceremony, as the Turk in historical Venetian symbology is always the bringer of unsavory influences from somewhere outside of the Republic–gambling, homosexuality, prostitution, the wearing of masks–all were blamed on the Turks in historical times. Thus, this ceremony was a celebration of the triumph of order and nationalism over unsavory and unseemly proclivities which threatened the moral framework of the Venetian Republic. By ascribing a foreign origin to these sins and ritually slaughtering them in the pre-Lenten festivities, the collective psyche of the Venetian community could be purged and absolved, yearly, ritually.

Eventually the Flight of the Turk was replaced by the Flight of the Angel, and in modern times the “Angel” has traditionally been a famous Italian starlet who flies the zipline. This year, in a controversial but historically ironic move, the organizers of Carnevale invited the American rapper Coolio to be the Angel. The irony was lost on almost everyone; I’m not even sure that the organizers themselves were aware that they were re-instating the Flight of the Turk…America of course being the Turk, the bringer of licentious and unsavory behavior. Now if they would only re-instate the slaughtering of the pig, they would have a ceremony with real historical significance as well as an archetypal symbolism worthy of the spirit of Carnival. But I doubt that will happen; as soon as someone figures out the racial overtones of this year’s Flight in terms of its historical context, no doubt the organizers will go back to the tamer, and less interesting, practice of having young famous Italian beauties fly the line.

The second ceremony, the parade of the Three Marias, evolved from a supposedly actual event that occurred many years ago in Venice. Traditionally in Venice, women were married off in group wedding ceremonies, where many couples would be wed all at the same time, at a certain time of year. One year however, the wedding procession carrying all of the brides-to-be and their dowries was intercepted and robbed by a band of brigands. Eventually the thieves were caught and brought to justice, and the parade has been held ever since in honor of the young brides and the valiant men who saved them. So it is in essence a celebration of the triumph of order, justice, marriage, etc, over the influences of greed, thievery, etc.

Hopefully you get the gist of where these ramblings are going: that these opening celebrations are part of the “Apollonian” face of the Carnival celebrations, displays of the outward order and glory of the Republic of Venice, before the city dives into its celebration of the Dionysian side of human existence, into the world of dancing and drinking and cavorting and masquerading, and god-knows-what, that the gates of Carnival open into for 10 days in late winter.

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