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In a few short weeks I will join artists around the country for the most stupid-fun adventure ever to happen.
Empire Builder is a cross-country, multi-day, artist adventure on the Amtrak line of the same name. We will be converging on the train from cities around the country to meet, conspire, create, and interact while riding the rails to attend the Open Engagement Conference in Portland, OR on May 14th.
We created a blog to collectively talk about what we’re doing: click here
Tags: trains
I had these photos taken more than a year ago, while in the city of Dehra Dun, in Northern India. I was staying at Vandana Shiva’s seedbank farm, Navdanya, outside of the city, but had taken the bus into town to do some errands, indulge in an americano, and check my email. Set up along the side of one the busiest roads in the center of the city were two gentlemen with hefty and antiquated cameras on rickety tripods; tattered and dusty pieces of black cloth were pinned to the walls by the road, a black umbrella hung nearby, and a rickety stool underneath the cloth. Despite the ubiquitous digital passport services that have popped up (every Indian carries a few such photos in their wallets for various and unimaginable bureaucratic uses), these two men were taking pictures by the side of a busy, traffic-clogged road for a living.
The older man ended up making two sets for me; in the first take I lifted my hands to remove my sunglasses, and so the negative showed a pair of “ghost hands,” which I insisted on developing anyway. He developed and printed the negatives on the spot, inside of his hefty black box of a camera, and after carefully drying the set, folded them inside a tiny paper envelope and handed them over for rs 20.