I do like a project for the winter. In the past I've concentrated on fiction-writing and my photo-books, but this year I'm using the time to sort out a box of negatives I've had since 1982. That was the year I spent five weeks criss-crossing America on a Continental Airlines Visit USA air-pass, which allowed me unlimited flight all over the continent. I think it cost £200, and I went over with just £200 in my pocket, travelling from New York and New Hampshire to Seattle, Houston to San Francisco and Boston to Denver, dossing in airports or with pen-friends or friends of friends, as well as a second-uncle of my Dad's and even a very kind Californian lady whose photograph I took when she visited Warrington to campaign against proposed nuclear weapon storage at the former RAF Burtonwood (I think!)
I travelled light, carrying only my trusty Olympus XA camera, and I shot Ilford HP5 and Kodak Tri-X to produce well over 500 black and white
negatives, all of which have just been sitting in this box for the last
43 years. Now I've started scanning them to digital, transporting myself back to
when I was just 22 with untold adventure ahead of me. (Although, I must
admit, I've already seen some things I can't even remember anymore. There's a shot of me with a vast grassy canyon behind. Turns out it's Cannon Mountain in upstate New Hampshire. Not a single memory of it! Would never even have known I'd been there without that photographic evidence!!) I see the work as my own personal Stephen Shore road-trip, or a Robert Frank tribute, and I'll produce a book of course, to go (unsold) with all the others I've produced. But, hey ho, it's worth it for the creative satisfaction I'm getting. Continental '82 is what it'll be called. Available in no good book shops ..
The shots above show a 'cowboy' on a vast, empty DC-10, and a skinny oik with pretensions to photographic grandeur on the deck of a Staten Island ferry. Ah, the joys of youth ..
