I will post no photographs for Aspen, Colorado. Not for this trip anyway.
Kevin’s from Colorado and he had never been to Aspen before. He was excited to go. on assignment for Travel & Leisure (look for it in August, I believe). Me, I am always excited to just go.
In Aspen, the time was off-season and the stores were closed, streets were empty, the trees still barren and the sky was muddy. My stomach was a mess. I felt horrible. I must have swallowed too many dinoflagellates while swimming around the Bio Bay for 2+ hours to make those photographs.
We woke up early and Kevin began shooting. I would scramble around on the ground where all of the gear was. Every time I stood up, I thought I would faint. He put down his Canon 5d about two feet to my right and I kept feeding him 4x5 film holders. He was shooting a fly fisherman while we were on a bridge for a jogging trail just east of town. Not that many joggers went by, about half of them were pushing strollers.
A few minutes passed and we turned around, reaching for the digital camera. But it was not there.
We searched the area, the river, the river bank, called the police, and posted a sign. I called the National Forest ranger station and endured a tongue-lashing about permits. Despite taking all possible measures, the camera is gone. Perhaps overwhelmed by the fantasy land of designer ski-wear, Prada and silver Cadillac Escalades, some opportunistic jogger just had to steal the nice digital camera.
The police report part of our life is not so glamorous.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Memorial Day
A gentle condemnation of war, tated eloquently and sorrowfully in the New York Times by Nancy Sherman today.
Travel as profession or pleasure has its problems (carbon usage, hello?) but I fervently believe that people meeting each other across cultures will lead to more peace and progress than any war ever will. I have been to View Nam now, and it's impossible to imagine fighting a war with the country. Despite the statues of Ho Chi Minh everywhere, the Vietnamese seemed happy enough to simply do business. Let's hope that I could travel to Afghanistan, maybe in less than ten years, and come back saying the same thing.
In honor of all of those who've been hurt by the stupidity of war.
Travel as profession or pleasure has its problems (carbon usage, hello?) but I fervently believe that people meeting each other across cultures will lead to more peace and progress than any war ever will. I have been to View Nam now, and it's impossible to imagine fighting a war with the country. Despite the statues of Ho Chi Minh everywhere, the Vietnamese seemed happy enough to simply do business. Let's hope that I could travel to Afghanistan, maybe in less than ten years, and come back saying the same thing.
In honor of all of those who've been hurt by the stupidity of war.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Swimming with the stars
The dinoflagellates are tiny, brilliant blue stars pouring through your fingers. They are to be photographed as abstraction, as mystery, a piece of the infinite that escaped from the center of the earth.
A fish in the Bio Bay looks up to see the dinoflagellates twinkling, and makes wishes. Just like we look up to our own version of the known universe, and make wishes.
© 2010 kevin cooley & bridget batch
© 2010 kevin cooley & bridget batch
© 2010 kevin cooley & bridget batch
(and happy anniversary to us)
A fish in the Bio Bay looks up to see the dinoflagellates twinkling, and makes wishes. Just like we look up to our own version of the known universe, and make wishes.
© 2010 kevin cooley & bridget batch
© 2010 kevin cooley & bridget batch
© 2010 kevin cooley & bridget batch
(and happy anniversary to us)
Vieques Misadventures II
It’s a ten-minute drive from Vieques to Isabel Segundo and the airport on the other side of the island. We have to be at the airport at 9:20, so we tried to start the car at 8:50. The engine refused to turn. I called Martineau’s Car Rental and they said we got the key wet, which is a $350 charge.
“But we didn’t get the key wet! The car was overheating yesterday! And now we are going to miss our flight, I should charge you for the inconvenience! If we got the key wet how could we have the car here at the hotel. You have to send someone here to take us to the airport.” Imagine tortured Spanish here.
I walked across the street and kicked the Malécon. I so rarely get that angry my friends would be surprised to read that. Because the passenger ferry to the main island was out of commission, the car ferries were all running an hour late, and this was why we were even flying to San Juan. Missing the baby flight to San Juan meant missing our flight to Atlanta, and then missing our the last flight out to New York. And that meant missing a meeting for me the next day and possibly our flight to Aspen for a job the next evening. The price of the car rental had just gone from $150 to something like $2000.
Martineau continued, “You got the key wet, it’s the only reason it won’t start. And we have to send the car to the mainland and this is very expensive, we can’t rent it for a month. You agreed to pay $350 if you got it wet.”
“But we didn’t get it wet!”
“Fine take it up with your credit card company. We will send them the evidence.” The could send a picture of any wet key they wanted to send. I told Kevin that if Citibank didn’t side with us he should drop their card but I don’t think he wanted to hear that. Martineau slapped $550 – unauthorized – onto the card immediately, as Kevin was on the phone in the airport lobby frantically making his case to Citibank’s representative.
I do not know if I would call Martineau overtly fraudulent so much as opportunistic. To pass along hearsay, a man who worked for a tour company in Vieques told me that Martineau’s were the worst and often tried to charge people for “getting their keys wet.” Their car repair undoubtedly is expensive but it’s not our fault that the engine couldn’t cool.
We made it to the airport. We made it to Aspen even, only to find a place far more degenerate than I would have imagined.
“But we didn’t get the key wet! The car was overheating yesterday! And now we are going to miss our flight, I should charge you for the inconvenience! If we got the key wet how could we have the car here at the hotel. You have to send someone here to take us to the airport.” Imagine tortured Spanish here.
I walked across the street and kicked the Malécon. I so rarely get that angry my friends would be surprised to read that. Because the passenger ferry to the main island was out of commission, the car ferries were all running an hour late, and this was why we were even flying to San Juan. Missing the baby flight to San Juan meant missing our flight to Atlanta, and then missing our the last flight out to New York. And that meant missing a meeting for me the next day and possibly our flight to Aspen for a job the next evening. The price of the car rental had just gone from $150 to something like $2000.
Martineau continued, “You got the key wet, it’s the only reason it won’t start. And we have to send the car to the mainland and this is very expensive, we can’t rent it for a month. You agreed to pay $350 if you got it wet.”
“But we didn’t get it wet!”
“Fine take it up with your credit card company. We will send them the evidence.” The could send a picture of any wet key they wanted to send. I told Kevin that if Citibank didn’t side with us he should drop their card but I don’t think he wanted to hear that. Martineau slapped $550 – unauthorized – onto the card immediately, as Kevin was on the phone in the airport lobby frantically making his case to Citibank’s representative.
I do not know if I would call Martineau overtly fraudulent so much as opportunistic. To pass along hearsay, a man who worked for a tour company in Vieques told me that Martineau’s were the worst and often tried to charge people for “getting their keys wet.” Their car repair undoubtedly is expensive but it’s not our fault that the engine couldn’t cool.
We made it to the airport. We made it to Aspen even, only to find a place far more degenerate than I would have imagined.
Friday, May 28, 2010
Whitney late-night
This piece by Michael Asher for the Whitney Biennial absolutely rocked the Biennial itself, for me. We went last night, with our friend Jenn, after a long building meeting. The experience was magical.
Normally when you visit a musuem, you have to remember your dinner plans, your work commitments, pay attention to your phone's email, or at least feel conscious of the time that the museum closes. Although I did receive a text at 2am, that was more funny than distracting. I am not usually that cool.
I felt for the staff, but, wow. I could give the art real time and lose myself within it. Having the museum be almost entirely closed (especially with no sunlight streaming in) off to the outside world -- much like a casino, furthered the sensation of being lost.
The crowd that shows up at a museum at 1 am makes for good people watching too.
Now I always want to experience a museum in this way.
Normally when you visit a musuem, you have to remember your dinner plans, your work commitments, pay attention to your phone's email, or at least feel conscious of the time that the museum closes. Although I did receive a text at 2am, that was more funny than distracting. I am not usually that cool.
I felt for the staff, but, wow. I could give the art real time and lose myself within it. Having the museum be almost entirely closed (especially with no sunlight streaming in) off to the outside world -- much like a casino, furthered the sensation of being lost.
The crowd that shows up at a museum at 1 am makes for good people watching too.
Now I always want to experience a museum in this way.
Vieques as Paradise
Malecón in Esperanza, Vieques
© 2010 bridget batch
Yes, isn't Vieques a little paradise? Could I sell these for the brochure?
he didn't make it onto the plane
© 2010 bridget batch
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Vieques Misadventures
Beaches in Vieques feel like you purchased them in a backroom deal, definitely screwing someone over in the process.
In other words, they are so uncrowded, private even, clean, clear, pristine, you feel as if you own them. Such a feeling is marvelous and, depending on your beach experience, unprecedented. Thanks US Navy for keeping people away for so long! Who knows how much longer this will be, Vieques is no secret, nor a difficult trip (from the East Coast). The W just built a spa, the real estate is not cheap, and yet, it still feels renegade and unbesmirched.
Bahía de la Chiva
© 2010 bridget batch
We bounced over the barely functional 4 wheel drive tracks and landed at Punto Arenas beach on the north side, Atlantic Oceanfront property. We then parked the car in a little pullout facing the water, but surrounded by the forest. That's how they do beach in Vieques, you get a private driveway that fits one car. The next one is way down, invisible around some bend. Walk 2 feet and the beach is yours. The water was gentle, sheltered by the island of Culebra just a couple miles away. I spread out my towel and removed my bikini top enjoying the freedom involved in having no one to offend.
The last point along Bahía de la Chiva (Blue Beach) won whatever contest we were conducting to name our favorite beach. It's on the Caribbean coast, at the end of the one road into the eastern side of the island, a National Wildlife Refuge that used to be littered with bombs. The clean-up effort continues and civilians can't access maybe half of the island. Some bunkers covered in greenery rot over on the western end, but the jungle is working to claim them and their roads. One does not think of the Navy while sitting on the beach.
Just one little vestige of the Naval occupation remains, well, two if you're count the dramatically high cancer rate. Near those bunkers, a radar installation is marked as a no-go zone on the map. Our discounted jeep from Martineau Car Rental overheated next to a bunker covered in flowering vines. Just don't do it, do not rent from Martineau, don't drive around abandoned roads in one of their cars, and don't drive up to US military stations hidden in the jungle.
But, after the Jeep cooled, Kevin, completely unfazed by the stench and pouring smoke, pressed on. Wandering the roads over barely inhabited hills as the sun set, he, of course, found the radar station. Before we even parked, the radar station also found us. An overlit pick-up was speeding over to the chain-link gate on the road. I didn't see any radar facility, both of us just put our hands up and jumped back into the Jeep. It started and Kevin peeled out, up another hill.
The sun had set now, but the sky was still blue, a few fireflies dotted the dusk and the jungle was loud. Nothing was out here but a paranoid security guard to the left, trees, vines and a lot of razor wire-covered fencing. At the top of the hill the car started pouring out smoke again so we got out and started photographing. I changed into a little black outfit to try and make a "Spirit" picture from my new project. The mosquitoes launched a full-scale assault and I muttered my gratitude to American sanitation and its successful banishment of malaria.
Someone had made a large stencil of some words in the road.
AQUI
NOS DA
LOS QUE
-OS
The last bit looked like "MOS" but the first letter or letters were worn off. I walked around and tried to figure out what it said, and why. Nothing human-made resided near us, except the razorwire. Dios seemed the obvious candidate. Six years of studying it and yet my Spanish is feeble. Despite the heat and mosquito bites I felt chilled. Mental institution leapt to mind.
Kevin walked over, "What does that say?"
"I don't know, I am trying to figure it out. I think it says "Here, what God gives us."
"Let's get the hell out of here. That car had better start."
I looked at him, "I am not going to argue with you!" And I threw the tripod into the car. I never do that. The poor car actually started.
more misadventures to come
In other words, they are so uncrowded, private even, clean, clear, pristine, you feel as if you own them. Such a feeling is marvelous and, depending on your beach experience, unprecedented. Thanks US Navy for keeping people away for so long! Who knows how much longer this will be, Vieques is no secret, nor a difficult trip (from the East Coast). The W just built a spa, the real estate is not cheap, and yet, it still feels renegade and unbesmirched.
Bahía de la Chiva
© 2010 bridget batch
We bounced over the barely functional 4 wheel drive tracks and landed at Punto Arenas beach on the north side, Atlantic Oceanfront property. We then parked the car in a little pullout facing the water, but surrounded by the forest. That's how they do beach in Vieques, you get a private driveway that fits one car. The next one is way down, invisible around some bend. Walk 2 feet and the beach is yours. The water was gentle, sheltered by the island of Culebra just a couple miles away. I spread out my towel and removed my bikini top enjoying the freedom involved in having no one to offend.
The last point along Bahía de la Chiva (Blue Beach) won whatever contest we were conducting to name our favorite beach. It's on the Caribbean coast, at the end of the one road into the eastern side of the island, a National Wildlife Refuge that used to be littered with bombs. The clean-up effort continues and civilians can't access maybe half of the island. Some bunkers covered in greenery rot over on the western end, but the jungle is working to claim them and their roads. One does not think of the Navy while sitting on the beach.
Just one little vestige of the Naval occupation remains, well, two if you're count the dramatically high cancer rate. Near those bunkers, a radar installation is marked as a no-go zone on the map. Our discounted jeep from Martineau Car Rental overheated next to a bunker covered in flowering vines. Just don't do it, do not rent from Martineau, don't drive around abandoned roads in one of their cars, and don't drive up to US military stations hidden in the jungle.
But, after the Jeep cooled, Kevin, completely unfazed by the stench and pouring smoke, pressed on. Wandering the roads over barely inhabited hills as the sun set, he, of course, found the radar station. Before we even parked, the radar station also found us. An overlit pick-up was speeding over to the chain-link gate on the road. I didn't see any radar facility, both of us just put our hands up and jumped back into the Jeep. It started and Kevin peeled out, up another hill.
The sun had set now, but the sky was still blue, a few fireflies dotted the dusk and the jungle was loud. Nothing was out here but a paranoid security guard to the left, trees, vines and a lot of razor wire-covered fencing. At the top of the hill the car started pouring out smoke again so we got out and started photographing. I changed into a little black outfit to try and make a "Spirit" picture from my new project. The mosquitoes launched a full-scale assault and I muttered my gratitude to American sanitation and its successful banishment of malaria.
Someone had made a large stencil of some words in the road.
AQUI
NOS DA
LOS QUE
-OS
The last bit looked like "MOS" but the first letter or letters were worn off. I walked around and tried to figure out what it said, and why. Nothing human-made resided near us, except the razorwire. Dios seemed the obvious candidate. Six years of studying it and yet my Spanish is feeble. Despite the heat and mosquito bites I felt chilled. Mental institution leapt to mind.
Kevin walked over, "What does that say?"
"I don't know, I am trying to figure it out. I think it says "Here, what God gives us."
"Let's get the hell out of here. That car had better start."
I looked at him, "I am not going to argue with you!" And I threw the tripod into the car. I never do that. The poor car actually started.
more misadventures to come
Vieques Pics
On the ferry to Vieques
© 2010 bridget batch
US Customs House in Fajardo, Puerto Rico
© 2010 bridget batch
On the pier in Fajardo, Puerto Rico
© 2010 bridget batch
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Kevin and I are preparing to do a shoot in Vieques, Puerto Rico. He is at his friend Brian’s, testing out a lens with his video camera. I am working on another, unrelated project.
We are going to shoot at the “Bio Bay.” Bahia de Mosquito is the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world. w.golden-heron.com/biobay.html. Wait, what’s a bioluminescent bay?
In February, I was idling on the phone with the man. He was at the Caldera residency. I was stuck at home, missing him, missing wanderlust and trying to cram down as much “day job” work as I could before leaving for Arizona. I was also researching bioluminescence. I am working on a proposal (and missing many deadlines) for a grant to build a bioluminescent (or reminiscent thereof) installation in the city here. Besides being beautiful, I want to create, within an urban environment, the eerie and otherworldly I so often shoot in nature. Most humans live in cities, and yet so many of us seem to long for nature, to find the only refuge in this world that torments us. How many New Yorkers in their 30s decide that the only way to keep sane is to buy a house upstate?
How to create a sense of bioluminescence in non-natural materials is a problem I have no yet solved. The fascination, and conviction, that this phenomenon reaches to a place so strangely inside of us, yet so foreign as to remain frightening and transcendent, began during a trip to shelter island for the party of someone who had a house out there. Shelter Island has no streetlights and, on a moonless night, basks under the starriest skies in southern new york. In that blackness, at least ten of us held our breath and flung ourselves off of a dock and into the bay.
All around us, the water sparkled. Previously as tranquil, murky and foreboding as any leech-ridden lake, the water now shone as lovely and jewel-like as the sky. This was bioluminescence and I had never heard of it.
Back to this year, I followed every possible search for bioluminescence that google deigned to make available to me. I even went here and immediately sent a link to Jean-Luc Sinclair. Of all the strange ideas, yet one that somehow reaches deeply inside, to a place logic and mystery convene, music, logical music, made from notes matching DNA.
And, I found this: Meanwhile, Kevin was hitting on bioluminescence as a theme as well, as he kept lighting more flames and catching more trails while way out west. Now that we are back east, and also tripping on our FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, we have decided that Vieques is the place to go. So has the W, sigh.
We are going to shoot at the “Bio Bay.” Bahia de Mosquito is the brightest bioluminescent bay in the world. w.golden-heron.com/biobay.html. Wait, what’s a bioluminescent bay?
In February, I was idling on the phone with the man. He was at the Caldera residency. I was stuck at home, missing him, missing wanderlust and trying to cram down as much “day job” work as I could before leaving for Arizona. I was also researching bioluminescence. I am working on a proposal (and missing many deadlines) for a grant to build a bioluminescent (or reminiscent thereof) installation in the city here. Besides being beautiful, I want to create, within an urban environment, the eerie and otherworldly I so often shoot in nature. Most humans live in cities, and yet so many of us seem to long for nature, to find the only refuge in this world that torments us. How many New Yorkers in their 30s decide that the only way to keep sane is to buy a house upstate?
How to create a sense of bioluminescence in non-natural materials is a problem I have no yet solved. The fascination, and conviction, that this phenomenon reaches to a place so strangely inside of us, yet so foreign as to remain frightening and transcendent, began during a trip to shelter island for the party of someone who had a house out there. Shelter Island has no streetlights and, on a moonless night, basks under the starriest skies in southern new york. In that blackness, at least ten of us held our breath and flung ourselves off of a dock and into the bay.
All around us, the water sparkled. Previously as tranquil, murky and foreboding as any leech-ridden lake, the water now shone as lovely and jewel-like as the sky. This was bioluminescence and I had never heard of it.
Back to this year, I followed every possible search for bioluminescence that google deigned to make available to me. I even went here and immediately sent a link to Jean-Luc Sinclair. Of all the strange ideas, yet one that somehow reaches deeply inside, to a place logic and mystery convene, music, logical music, made from notes matching DNA.
And, I found this: Meanwhile, Kevin was hitting on bioluminescence as a theme as well, as he kept lighting more flames and catching more trails while way out west. Now that we are back east, and also tripping on our FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, we have decided that Vieques is the place to go. So has the W, sigh.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
But then...
But home is also a land of roots and community. Although, just why is it that we need roots and community? The longstanding view of a world in which one is loyal to some divided groups of humanity, variously called your tribes, your country or your trench coat mafia, has not proven to be peaceful or even really effective in terms of global management.
I think that those of us dwelling as artists, hipsters (yes, you know you are), world travelers, whatnot these days, like to think that we construct our own communities. Choose your own community, if you will. Your community status results from the intrinsic qualities of you and what you have thought about, created and contributed, not from your bloodline.
Although when on the road I can easily strike up a conversation with just about anyone, it’s at home in New York City where my community surrounds me. It is my friends who I miss while traveling. It is my friends who I like to help out. I filled in as assistant on Jen Campbell's shoot for Glass Magazine two days ago, for example.
And yesterday, sitting in McCarren Park, Kevin and I ran into his friend Ian. With Ian were two people, one who just moved back to New York from Portland. Later his friend from Portland joined us. Six people, loosely linked sat and talked for hours. The sun drifted behind lengthening shadows and we followed the last of its rays onto the softball field. The girls next to us, also progressively moving into right field, lost the chihuahua they were babysitting. But the softball team had adopted him, so they were saved from a roommate's wrath. They, and the chihuahua, joined our group. Later that night, we went to our friend Brian's apartment and ate too much cheese and drank too much wine with him and more friends. I can't relay to you that any of the conversations were deep and insightful. But besides pleasant, it was important. We were with family.
I think that those of us dwelling as artists, hipsters (yes, you know you are), world travelers, whatnot these days, like to think that we construct our own communities. Choose your own community, if you will. Your community status results from the intrinsic qualities of you and what you have thought about, created and contributed, not from your bloodline.
Although when on the road I can easily strike up a conversation with just about anyone, it’s at home in New York City where my community surrounds me. It is my friends who I miss while traveling. It is my friends who I like to help out. I filled in as assistant on Jen Campbell's shoot for Glass Magazine two days ago, for example.
And yesterday, sitting in McCarren Park, Kevin and I ran into his friend Ian. With Ian were two people, one who just moved back to New York from Portland. Later his friend from Portland joined us. Six people, loosely linked sat and talked for hours. The sun drifted behind lengthening shadows and we followed the last of its rays onto the softball field. The girls next to us, also progressively moving into right field, lost the chihuahua they were babysitting. But the softball team had adopted him, so they were saved from a roommate's wrath. They, and the chihuahua, joined our group. Later that night, we went to our friend Brian's apartment and ate too much cheese and drank too much wine with him and more friends. I can't relay to you that any of the conversations were deep and insightful. But besides pleasant, it was important. We were with family.
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