http://www.utata.org/ UTATA is a salon; a collection of photographers who share a love of the craft and a genuine ability to "play well with others". From shiny new amateur to grizzled old pro, we're about being a tribe, doing cool things with photography and, to steal a phrase, "pushing the envelope". We produce regular photography projects and publications, publish a daily photography blog, and offer both feature-length and short articles as well as regular columns. We invite you to visit the Utata tribe. Publisher: Catherine Jamieson, Operations Manager: David Wilkinson en Copyright 2010 Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:50:13 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4443678060_41d5d7c2cb_m.jpg http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38233.php Photo By: macphotos | Blog By: Greg Fallis - Laundromats seemed lonelier back then. In college, it was the most desolate place in the world. Sitting in a laundromat always felt like not being invited to a party. You sensed that other people—people more cool than you—were off somewhere laughing and drinking and getting laid, while you sat there uncomfortably on a bench watching your whites tumble around in a circle. Sitting in a laundromat insured that the second major appliance you bought was a washer and dryer. You lost those in the divorce, but got a new set after the new marriage, and then lost those too. A cinnamon-colored set came with the condo you bought, unaware the economy would soon collapse. You lost those as well, along with the condo they came in. And now here you are again, and it's not so bad. The bench is still uncomfortable, but you like the quiet hum of the dryer. Watching the clothes spin is a lesson in personal history. There's the aloha shirt you bought in Antigua on your second honeymoon. And there, the Elvis Costello tee shirt your first wife appropriated to wear while painting the kitchen, her hair knotted up in a continuously collapsing bun. And the pink Tiger Woods polo shirt you got for Christmas as a joke—you wore it anyway, and still wear it to lounge around in the apartment. It's faded now, barely pink at all, and torn under the left arm. But it's soft and it's comfortable. Like you thought your life was going to be. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38233.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38233.php Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:50:13 +0000 Photo By: mawphotography | Blog By: Greg Fallis - Standing beneath a streetlight in the company of moths and a lone shopping cart, I listen to the sound of late evening traffic. The store is just closed; the last of the shoppers scurry to their cars, eager to be gone. Inside the workers bumble through their last-minute chores—sweeping, cashing out, locking down the registers. Everybody has someplace to go. Everybody has someplace to be. The people driving down Addington Street. The late shoppers with their white plastic amniotic shopping sacks. The weary workers. Everybody is moving in a certain direction. Everybody but me and the moths. And the shopping cart. I'll wait until the lot is empty. Then I'll push the cart as fast as it'll go, as fast as my aged legs will allow, and I'll hop on back and ride like I used to as a child. Me and the rattle-wheeled cart, through the empty parking lot, over and over until I'm tired enough to sleep. Only then will I return the cart to the streetlight, where the moths will still be patiently waiting. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38232.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38232.php Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:30:49 +0000 Photo By: blakley | Blog By: Greg Fallis - In 1982 Bruce Dorbowski and his brother Winston began production of a U.S.-made people's camera—an inexpensive plastic unit with an equally plastic lens. It was inspired by a cheap-ass Russian camera that was a low-tech response to a high-tech industry which had sucked much of the spontaneity out photography. The Dorbowskis called it the Hipstamatic 100. And hey, it only cost about eight bucks. Production of the Hipstamatic 100 stopped a little over a year later because, c'mon...the camera was only worth about eight bucks. Only 150 or so were sold, total. They could probably sell more now, because at some eccentric moment after digital imagery became the dominant mode of photography, cheap-ass analog cameras became unexpectedly popular. They re-introduced a cheerful uncertainty to the process, a predictable randomness in which you knew you wouldn't know what the result would be. And then on the seventh day, Apple created the JesusPhone, a multi-media-enabled device that walked on wireless water and took photos at the same time. It was inevitable that an app would be invented for this expensive high-tech contraption to recreate the low-tech feel of cheap-ass cameras. And lo, the Hipstamatic was reborn in digital form with all its foreseeable uncertainty. Is this a gimmick? Absolutely. Yes, without a doubt, completely, it's a gimmick. But it's a gimmick that seems to inspire folks to photograph things they wouldn't ordinarily photograph, and to do it in ways they wouldn't ordinarily do, and to experiment with ideas they wouldn't ordinarily consider. And hey, it only costs about two bucks. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38230.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38230.php Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:45:05 +0000 Photo By: krzysiekkobus | Blog By: Meera Sethi - They may not know each other from Adam, but they're rivals as soon as they sit down across the board. Each begins with the same stronghold and the same army: one black, one white, each piece staring down its mirror-image combatant across the squares. Standing, they're strangers, or neighbors, or friends, or lovers. Sitting, they've got a fight to win. It's a fight that will bring them both smiles, perhaps, but a fight all the same. They start the timer. All's fair in love and chess. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38228.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38228.php Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:42:23 +0000 Photo By: mascha | Blog By: Greg Fallis - Girls and cats will do what they want, the saying goes, and boys and dogs just have to get used to it. That little linebacker of a cat is clearly affronted by the behavior of his human companion, selfishly snatching all those shiny soap bubbles for herself. The girl, on the other hand, resplendent in her stars and stripes, rises eye-squinted and open-mouthed to the bubbles, like a trout to a fly, entirely oblivious to the cat. Cats do not like to be ignored (unless they choose to be ignored, in which case they resent the attention). Cats do like soap bubbles, and believe those delicate soapy orbs are theirs by Divine Right. But despite the girls' obvious lapse in regard to the Protocol of Cats, the little guy displays an admirable restraint. Any response other than an imperious glare to the girl's trespassing on his soap bubble rights would be...undignified. Cats do like to stand on their dignity. Girls, happily for us, do not. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38227.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38227.php Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:41:42 +0000 Photo By: maureenbond | Blog By: Greg Fallis - What you see here is a triumph of women's activism. In the middle of the 19th century American women of a certain class began to voice their opinions on social issues, such as the emancipation of slaves, temperance, pay equity, and the right of women to vote. At the same time, women began to reform the Victorian dress code—particularly in regard to undergarments. Women were beginning to ride bicycles and engage in sports, and the underwear of the age was much too constricting and binding for easy movement. One of their first successful efforts at dress reform was the creation of the 'union suit,' so called because it united a top garment and a bottom garment into a single unit. It was both modest and, with the cleverly designed 'drop bottom,' eminently practical for active women. The union suit was one of the first mass-produced garments of the Industrial Revolution; the production process allowed it to be easily replicated in three colors—natural wool, grey, and the ever-popular red. The union suit was so practical and so inexpensive (the Montgomery Ward catalog for 1895 priced them at ten cents) that men soon adopted them. This may not have been the first time men chose to wear womens underwear, but it's probably the first time an undergarment designed for women became standard clothing for men. So this garment—shabby, worn and faded as it is, and despite the fact that it's been claimed by men—should be seen as a testament to the power of strong-willed women to change the world. Editorial note: And yet the issue of pay equity for women, like this undergarment, is still hanging. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38225.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38225.php Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:09:35 +0000 Photo By: insideman | Blog By: Jamelah - In the summertime, we will have picnics. We will. We will go to parks and sit at picnic tables and eat potato salad. We will talk about interesting things and we will read books and we will take naps in the sun. We will. In the summertime, we will go for walks. We will kick off our shoes and curl our toes on the sunwarmed ground, soaking up the heat of the day right through our soles and letting it radiate through us until we feel like we are made of pure energy. And then we will eat ice cream. In the summertime, we will. And when it rains, we will jump in puddles and when it is too hot we will hide out under trees. We will drink lemonade and tea and we will listen to the jingle jangle of ice cubes in glasses. And at night we will lie down right in the grass and let it tickle our skin while we watch the stars and the fireflies and we will listen to the soundtrack of cicadas and crickets and our own breathing. Baby, we will. In the summertime. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38224.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38224.php Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:18:07 +0000 Photo By: elizabethtaylor | Blog By: Greg Fallis - The most important skill I learned as a medic in the military was the ability to lay down almost anywhere under nearly any circumstance and fall asleep. A couple hours of sleep huddled under a poncho in the rain, twenty minutes of peace curled up on a gurney in the morgue, a brief respite stretched out on an old woolen blanket in the back of a field ambulance. Until you've been seriously sleep-deprived, you've no idea how precious it can be. What's best is that hypnagogic point when the waking world and sleep meld together, when you can't tell thought from dream, and you don't feel any need to distinguish between the two. Second best is that complete cessation of wakefulness, sleep deep and dreamless, a drawing of the curtain over—well, over everything. An indifferent unfilled void, an absence, a welcome nothingness. I feel an instant kinship when I see somebody asleep in a situation where others are awake. At a desk. On a park bench. On the train. I'm familiar with the terrain of sleep, and wherever that slumbering person is, I suspect I've been there too. What differs is what we bring back with us. You can't return the souvenirs of sleep. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38223.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38223.php Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:22:30 +0000 Photo By: karamanis | Blog By: Meera Sethi - In Istanbul a cat with tucked tail sits, neat and serious, next to a woman with an open book in her hands. Does it really matter what she's reading? I imagine a mystery novel; a cat, I speculate (if it had the patience to follow a narrative from beginning to end), might enjoy a bit of blood and suspicion. Does it really matter if the cat sat down first, or the woman, or how long it will continue to lounge here when she leaves? (Or it could be a field guide to Istanbul birds; a cat, I do believe, is a hunter concerned with knowledge and preparation.) The woman reads (has she even noticed the cat?), the cat sits (has it even noticed the woman?), and instantly a leap is made. Here we have a cat who listens to stories. A silly notion? Perhaps. But no one, I venture, would be more pleased about it than the cat. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38221.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38221.php Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:25:12 +0000 Photo By: pfffft | Blog By: Greg Fallis - There is something quite literally miraculous in the faces of strangers. All those faces—all so different from each other, all so alike. All so different from our face. All so alike. They are all pretty and handsome in the same way we are, and in ways different from us. They are homely and unattractive in the same way we are, and in ways different from us. Each of those faces is a mirror showing us the truth and the lie, showing what is and what was, what might have been and what might yet be. Mirare—to wonder at. From that same Latin root we get the modern words 'mirror' and 'miracle.' From that Latin root, we get 'admire.' We get 'mirage.' Looking at this face—at this entire collection of faces, all these admirable mirage faces—how can we not also be looking at ourselves? This is the Miracle of Vicky on the Lawn: in the tranquility of her unruffled, unstudied beauty we can, if we look carefully enough, find some small measure of serenity and grace in ourselves. Editorial note: Here is the ongoing collection of Jen's 365 Strangers. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38217.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38217.php Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:38:13 +0000 Photo By: j_ch_ | Blog By: Greg Fallis - Here's a true thing: your kids know you're hopeless. You'll never understand, you're over-protective, you don't have even a remote grasp of fashion, you've forgotten how to play (assuming you ever really knew how to play in the first place), and you just won't leave them alone. You show them the pretty spring flowers and say how pretty they smell, but warn that bees might be hidden in them. You give them a bouncing ball and tell them to go play, then warn them the ball might bounce over the fence. You give them a cool tricycle and tell them to go ride, then warn them not to ride too fast. You're just hopeless. It's not your fault. You swore that when you became a parent you'd remember what it was like to be a kid. You promised yourself that you'd remember how hopeless your own parents were, that you'd be different, that you'd be cool. You'd remember that it really didn't matter if you ate all your vegetables, that there's no hygienic reason not to share your sandwich with your dog, and that a beautiful spring day constitutes legal grounds for cutting school. You tried, you really did. But you're still hopeless and your kids know it. Here is another true thing: when the bee stings, when the ball bounces over the fence, when the trike tips over and they skin their knees, your kids will look for you to make it better. And for the time it takes to make it better, you'll be the most wonderful person in their world. Then you'll go back to being hopeless. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38216.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38216.php Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:37:36 +0000 Photo By: russmorris | Blog By: Greg Fallis - On a night in spring The floating bridge of dreams Does break, and Parting from the peaks Are lines of cloud across the sky. Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38214.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38214.php Tue, 02 Mar 2010 19:26:40 +0000 Photo By: karamanis | Blog By: Meera Sethi - There is evidence that too little vitamin C in the body can lead to dry hair, split ends, gingivitis, scaly skin, poor-healing wounds, easy bruising, nosebleeds, high blood pressure, gallbladder disease, stroke, atherosclerosis, and a general decrease in the immune system's ability to fight off infection. There is some evidence that a diet rich in vitamin C, on the other hand, may help to lower your risk of developing high blood pressure, the common cold, sunburns, osteoarthritis, age-related vision loss, asthma, pre-eclampsia, and some cancers. So anyway, hey. Are you by any chance looking for some vitamin C? Because I know this place in Istanbul... see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38213.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38213.php Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:00:36 +0000 Photo By: harpy | Blog By: Greg Fallis - The mind is a strange place, occupied with odd unruly ideas and ungovernable thoughts. I can think of no reason my mind should retain the white-on-white image of a pale, waxen hose coiled casually over an ivory-colored hook affixed to a milk-hued wall. No reason at all. And yet there it is. There it is, mathematically asserting itself into my consciousness, a series of lackadaisically recurring loops, a model of sensuous self-similarity. Each loop of the hose is like every other loop—like, in fact, every loop of every coiled hose in the entire world. What we see here is the pallid echo of an organic shape ubiquitous in nature. Here is the coiled snake, here is the asymmetrical orbit of planets, here is the route of the roulette ball and the contracting pattern of flares leading to a coronal implosion. Here is the circuit your dog takes when patrolling the back yard. Here is the course of love. But no—it's just a white hose coiled around a white hook against a white wall. I'm not drawn to it by some primitive collective unconscious gravity. I'm drawn to it simply because it's beautiful. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38211.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38211.php Fri, 26 Feb 2010 18:53:16 +0000 Photo By: k2ski | Blog By: Jamelah - The sky in winter can be many things: soft, pale, metallic, mostly white, hinted black, flat, dull, motionless, dead, angry, tumultuous, promising, forbidding, broken, streaked, sunny, starry, clear blue so beautifully icy blue it almost hurts. Never the same from one moment to the next. Threatening a storm or whispering calm. We look at it, wondering whether to take an umbrella, whether to wear boots, whether to bring sunglasses, hoping that its ever-changing looks will tell us what we should do next. The bench keeps its back turned and doesn't care a bit, waiting only for someone to stop and sit. see illustrated entry utata.org http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38207.php http://www.utata.org/frontpage/38207.php Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:40:07 +0000