Wakarimasen: I Don't Understand

This project is the result of an accident — the almost universal way in which creative ideas infect us. Like so many photographers do on a regular basis, I was out in the world, exploring the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State and stumbled upon Fort Worden — an old, World War I artillery battery in the town of Port Townsend. Decommissioned decades ago, it is now a State Park recreation facility. Its miles of cement walls are the perfect target for the graffiti-prone and their profanities, a reality the Parks Service does its best to protect us from. Industrious — no, creative — Park Service employees periodically paint over the profanities with broad brushstrokes and whatever colors of paint are handiest. There is no attempt to beautify, only cover. Nonetheless, the result — at least to my eye — is a dance of the most wonderful shapes and colors, the perfect raw material for a photographer predisposed to enjoy abstract photographs.

For a few years in my youth, I studied Oriental calligraphy — Chinese and Japanese, in particular. I love the dance of the brush, the shapes that are both words and graphics that capture the motion of the master calligrapher's hand. These graffiti shapes on the wall of Fort Worden reminded me of the calligraphy I studied — and like the calligraphy, they seemed to be words that I could not read. Hence, wakarimasen — Japanese for "I don't understand."

Video

Here is a short Windows video of the Wakarimasen folio.
Here is the same video in Quicktime format.

Single Images

Several images from the Fort Worden work (but none of the ones in the folio listed below) are available as single images in the abstract category. These are aproximately 8x10", printed on 11x14" paper.

PDF Publication

A PDF of this work was published in LensWork Extended #70 as a PDF publication. Here is a slightly modified version of the digital publication. Acrobat Version 6 or greater is required.

Download the free PDF file, 12.1 megabytes

Folio

There are sixteen images in this folio as well as a title page, introductory text page, and a colophon page. The images are pigment-on-paper, printed and signed by the photographer, numbered, with an embossed artpaper cover. The sixteen images can be seen in the PDF.

The folios are produced to archival, museum standards using an Epson 4000 on Hahnemuhle PhotoRag Bright White 310. The folio measures 8x10.5". The images are about 7x9", but vary in size. Here is a more detailed description of a folio.

The folio is $145
(plus shipping and handling)

Purchase Folio Online