Time Slip

If you remember this, you're with me. Ah, the smell of fixer in the morning.

Unexpectedly I find myself managing a darkroom at Columbia University Teachers College. As you might know, I began a doctorate in college art education last year, focusing on digital art education. This year, in addition to everything else, I'll be mixing chemistry and reminding people to agitate.

There's a lot I've forgotten, am surprised to remember... odors, textures, procedures. This week I'm scrubbing trays and rebuilding shelves. Next week I'll realign enlargers.



The lab is on the roof. From the front door I watch the sky and the texture of the slate as it changes with the light.



In a different life — more than twenty years ago — I taught photography in Tucson, Arizona, at Salpointe High School and Pima Community College. Stranded negatives were common. Here's a thing I've forgotten — the ephemeral materiality of the Tri-X negative strip; curled, translucent, shiny, thin (but not as thin as a computer file). This week I've dug them out of drawers and crevices, artifacts from an earlier way of picturing.



What's the purpose of educating ourselves? What does a so-called teacher do?

These questions fascinate me — as you know if you've worked with me in any of my various classes, no matter which institution. Here at TC I'm digging deeper. Up on the roof I'm waking up in a time slip and wondering where I am. This barely looks like today.

Here's a thought: which way does a camera point? To the past? To the future?

How about this, can we picture ourselves now? Standing, breathing, waking?