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I’m happy to have my photograph, The Thweet Family, included in an interesting show at New Orleans’ Darkroom Gallery called  Paraphrase. All of the photographs in the show mimic or allude to famous photographs; Hugh Brown’s photograph (above), Child with Toy Chainsaw in Griffith Park, based on the Diane Arbus image is a great example. My photograph (below) paraphrases this wonderful 1953 photograph by Paul Strand called The Family.  Listen to the juror’s statement here. Sure wish I were closer to New Orleans and could make it to the show!

The Family, Paul Strand, Luzarra, Italy

]]> http://bonniejonesphoto.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/paraphrase-darkroom-new-orleans/feed/ 1 bonniejonesphoto Paraphrase, Darkroom Gallery, New Orleans The Thweet Family The Family, Paul Strand http://bonniejonesphoto.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/new-photographs-memory-and-frozen/ http://bonniejonesphoto.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/new-photographs-memory-and-frozen/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:41:34 +0000 bonniejonesphoto http://bonniejonesphoto.wordpress.com/?p=539 ]]>

My darkroom is packed up for our move to Washington in a couple of days. It seems like I just got it set up! I didn’t quite get to finish all the printing I was hoping to do, but here are two last photographs in my black and white series made at our Texas home…

Memory

Frozen, No. 1

Well, the time has come to move on from Texas…In about a week my husband and I will make another military move.  This time we’ll travel to the northwest corner of the country, to the Tacoma area in Washington. We were hoping to stick around Texas a little longer…we’ve had a good time here and there’s so much of Texas we haven’t seen.  But on our way out we will make a quick stop in Austin where I will be selling my photographs at The Lone Star Ladies Present: Shop Austin. This should be one last good taste of Texas for us. If you are in Austin, come by!

Rattlesnake season has just begun and already I’ve seen more snakes than I thought I ever would. This is because I went to the Rattlesnake Roundup – an event I won’t soon forget – a couple of weeks ago.  It’s an annual event in Sweetwater, Texas, which is about 80 miles north of us. Here’s a good YouTube video that sums it up pretty well:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkiA4Hhrjuo. Our time in Texas is getting short and we were curious… I’ll just say that hopefully I’ll leave Texas without seeing any more snakes. It was a very strange couple of hours. Watching other visitors reactions to the snakes was really interesting – look at the expressions of delight and disgust on the faces in the background in some of these pictures. 

Souveniers I passed on -

The main attraction –  snakes were pulled out of their burlap sacks, handled, and measured to find the longest…

A rattlesnake is on the table between these men and they are stretching it out along a measuring tape. The longest measurement I heard was 68 inches. Yikes! 

The little boy in the middle seemed really happy about having the snake in front of him. The little girl is thinking crazy little kid…

A snake gets “milked” for its venom…

More snakes and happy little boys…

An especially creepy sight…

Beautiful warm weather returned on Sunday and we took a drive north to Sweetwater. On the way we passed through Tennyson, where there is nothing to be found, and then Bronte, which seems like a nice little town…I especially liked Superman here, painted by a high school art class.

We were on the road again last weekend, this time to San Antonio. We meandered along small roads and stopped quite a bit as usual. If only the sun could have peeked out! I took lots of photos but the white sky gave off only dull washed-out light. How frustrating! Many of the places I stop and photograph are pretty faded already – just a bit of sunlight can bring them to life, turning a spot that looks hopeless into hopeful.

Side of a church in Brady

Blue Wagon, Fort Martin Scott near Fredericksburg

Ranch.com

Luckenbach

Porch Piano, London

Cemetery and Red Dirt Road, Kimble County

C.O. Coffy, Menard

Alcapulco Drive In, San Antonio

The Alamo, plus crowd

Here’s another batch of photos from my trip through the Big Bend of Texas. I grouped these together because they are all particularly lonesome places…

Below is a pioneer cemetery in the town of Fort Davis. What an unusual spot. A narrow path from the highway leads you in between two houses, as if you are going into someone’s backyard, and opens up into an overgrown field where the cemetery sits in a corner. Despite being surrounded by homes (and barking yard dogs) the graves and grounds are neglected and even charred by fire. The stones were so scattered that I don’t think my pictures do this strange place justice, but here’s a glimpse…

We passed this metal barn on the path to the cemetery. Pieces of it looked ready to fly away in the wind.

The next few photos are from another frontier fort northeast of Fort Davis called Fort Stockton.

Inside the officer’s quarters -

Inside the Buffalo Soldier’s Barracks-

 Window to officer’s quarters-      

An Episcopal church near Fort Stockton -

I brought along my large format camera and put it to use when I saw the clouds cutting across the sky like this just outside of Fort Davis. This scene was more lovely than lonesome.

Last weekend the Montster Truck Show came to San Angelo, and I talked my husband into going. Why? I guess I’m just interested in wacky spectacles like this…And wacky it was.
Plenty of “crushing carnage” like the excited man in the ad promised! We had fun, at least until our gasoline induced headaches got too bad to bear. Our next monster truck show will have to be an OUTdoor event…
I picked out my favorite before the show began -

And here, in action -

A race to see who can crush the fastest -

This one almost ran into the wall in front of us -

Between crushes were mud races – here’s the winner…

Here’s Dragonfly rumbling over a minivan. This driver was female -

And a close up of the descent -

Just a quick post to say Happy Thanksgiving. We’ll be visiting a friend in Big D, so I’ll get to see some more of Texas on the drive from San Angelo.  I’m hoping to hunt down a ghost town along the way…

I’m having a little sale in my shop this weekend (Nov. 27 – 30) to celebrate Thanksgiving and also my recent move to Texas. Enjoy 15% off all photography (prints). Just type “thanksgiving” for the discount code at checkout. Have a look!

And the picture of the day…Here I am with my dog Teddy at Lake Havasu in Arizona. I made this picture a few weeks ago on the drive from California to Texas. What a lovely oasis after many miles of desert. 

Self Portrait with Teddy, Lake Havasu