Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Now its getting strange



I came across this photograph of me photographing a woman for my project on the street while she was photographing me. Strange.

Photographers like nothing better than to take pictures of each other. Walk into any photo dept in any newspaper in the country you will see the walls plastered with images of photographers goofing for the camera. Gone are pictures of fires, riots and war, instead you are likely to find a shot of Gary the old timer on the toilet.

While in college a friend of mine actually talked his professor into giving him credit for a semester long project documenting a ritual called, "White Trash Thursday". He lived in a trailer off campus and with Deliverance playing on the VCR in the background we would all get drunk and photograph each other. This all culminated in him presenting his 'work" to the faculty.

The professors were not great and we all thought the classes were a joke. The extraordinary thing about school was being around a group of people who , for the first time in my life , cared about pictures as much as I did.

We critiqued each other's work, encouraged each other and took turns dating the same handful of female photo students. Every now and then an outsider would come into our group. We had a redheaded roommate for one semester from a farm town in Southern Indiana named Nelson. One night I walked past his room and saw him sleeping on a mat on the floor with his arm over his twin brother Neal who in turn had his arm on their younger brother Ned. Three of them lined up like cordwood.

9 comments:

dunstan said...

Hey, that's Heather! Neat.

Robb said...

Thomas, do you have the White Trash slides? I had them for years and gave them to you or Darcy for some reason. - Bass

ThomasBroening said...

Bass-I think they have been donated to the Indiana University Archive so future generations of scholars can study them or they are in my closet. You want them?

Anonymous said...

exactly how many different colored pick up trucks do you have access to? did you feel that the white one made you less stealth then the red one?

ThomasBroening said...

We just take which ever truck the car rental has in stock. Though red did stand out a little too much.

Douglas said...

That White Trash Thursday project was ART! It should go on a national tour before being enshrined at the Smithsonian.

Get those slide to Bass and lets see them online!

Unknown said...

ey you guys - have to take exception to the exact description of the photo group -don't believe there were only boys or easily wooed "female photo students" in that group -though have to say I definately made a point to avoid the whole trailer park scene. I'd like to suggest that rather than saying the professors were idiots for allowing the work to be submitted, maybe consider that someone paid money to take a class where the only thing he "learned" was getting drunk in a trailer park .. I'm just saying . . .

Anonymous said...

WHAT COLLEGE DID YOU GO TO LEARN PHOTOGRAPHY?

ThomasBroening said...

The Harvard of South Eastern Indiana. Indiana University.