Alexis Byter - Words & Vision

Under new ownership

Charles Christian — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:36:01 +0100

Well not really - but be prepared for changes - I'm concerned this blog is heading too far into pseuds corner territory. Stay tuned.

World War III has been cancelled

Alexis Byter — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:12:29 +0100

When I was a kid, we honestly believed that World War III – between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union – would start here at Checkpoint Charlie. That's the little white-painted wooden hut, in the middle distance, with the ersatz sandbags in front of it and sitting in the middle of what is now a busy shopping district in the centre of Berlin. Back then is was the border between the US and Soviet zones – but now the Soviet Union has gone, Germany has been reunified and Checkpoint Charlie reduced to a tourist destination. I took the picture late at night, using a far too small camera and holding it in my hands rather than of a more substantial support – but that is the nature of the genre. I was also intrigued that there is now a museum dedicated to the Stasi – the old East German secret police – which, at the time I was visiting the city, was holding an exhibition looking at the surveillance techniques they used to employ.

(Berlin, 23:43pm, May 19, 2008, f 3.6 - 1/80 - ISO 800)

Fetching in the lines

Alexis Byter — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:11:44 +0100

(Scarborough, 17:07pm, August 1, 2007, f 4.0 - 1/250 - ISO 100)

I took this picture on a visit to Scarborough last year. I was there again a couple of weeks ago and the building is in the same derelict state – OK there's a different car blocking the entrance but you get the picture. The building is one of the few remaining stores that used to support a once thriving fishing industry. In fact you can just see the words Emulator on the wall – this was one of the last steam trawlers to sail out of Scarboro, tho it would have been scrapped (no heritage funds to turn old ships into museums in those days) about 50 years ago. One of my uncles used to skipper it. Another had a trawler torpedoed beneath him (he and his crew survived) back in 1915. (Better make that a great, great uncle.) Now, all that lies in wait for these buildings is a revival of the property market when no doubt they'll be turned into trendy living accommodation for weekend visitors.

where long lines once hung
now apartments and loft space
for the nouveau riche

It also reminds me of my old Aunt Margaret

FETCHING IN THE LINES

My Aunt Margaret was a fisherman’s wife who spent most of her adult life working in the warehouses on the Scarborough Fish Pier. When I was young, she was my baby-sitter and evenings would be spent listening to her holding forth on her two favourite topics. These were the Old Testament, with a strictly fundamentalist, Elim pentecostal interpretation – and the Soviet penal system.

She admired the fact that Joseph Stalin, like the Lord Jehovah, was quick to smite down anyone who opposed him.

After discussing the metaphorical symbolism of Adam and Eve’s nakedness, or some other tale from my Children's Illustrated Bible, we’d have a supper of soup, accompanied by large hunks of bread.

It always annoyed my mother (whose idea of a rigorous physical workout was – and still is – taking her mink coat for a walk) that Aunt Margaret would hack the loaf into wedges, rendering the leftovers impossible to toast the following morning.

I now realise that the long years spent in the raw cold on the pier, mucking the salt-slaked long lines clean of debris, then skaning the mussels from their shells to provide fresh bait, had turned the knuckles of Margaret’s hands into arthritic claws, incapable of wielding a more subtle knife cut.

Still life at the 11th Street Diner

Alexis Byter — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 19:45:11 +0100

At the 1950’s style, chromium-sheathed 11th Street Diner, on the corner of Washington Avenue in downtown Miami Beach, the short-order cook looks like Samuel L. Jackson would look, if he were playing a short-order cook in a 1950’s style, chromium-sheathed diner in downtown Miami Beach. Except the white’s of this cook’s eyes are permanently bloodshot and inflamed from the long hours spent working in the hot fat and steam-filled atmosphere of the diner’s kitchen. The 11th Street Diner is just around the corner from the Wolfsonian Foundation, the home of Miami Beach’s premier collection of art and artifacts celebrating the city’s Art Deco heritage of the 1920s through to the 1950s. On a slack Saturday lunchtime in April, there are still more people in the diner than there are in the museum. Perhaps the people here prefer to live out their heritage in realtime, rather than view it through the toughened glass of museum exhibit cases.

In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes writes that the essence or ‘noeme’ of photography is its ability yo captures ‘that-has-been’ – the brief instant in time, between here and infinity, when the camera lens snaps shut. Look at this photograph. Has the diner finished eating? There is still some sesame-seed bun on the plate, along with ketchup splattered fries. The angle of the fork suggests the diner has just paused to take this shot and will soon be returning to his meal. But this debate is academic because minutes later the meal is over. What we are seeing now is ancient history. The table has been cleared, the diner has left scene, the detritus has been trashed or recycled, and the plates long since washed, stacked and re-used by further generations of diners.

Out of sight of the camera, the short-order chef is speaking on his mobile phone, interceding on behalf of one of his customers, remonstrating with her boyfriend that he is not paying the mother of his child the respect she deserves. On the diner’s sound system American Woman by The Guess Who is playing.

(Miami Beach, 12:49pm, April 12, 2008, f 2.8 - 1/60 - ISO 100)

Street Life #13

Alexis Byter — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:34:54 +0100

I took this picture earlier this week in Old Compton Street in London's Soho. The subject I was focusing on was the woman working on the laptop in the coffee shop – I'm intrigued by this idea of coffee shops (usually a Starbucks or somewhere similar with wi-fi) becoming the so-called 'third place' – a halfway house between working from home and working in an office.

Here's an aside... My favourite image – inevitably taken when I did not have a camera to hand – was in another coffee shop, this time a French themed one in a side-street in the fashion district near Oxford Circus. There was an elderly Tibetan-looking buddhist monk, dressed in crimson robes (there were no crowds so he was not the Dalai Lama) he was drinking hot chocolate from one of those big French-style bowls you usually only see in Continental Europe – and in front of him was an Apple Mac laptop (the cafe had free wi-fi access). Perhaps he was surfing the web, looking for enlightenment in cyberspace. On the internet nobody knows you are a dog (or even a god).

Anyway, back to this week in Soho. It was only after I'd taken the picture that I spotted the guy on the right, glugging wine straight from the bottle – no glass, perhaps he'd not been having a very good Monday morning. I say I spotted the guy – in fact he'd spotted me first and it was his wild gesticulating (not caught on camera) that attracted my attention. As he looked angry (and possibly drunk) I decided not to push my luck by taking any more pix and, in the words of the old-style News of the World reporters, I made my excuses and left.

(London, Soho, 12:42pm, June 16, 2008, f 4.0 - 1/400 - ISO 400)

Street Signs #7

Alexis Byter — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:38:52 +0100

Another picture from Miami Beach, snapped through a coach window and showing a traffic violation sign – however in the background is another sign promoting an upcoming convention with the snappy tagline of 'Welcome to Miami - where spinal expertise is hotter than salsa dancing'. Hmmm...

(Miami Beach, 22:04pm, April 11, 2008, f 3.6 - 0.3 - ISO 400)

Street Signs #6

Alexis Byter — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 15:08:09 +0100

There was a time, not that long ago – alright, it was in the 1970s and early 1980s – when the only person to be seen in London's Oxford Street shopping district carrying a placard (or sandwich board) was a militant vegetarian pacifist (if that's not a oxymoron) who urged people not to eat meat because he believed it stoked our animal passions and led on to war and cruelty. Today, by comparison, Oxford Street is filled with latter-day hawkers advertising English language schools, tanning & waxing salons, sushi bars, mobile phone unlocking, body piercing, tattoos and a host of other equally essential, can't live without 21st century needs and services. In case you are wondering why everyone is wearing heavy coats in April – it was unseasonably cold weather.

(London, 14:36pm, April 2, 2008, f 4.9 - 1/640 - ISO 400)

Street Life #12

Alexis Byter — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:39:26 +0100

The Royal Academy of Arts' annual summer exhibition is currently taking place in London – here's a picture I took on Piccadilly (that's the London Street on which the RA is located – it's also the street on which you find The Ritz and Fortnum & Masons but that's another story) a couple of months' ago. You'll have to attend the show to see if this street artist's work made it into the exhibition.

(London, 12:39pm, April 2, 2008, f 4.9 - 1/200 - ISO 400)

Street Life #11

Alexis Byter — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 07:58:18 +0100

We're back to that old street photography trope of men in wheelchairs – however when I first saw this gentleman, I thought "Oh, mi gawd – he must have had a heart attack or something" as he was apparently slumped forward and motionless in his chair. And then I realised that he was actually peering at his mobile phone. Not merely peering at it but texting – I thought texting was a lost art to anyone over the age of 35. Note the backdrop of a cut price sale in a shop carrying designer label clothes

(Norwich, 15:06pm, April 4, 2008, f 4.5 - 1/125 - ISO 500 huh, ISO 500!)

Despatches #6 - Red Dress

Alexis Byter — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:08:59 +0100

I know... the phrase 'red dress' summons up lachrymose images of Chris de Burgh singing Lady in Red to Princess Di (although to me the words remind of the line in the old Tommy Tucker 1964 track Hi-Heel Sneakers where he sings "Put on your red dress baby, you know we're goin' out tonight" – the song was also covered by just about everybody who was anybody in the Sixties music scene) however what caught my eye here was the bright red dress with its every decreasing price tag – reduced from £750 to £250 to £125. It was only later, when I was looking at the image on a large screen, that I clocked the board at the side of the picture, with its long list of cosmetic beauty treatments. I guess for many women that is the downside of wearing a posh frock – the expectation (or maybe even the requirement)that it will be wrapped around an artificially toned and enhanced body. Bring me a rocket leaf salad without any dressing – and go easy on the leaves. Nah, not for me, crack open another tub of Pringles.

(Norwich, 14:25pm, August 25, 2007, f 3.5 - 1/125 - ISO 80)

Despatches #5 - The Diving Belle

Alexis Byter — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:19:37 +0100

OK, so it's not Christ the Redeemer above Rio or even Antony Gormley's Angel of the North near the A1 at Gateshead but it was jolly nice of the good burghers of Scarborough to erect this statue in a prominent position at the end of the Lighthouse Pier to celebrate the resort's long association with sea bathing. However the devil is in the detail – or the context – and nobody seems to have noticed that the backdrop to the statue is a lighthouse in grave need of a lick of fresh white paint.

(Scarborough, 17:33pm, August 1st 2007, f 6.3 - 1/400 - ISO 100)

Street Life #10

Alexis Byter — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:02:50 +0100

Eating fish & chips during the holiday season at the English seaside is not just a way of taking on food. It is not just a tradition or a way of life – it is a religion. Consider the concentration and enrapt look on their faces – they are like celebrants at a mass taking communion. For one brief moment in time, all the troubles of the world has been blotted out and there is just fish and there is just chips. (And, in the case of at least one of our alfresco diners, there is also mushy-peas.) Contemporary cultural note: the plastic forks are a recent innovation – it used to be a little wooden fork; and, fish & chips were never ever served-up directly into a newspaper – any fule kno that would just get the food stained with printers ink.

(Scarborough, 18:40pm, August 1st 2007, f 3.6 - 1/100 - ISO 100)

Street Life #9

Alexis Byter — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:57:24 +0100

We're back in Scarborough for this picture – altho I'm not sure whether it should be one of my street life or street signs pictures. This is one aspect of the English seaside that remains as strong as it always has done – the cockles and whelks stall – but would you play seafood roulette with a place (no fishy pun intended that's claim to fame is that it is the cheapest source of fresh fish? Actually these people have been in business for years and their food is perfectly safe – and probably the best on the coast. But, for the summer holiday trade (and note the copious amounts of salt and vingegar available) price is king so they have to emphasise cheapness rather than quality. The picture also shows one of the perils of street photography – being spotted by your subject (and I was standing on the far side of the street about 60 feet away) – tho fortunately in this case she has a big smile on her face.

(Scarborough, 18:12pm, August 1st 2007, f 3.6 - 1/100 - ISO 100)

Street Signs #5

Alexis Byter — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:56:46 +0100

In the United States, some judges have to stand for election and re-election just like politicians. And they buy ad space just like politicians – so when I saw this campaign poster, I could not resist taking a picture. I also liked the way the bright blue of the poster contrasts with the red of Do not enter - wrong way sign – which could almost be a comment on Judge Faigin's campaign.

(San Diego, 15:27pm, May 14th 2008, f 2.8 - 1/1000 - ISO 100)

Street Life #8

Alexis Byter — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:28:35 +0100

This is positively the last pastry/bread-product/donut related posting – at least for some time. I found this image buried in a old folder – I was walking past the Tesco supermarket on the corner of Jermyn Street and Lower Regent Street – and there was a line of barren window-boxes bereft of any vegetation and just about anything else except this abandoned donut. I'd like to think it had been left out for the birds or as some latter-day libation to the gods or faerie-folk – but I doubt it.

(London, 09.55am, June 21st 2007, f 4.5 - 1/80 - ISO 200)

Honeymoon in Vegas

Alexis Byter — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:52:42 +0100

My earlier posting about the 'Berlin Buns' struck a note with a number of people with a interest in techie matters (What are you doing reading this blog, you should be working? – Actually, what am I doing writing this bog, I should also be working!) as it appears that cakes, pastries and sundry bread products play an important part in their lives. So, I thought I would dig out another cake-related photograph – taken with a pretty basic point-and-shoot digital automatic. The picture was taken in the shopping arcade of the Wynn Hotel, which is currently the top venue for weddings in Vegas, and shows a wedding cake that appears to be decorated with icing-covered donuts. Here is a haibun I wrote about the trip...

Honeymoon in Vegas

They always tell you Las Vegas is the wedding capital
of the United States – if not the world. On my short
trip I encounter two brides. The first, clad in traditional
long white dress and veil, is standing in the queue for
a cab outside the Bellagio at midnight on a warm June
evening.

The second is when I’m on my way back to the airport.
I’m standing outside the Wynn, waiting for another cab.
But, there’s a delay and a plane to catch so I order a
limo – not as flash as it sounds as they are cheap to
hire. A couple, waiting in the queue next to me, ask
if they can go dutch and share the limo as they too
need to get to the airport in a hurry. “No problem,”
I say. Turns out they have been in Las Vegas to get
married and took a honeymoon suite at the Wynn that
had a floorspace of 1800 square feet. “That’s bigger
than many people’s homes in the UK,” I say. “That’s
bigger than many people’s homes in the United States,”
they reply.

Vegas honeymoon – in a bridal suite
bigger than the home they’ll share.

(Wynn Hotel, Las Vegas, 20:24pm, June 26th 2007, f 2.8 - 1/60 - ISO 200)

Street Life #7

Alexis Byter — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:48:22 +0100

Do Americans have a sense of irony? Currently there are a lot of complaints that the rising cost of gazoline (petrol) means that it now costs about $100 (£50) to fill up the tank of a big gaz-guzzling SUV compared with $30 just five years ago. Now look at this picture. It was taken earlier this month in San Diego (shot thru a chain link fence if you were puzzled by the blurry bits) showing a local stretch of freeway (it's the San Diego Freeway where it runs under 5th Avenue as it happens) in the mid-afternoon. The main road is busy – and so is the filter lane/ramp in the centre of picture. But looky here – there is nobody using the carpool lane for cars carrying more than one person. Go figure.

(San Diego, 15:31pm, May 14th 2008, f 4.9 - 1/400 - ISO 100)

Despatches #4 – 7 miles high

Alexis Byter — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:49:43 +0100

Ok, technically this is not a great picture but it intrigued me – it was taken from the aisle of an NWA passenger jet (while leaning over a large Armenian gentleman) flying at 37,000 feet (about seven miles high) over the ice-packs of the Greenland/Davis Strait/Hudson Bay area of North America earlier this month. The metadata on the JPEG file says it was 9:40am in the morning but I'm not sure if that was UK time or US time – mid-flight you are in the middle of so many different timezones that it's all a bit academic. I had to tweak the image a little in Photoshop to overcome to contrast and glare but this is pretty much what I saw with my own eyes. Have the ice-packs melted earlier this year?

(Seven miles high, somewhere over Greenland/Canada, 09:40am, May 11th 2008, f 4.9 - 1/1000 - ISO 200)

Street Life #6

Alexis Byter — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:45:39 +0100

I took this picture in San Diego earlier this month – the city has an excellent tram-car/mass transit system running all the way down to the Mexican border. I took this picture because I was fascinated by the woman with the suitcase and bags – why was she wearing the overcoat and those thick boots on what was a stinking hot afternoon? Was she homeless or just eccentric – there were plenty of both about in San Diego, including an elderly guy in a motorised wheelchair, sporting a luminous pink mohican haircut on his head and flying a pennant on his chair saying he was 'bad to the bone'. He zoomed past me so fast on the street I couldn't get my camera focussed on him before he was gone. Bad to the bone and fast to the bone.

(Mid-town, San Diego, 17:52pm, May 13th 2008, f 4.9 - 1/320 - ISO 100)

Despatches #3

Alexis Byter — Thu, 22 May 2008 10:01:15 +0100

This week I was in Berlin with the day job, attending another tech show. In terms of the freebies, all delegates got the Berlin equivalent of an Oyster card for unlimited free travel on the city's public transport system and a dinky little backpack/wheelie bag. The latter proved particularly popular, with grown men devising all manner of schemes to obtain additional bags. Plenty of food available – altho it was of a peculiarly Germanic nature, comprising mainly of small animals and fish fried, stewed, baked, pickled, sliced, diced and/or turned into sausages served up with sauerkraut and cream cheese. Still, the doughnuts (donuts ?) were nice.

(Messe Centre, Berlin, 16:52pm, May 19th 2008, f 4.0 - 1/60 - ISO 100)

(Messe Centre, Berlin, 15:39pm, May 19th 2008, f 3.6 - 1/25 - ISO 400)

Street Life #5

Alexis Byter — Sun, 18 May 2008 20:03:40 +0100

I don't do early mornings – takes me all my time to get my shoes co-ordinated, never mind my socks – so there I am, early one morning last summer, walking across the concourse at Liverpool Street Station in London, when I see this immaculately dressed women in front of me, wearing a killer pair of high heels – a pair of killer high heels that were the brightest thing to be seen that morning. End of story.

(Liverpool St. Station, London, 07:39am, July 24th 2007, f 4.9 - 1/200 - ISO 80)

Despatches #2

Alexis Byter — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:44:19 +0100

I'm doing a lot of travelling at the moment – and that means endless hours waiting around airport lounges, as well as the now all-too-familiar 'shoes off, belts off, jackets off, pockets emptied, laptops out, liquids out' routine going through security. Here are some casual observations gleaned from the past 24 hours...

• At the airport in Memphis, Tennessee, they offer little plastic bag-like bootees to put on your feet before going through security, so you don't get your feet dirty. Its the only airport I've ever seen with this facility. Southern comfort?

• On the fight into Atlanta, the pilot warned of turbulence because we would be flying through 'tornadic weather' – an interesting euphemism to ponder while all around were losing their lunch.

• In one airport lobby, while discussing the tyranny of alway-on email thanks to Blackberrys and wi-fi, another traveller confessed that he was trying to introduce the concept of 'email-free Fridays' at work. "If you need to communicate with someone, just pick up the phone and speak to them – and if they are in the same office, go visit them." The man was clearly a dangerous radical.

Here's a picture I took last month in one such departure lounge – he's not practising yoga but merely sitting there to take advantage of the nearby power socket.

(Miami International Airport, 19.06pm, April 13th 2008, f 3.2 - 1/13 - ISO 100)

Despatches #1

Alexis Byter — Thu, 15 May 2008 00:39:01 +0100

I'm staying at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego. It's the coolest hotel in the city. All the bellhops look like rock band roadies – and all the women working on the reception desk could pass for rock chicks. Loud rock music plays in the foyers and corridors 24/7. But leafing through the hotel guide in my room I read the following passage, and I quote...

IN CASE OF AN EARTHQUAKE: Tremors are infrequent and seldom dangerous. When you check into your room, please identify the safest place of an earthquake, so that if a tremor occurs you can carefully move toward it. Remain calm and don’t panic. Do not rush outside. Protect your hands and feet from debris and broken glass. Brace yourself in an inside corner away from windows and glass. Crouch under a table or desk. Stay away from windows, sliding glass doors and mirrors. Move to an inner wall or corridor. Avoid any objects that might fall or shake loose. If you are in bed, stay there and place all the pillows and covers over your body.

Stay away from windows, sliding glass doors and mirrors? Avoid any objects that might fall or shake loose?

In my room one whole wall – all that exists between me and a 12 floor rapid decent into the street – is made of glass. The door to the bathroom is a sliding glass door. There are two mirrors, each measuring approximately 5 foot by 5 foot, in my room, as well as a wall mounted flat panel TV with a screen so huge that many cinemas would be in envy of it. (This TV is suspended over a small desk, the only element in the room I could possibly crouch beneath.) And there are a number of glazed pictures hanging on the walls in the room.

Did the people who wrote the earthquake warning ever visit my room?

Do the women working on the reception desk realise the irony of answering the phone with the question 'How can we rock your world?'

And, am I the only person to have noticed that one of the pictures in my room – a photo of the neck and machine-heads of a Fender Stratocaster guitar – has been hung upside down?

Street Life #4

Alexis Byter — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:55:37 +0100

It wasn't that long ago that the sight of a news camera crew filming in a busy street would have attracted a huge audience. This picture was taken last September in London's Oxford Street – you can see the woman on the right hand-side of the photo giving the news reporter (who I assume by her headscarf was working for an Arabic or Asian TV channel) a passing glance but apart from that, nothing. How blase we have become.

(Oxford Street, London, 13:46pm, September 3rd 2007, f 4.9 - 1/200 - ISO 80)

Haiga posting

Alexis Byter — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:19:07 +0100

With fighting breaking out in Beirut again, again, here is a haiga I originally created a couple of years ago – don't worry about the JCX signature, that's an old pseudonym I once used. This is no place for a lecture but I believe its an option for every creative artist to comment on topical issues when they feel the need – you don't have to but if you do feel the urge, don't be put off by the fear other people may think you are being 'political'. All art has a political subtext.

Street Signs #4

Alexis Byter — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:27:27 +0100

Another image that combines elements of street life with street signs. They were holding an exhibition at the Bass Museum (immediately behind me as I took this shot) celebrating some of the ideas people had in the 1940s, 50s and early 60s for developing Miami as a holiday resort. I like the way the exhibition's subtitle 'Promises of Paradise' is off-set by the reality of the boarded-up art deco Adams Hotel across the way. Looking at this photo on a large screen I also noticed the clutter of power lines and telephone cables. This seems to be a feature of American streets – I've got a copy of a Walker Evans picture (Main Street, Pennsylvania Town) taken over 70 years ago in 1936 and hardly anything (other than the shape of the automobiles) has changed – half empty streets and skylines cluttered with cable.

(Miami Beach, 11:37am, April 12th 2008, f 4.5 - 1/1000 - ISO 100)

Street Life #3

Alexis Byter — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:47:10 +0100

Not sure whether this falls into the category of street life or street signs... anyway, back to Miami Beach again. Because this is a pedestrian-friendly city, you see a lot of people walking their dogs (although admittedly most of these dogs look like 'rip your throat out at a moment's notice' American bulldogs or pitbulls – which is why I was sheltering behind the lampost, or whatever, on the far right of the picture. What originally caught my eye here was the dog belonging to the guy in the blue polo shirt and shorts, seen heading out of the top of the picture – the dog had more bling around its neck than the average gangsta rapper. Americans also like their big shiny 4WD pick-up trucks (so do I actually) and it was only when I looked at the full size version of this photo that I saw on the back window a sticker saying the driver attended the University of Margaritaville. The bumper sticker reads Politicians and Diapers need to be changed - Often for the same reasons.

(Miami Beach, 10:03am, April 12th 2008, f 3.6 - 1/800 - ISO 100)

Street Signs #3

Alexis Byter — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:16:16 +0100

This picture was taken in the vaults beneath the market building in Scarborough. I liked the incongruity that beside the seaside in England, there was an enthusiast for Native American culture – and that he had had to go to Sweden, another country also not known for its Native American culture.

(Scarborough, 10:57am, August 1st 2007, f 8 - 1/60 - ISO 200)

New prose poetry

Alexis Byter — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:05:34 +0100

BOURBON EYES

6:30 in the evening. You finish your third Jack
Daniels, roll yourself another cigarette, then
turn to me and say: Sure. I’m really happy with
the way my life’s turned out. You smile tightly
and quickly turn away, in case I notice your eyes
are lying.

Your eyes are lying. They are lying to me and
they’re lying to you. You’re heading for the
rocks and a bottle’s the only wreckage you’ve
got to cling on to.

6:35 in the evening. You order your fourth
Jack Daniels and roll another cigarette.

...Lex Byter

Street Signs #2

Alexis Byter — Tue, 06 May 2008 10:01:19 +0100

This was taken in Miami Beach last month – I particularly like the contrast between the idealised world depicted by the model on the poster and the real lives of the people waiting for a bus. And it also reflects that well-known trope of street photography that there has to be a guy in a wheelchair somewhere in the picture.

(Miami Beach, 3:41pm, April 12th 2008, f 5.6 - 1/100 - ISO 100)