PASSAGENWERK

I came across this article today.... www.lensculture.com/rauschenberg.html

it has to do with re-photographing atget shots, looking for the same locations (if they are still there) and replicating the shot as closely as possible.
Inspiring! because i've been looking for a type of photo-project to pursue and to structure the time i'll be spending in paris starting on the 19th of this month. i've come to the conclusion that I should spend some time re-reading as much of Benjamin as I can, in particular his writings on photography, on flanerie, and revisit the Arcades Project. There's a New York Times article from a couple years back, says that there are about 30 of the actual arcades left, on the right bank, 1st and 2nd arrondissement.
the idea is to photograph decay, fetishism, the crowd, politicization of art, the ways in which the street becomes the interior, the perspective of the flaneur, to do a kind of photo-mapping of the different neighborhoods within the city, and at the same time pay a kind of homage to benjamin.

I have a lot of reading to do.

tuesday nonsense

first thing that pops into mind: a cabin crew member from the earlier class (french so imagine a heavy accent) is asked by an instructor:
what do you say/do when you are patrolling the aisle on a night flight and you see someone awake?
"you say to zem: are you lonely tonight?"

its funnier if you say it out loud. and if you imagine it actually happening.

there's not much to keep us entertained here during the week. bad tv. internet research. some reading. listening out for ghosts. making tea. more bad tv.
and missing home, and trying to figure out which home you miss, or rather which idea of home.
because i know at least for myself i don't have a clear concept of it. i don't have a routine, an established life(style). feels like it's been nothing but flux for a while and i can't allow myself to even think too much about it because i get overwhelmed. not depressed, just confused.
takes me back to reading sontag, not too long ago but feels like ages, book's been donated to a photog who seemed keen on it....
her suggestion that photography can be a sort of defense mechanism, a filter you place between yourself and the world, to shield against what damage it may do up close if you make yourself vulnerable to your surroundings. there was a great deal more to it i know but at the moment i have the sense that i'm guilty of that. using the act of photography as my own immediate cheap form of psychotherapy. or something along those lines.
i'm tired and not making much sense at this point. the essence of what i'm trying to say is that in the midst of the drastic changes i've been going through and the focus i've been determined to maintain during this interview/training process, i'm looking left and right for the means by which to orient myself, to ground and center and develop something of a figurative root system. roots more in idea and meaning than actual earth. actual city. the risk of sounding trite, the home within the mind, which can stand physical upheaval and transition....