Fudagraphy Blogography

Brian Barlow - AKA "The Dick Mime"

La Roux with clothing provided by Evan Biddell

At some point in the last few months I stopped writing frequently. Around this time last year I was having a bit of a personal crises and I began to write again after a gap of a few years. Exactly what I wrote is not as important as the fact that I had the need and the urge to write and fill every scrap of paper, every hard-drive with thoughts, rants, and expressions of personal feelings. This blog came from that literary awakening I had. I felt prolific and wanted to express myself with photos, with film, with words, and in other ways that in retrospect were less productive and more self destructive. It is odd that I stopped writing in the first place, because I never ran out of thoughts or things to say - I just didn’t feel like sharing them; not with others or with myself. It’s as if I felt my ideas were not good enough to share.

Enter the Haggis as seen on my bread box

Recently I signed up for a “twitter” account because I thought it would be a useful tool for promoting my business. It occurred to me quickly how mundane the facts were that people posted on their twitter. Some people talked about going to work, some about doing chores, some about feelings, some about music or concerts or commercials they saw – and I didn’t seem to find any of this information remotely interesting. I find everything I do interesting and of course it occurred to me (not just now but long ago)  that not everyone does, but because I am arrogant I share everything about my life with everyone. To cut my side rant short, I really don’t know what the point to my blog is anymore. It was very very popular for a while and then I lost the need to share every single photo I would take and kept putting it off and putting it off until now I rarely think or care about it anymore. It was simply too exhausting as people became offended when I did not update it. People acted as if it was the same as ignoring their phone calls!

Cuff the Duke - an outtake from the new promo photos

I am a photographer, and I travel and meet interesting people and take exciting photographs of a variety of subjects – but personally I feel Woody Allen will someday send me an e-mail (not a phone call because he’s much too busy for that) and that e-mail from his iphone will say “Relax Fuda – what the hell is your problem” – or something to that effect with appropriate Freudian terminology and a high brow reference to Diane Arbus killing herself or something.

University of Toronto Medical building

I suppose another reason I have stopped writing has to do with me reading Susan Sontag and her book on photography. I will start this off by saying that her essays and points and arguments on photography are as brilliant as they are wordy; and she likes words. I am torn sometimes on whether or not people who casually use words like “unctuous”, “pernicious”, “convulsive” in writing, which is otherwise very readable and clearly aimed toward a general reading public, write this way because they are so brilliant or because everyone else is not.

Robarts Library - "More than meets the Eye" - It transforms into a robot

Basically, Sontag talks about the various arguments for photography; as an art, as a vehicle of North American consumption, as a recording tool, as an activity that is not quite traditional art and not quite hobby. She makes great pains to compare various aspects of photography to the traditional view of art while simultaneously discrediting these arguments. One of the many interesting points she brings up is that every single photographer seems to have their own special view on photography, on his/her place in the art world, and what photography means to them.

A producer from Austrailia produces an album in Toronto via Skype

It seems to me very selfish to contribute to the canon (not a pun on Canon – but that would be amazing if it was!) of photography literature, but also essential because without that personal connection to my work what one is left with is the vision of a stranger. I am very grateful to her for freeing me from the need to classify my art as a singular vision and/or technique because this mode of thinking is a cast off from the days when painters and photographers fought it out to define “art”.  Also, and at the risk of seeming petty, she made me feel terribly stupid for not having thought of many of these ideas first. Some people are WAAAAY smarter than me – though I have found few have the talent to put it to use. I am a photographer – but I am very good at what I do. I have to tell myself this every time a client who shows up with bed head, shingles, and pasta stained jogging pants does not get satisfying photos.

Dex AKA "Cadillac Grill" in the studio

I will admit something here that I am reluctant to admit professionally. I was not very busy for a few weeks and I started to have a kind of crises. I was quite close to getting a job to supplement my income because…I wanted to buy some stuff. I was not at the stage where I was worried about where I was going to get toilet paper but I was accepting a few more invitations to “dinner at a friend’s house”. I started evaluating the “value” of art because as I was seeing it – my art wasn’t having any value. I am melodramatic and have enough money to buy useless crap – but I started reading art theory. That didn’t really help my art but it made me feel stupid enough to book some shoots and re-do my website. Which wasn’t THAT out of date – but I felt it kind of really was. Also – I think I was sick for a few weeks because of the flooding of my apartment.

Sayuri/Stickers/Lazy shedding cat

 Did you know that Aristotle thought art had medicinal uses? Aristotle said that art was basically therapy. Did you know that therapist when separated into two words says “the rapist”. Follow that logic to the end and you will see what I am saying. Now forget that and divide your answer by five and move up a letter. Your word is “Elephant”!

Jen Simpson with clothing by Evan Biddell

I suppose having a clear mission statement for my work would be a good commercial idea, but I would be lying if I didn’t feel that my work is as varied as the subject matter I shoot and it satisfies my need to be around new and interesting people and also to wallow in the solitude of someone who very often hates everyone. Is that a mission statement? I hope not.

Jen Simpson with Clothing by Evan Biddell

Right now I am listening to “Cuff The Duke’s” new album “Way Down Here”. It is, in my opinion, the best album they have yet released. I am very proud of Wayne and ALSO that I am doing the new press photos for his album and they are going to be printed EVERYWHERE! I thought I would “throw” that sucker in while ranting. “Throw” is not the name of a Cuff the Duke song. I have no idea why I “put” quotation marks on “throw”. Nor do I know what I put a “T” instead of a “t” and why I am “putting” quotation marks on this. I honestly don’t even remember the last time I had to put a capital “J” on my name. Even government e-mails I send these days end with my computer alias. The alias is the beta character of each of the words IND FTCZ. A beta character by my creation and definition is the second letter in a sequence of the alphabet – Alpha Bet. My alias is my name “Joe Fuda”– don’t do math while reading my blog! FOCUS!

Dez at Josh Higgen's birthday party

“The meaning of art is not necessarily it’s content”.  - Susan Sontag (when asked about my blog entry that I wrote today. Susan Sontag is actually dead – but I doubt she would argue, and not because she’s dead. She actually said that in her essay “Against Interpretation” before she died. Did you know that she dated Annie Leibovitz? Isn’t that worth mentioning?)

Flight of the Conchords at Massey Hall - It was REALLY great!

To talk a bit about my work as of late, I am working on creating photo stories where the photos have a connection when in a sequence to one another. I used to believe in the one-liner photos (like Farside comics) but now would like to try to create a narrative is as coherent and interesting.

Maria Furlano who is now married and not Furlano

Also, I am trying to do a few different variants in my "Photos as Objects" series where I shoot actual printed photos in various ways. This series will continue until I stop thinking of quirky ways of doing it or end up finding a reliable link to Dark Wing duck on some tv streaming station. Basicaly I want to reference the mortality of photos by shooting that as objects. Mortality is something that has been lost as photos have become digital - I think I have mentioned this before in a previous entry.

Brian Barlow and Anna Edwards

I think I have said what I wanted to say for this entry and I know when to shut up. Below are some photos I have worked on in the last week or so. Enjoy!

Mike and Amy

Parody ad made for a poster for Josh Higgens 29th birthday

Josh Higgens takes on the orb

Brian Barlow is a funny guy - check out his comedy