Ripped From the Pages of Medium is becoming -The Long View!
The name of the stack is changing - There's a good reason why
When I started this stack it was to repurpose stories I’d written and published on Medium. But pretty soon I began using it to publish new stories, and Ripped From the Pages of Medium didn’t seem so right anymore. So welcome to the stack you already know but now with a new name; The Long View. I’m calling it The Long View because that’s what you get when you’ve lived a lot of years and honey, that would be me. Buckle up everybody, the old guy is taking you out for a ride.
In June, I was invited to sit down for a conversation with photographer and friend Mark Berndt at Edition One Gallery in Santa Fe. We spent an afternoon talking about pictures; why we make them, the stories of making them, and the things you learn when you’ve been making them for fifty or sixty years. Along the way, there are some stories from the old days and you can hear the audience laughing a lot and gasping once in a while.
The conversation is broken up into bite-sized chunks for easy digestion. Why not pick one that looks interesting and give it a try?
Here’s gallery owner Pilar Law introducing Mark Berndt and me to the audience. Then we talk about my early years as a photographer in 50s and 60s Chicago, and my 70s travels with the Hog Farm - 5:38
We talk about the idea of Intentional Photography. There are lots of pictures and some juicy stories about living on a bus and life in the movie business - 6:07
We talk about what I’m calling Kaleidoscopic Imagery. It’s about the benefits of using lots of pictures instead of just “the perfect one” because pictures are so available to us now. Using many of them creates context and offers viewers a fuller understanding - 10:30
We talk about the people who build and drive land speed record cars and my experiences going to Bonneville to shoot them - 4:02
There’s Always Another Story. This section is about how stories tell themselves to you when you let them, and how taking up writing changed my understanding of pictures - 5:47
Here we talk about the equipment I’m currently using, but then we talk about AI and how I’m planning to use it on a new project to recreate my psychedelic past. 4:56
We look at some of my favorite pictures, ones of land speed record cars, and the last Pony Express Station, portraits of Wavy Gravy, John Cale, and Nick Ray, and as we talk I tell the stories of how these pictures came to be - 14:10
Finally, Mark runs two short videos, The Museums Are Closed and Picturing Kansas and we talk about why I have chosen to use stills along with video to tell more complicated stories - 18:26
Before we wrap up here, my book Stories I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You got the best review a couple of days ago, and I’m too proud not to share it. Thank you Emilie Small!
Stories I've Been Meaning to Tell You by Andy Romanoff is honest, funny, at times horrifying, and beautifully written. Romanoff brings to life his street kid years in Chicago expressing not just the teenage bravado of taking a joyride in a stolen car but the inner fears that accompanied those crazy events. Having been a California hippy in the 60s and 70s, his adventures in those years seem familiar. His drug experimentation is mind-blowing, relatable and terrifying. Much of his love of all things mechanical would ordinarily be of no interest to me, but the way Romanoff writes about motorcycles, cameras and the Louma Crane were fascinating. The trajectory of his career in the film industry is both wild and interesting. The expression of human feelings is beautiful and heartfelt, from the elegies of friends passed to the love for his family. Romanoff writes about himself with a truth which brings solid reality to his stories. I absolutely loved this book.