Blue Divide 

Here's my discussion post for my Photo History class.

The Prompt:

The Blue Of Distance

https://assets.website-files.com/.../5fa1fda56ee73d962e96...

Write a personal response to the story -- what does this story tell you about yourself? What does the color blue mean to you? Why do you feel compelled (or not) to make photographs?  (minimum one paragraph)

My Output:

After I broke up with my last girlfriend, Kary, in 2020 I began focusing on more blues in my photographs; I’d use a polarizer for my skies, and I would purposely look for blue objects, paint, or police lights, and I would add blues and cyan in my edits. For the past 3 years I have tweaked my color calibration in RAW settings +20 Green Primary and -15 Blue Primary to bump my blues into a preem cyan territory and my yellows/oranges spicier. My cityscapes take on a surreal pop, my waterfalls and nature photos take on a cooler and richer presence, and my photos feel far more unique and resonate with my own emotional dysphoric dissonance. My color palette matches my own existential edge.

    I hold a tremendous weight of sadness, grief, and anger in me as I continue to mourn the loss of that friendship. She shouted at me to “shut the fuck up and take me home” when we were just having a conversation on what I felt was a fine day, and she didn’t think it was worth apologizing for hurting my feelings “I won’t apologize for something I’m not sorry about”, so I told her “Then we have to break up.” Leading up to it, she began to tell me that my camera was creating distance between us and started making mean jokes and teasing me at my expense, so I had been sitting on a mountain of rejections and setbacks. Because of my own trauma, past, and my ADHD I had developed an anxiously preoccupied attachment style, and her avoidant attachment style was making my own life miserable. I did not know the extent to which my ADHD would make my relationships so difficult. My emotions are like a kaleidoscope in a relationship in which I do not feel secure and safe, they constantly shift patterns triggered by the slightest touch, and small hurts turn into thunderstorms. My levies break and I overflow.  At that time, in 2020, I had been focusing my lens on Kary trying to show her how much I loved her with every photo and praise, at the protests and police, and at flowers and beautiful sights that Kary and I shared together. She was dealing with her chronic illness, her own anxiety and PTSD from the protests and from losing her paralegal career and was starting to play around with recreational drugs other than just cannabis, on top of her drinking. I loved her very much, and I always did my best to take care of her in those weeks of writhing pain and am still devastated that I had to choose my own peace over our companionship and partnership. We believed so deeply that we were a great team and that we strengthened each other’s resolve. But with Covid, both of us leaving our careers, and the stress of the landscape at the time, we just crumbled.

    Many of my photos at the time were focused on documenting the homelessness and Covid crisis within Portland, the trash and debris that littered Portland, the graffiti and artwork that was spreading across town, the murders of crows overtaking the city in the evenings, and the new flowers, empty streets, and quiet skies, that we experienced during Lockdown Covid. I was out doing grocery and food delivery gigs in my car, so I was roaming the wastes day and night witnessing everything 2020 had to offer. Either on foot, on my turquoise blue BMX bike, or in my car, I was there to see Black Lives Matter rallies, Nazi convoys, BORTAC and Marshalls in armored vehicles, recon planes and helicopters circling for weeks, snipers over downtown, dead and dying homeless people in their blue tarp tents, cold and wet houseless addicts laying motionless in the snow, people sleeping on sidewalks and shitting in gutters, and all the hipster guppies and affluent foreheads with all their causes and colored pins completely unaware of the world around them living like there was no catastrophic scene of depression just around the corner. In my roaming I chased down drive by shooters and car thieves, witnessed and reported accidents, and even gave out water bottles while delivering Chinese food on that 118-degree day with no AC in my car.

    That was before my doctors finally got me into a rigorous 6-month dialectical behavior therapy program that met twice a week, and I have been in weekly therapy for coming on 3 years. My ADHD was reassessed and re-diagnosed as an adult because I had gone 20 years without treating my ADHD with medication and therapy, and I was finally diagnosed with PTSD so that I could have that treated as well as my work injuries from my career at USPS. I look back at my photography of the time and I consider it some of my best and most beautiful photography. It held deep meaning and profoundly sad visuals that most people don’t understand or frankly deserve to comprehend.

Here's a song by Cancerslug. Alex Story is one of my favorite artists and musicians and his lyrics resonate with me in ways that nobody can comprehend. We've been acquaintances and online buddies since the late 2000s and I photograph his shows and he uses my photographs to help promote his bands. He released this song around that time. Hell it feels like he made a couple songs straight up for me. I could swear I asked him to cover Blondie and he did.

Cancerslug - Blue

"Damned if you do

Damned if you don't

Fucked if you will

You're fucked if you won't

I'm running out of air

It's running out like you

Running

Running out of air like you

This whole fucking world turns a cold dead skin color

Mother fucker

It's all monochromatic blue

My world is blue

The color left the same time as you

I wanna kill kill the voices in my head

If its got to be blue then I'll paint it red

I want to fuck and die in the chaos I bring

Bathe in the blood of every fucking thing

I want to kill kill kill everything

I'm a suicide bomb

I'm a murder machine

I want to kill

I'm blue

I'm blue"

And I have been able to relate to the lyrics of the song Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral.since I was a kid. Nine Inch Nails resonated with the child me in ways that I am still processing. The dark intrusive thoughts of suicide and self harm were there since I was little after I was targeted in a drive by shooting when I was seven. The idea that I don't belong here, that I shouldn't be, that I was chosen to be murdered for no reason, that I did something to deserve it. I still remember the car, the man with the gun laughing, and running for cover with my friend in his front yard.

"[Spoken]

He couldn't believe how easy it was

He put the gun into his face

Bang!

So much blood from such a tiny little hole

Problems do have solutions, you know

A lifetime of fucking things up fixed

In one determined flash

[Outro]

Everything's blue

Everything's blue in this world

The deepest shade of mushroom blue

All fuzzy, spilling out of my head"