(below) I love runny eggs. The potential of chicken life on a flattop, from a pan to on top of toast, the life on an egg lives for my mouth with a side of fried bacon. This morning’s breakfast consists of partially cooked un-inseminated chicken babies with a side of martyred pig rib-flesh. To top than off, I have a glass of tree droppings squeezed in Florida. All of this and much more can be found in your local corner store. I love runny eggs.
(above) Epic Breakfast:
3 16oz vital energy drinks
1 8 oz red bull
1 5-pack of powered doughnuts
2 slim jims
1 general mills golden graham cereal bar
(above) At first I believed the corner store was an intersection of binary worlds; the public and the private, the customer and the employee, supply and demand, taxed and untaxed, legal and illegal, repulsion and desire. Then one cloudy day I realized that no two worlds could exist or be understood without the context and co-existence of the many others.
My Binary order deteriorated slowly as the hours ticked on and the people ceased to be individuals and were defined by the products the product they bought in repetitious manner. Everyone and everything was in the same jar, lives crammed and forced to confront one another in claustrophobia. There was always a transaction, an intersection of personality and profile. Everyday was a surprising reinvention of the mundane. With a practical humility in tow, I learned to love the chaos bred by capital, commodity, and convenience.
I watched and listened, but I was not a fly on the wall. I was paid to kill flies, to cook food, to care for customers; instead I just pretended I knew how to do it. Then I pretended I knew how to make art.
(above) I have come to respect the Anonymity of the corner store. Its employees are more often than not treated as sub-humans. We are simply extensions of the products on the shelf. It is more convenient to ignore our human traits, qualities such as, memory, judgment, and gossip.
A small caucasian male walks up to the deli counter. After a moment of perusal, he orders a burger with American cheese, red onion, and a side of fries to go. He sits by the window and his cell phone rings. He answered,
“No, No, NO… Listen Bitch! I didn’t wanna do it. No! I never wanted to do it. You made me hit you Bitch”
His fries were almost done, though I’d rather not serve them, its my job.
“Awww Shit, you do not wanna do that you slut! You do nto want to press charges bitch! That’d be the last thing you’d ever do, bitch don’t fucks wit me. No I’m not gonna. Shut the fuck up!”
His fries were done.
(below) 7:15 am Friday:
A young woman entered the store with a young man who was on the telephone. They both approached the counter. The young man spoke into the phone.
“Aight aight I’m here man, ehh which ones should I get?”
“Yeah yeah they have ehhh… Whats condoms you got?” he asked me.
“Ehhh they gots the Trojans lubricated and the magnums.”
The young woman and I exchanged smiles. She was cheeky and embarrassed.
“Oh aight aight, you sure man? Okay.” He hung up the phone.
“Yeah Yeah gimme the magnums man”
I walk over and get the condoms from the rack. It was hard not to laugh as awkward tension built when his debit card got declined two times. The young man pretended not to know what is wrong. But before he made me run his card a third time, the cheeky young woman stepped foreword and paid for the condoms. Less than an hour later I saw her through the window, skipping for the bus stop, this was the happiest I have ever seen her.
Chief Ice Cloud: TBA
(above) 11:30am sunday : The Dairy Zombie and his wife David Bowie: $187.67
Who would try to steal a six-pack of red stripe light?: TBA
This as raw as my process gets. For the last six months I have made close to 2,ooo photographs while working as a short-order cook and running the deli a small corner store in Rochester, NY. The location of the actual store is not really important. I have been sequencing these mini-lab prints for the last two week and I prompted myself to turn to the S&W community for feedback before I have a “final” outcome. My process has been in part influenced by Doug Dubios’s methods that he described brief in a short video interview I made with him. This are low res prints of 3×4 images auto cropped to 4×6, so there is way too much edge tension in these prints, but this doesn’t matter right now. I will be printing my final publication on a color laser jet with improved quality, croping, and more variety in print size and layout. From the beginning it has been about a low overhead seeing that I am working with a cook’s wages. I do not think the this book calls for a typical “fine edition”, my plans are somewhat more subversive than boring ornate inlays. Currently this book is a fluid object, I have planned addition and omissions of content you can see low res here, but I am curious to see what y’all have to say. I never intend the book to be seen this way, but this is process… and it hardly ever is pretty, but please feel inclined to share your thoughts, questions, comments, and concerns.
Love it. It pulled me in. I will look again and give more feedback later.
Thank you sir, your opinion is always greatly appreciated. Since I recently just found out, I would like to publicly congratulate you for being a magnum expression award finalist. Seems like yesterday that many of us were together in a room at 8am generally lost, talking about photography, with little understanding of how our work fit into a larger context.
Can you talk about the arrangement? It felt nice in the beginning, but it almost feels like movement just for movements sake. I guess I just want to know what you intended me to feel when I looked at them organized on the pages this way.
I wanted it to feel nice and familiar in the beginning, placing the readier firmly in the comforts of a known quantity, the kitchen/deli. I hoped that the cook’s perspective is considered, but not questioned. The beginning is design to introduce the book’s perspective of a corner store and ultimately a larger world, through the narrow reality of a cook behind a flattop thinking about everything he doesn’t see, ie. tree droppings from florida. Movement for movements sake is generally how I feel when I open the kitchen at seven am, three times a week, its almost a numbing feeling. Then the Epic breakfast picture and story serves as the first hook and a foreshadowing of the chaos that is to creep in by the end of the book. After the “There are no two worlds” story i wanted the book to slowly visually deteriorate as the readers feelings change and they respond to the story “I have come to respect the anonymity of the corner store”. From this point on, the book descends and explores the darker side of human experience and the corner store. I hope that speaks to my intention, thank you for your well considered question. Do you have any suggestion on how I could improve the beginning or the arrangement more generally?
Thanks Alex,
Now I feel like I am in a larger room and generally lost all the time, but it is amazing when things, like the Magnum Awards, make you realize that maybe you have a place, its just going to take more WIGGLING to find it.
The Corner Store – We all know the corner store culture, to some extent. We usually try and get in and out as fast as possible. Well, I like the one you work at and have hung out there many times, but for the most part, they are slightly grimy and usually make you wonder whether or not you are going to get food poisoning from the steak sandwich you ware about to sink your teeth into.
I like how the photographs ignore the place as a whole, and focus on the details, the things that we usually ignore when we are actually there. Who knew you could take 2000 photographs in one corner store.
The stories are perfect.
The guy walking across the street is perfect.
The photo of the blue apron string is great. The knife, the sandwich, the pickles.
The text is essential. It brings something. I need to think more about it, but its so tragic. Magnum condoms, slim jims, an abusive lover.
You are going to incorporate the text right?
I also do kind of agree with Eduardo on the movement thing though. I understand idea wise why the narrative needs repetition but I think that you could break things up a bit here and there to give a bit of a rest in the quickness of the pacing. There were points where I was just blowing through the images because of the similarity in content between some of the pictures.
otherwise its a pretty unseen perspective. I say keep the prints gritty.
Yes I am going to incorporate the text. Thank you mr Fuchs, the pacing and repetitious sequencing are dually noted and have made me rethink my choice made in two or three points during middle of the sequence that need additional visual depth, i began to consider placing something in between the blue cashews and the cheeto spread, then changing something after the hotdogs and then maybe less repetitious yellow after the beef jerky and plus the pan with the tongs seems out of place right now maybe that could use a companion, but i digress. Thank you for sharing your recommendations and suggestions of the photographs in my second post that included a short list of others. After having spent a little time away from the images last week, that comment made me realize I can still improve this book.
What I have taken from mike’s and the other other suggestions so far is as follows, maybe a little more distance and visual complexity, while still focusing on the details and the tragedy. A more subtle approach to repetition because the pacing maybe a little too fast. Okay, so ill work on this with maybe one or two omissions then with some additional other photographs and rearranging; I will print three of four additions on a color copier on 11×14 paper.
Everyone’s help is much appreciated!