There will be signs

On stream of consciousness photography

DEAR EXPOSEUR—In my more popular days of sharing work on All The Socials, All The Time (a generally inadvisable hamster wheel of despair), I used to consider myself a street photographer. This was before the current connotation of the genre, which is to say: either sheepishly photographing people's backs from a distance, or being as confrontational as possible while someone records the affair in hopes of YouTube notoriety. I am being reductive here, but to a point.

I considered myself a street photographer strictly because the bulk of my photographic interest occurred on streets. That changed some years back, when I made the grave error of referring to myself as such, whereupon I received some number of snide emails and direct messages correcting me on the etymology of the phrase, its storied history in the annals of photography, the purveyors of the craft whose pedigree I could never hope to achieve, as well as several condescending remarks about my compositions in general.

These days, I prefer to think of myself as a stream of consciousness photographer. My approach to the art has less to do with the camera and more to do with how I interact with the world. I cannot readily define what that means, so allow me to demonstrate.

Yesterday, Baltimore received a light dusting of something closer to snow, but more like ice. It was entirely unexpected to last as long as it did, as is entirely expected by those who rely on modern weather apps. Therefore, by 9:30 PM last night, everything was covered in a sheet of impenetrable ice and the temperature hovered somewhere south of 20°F. There was a fifteen-car pile-up on Druid Park Lake Drive over I-83. I thought this a good omen to go take photographs—the ice-covered world.

My stream of consciousness began as it always does by driving west. Whenever I leave to take photos, I always start by driving west. That's just how it works. I decided to continue west on North Avenue because I remembered a bar sign at the intersection of Poplar Grove and North that I had never photographed that might look nice in the snow. When I got out of my car, I slipped and fell to my knees. As I was setting up my tripod, a man came out of his house and began walking up Poplar Grove in sneakers. He struggled for a hundred meters or so before he, too, fell. Then he stood up and said, "I'm gonna need my boots." He stood up, and then, unmoving, slid backward down the hill in reverse until he reached his front steps.

Across the street were a few ice-covered vans and trucks, and a snowball stand. I really liked the sign on the front of the snowball stand that read "Pay Homage!" To whom? How? Why? What an amazing thing to write on a snowball stand.

I took that as a sign to continue exploring down Poplar Grove, which actually entails driving down Bloomingdale since the former is a one-way street. Midway down Bloomingdale, I passed a row of perennially-there classic cars outside a garage, each covered in snow and lit by a wan spotlight. I parked and slid my way over to the lot, only to spot a man sitting in a camper van looking vexed. This gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I retreated, taking the long way back to evade detection. I caught a one-way sign cocked at a jaunty angle, and photographed it.

Back in my car, I followed the one-way sign further south until I reached Baker Street, then took an easterly route past one of my favorite garages in town. I was dismayed to find that the sign I know and love had been removed, and replaced by a hand-lettered sign for a welding shop. Dismay gave way to bliss when I saw the cursive lettering which read “We Repair… Broken Relationships!” How sweet.

Feeling good about the fruits of this direction, I continued down Lafayette until a stopped plow forced me to redirect down to Edmonson Avenue. This was a good thing, because that’s where The Tree lives, and took the detour as a sign to revisit it in the snow.

Presently, a police helicopter flew overhead on a westward vector. I lost it by Poplar Grove. How neat to be back where I started! The clock struck 11:11, and I wished for the opportunity to take one more neat photo before turning in.

I turned north on Poplar Grove until I reached a stoplight at Lafayette. A pair of trucks with flashing headlights came roaring up behind me. Terrified that they might not stop in time, or that they might lose traction on the ice and pulverize me—which is almost an annual tradition for my poor car at this point—I moved out of the way into oncoming traffic. They veered right without stopping, and I followed them down Lafayette to see what all the hubbub was about. I passed a fun little Jamaican delicatessen named “THE PATTY SHOP” with very classic plastic signage, and so I broke off my pursuit to photograph it.

A cat yowled behind me. I turned and saw a pair of shabby row houses, or what was left of a row of them, and felt a deep melancholy at the sight of their disrepair. I heard sirens approaching, and made it back to my car in time to see the two speeding trucks in a field surrounded by police cars and an ambulance not far from Dukeland. I did not linger to see the fallout of that scene, and instead decided to take Fulton north toward home.

As I headed up the hill, slipping on patches of black ice as I drove, I saw a sign that I thought was too good to pass up. And on a whole night of signs, what better way to end it than with another sign?

I fully anticipate that calling this “stream of consciousness photography” will earn me another round of corrections from the well-informed and deeply concerned. Someone will surely point out that I've bastardized a genre with a respectable heritage, or that such and such photographers are rolling in their graves, or that what I'm actually doing is called something else entirely with its own rich tradition I'm too ignorant to know about and to which I must pay homage. Fair enough.