paper time machine

How depressed I was today!
I tried out my grandfather's Leica last weekend, and droped off two rolls of film for developing at "the best photo place on the upper west side" apparently. Today I went in to pick up the prints and was shocked by the contemporary state of lab printing! The prints were pixelated! So sad. I got in a big fight with the woman when I tried to return them, and she told me there are no more optical printers in this country, they have all been traded in for digital printers. lost are subtle tones, and the beauty of film. As I work with vintage prints of my grandfather's all day, and see the richness of tones in the silver, and preserve them for the future I wonder how amazing they will look in 200 years (if they even last that long). According to my collegues at the Avedon foundation, they don't expect the prints to last that long and are digitally archiving all of their material... So what about these collectors who are dropping millions on Andreas Gursky prints? Apparently the Jeff Wall prints up at MoMA now are starting to fade at the edges. Its all a lesson in impermanance. The art of the moment. Alive now, closest to its date of creation. I saw a Discovery channel special on excavating an Egyptian tomb. Sealed for 3 thousand years, but as soon as it's opened the contents start to disintegrate rapidly. Create. Preserve. Study. All feeling the affects of global warming here in NYC. Snowing on easter.... How can conservative TV pundits get on TV and bash Al Gore. How out of touch are these people? The rotting matter fertalizes the new seed. When's that flood coming again? Its so easy for me to let my mind spin out of control into the apoclyptic vortex prognostication. I guess it only bothers me because I love life so much, and no matter how fucked up I thing things are here in America, I know damn well its easier to live here than a lot of other places on this planet. Maybe its so easy that people cant relate to suffering anymore. Digital is easier than optical printing I guess. Beauty suffers for convenience. A cultural desert surounded by oceans. NYC oasis. SF oasis. (Just getting my boo-hoos out so I can move on). So the lesson here is learning to embrace change instead of strugling against it. I guess I need to go out and buy a new digital camera. Shooting on film is fucking expensive. I've been listening to my grandfather's lectures on tape while I paint my post apoclaypse beauty salon series. So amazing. So technical. Lost to time....
shit. we're all gonna be dead someday. all our knowledge preserved on the best means available at the moment, forever becoming obsolite. But those Egyptians...they knew a thing or two about permanance....
Some of us live our lives and wind up as trivia if we are lucky. R.I.P Sol LeWitt