David Hornback Spain
2alex.neutron@gmail.com
My older brother’s excessive, obsessive list-making of girls when we were young used to drive me nuts. He made lists of all the girls he had danced with, he had kissed, he had touched, he desired, he had been rejected by. Then he would corner me, show me his lists, and tell me all about them. At fifteen, I was skinny, nearsighted, nerdy and extremely shy. I was embarrassed by his confessions and never knew how to respond. I thought that making lists of girls was stupid and immature, but I also felt envy—it would be years before I even got up enough courage to ask a girl out.
Thirty-five years later and I discover that I had inadvertently made my own lists. Back when I was fifteen I set up a darkroom and became a photographer. My past time became my career and also my visual diary. I photograph everything in my life. Two summers ago I came across all of my early negatives in my parent’s attic and found that I had a preponderance of photographs of all the pretty girls, from high school on through the present. I brought most of my negatives back to Spain with me (where I now live) with a project in mind: to scan in all of the girls who had meant something to me in my life: friends, lovers, crushes and wife. After scanning in several hundred images, I had to stop. To do it right, I would want all of the images. But there are hundreds, maybe even thousands. And I don’t want to leave any out. What could I do once I had all photos scanned in and worked? A thousand-page book? A thousand-image exhibition? This unclarity with a final form has blocked the project. I want all my girls on my visual list. But how to make it really succeed? I am suffering a visual form of writer’s block.
David Hornback Spain
2alex.neutron@gmail.com
My older brother’s excessive, obsessive list-making of girls when we were young used to drive me nuts. He made lists of all the girls he had danced with, he had kissed, he had touched, he desired, he had been rejected by. Then he would corner me, show me his lists, and tell me all about them. At fifteen, I was skinny, nearsighted, nerdy and extremely shy. I was embarrassed by his confessions and never knew how to respond. I thought that making lists of girls was stupid and immature, but I also felt envy—it would be years before I even got up enough courage to ask a girl out.
Thirty-five years later and I discover that I had inadvertently made my own lists. Back when I was fifteen I set up a darkroom and became a photographer. My past time became my career and also my visual diary. I photograph everything in my life. Two summers ago I came across all of my early negatives in my parent’s attic and found that I had a preponderance of photographs of all the pretty girls, from high school on through the present. I brought most of my negatives back to Spain with me (where I now live) with a project in mind: to scan in all of the girls who had meant something to me in my life: friends, lovers, crushes and wife. After scanning in several hundred images, I had to stop. To do it right, I would want all of the images. But there are hundreds, maybe even thousands. And I don’t want to leave any out. What could I do once I had all photos scanned in and worked? A thousand-page book? A thousand-image exhibition? This unclarity with a final form has blocked the project. I want all my girls on my visual list. But how to make it really succeed? I am suffering a visual form of writer’s block.