photoblogatory

A Chilean born, NYC documentary photographer who has been photographing the urban landscape for over 30 years, Vergara is known for his technique of returning repeatedly to the same location to photograph the changes over time. 

The photographer describes his series: “Since 1977, I have been documenting images of  Dr. King that regularly appear along the commercial streets and alleys of such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Camden, N.J., and Baltimore. Many of the murals portraying this civil rights leader are painted on the outside walls of liquor stores, auto-repair shops, fast food restaurants, mom and pop stores, and public housing projects. The majority are the work of sign painters and amateur artists. All of the statues and many of the murals I photographed are located on streets named after him.” 

Fast Girl Films and a crew of about a million, arrived at Photolab today to shoot scenes from: And Then Came Lola. The film is about….uh…I don’t know what it’s about. Nobody tells me anything. I know some of it takes place in a photo lab. In this case, MY photolab!

So, as far as I figure, there is some romance going on in the darkroom between Lola and the owner of the lab. Is the romance intensified being located in a dark room? Real darkroom technicians don’t feel the intimacy of the darkness. For them it is a work room, and the same as a light room.

The crew of a million, actually about 20 people, came with the usual cameras and lights you’d expect. But also a surprising amount of food. Cases of bottled water were stacked by the door. Coffee, pastries, cookies, salad, apple pie, random stuff but a lot of it. The crew arranged big black garbage bags, one for garbage, one for recycling. Everybody conscientiously filled them up and at the end of the night they carried two full bags to the dumpsters.

With digital film making, like all digital imaging, we could see the takes right away. They shot the darkroom scene with the requsite red lighting that turned out to be only kinda redish. Plenty of regular light on the actors and red light on the darkroom stuff.

One scene we watched involved Lola sighing, reaching down and pulling up her sock. It took about 37 takes to shoot that. At last, with the actresses now on double over-time, they wrapped the scene and went home. It was a 12 hour day. Back tomorrow morning for what is going to be another 12 hour day, I am sure.