Thursday, August 31, 2006

Video Killed the Radio Star



And you thought it would never happen. Yup, Matt Mendelsohn Photography has finally joined the ranks of the millions of twelve-year-olds around the planet with its brand new blog. And it couldn't come soon enough. A lot is happening here at world headquarters--we're gearing up for a new web site (hopefully by Thanksgiving), my brother Daniel's book, "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million," comes out at the end of September, we've got a big exhibit in Houston opening in November, and Alexandra can sing Hey Jude all by herself.

So rather than miss out on all these things while waiting for our new site, we decided to be a bit more proactive. The old mattmendelsohn.com, which has served us well for the past few years, is being put into mothballs. The pictures were scanned years ago--pre-history in a digital world--and things were looking a bit musty. Not to mention that the site really didn't reflect any of the amazing color work we've been doing for the past few years. So, for the next two months--give or take--please come and see us here instead. (You can get to The Dark Slide from the old web site. We've put an "under construction" place holder there.)

So first things first: what's a dark slide? Are you a Star Wars nut and just can't spell, you're thinking? No, I can spell. (I'm actually a failed English Lit major, who would probably be teaching Flannery O'Connor were it not for a guy name Geoffery Chaucer. More on him later. ) As I pondered--for all of three minutes--what to call this first blog, I thought about something that would hearken back to the good old days of photography, the days when film was king and we were all out taking pictures, not sitting on our computers blogging. That's when the dark slide popped into my head. A dark slide is a thin piece of metal that one inserts into a camera (a Hasselblad, a 4 x 5 view camera) to prevent light from hitting the film. It costs about three pennies to manufacture, but has caused more photographers to curse and spit than any high tech piece of electronics. You see, dark slides were very easy to lose, and without them your camera wouldn't function. Nothing like a $4,000 Hasselblad at the mercy of a $.03 piece of metal. More than anything, dark slides reminded photographers of their utter fallibility. Film got ruined, cameras wouldn't fire--it was a real zen experience, believe me. If I had a nickel for every time I heard myself muttering, "Shit, forgot the dark slide..."

Anyway, can't linger too long on this first post. I have a wedding in the Bahamas this weekend and I haven't begun to pack. But I did want to throw up a picture from last week's wedding of Rina Khelmani and Bimal Shah. There's nothing quite like an Indian wedding--the colors, the saris, the dancing. It was way, way fun. And when I get back I'll post lots of new pictures so those of you looking for my work on the main site can at least view it here.