Contemplative Landscapes by Noah Kalina
Noah Kalina is uploading videos of the “long photograph” variety of peaceful & contemplative nature scenes to YouTube. 4K. No AI. “Press play and walk away.”
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kottke.org posts about Noah Kalina
Are You a Local?
In a recent edition of his newsletter, Noah Kalina highlights some responses he got to this question: How many years do you need to live somewhere before you are considered a local? Here’s a sampling of the answers:
My hot take as a military kid who has continued to move around is that I think it’s a little weird how people gatekeep being a “local.” If you’ve lived somewhere long enough that you know your way around, have connected yourself with other locals and the local culture, are invested in the community, & see yourself continuing to stay there long term, I think you’re a local. Local to me is about the relationship to a place, not a chunk of time.
I had a friend move from CA to PA. He told me that people move to CA and build new lives and new families, and generally people are accepting of transplants. Meanwhile, he has a hard time acclimating to PA bc people tend to stick in the area where they grew up - it’s hard to break into an area where everyone’s great grand parents knew everybody’s great grandparents.
I liked this distinction:
Depends on where your heart is. You can be local by proximity, but not necessarily culturally. Like, knowing the area and how to live there. But some of those folks move and want to change the culture of a place. Or they come in and simply don’t honor the history and memories of the place ..and tbh, if you don’t know and honor that, then you don’t actually know the people and therefore, you don’t really know the place….so you local, but not a local.
And I feel this one as someone who currently lives in VT:
In New England, the rule is simple. You are considered a local as soon as you have three grandparents who were born in the town where you live.
I’ve lived here for 8 years now and I could live here for 8 more and not really feel like a local, nor be accepted by actual locals as one. For the first three years I lived in my small town, I felt like people were always looking at me when I went to the grocery store — like, “who’s this new guy in here on a random Tuesday in stick season?” They could smell the NYC on me. I don’t really mind though — I’m in a bit of a weird situation where I don’t actually want to be a local (or even really live here at all (long story)).
I lived in NYC for 13 years and 100% wanted to be there, to be involved, to feel like I had a tiny hand in making the city what it was. Calling yourself a New Yorker while not having grown up there is a bold move, but I dunno, I feel like I’d gotten there before I decided to leave.
Anyway, the full thread is worth a read. See also a related question with many interesting replies: Where Do You Call Home?
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Noah Kalina on viewing old photos or videos of yourself:
I think that’s why it’s so uncomfortable for some people to watch old videos of themselves. It exposes the core of who you really are.
No matter what you try to do, no matter where you end up going, no matter how much you might try to change, you are who you are, and that very particular and unique type of personality you have stays with you forever.
It’s fascinating, painful, revelatory, and embarrassing.
The photo above is my 6th grade school picture from 1984. I loved that velour vest for reasons I cannot presently fathom. When I think about who that kid was and who I am now, I hope that I’ve retained the best parts and let go of the things that didn’t serve him so well. It’s a process…
Counterpoint (or perhaps complementary point): I think often of this old post from The Sartorialist about a woman who reinvented herself upon moving to New York:
Actually the line that I think was the most telling but that she said like a throw-away qualifier was “I didn’t know anyone in New York when I moved here….”
I think that is such a huge factor. To move to a city where you are not afraid to try something new because all the people that labeled who THEY think you are (parents, childhood friends) are not their to say “that’s not you” or “you’ve changed”. Well, maybe that person didn’t change but finally became who they really are. I totally relate to this as a fellow Midwesterner even though my changes were not as quick or as dramatic.
Half a Life in 2 Minutes
For more than 21 years, Noah Kalina has taken a photograph of himself. Periodically, he makes video compilations of the photos — you’ve probably seen them here or elsewhere. For his latest video, he’s collaborated with Michael Notter (visuals) and Paul O’Mara (sound) on a video called 7777 Days.
In a first step, Michael used the machine learning library dlib (http://dlib.net/) and some custom Python code to detected in each of Noah’s photos 5 face landmarks (i.e. both eyes, the nose and the two corners of the mouth). These landmarks were then used to align the faces in all photos, so that the eyes and corner of the mouth were horizontally oriented and always an equal distance apart. After that, some small image intensity correction were applied to make very dark images a bit brighter and very bright ones a bit darker. This was followed by an upscaling of all images (where needed) to a 4K resolution.
The result is a 2-minute video (reminiscent of Jason Salavon’s work) that spans half of Kalina’s life — in the video he ages 2 months every second and 10 years a minute.
Update: Kalina and Notter explain how this video came about and how it was made.
Virtual Travel Photography in the Age of Pandemic
Using live feed webcams, Noah Kalina is “travelling” around the world photographing places. From top to bottom, Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, Times Square in NYC, Huntington Beach, CA, and Bourbon Street in New Orleans. Here’s St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City from just a few minutes ago — it’s completely deserted.
Noah Takes a Photo of Himself Every Day for 20 Years
On January 11, 2000, when he was 19 years old, photographer Noah Kalina took a photo of himself — and just never stopped doing that. Although he’s missed a few days here and there, he’s kept up his daily habit for 20 years. The video above shows all 20 years of his daily photos.
Six years into the project in 2006, Kalina uploaded a video of his progress to Vimeo and then YouTube and it went viral, changing the trajectory of his career and life. The project has exhibited in art galleries around the world and The Simpsons even did a parody of it.
As someone who has done one thing near-daily for 20+ years, I feel a great kinship towards this project. I’ll see you in 2040, Noah.
Update: Kalina did an interview about the project with Van Schneider:
I can basically look at any shot in this project and know exactly where I was. Certain photos provide details and I can recall who I was with or what I was up to. It’s the perfect diary for me since I’ve never really enjoyed writing.
The opposite of a muse
Isabelle Mège does not call herself an artist, but she has nonetheless been working on an interesting project for the last 30 years. Mège contacts photographers she likes and asks them to incorporate her into their work, keeping a copy of each photograph afterwards. She has over 300 photographs and has curated 135 of them into what she calls “the collection”.
After each shoot, Mège would follow up and ask the artist for a print, signed and sometimes numbered by its edition. The print would go into her archive, along with any artifacts related to its making; Elkoury’s letter, for instance, is accompanied in the archive by Mège’s notes about their encounter (he was late to their first meeting, and arrived with his shoelaces untied). Also in her archive are the heels that Witkin attached to her feet during the 1990 shoot, and a news item about Japanese customs having seized incoming copies of the magazine ARTnews to prohibit their circulation; the photograph, in which Mège’s pubic hair is visible, was considered obscene. Her diarizing and collection of correspondence, clippings, image reproductions, and relevant items reveal that the planning around certain images often lasted years. Several times, having worked with an artist to make an image, she was unhappy with the results and excluded it from her collection. When approached by artists who wanted to work with her but for whose work she had no feeling, she refused.
Mège felt strongly that no money should be exchanged in these interactions. (“As soon as there’s a question of payment, it’s dead, you fall asleep,” she told me.) She also asked each artist to sign a contract printed on a three-inch slip of paper, stating that she would have the right to exhibit or publish the image for noncommercial reasons only.
Mège’s project fits neatly into contemporary selfie culture. Her collection reminds me of other creative people who have incorporated themselves into their media of behalf of someone or something else. Call them “selfie auteurs”. Adam Lisagor has starred in many of the videos his company makes for tech clients. Casey Neistat films himself going on adventures for clients like J. Crew and Nike. Noah Kalina was commissioned by VH1 to take photos of himself posing with celebrities in his Everyday stance. I’m sure there are many more examples1 but few have done it as cleanly and purely as Mège.
Maybe kottke.org should be in this list as well. This is my website — my name’s right at the top for crying out loud — and I share my opinion about things here all the time, but in a significant way, the site isn’t actually about me. It’s mainly about other people’s work and ideas. Sure, if you read long enough you learn about who I am as a person in the process, but it’s not the point.↩
Amazon Primed
Photographer Noah Kalina (of Everyday fame) keeps a blog of his purchases from Amazon called Amazon Primed. Recently documented purchases include a Weber grill and a shoulder mount for a camera. Now Kalina has turned his blog into a book published by Amazon.
Cabin Porn, the book!
The folks behind Cabin Porn are making a book with photography by Noah Kalina. Outstanding.
Average Noah Kalina
Than Tibbetts took all the frames from Noah Kalina’s Everyday video and averaged them into one photo.
Those are some of the yearly averages…you’ll have to click through to see the overall average.
Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 12.5 years
Noah Kalina, one of my favorite photographers, has taken a self-portrait of himself every day for the past 12 and a half years. After six years, he released a video of the results, which video went crazy viral and brought the attention of the world to Kalina’s door. Now he’s released the 12.5 year version.
I hope I live to be 100 to see the 75th anniversary edition.
Everyday iPhone app
What a great idea…Noah Kalina, Adam Lisagor, William Wilkinson, and Oliver White made an iPhone app that helps you remember to take a daily photo of yourself inspired by Noah’s Everyday project.
Watch closely for the Noah Durden character…
17 years of daily self-portraits
Dan Hanna has made a rotating self-portrait video assembled from 17 years of daily photos, a la Noah Kalina’s Everyday video.
17 years worth of taking 2 photos a day as my head rotates in sync with the Earth around the Sun.
The split screen is a nice touch and I love watching the hair on his shaved head grow back like a Chia Pet every few months. Here’s a description of the rig he uses to take the photos. (via heading east)
Labs At Night
Seed Magazine has posted Noah Kalina’s photos of science labs at night. The Salk Institute is represented of course.
Regal
Top: Leslie Hall by Noah Kalina.
Bottom: The Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by Isaac Oliver. (thx, adriana)
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