I spent most of Election Day, day November 8, 2016, driving around to polling locations in St. Louis. Generally, people were in a celebratory mood. Everyone I asked to photograph said yes. When I got home, I stayed up until 12:30am watching election results. All the positive feelings I had were gone by the time I turned off the TV. As far as I can tell, the system worked. Everyone, except Trump’s team, underestimated a large and angry part of this country. The only thing we can do at this point is not become them. The ugly things we as a country covered in a blanket and have been trying to ignore were given a spotlight and validation. We are going to have to confront all of it. Maybe that’s a good thing. We need to channel the frustration and anger into positive and vocal counterpoint.

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In all the times I’ve been to NYC for work or on a personal trip, I had never photographed in Times Square. My felling in general is that it represents all that is amazing and terrible about American culture at the same time, in one place. For mainly that reason, I have just stayed away. Last week I had some time after dinner while in town for work and decided I should probably head into the vortex just to see if there was anything good I could get. In terms of the book I’ve been trying to put together for the last couple of years, something from Times Square could make sense. I got there at about 10:30 PM and as one would expect, it was packed. It was pretty easy to take pictures of people without them noticing because everyone was staring up at the screens and digital billboards. Also,  cameras where everywhere. I found myself most interested in all the people taking selfies and photos of others in front of this ridiculousness and of the giant screens themselves. It was exactly as I said before, all that is amazing and terrible about American culture at the same time, in one place. I was there for about half an hour and totally overwhelmed by the weird lighting and crowds of tourists. Here’s a couple of the better ones. The guy taking a picture with his iPad and the woman posing for a selfie are my favorites. I might try to see if there is a place for one of them in the working draft of my book.

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It was nice to see some DC friends when they were in town the other night. Although I’ve seen Mary Timony and Laura Harris play a million times, this was the first time seeing them play together in Mary’s new band Ex Hex. They were great and probably have some of the best rock moves I’ve seen in a long time. Check them out if you have chance.

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