Friday, October 6, 2017

Dia-Pic Book

Today on waking before work and with my departure to Thai quickly approaching I came up with the title and organized my thoughts behind a book I have thought of for years. An attempt at an intimate story that will document my inner most feelings and my creative physical process. I want to tell the story of who I am, my thoughts, my art, honest vulnerabilities, and the daily adventures of the next 6 months. I want a no rules, honest documentation of this whole thing, of me and what I do, hopes, thoughts, failures, successes etc.

Not sure if this first book will ever be published, maybe no one will care or maybe it will be too personal but I think this a important story to at least try to tell. If for no other reason than through the telling of it, it will open me up and help me understand who the f-ck Gerry Yaum is and what the f-ck is he trying to do as a human being. People often ask me why I do what I do, half the time I have no idea. Maybe this Dia-Pic book will help clarify that in my mind at least.

I want this to be a completely honest endeavour, warts (got lots of those) and all. This is something that I will probably keep private at least till I am gone, having it thou is important, being completely honest is vital. It might be something eventually destroy (or edited like E. Weston’s Daybooks) before I die but the making of this thing needs to be done.

I want the visuals of this thing to be free flowing with many modern sources of the written word and visual included. The book may include the following as contributing source materials.

- Personal diary hand written logs.
- Blog copy and pastes.
- Facebook copy and pastes
- Paper artifacts from trip, tickets, newspapers, notes grabs
- Selfies.
- Digi photo grabs of events and things, including photo grabs of video edits etc., screen captures.
- Photos taken by others I meet.
- Stills, serious b/w pictures made this trip (scans) and a post trip darkroom efforts, exhibitions, talks.

This thing is still evolving in my mind. I think thou it should be a very intimate window into my art and person. No one might care, they might see it as a pretentious bit of arrogance on my part but who the f-ck cares, am mostly doing this thing for myself in an attempt for me to understand me. If by some miracle it is published at some far off future date after my death and is in a way beneficial to others, alls the better!

The idea of artists, who they are and how they create their work has always been very intriguing to me. To tty and document that person-process for myself and possibly for others is exciting. I do not want to miss this chance. How many more times in my lifetime will I have the freedom to do 6 month creative trips, heck this could be my last kick at it. I need to make the absolute most out of this opportunity.