fifty-nine

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

The live version of the non ai self portrait from a couple days ago. I find these a bit irresistible. Click once to prime it, enlarge it if you want, and click again to play. No sound.

We see a lot of beautiful and extraordinary things here in Kyoto. Sometimes we’re surrounded by astonishing crowds, and sometimes we’re all alone in the world viewing them, which is one of the great peculiarities of major tourist destinations when you dig a little deeper into them.

I, of course, take very few pictures, brief, minute-long sets throughout the day, usually anywhere from one to five minutes of total photography. And when I find myself among hundreds of people in an extremely crowded and beautiful place all taking pictures, I tend to lose interest rather than want to take more photos of the same thing.

I can hardly fault anyone for photography. When I see people with especially fancy cameras, I imagine they’re doing their fair share of post-processing to bring out the best in their images. What I do with mine may or may not be comparable to the kinds of things people used to do in darkrooms or with elaborate editing software. I really don’t know.

Many of the pictures I’ve been showing you are rooted in original images but layered with commentary, recreation, and artificial intelligence additions. Still, sometimes the photos that come straight out of my phone camera look particularly bewitching. And while I’m disinclined to leave those images completely untouched, I am inclined to show you a few that are closer to the original and especially striking. My postcard images.

So here are a few of those for today. And that’s today’s report from Kyoto.