days at home Wolfgang Hastert
Take pictures of (not necessarily in this order): Walk with dad in the middle of winter Our garden—everything snowed in Same walk with Dad/ Spring time (remember where we stopped and studied the trees) Breakfast, Dad taking his pills Pretend—as if I were a boy again/ Looking up at Mom & Dad (try low angle shoot) Mom & Dad together (difficult) My father, my son Dad’s shoes on the rack—drying My small and trusted alarm clock Cleaning up at the orchard with Mom Dad’s tools—all in order When everyone sleeps—the flash freezes time at night Pictures of me and the street gang At the cemetary with Mom My tools for recording time, memories and dreams: Dad’s old ZEISS NETTAR camera My HOLGA pinhole camera Use the old NIZO Super 8 camera— 24 frames per second! (only two rolls of KODAK Tri–X left) How will I get the film rolls through airport security on my way home to California?
visits back home december 8–22 may 18–30 august 26–september 21st september 28–october 3rd
Imagine a world in which there is no time—only images. We all have our time machines. Some take us back to memories and some propel us forward to our dreams.
1 Back home, the world is arranged by mechanical time. Each day at the same time the meals are prepared. Lunch is eaten exactly at 11:30. Medicine is taken after each meal. Occasionally, there is a short glimpse of “body time� when one listens to their heart beat and to the rhythms of desire. A time when family talks about childhood pranks and memories. And the laughter of the neighborhood kids during the long days of summertime.
( 4 page spread )
2 Cameras have something in common with clocks: They are machines for measuring time, allowing light for a split second to travel through the shutter and expose the film. For the pinhole image, time is not controlled by the mechanics of the apparatus but by the hand of the operator who spends time with his subjects.
3 Every person lives in their own time back home. All clocks tick at different rates. In the time for a leaf to fall in one person’s life, a flower could bloom in another’s.
4 The world at home is arranged. During the dark silence of the night, the instant of a camera flash illuminates the dark for a split second and records memories of the father and child.
5 The mother wants the child to be at home. For her, he is still an infant, as if no time has passed since birth. But the child has grown older and moved away. For the mother, the change in time is visible. Birthdays, marriages, and death are the true sign posts for time passing.
( 4 page spread )
6 Time is not continuous. It stops and starts in little flickering increments as it is recorded at 24 frames per second and pretends to show real time.
7 For the child time moves slowly. It rushes from moment to moment. The child is barely able to wait for the rest of his life. Whereas the elderly wish to halt time as it darts by so quickly.
Late September 2010
When I was sitting next to my father’s bedside, he said to me in one of our last conversations: “I wish I could turn the clock back some years. I reckon, I was once like you are now.”
I wish to thank Jenny Yoshida Park and Arno Rafael Minkkinen for mentoring the making of this book Alan Lightman for inspiring my thinking about time through his novel Einstein’s Dreams
About the making of the book All images were shot on film and then processed and digitally scanned at Chrome in San Diego. The paper is Moab Entrada Rag Bright 190 gr. Days At Home was printed and bound at Evidence of the Hand by Jenny Yoshida Park in San Diego. Edition of one, November 2010 Design by Wolfgang Hastert
Image & Text Š copyright 2010 Wolfgang Hastert filmgang books, San Diego www.wolfganghastert.net