i like to tell stories

#1RN | Invisible String

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

February 7, 2010 - 11:32:48 PM

I Taught Myself To See Invisible String All Over My Face

please press play to start video - best results in full screen, scaling off

#1RN | 2/4/10 & 2/5/10

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Evan | Sondra

I Cannot Fly

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Summer Nights, Walking | {In Winter}

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 03:30:00 +0000

February 5, 2010 | 1:01:34 AM - 1:50:36 AM - 1:47:46 AM & 6:42:30 PM

Today I went for two walks and it was not a summer night but a winter one. An exhibition I had been looking forward to opened tonight and when I arrived the only other visitor was leaving. I was there alone for the entire time it took to view these prints on the walls and no one else arrived until I was leaving. It was the best opening in New York I have ever been to as it may as well have been for me alone and alone I was.

Tonight for the first time in my life, I started the purchase process for a photograph.
This decision is undeniably the correct one.

My New Scar

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:00:00 +0000

This scar I just received has no start and has no end.

It is a horizontal and a vertical line that also goes in a circle. Deep is this ocean of this circle that has two surfaces, one that faces the light and one that faces the dark.

This scar stretches beyond the edges of these frames.

7th Ave. & 28th St.

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:00:00 +0000

February 4, 2010 | 6:47:21 PM

Everytime I Visit Martha

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

12/22/09 - 1/1/10 - 1/8/10 - 1/15/10

I photograph this flower each time I visit my grandmother.
I only tonight realized I have now done this for over 10 years.

4/22/09 - 4/25/07

La Cantara | 12/22/09

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

It's been 20 years since my mother saw me quite like this...

...and that was only after major physical trauma.

La Cantara

Site | Kerrville, TX

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:00:00 +0000

U.S. Olympic Training Site | Kerrville, TX

December 25, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0000

The House Of Saunders

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:00:00 +0000

please press play to start video - best results in full screen, scaling off

The Land Of My Blood | The House Of Saunders

January 17, 2010

It Can No Longer Take Flight

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:30:00 +0000

I stopped getting 4x6 prints made sometime around 2005. These must be from before then. I have thousands of 4x6 prints scattered around my apartment and some are in boxes and some are in stacks and some are still barely looked at and hidden away in files. I stopped and went through a stack the other day, I miss these touchable stacks. They are shuffled, unmarked and the negatives unscanned. I cannot imagine having to find these negatives in the hundreds and hundreds of envelopes squirreled away in here.

The day I went through this one stack, I pulled out these three. A tree shadow on a cold day in Queens, NY. A friend in New Paltz, NY. A dead bird in a place on a street I cannot recall tonight as I write this. All I know about this bird tonight is that it can no longer take flight.

WINNER

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:30:00 +0000

NSCA 5-Stand A4 | Parcours de Chasse A7 | 2009 National Sporting Clay Championship

My trophies from nationals finally arrived today after being shipped from Texas to New York, back to Texas and once again back to New York. This note from someone previously unknown also arrived today unexpectedly:

"I`ll tell you a short story, Jonathan: I`ve read almost all your stories, and watched all your photographs for the last hours (except for the ones about shotguns.) I`m left with a feeling that you must be one of the most polite persons I`ve ever "met" on the net."

Thank You.

"Who's Jonathan?"

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:12:00 +0000

I Am Jonathan

Voicemail From Unknown Caller, 3:05 PM EST | Today

(if your phone ends in 7861, some kids & a Henry may have your phone and they want money)

The Blue In The Moon | Prelude

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

The Girl With The Bird On Her Chest | Texas 2009

I did not know she had a bird on her chest when I met her. This would be learned later. I first met her, well, not met her, but saw her on the day before Halloween in Texas. She was dressed as a nerd and she was my waitress at a Chili’s®.

I was sad as Chili’s® will forever mean one thing to me and there is nothing that can really change that one thing however this was not that Chili’s®, so I did my best to pretend I couldn’t remember why Chili’s® means what it does. Then this redhead walked up and served me my potato soup.

Three days before Christmas I met her again. I was again at this one Chili’s® in Texas, I was again sad and this time she served me my hamburger, only this time she was not a nerd, she was a reindeer.

This time, I did not let this mean nothing. I left the table my family was sitting at and trapped the poor girl near the waitress stand. I simply said I was in town for a short while and would like to someday, somehow photograph her. She looked at me for a moment as a smile appeared across her face and she simply said, “High five!” We high fived one another and would later meet on three different occasions shortly there after to make photographs before I left Texas.

One night in between our three days on the first new night of the New Year, she called me at 3:12 AM and told me to go outside. There standing on the front lawn of my parent’s house in Texas in my underwear in thirty-degree weather, I did as she requested. I looked up at the moon… It was full, it was blue and I’ll never see how all these things could ever align more then once in such a moon.

Before we met to make photographs for the first time, I asked her to text me a photograph of herself in her Halloween glasses and to text me a photograph of herself in her antlers and to my surprise, she did. Before day one of photographing, she told me her name meant tree by the water so as requested, this was to be the first place I would photograph her and this is where we found this feather.

#1RN | 1/28/10

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:00:00 +0000

#1RN | 2.5 Hours Ago | Sasha

The Seventh Avenue Express

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

please press play to start video - best results in full screen, scaling off

January 25, 2010 - 11:00:21 PM | January 26, 2010 - 7:33:30 PM

The Seventh Avenue Express

I have a habit of listening to one piece of music quite often. Right now it is the piece here but this changes as often as I can discover it. I tend to hear something and then play it endlessly over any given amount of time, over and over and over and over. I sometimes start this way of listening to something while I work alone in front of a computer but only after certain hours or during distinct moments or maybe sometimes when in transit from one place to another. It is in this cycle that I feel a comfort like I otherwise never experience. During the past two train rides I have been on, this particular piece of music was again playing in my headphones while I sat there alone. Over and over and over it played and I was not feeling the comfort I once did within it and I was listening in a longing to feel this comfort once again.

I boarded these trains, sat down and only then noticed what was taking place directly in front of me and on each occasion, it was this same thing. Only I could see and hear these things together in this way: over and over and only inside my own head.

(Max Richter, Sunlight, Songs From Before)

The Last Time I Was In Texas | XVI

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

October 29, 2009 | 8:23:11 PM

See Through | NY

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

New York | 2010

See Through | TX

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:00:00 +0000

Texas | 2010

The Last Time I Was In Texas | XV

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +0000

October | 2009

17 Years Ago

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:00:00 +0000

I-95

17 Years Ago, I Was 19

Where Is The Romance?

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:30:00 +0000

camera life | 3/17/09 - 12/21/09

I can remember the first time I saw a photograph of a photographer that I was in awe of with their camera. This camera was a precision instrument built to take abuse and keep dishing out wonder, year after year and the camera in this portrait was absolutely beaten to shit simply by the amount of its use. Given who this photographer was however, it was clear this cameras function underneath the brassing, dents and the abusive behaviors of creative struggles was completely intact.

This I found romantic.

For the past 5 years, I have averaged two new (simplistic) cameras a year or guesstimating about 15 or so as I consciously stopped counting, collecting them on a shelf or blasting them with a shotgun. Cameras that approach the level of interesting that my film cameras once held, are also simply priced beyond their own usage or value. Of the 100 or so photographers I know, only 2 of these photographers own such contraptions and they are strife with issues.

People have sung songs about film and people have sung songs about film cameras. No one will ever sing a song about a camera not designed to last more than 1 year.

This is not only not romantic, this is like being in love with a woman who asks to be your friend with every love letter you send her.

This I find heartbreaking.

For Ponyboy

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:00:00 +0000

please press play for a 90 second video - best results in full screen, scaling off

#1RN | November 8, 2009

One Man, Standing Alone

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Saunders) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:00:00 +0000

January 19, 2010 | 2:00:32 PM | New York, NY

- - -

One Man, Standing Alone

One Man, Standing Alone

One Man, Standing Alone

Three Men, Standing Alone