Seventeen Year Old Ali
And His Photos


As the year comes to a close I find myself scrambling to finish out the last of my artistic new year's resolutions. One such resolution was to revisit my first few rolls of film, taken when I was seventeen. I decided to take the best photos from those rolls, and scan/color grade them with my current work flow, sensibilities, equipment, know how etc.

I received my first 35mm camera as a high school graduation present when I was seventeen. It took at least a couple years for me to accumulate the experience and failed experiments necessary to teach me the process, from what film suited my tastes, shooting methods, lenses, digitizing/scanning prints or negatives, color grading, output etc.

So my last trip to southern California found me rummaging through old photo binders and shoeboxes, marveling at how abominable my photos were from that time. Of course there was the obligatory nostalgia , and sweet wistful sadness that always touches such activities. I found to my relief that the task proved easier than I anticipated, since almost all the photos I remember as being strong, and worth re-scanning/color grading, were not good enough at all. However a few did make the cut and I set them aside to process under my current standards.

It was during this same trip I hung out with my friend Kate, whom I hadn't seen since high school, and eventually the conversation came round to my photo hunt, and we both remembered that she had taken photos of me, with one of my paintings, for her film class, right about the same time. Predictably after high school we lost touch and I had never seen the photos from the shoot. So we went through her old boxes of photos together (hers were much better organized than mine), and just when we were about to give up, she found them.

I couldn't pull myself away from the large format slides of seventeen year old Ali. Who was this kid with the Lyle Lovett inspired hair, popped collar, and affected brooding scowl, that advertised to the world he took himself far too seriously? That kid was me. God bless the little whipper snapper.

So here is seventeen year old Ali to introduce the photos he took that year, along with twenty six year old Ali's revised scan/color grading underneath.