Florida, Spring 2006

Very few people study art at Yale College. Fewer still are male. Demographically speaking, I should not have expected anyone on the lightweight crew team to share my passion (at least not exactly). Perhaps I just missed the boat; most of the other rowers studied history or economics. When the team traveled to Florida for spring break training, I’d just started photography. I carried my camera around snapping shots of oars, and moments between workouts. The guys liked the idea of glory shots, but no one seemed intent on discussing images as art. And as the sophomore known most for my tie died shirts, and who stunk at rowing, I felt the time wasn’t right to start the dialogue.

We jogged to and from practice. Getting there was never that tough, but jogging back always seemed… harder. I was jogging back with a freshman named Henry Agnew. Somehow I got to rambling at length about black an white film photography. Contrary to my own expectations, I heard myself invite Henry to photograph with me after we got back to the hotel. We walked around, eating, talking and taking pictures of exotic things, like air pumps, and trees. Henry (for some reason) listened attentively as I told him about the camera, and how to use the light meter.

I didn’t realize until after hanging out with Henry that I’d felt isolated in Florida. Not to say that SportsCenter isn’t great. When we got back to Yale, I printed copies of the photos Henry took and gave them to him. I also sold prints of the photos I’d taken to the other guys on the team for memories. Henry’s reward for being a good teammate and engaging me when I need it? I started asking him for more help. It wasn’t long before Henry was hugging chairs on the darkened campus of Albertus Magnus college, pouring mango juice for Ani Katz, and waiting in horror-struck silence to see who belonged to the footsteps of that greenhouse we swore was empty.

Thank You, Aldrich Museum

By Elizabeth Fiedorek
ElizabethFiedorek.com

The Aldrich Museum has line drawings of buildings and shiny purple paintings dripping into nuclear goo. Gabe and I weren't impressed, but we browsed accordingly. Generally I disdain those who meander past each painting, pausing a requisite 20 seconds in front of every name they recognize. Not to say my thoughts are any more elevated, just that I prefer to walk quickly.

Mostly I'm just spinning my wheels.

Gabe once said he wanted his art to make people "look closer at the world." What does he do when there's nothing worth looking at?

The back room was quiet, with good light. Gabe set up a tripod and started asking members of our 7-person group to join him for a project. He directed me and another friend, Ali, to lie on the floor as if reaching toward a painting with a neon-purple-suburban-nuclear-meltdown feel. "Look like you've been conquered" was the advice he offered. He positioned and repositioned our bodies, at times adding his own. He sought feedback and used Ali's suggestion, a pose where she reaches up toward the painting in confusion, as the focal point of the final image. After the image was done and printed, he reminded me to look for it in the gallery, pointing out where he'd fused separate images and how he'd decided what to do.

"Our human debris," he called it.

Small Town, Florida

By Henry Agnew

THE first time I went on a photo shoot with Gabe was during my freshman year. We had met on the Yale lightweight crew team—both of us were walk-ons, he a year older than I. My first impression of Gabe was that he was a little eccentric, very friendly, had a great big smile, and didn’t really seem like a typical college rower. In reality, Gabe Diaz isn’t a typical anything.

When we went on our first shoot, we were in Florida on a Spring Break training trip with the crew team. I know going to Florida for Spring Break sounds pretty awesome, but when we weren’t rowing, the trip consisted mostly of sitting around the hotel pool and thinking about when our next meal would be. Between the morning and afternoon practice sessions, we had plenty of free time to walk around and explore the area. There wasn’t anything very exciting to see. But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t be able to take some cool photographs.

So one day after practice Gabe asked if I wanted to go take some photos with him. I had nothing better to do other than work on my tan, and Gabe seemed like a cool guy to hang out with, so I happily went along. I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but we probably just began walking towards no destination in particular, with Gabe stopping every now and then to take a shot, explaining why he thought it made for a great picture, what with all the light and the angles and so forth. (Gabe knows a lot about photography and he is always super-excited to share his knowledge with interested folks—that makes him a really great teacher).

Pretty soon the camera was in my hands, and Gabe told me to take a picture of anything I wanted. He taught me the basics of using the camera—how to focus, how to click the button to take a picture—pretty complex stuff. I even learned how to load the film! The first shot I took was of an air-vac machine at a gas station. Later I took a sweet shot of Gabe standing in a wooded area near the highway eating a loaf of Amish strawberry bread. Three years later, I still have the black-and-white printouts of both of those.

After an hour or two, we had to return to the hotel, either for practice or for dinner, I don’t remember which. It was a fun afternoon, but at the time, I didn’t think it represented anything more than that. What really happened that day in small-town Florida was something special—a partnership was born. And a very unlikely partnership it was! I had never had much interest in photography—when I did express myself artistically, it usually involved spending a couple minutes during lecture making drawings in Microsoft Paint. But over the next three years, taking photos with Gabe has created some of the most fun, memorable, and questionably legal experiences that I’ve had during college. I look forward to sharing lots of those memories on this blog.