Roadside Yeti: Dreaming with Toy Cameras
Artist Joe Rauh recently installed this roadside Yeti in Ranchita, a small town in Eastern San Diego County [map]. Call this 11 foot tall, 250 pound monster a yeti, bigfoot, or sasquatch, he's certainly hard to miss. Read more about how and why Joe built the Yeti on www.roadsidemonster.com.
While future snapshots will document the Yeti as he solemnly stands outside the country store and real estate office, I decided to capture "Little Joe", as the lady in the store called him, with a Diana+ toy camera. Which leads me to an important point -- if a regular camera is a tool to help preserve our memories, perhaps toy cameras are made to record our dreams.
And in your strangest dreams, perhaps you'll realize why they call them bigfoot:
Maybe our memories are a little bit soft around the edges. Heck, with our noses to the grindstone, everyday life can often be soft around the edges. Showing just a hint can suggest something exciting. Fire the imagination. Snap you out of your routine for a second. Help you temporarily access a dream state. For some folks this may be asking a lot, but I hope you'll try to gaze into the blurry parts a little bit more. Find a figment and follow it. Let me know what you see.