2 and a quarter

11/28

2012-01-07T08:58:00.001-08:00

New York City

5/2

2011-06-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

I grew up as a sports crazy kid in Yonkers, NY, and since all of my friends were the same way, we played pickup games all year-round. Tackle and touch football and baseball and stickball and whiffle ball and dodgeball and kickball and basketball. Little League baseball was the only organized sport so that was the only time I actually played on an official team. Mostly, after school, we just picked up teams and played until it was too dark or it was time for dinner. We did this pretty much every day.

One memory I have is the summer I decided I wanted to be a left-handed pitcher (I was normally right-handed). I would wait until my father got home from work and after rushing him through dinner I'd make him come outside and play catch with me. He would stand there indulging me while I either bounced pitches off his legs or winged them over his head into Mr Levy's yard next door. I don't imagine this was fun for him but he never complained. He was great about that stuff. He might have been tired after a long day but he never said no. Thankfully, for him, this left-handed obsession lasted only one summer.

The 2011 baseball season began a few weeks ago and while I always look forward to the start of a new season, this year feels particularly poignant.

My dad died suddenly at the end of January so this is the first year I can remember where we weren't discussing spring training or the upcoming Yankee season. He was a life long Yankee fan and watched all the games with great enthusiasm. He would often call me in Boston with the highlights of some afternoon game he had just watched. A funny thing he did was call the players by their first names. He'd say things like, 'Mariano was just terrific' or 'Derek got two hits' or 'Andy pitched a great game'. It was like all his favorite players were members of our extended family so he called them by their first name. It was very sweet.

We had the chance in the last few years to go to some games together. Twice I met up with him and his buddies from the Senior Center to see the Yanks play the Sox at Fenway. Me and thirty or forty old guys sitting in the right field grandstand. It was great. We also went down to Yankee stadium twice. Once Mike Mussina out-pitched Dontrelle Willis and the Marlins for a 1-0 win and in the final season of the old Yankee Stadium we witnessed a Nick Swisher walk-off home run for another win. Those memories would have stayed with me anyway, but now they are especially significant.

Baseball and sons and fathers has become a bit of a cliché over the years (with all the teary sentimental movies it's no wonder), but like most cliché's there's a lot of truth to it. When my mom died suddenly in September 1999, we took solace in watching the Yanks win the World Series. Those games gave us a temporary respite from our collective grief; a brief diversion from our own pain. It brought us closer together and in the years that followed it kept us close. It remained a great comfort to us both.

It's been hard getting interested in baseball this season. I miss my dad.

11/3

2010-11-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

The expression 'The best things in life are free' seems silly until you ride the Staten Island Ferry at night.

10/27

2010-10-27T12:59:00.000-07:00

My local NPR station had yet another show about the Tea Party this morning. An hour wasted discussing the various angry, crazy, racist, homophobic nitwits that make up what they think is a new wave of Angry Americans. What they don't seem to do is ever look more deeply and question the coded rhetoric of these various people. That the vast majority of them are white and are 'angry' at our black president never comes up. That many of them continue to spout hideous racist sentiments about minorities or immigrants is never questioned, that often what they say is factually incorrect or blatant lies is never challenged. If someone says it, then it must be true. That much of this 'anger' from 'regular people' is, in fact, funded by wealthy Americans (the Koch brothers among others) and foreigners looking to increase their political influence by having other people do their bidding for them is conveniently ignored.

What NPR needs to do is to stop patting themselves on the back with one hand and asking for 'listener support' with the other and get back to being a news organization. There are far too many opinion pieces and columnists and editorials and news analysts and not nearly enough actual reporting. What people need are facts, not another windbag's opinion or analysis about something they can't be bothered to get out of the office and report about.

When NPR's Juan Williams was fired last week there was an uproar about this 'respected journalist' being fired for expressing his opinion. What wasn't discussed was that Mr Williams hasn't been a serious journalist for years, he's an analyst. He simply comes on the air and talks. He's one of the increasing number of people who make a (very good) living giving their opinion on various news outlets. Everybody's got an opinion, even if they haven't done any fact finding. We're a nation of pundits. You know the expression, 'Everyone's got an opinion...' Well, in my opinion (ha ha ha) if Juan Williams was a real journalist, he wouldn't been playing the clown in Bill O'Reilly's circus. Anyone with a level of self respect wouldn't do 'Ol Bill's bidding. He'd also be embarrassed to play the fool on the same network that brings us O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity.

But maybe I'm the fool, because the day after Williams got fired he signed a contract with Fox News for 2 million dollars. So no more pity or outrage for Juan Williams (and no more discussion of racism), because he got what he wanted. A fat check and a chance to play the fool on a regular basis.

P.S. Where was the outrage recently when a gubernatorial candidate in Rhode Island said President Obama "Can take his endorsement and really shove it"? If a candidate had told President Bush to "really shove it" there would have been tons of outrage for being disrespectful towards the sitting president. But with president Obama, the media is noticeably silent; more concerned about Juan '2 Million' Williams.

7/25

2010-07-25T08:15:00.000-07:00

My cd player has been broken for weeks so while it's getting repaired I've been listening to my large, if old, vinyl lp collection. Specifically records by local Boston bands from the 80's.

And one thing I couldn't help but notice was that even though they may have been crudely recorded or lack technical expertise, they all rocked like crazy. Bands like the Neats, Lyres, Del Fuegos and Scruffy the Cat played with a passion I often find lacking in younger, hip, bands of today. These bands may not have been the greatest musicians, but they more than made up for it in sheer exuberance. A combination of punk's do it yourself attitude mixed with a garage rock aesthetic, it's loud, fast, often sloppy, but with an urgency that rings true. It sounds like rock and roll.

Compared to some popular bands of today it feels like night and day. Whereas a lot of new bands have greater technical and recording chops, they seem to have drifted away from anything resembling rock and roll. As if musicians get their training now studying music theory, philosophy or poetry and then turn around and write maudlin songs based on entries in their 'journals'. It sounds so precious and cloying that I want to scream. Someone gave me a recording by Jack Johnson a few years ago and all I could think of was a guy strumming a guitar in a college coffee house trying to get laid with songs based on his bad poems. It was so self consciously sensitive (and awful) that it was a cliché.

Grizzly Bear is another band that makes me want to throw myself out a window. Given the cd Veckatimest (say what?) as a gift, I tried listening to it a bunch of times and could never get through the entire thing. At around 30 minutes into it I would shut it off so my screaming wouldn't disturb the neighbors. It was awful. Like a bad version of the Beach Boys meet choral music. I don't know what it is but it's not rock and roll. It couldn't be any more pretentious.

The thing that bothers me about this music is that it feels so disconnected from the origins of what created rock and roll. If you listen to it you hear nothing resembling blues or country or rhythm and blues, or rockabilly or soul or swing or funk or surf music or punk or anything. It doesn't make you want to dance or yell or have sex or cry or get into a fight or feel you're alive. There is no emotional component (aside from naval gazing self pity) so for me, it doesn't resonate in the least. It's soulless, like a lot of postmodern art. Something created in an insular environment that has little or no connection to everyday experience. It's a completely interior monologue. Technically proficient and theoretically based, it tries to be perfect but it lacks the emotion necessary to make it real. It's so perfect it's lifeless.

5/31

2010-05-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

I had the chance to see Gene Smith's 'Jazz Loft Project' show a few weeks back and I must say I keep returning to it in my mind. It's the kind of photography that was dismissed out of hand in graduate school (it's black and white, old and thoroughly NOT postmodern), but the kind of work that has inspired me since I picked up a camera.

It's an incredible, if somewhat obsessive (as only Gene Smith can be), document of the loft building in NYC where Smith lived in from 1957-1965. He not only photographed the life within the building, (where musicians came to jam after gigs and parties lasted all night) but what he saw on the street as he looked out his windows. And from the enormous output, Smith photographed EVERYTHING.

1,447 rolls of film and about 40,000 pictures comprise this document, but perhaps the most interesting part of it had nothing to do with actual photographs. Smith also managed to wire the building for sound and record (via 1,740 reel to reel tapes) everything that took place within it. Included in this incredible collection is Thelonious Monk rehearsing for his legendary appearances at Lincoln Center and other various jam sessions, but also lots of things he taped off of the radio (plays, news programs, a World Series baseball game).

The exhibit displays the photographs and recordings in equal measure, which allows the viewer to completely immerse themselves in Smith's world. You get the chance to look at photographs and then listen to numerous recordings. The Monk rehearsals are breathtaking. There are also films of Smith discussing his work and various musicians talking about their experiences in the loft building during this time. It's an incredible document of a time and place that no longer exists; one that would have been lost if not for Smith's obsessive recording of everything around him.

Overall, it's one of the best shows I've seen in years and once again confirms Gene Smith's place as one of the most important documentarians in the history of photography.

4/29

2010-05-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

It was a year ago today that I lost my dear sweet dog, Lucille. She was riddled with cancer and I had to make the awful decision to put her down. I said my goodbyes to her and then held her in my arms weeping as she drifted off to permanent sleep. It was one of the saddest and most painful days of my life. A year later my heart still aches when I think of her lovely face and all the joy she brought me.

Lucille was originally my wife, Caroline's, dog and when Caroline was diagnosed with cancer and died suddenly six weeks later (at the heartbreakingly young age of 42) she became my dog. In the days, weeks, months and eventually years that followed, Lucille was my saving grace. She gave me a reason to move forward, made me laugh every day and was the best companion I could have ever asked for. I don't know how I would have survived without Lucille. When I felt like I was drowning in sorrow and grief, she kept me afloat. We spent almost every minute of every day together and I found that my ability to love her had no bounds. It grew with each day.

I think only people who own dogs can truly understand what they bring to our lives. Their good cheer and endless enthusiasm for our daily rituals coupled with unyielding and constant love is something that is hard to match and is impossible to replace. I miss her every day.

Like all the other experiences in my life, I've been forced to incorporate this into my life. You don't get over it, you just learn to live with the loss. It becomes part of who we become. It helps to define us.

When I think of Lucille now, my only wish is that she has been reunited with Caroline and they are both healthy, walking in the woods on a cool summer day.

4/25

2010-04-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

4/10

2010-04-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

Thankfully March and March Madness is over because I had run out of tolerance for college basketball. It's not the teams or the players, but rather the commentators, announcers and coaches that I'm completely sick of. If I had to listen to the insufferable Digger Phelps, Dick Vitale, Kevin Harlan, etc. for another day I was going to shoot myself. Plus watching the histrionics of Bruce Pearl, Coach K., Tom Izzo, Rick Pitino, John Calipari or anyone else who feels the need to race up and down the sidelines (and often onto the court) screaming at the players and referees CONSTANTLY for 40 minutes is enough to make one hate everything about college basketball. Someone needs to tell the networks and the commentators that fans like the games and not all this other manufactured and contrived drama.

On the professional side the Celtics have played so inconsistently bad that if I hadn't already lost the majority of my hair it would have fallen out in clumps this season. And I can't even accurately describe my disdain for Rasheed Wallace. What a waste of a roster spot, not to mention talent.

The only good thing that has happened is that Dennis Johnson was finally inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Anyone who watched him during his career knew what a great player (and big game performer) he was. His induction is long overdue.

2/23

2010-02-23T08:15:00.000-08:00

I was watching Connecticut play West Virginia in college basketball last night and I couldn't help but be weirdly fascinated with West Virginia coach Bob Huggins. Huggins, who has the distinction of not graduating a single player during the entire time he coached at Cincinnati, no longer even tries looking like a professional college coach on the sidelines during a game. While most coaches still wear a suit or coat and tie (Pat Knight at Texas Tech goes with the golf shirt) during games, Huggins wears a turtle neck shirt and a black track suit top. His hair is slicked back so the only thing keeping him from looking like Paulie Walnuts of the 'Sopranos' is a white streak.

I finally got around to seeing Harry Callahan: American Photographer at the Boston MFA yesterday and although it is fairly small (only about 40 images) it was really good. There is an elegant simplicity to his work that is very powerful and each image is perfectly composed. And after seeing so much contemporary art photography where the size of prints are enormous, it was a relief to view these small wonderfully printed photographs. Looking at each one was like viewing a short story.

2/21

2010-02-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

It's been a few weeks but it's hard to stop thinking about graduate school. It was so intense for so long that I find it hard to reintegrate myself back into a world without papers to write or books to read. It's oddly relaxing to suddenly have nothing due on Monday or next week or next month. I feel calm and anxious at the same time.

I also keep thinking about the teachers in the program. To review and consider what I learned but mostly to really appreciate the majority of the faculty. Especially those who were generous with their opinions and knowledge. The ones who tried to help you rather than dictating the direction of your work or how you should get there. The good ones listened to your ideas and worked with you. They didn't impose their own sensibilities on you or wanted you to make work that would look like theirs.

These faculty members were actually really good teachers, not just working artists who needed a paycheck. They were the ones who went above and beyond the job's requirements. They weren't lazy, burned out, selfish or arrogant. They did much more than the minimum.

The reality is that all the students knew who was working hard and who was phoning it in. It was painfully obvious.

The great teachers will stay with me forever. I will always appreciate their kindness and generosity for the gift it was. The other lazy or disinterested ones? I can't forget them fast enough.

1/23

2010-01-23T06:40:00.000-08:00

I graduated last Saturday so I now officially have my MFA.

Twenty four straight months of reading, writing, thinking, photographing, processing, printing, framing, articulating and ultimately defending my work is now complete. I can finally exhale.

About a year ago a friend wondered if I thought my work would better or worse when I finished this program. I wondered myself. Right up until the very end as I wrestled with different theories and comments from various faculty members. It was not an easy process and it stirred up difficult feelings about myself, my life, my values and my work. Many times it felt pointless and I thought about quitting hundreds of times.

Now that's it over is my work better?

I think so.

Definitely.

12/30

2009-12-30T08:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally made it to YouTube.

And I didn't even know it.

I was watching old concert videos of the band NRBQ (still one of the great American bands) and during one of 'Shake, Rattle and Roll' there I was in the front of the stage with my friend Janet. Just for a split second about 4 minutes into the song. I have this goofy grin on my face and look like I've had more than a few beers. Crazy. The Paradise in Boston. 1982.

I also saw the Robert Frank show at The Met a month or so ago and it was really interesting to see the entirety of 'The Americans' on exhibit. It was the exact order from the book and having them displayed side by side allowed viewers to see how the images refer to each other in a much different way. Plus seeing entire walls of photos on the same theme made you realize how much consideration Frank had given to how this work was organized. It's an incredible body or work and still packs a wallop. My only complaint was the quality of the prints. They seemed to have been compiled from people's personal collections so they varied both in size and quality. Some were beautiful and some looked like bad work prints; over or under exposed, dust spots etc. I couldn't help but wonder why The Met hadn't had a new pristine set of exhibition prints made for this occasion (it's the 50th anniversary of 'The Americans') instead of showing a group of mismatched prints. I could only help but wonder if Frank (notoriously prickly) wouldn't allow it or if the original negatives had been lost, damaged or destroyed.

Still, the best show I saw last year was 'Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt' at the New Museum. An amazing retrospective of work he's done in South Africa, both before and after apartheid. It's great documentary photography and great art. Most importantly it makes you think. Bravo.

8/8

2009-08-08T12:25:00.000-07:00

I read in the NY Times this morning that singer Willy DeVille had died yesterday of cancer. He was 58.

Willy was one of my all-time favorites and someone who was completely underrated as both a singer and a songwriter. He originated in the NYC punk scene in the late 1970's, playing CBGB's in the band Mink DeVille. They were tremendous, but more Spanish Harlem street corner meets Doc Pomus than the Ramones, Blondie or Television.

The first time I saw them was 1980 at Lupo's in Providence, RI. and I was completely hooked. Willy came out in his usual skin tight suit pants, purple ruffled tuxedo shirt, his hair in a shiny black pompadour. The band looked like they were in the mob, dressed entirely in black with leather jackets, pork pie hats; everyone smoking cigarettes. I don't remember if they wore pinkie rings. By the end of the show, Willy was so loose the roadies had to carry him back onstage for the encore.

I saw him four or five more times after that in Boston and he was amazing each time. He also made a bunch of great albums. 'Cabretta', 'Return to Magenta', 'Le Chat Bleu', 'Backstreets of Desire' and 'Loup Garou' were my favorites. These recordings feel timeless and are filled with great melodies, incredible lyrics and soulful singing. Willy never got his due but made great music his entire career. He was one of the best.

New Work pt 7 (Chelsea iphone photos)

2009-06-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

New Work pt 6

2009-06-05T09:48:00.001-07:00

New Work pt 5

2009-03-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

2/28

2009-02-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

I met with my new mentor a few weeks ago for the first time so I wanted to show her all the work I had done in my first two semesters. After she looked at about six of the urban landscape photos she stood up and grabbed a book from her bookshelf. It was Lee Friedlander's 'Sticks and Stones Architectural America' and when I looked at it, it was the closest thing I had seen to what I was trying to do. It was really nice to see something similar to my own work (especially being Friedlander) but I wondered later why not a single faculty member had mentioned this book or seen the connection between what Friedlander had done and what I was trying to do (medium format black and white images taken mostly in cities). The best anyone could come up with at the time was to either shoot color or to look at Lewis Baltz.
Lewis Baltz? His work was of suburban houses from California in the '70's and other than being black and white had little or nothing in common with what I was trying to do with an urban environment in 2008. When I thought more about it I realized that Friedlander probably isn't considered postmodern enough to be relevant. So even though Friedlander is one of the most important and prolific American photographers, a book of his work published in 2004 (and produced in the previous ten years) is either ignored, discounted or unknown by the faculty. It took about twenty seconds for my mentor to see the connection, but not a single faculty member could do the same. It's stuff like this that makes me want to beat my head against the wall.

2/16

2009-02-16T14:07:00.000-08:00

The response to my Chelsea street portraits was overall pretty positive, but most of the faculty felt it wasn't enough. That they'd seen similar things in the past and that I needed to expand my ways of portraying the city. That simple portraits weren't enough. People suggested reading up on 'sense of place', which while sounding good remains one of the most nebulous terms thrown around art school. I even had a faculty member tell me he had no idea what it meant. I agreed, although I did find a short one by political geographer John Agnew that I liked. By 'sense of place' he means the 'subjective and emotional attachment people have to place'.
So I'm trying to incorporate some representation of my emotional attachment to Chelsea. How I do this is still unclear but I think it will include urban landscapes, more formal portraiture, and possibly still life's, panoramas and architectural details. After that, who knows?
I'm also continuing to use the idea of 'All-American' city as a way to frame all of these disparate ideas. The All- American City award is given by the National Civic League annually to ten cities in the United States. Chelsea won in 1998, the year I moved here. So one of the questions I keep asking myself is what is American and what does it mean to be All-American? Can there ever be a single definition or is this one of those things that's forever changing. Fluid.
I also like the idea of my work questioning the traditional notion of All American. Given the current political discourse regarding immigration, the fact that Chelsea is largely Hispanic (more than 50%) challenges directly, conservative views as to what is and who are Americans.

New Work pt 4

2008-11-14T09:12:00.000-08:00

2008-11-14T09:01:00.000-08:00

11/9

2008-11-09T07:33:00.000-08:00

I recently saw/heard three things which made me think very seriously about the kind art I not only respond to but the kind of art I want to make.

The Harvard Film Archive had a retrospective of films by Bruce Conner (1933-2008) which were some of the most amazing things I've ever seen. He used almost entirely found footage which he edited together to create films that were hilarious, haunting, breathtaking, sad and truly unforgettable. It's like he created his own visual language out of discarded images (educational films, newsreels, b-movies, industrial films, etc) to critique American culture.

William Christenberry's photographs (William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005) and talk at MassArt, while being different from Conner, have a somewhat similar sensibility. His interest in the vernacular architecture of Hale County, Alabama seems to mirror Conner's use of found materials. Both create art from what is discarded or overlooked. They find beauty (or in the case of Conner, humor and mystery as well) in things most people wouldn't notice. In Christenberry's work, it's a subtle beauty that stems from what he called his 'emotional involvement with vernacular architecture'. He also said you could always tell an artist who is in love with his subject. He clearly does and even though many of his photographs are made with an old Brownie camera, there is both beauty and elegance.

A few days later Gregory Crewdson spoke at MassArt and he went into great detail to describe how he makes his photographs. Working with a crew between 50 and 60 people, Crewdson makes constructed images that look like film stills. This often includes building sets, using smoke and rain machines, closing off streets, setting buildings on fire, making snow, hiring actors, etc etc. As he went on it seemed like his working process became more and more involved with not only more intricate stage sets, but massive amounts of digital post production. It felt as if it had nothing to do with photography and more to do with working with gadgets and props. Towards the end of his discussion he said he doesn't even like 'touching a camera' and that he wasn't interested in what his photographs mean. This felt like a total cop out because why would someone go to such lengths to produce these images if they weren't interested in the meaning of them (other than the obvious reality that he can sell them for lots of money)? I also felt that for all the dazzle in Crewdson's work (and technically they are pretty amazing) they leave me cold. Once I get past the technical part, there isn't much left. Just an anonymous woman sitting in a car at an intersection with the door open, for example. Wow.

For me Crewdson's work ended up feeling kind of vulgar. The idea of so much time and money being used (wasted?) to make something that is ultimately so unemotional. That when you strip away all the manufactured 'drama' you're left with but nothing but artifice. It's visual junk food. And compared with the powerful simplicity of Christenberry and Conner, the work of Crewdson feels even more empty. It seems like Crewdson has gotten so far away from actual photography and traditional image making, he's lost any connection to what he's trying to say. No wonder he doesn't want to talk about meaning.

10/6

2008-10-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've heard over and over from certain faculty members is to 'get out of your comfort zone'. This has always bugged me and continues to do so because the assumption made by these people is that I/you/we are in fact 'in a comfort zone' or have been doing the same thing artistically over and over and over for years. We have never ever tried anything new. How would any of these people actually know what our respective comfort zones are? What also makes this cliche 'get out of your comfort zone' infuriating is that often these same faculty members have either been doing the same thing themselves for years or recommend other artists who have (Cindy Sherman, The Becher's etc).

They also seem to think that by simply using a new film or shooting color/b&w instead of what you're currently doing is the answer. For me, getting out of the so-called comfort zone is to do a different kind of photography than what you normally do. Not just change film and/or move to color but do something that makes you actually look at something new or have a different approach visually. If you continue to shoot the same kinds of things but just in black and white instead of color (or vice versa) how does that really change anything? You simply become proficient with another technique while doing the very same thing.

Right now I'm in the early stages of something that has made me as uncomfortable as I've ever been. I'm photographing total strangers on the street in the city where I live. That alone wouldn't be too difficult except in my case most of these people are new immigrants and many of them don't speak English or are initially skeptical as to why this white guy wants to take their photograph. So each time I want to take someone's portrait I have to ask their permission and explain why I'm doing what I'm doing. Every single time. It takes all my nerve to sometimes just leave the house, let alone approach total strangers. But, when I get permission and when these portraits work out well, it's an exhilarating experience. Worth every rejection and every uncomfortable moment along the way.

New Work pt 3

2008-09-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

2008-09-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

2008-09-14T09:11:00.001-07:00

9/14

2008-09-14T08:14:00.000-07:00

It's a little tricky coming to terms with trying to do a documentary type photo project (in this case street portraits in the city of Chelsea, MA where I live) since it seems that this kind of work is discouraged in MFA programs. That somehow, documentary work is no longer valid; especially portraiture. This goes against much of what I believe in, since so much photography now leaves me cold and so much portraiture feels contrived. the overly produced, highly stylized imagery that feels closer to commercial photography than art photography. It also feels cold and distant, and so often there seems to be no connection between the artist and subject. Where the people photographed appear more like specimens.

This contradicts a lot of the art that I have always responded to, especially photography. I recently saw the documentary film, 'Man on Wire' and it was fantastic. A simple film about the French high wire walker who walked between the twin towers in 1974. There was something incredibly powerful and moving in just seeing the still photographs of him up high between the towers or lying down on the wire. It gave me chills and made me realize, once again, how intensely interested I am in photographing the world around me. Other people can take care of the self portraits or the intimate portraits of family members, I want to go out and look at the unknown and the unfamiliar. I'm more interested in the real than in the conceptual. Todd Papageorge (director of Yale's graduate program in photography) addresses this by saying, 'there's a failure to understand how much richer in surprise and creative possibility the world is for photographers in comparison to their imagination'.

7/15

2008-07-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Marshall Crenshaw made a live recording a few years back called, "I've Suffered For My Art...Now It's Your Turn" to which I say, exactly.

Had a chance to see Chantal Akerman: Moving through Time and Space on the last day at MIT's List Visual Arts Center and it was really amazing. It was five film/video projects that she produced over two decades. A couple were just single projections of films and three were rooms with installations using numerous video monitors. I particularly liked 'Sud' (South) which was a film that dealt the death of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas in 1996. He was an African-American man who was taken by three white men, tied to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged to death. Akerman's film has interviews with whites and blacks and then proceeds to show the three miles of road Byrd was dragged on. The shot is from the back of a vehicle and allows the viewer to imagine the horror Byrd went through as he was dragged to his death. It is one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. A portrait of violence like no other.

I also finished James Lord's 'A Giacometti Portrait'. In it Giacometti refers to things that he's working on as being 'en route'. I really liked that idea. The feeling that while we are working on something and it isn't finished, it's 'en route'. It sure feels better than, 'I started this thing and actually have NO idea where it's headed'. It also reminded me, unfortunately, of something George W. Bush said to Tony Blair. He once commented to Blair that 'the problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur'. The scary thing was that he wasn't kidding. I wonder if they have a word for hors d'oeuvre or cul-de-sac?

New Work Pt 2

2008-04-10T08:18:00.001-07:00

New Work

2008-04-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

3/15

2008-03-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Geoff Dyer's 'The Ongoing Moment' and I will say it was a treat; especially after 'On Photography' and 'About Looking'. What was most refreshing about it was that Dyer wasn't proclaiming to be an expert on photography and it wasn't filled with sweeping generalizations like some other works. He's just a guy writing about photos he's looked at and how there are different themes running through the work of some of photography's most important artists. How they often photograph the same motifs (road signs, hats, barber shops, empty rooms, doors, etc) and then somehow connecting them as if they had met (some had, but most of them never crossed paths). He does a wonderful job of breaking down and examining the work of Walker Evans, Andre Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Paul Strand, Robert Frank and William Eggleston in a way that is fresh and provocative. He just tells you what he thinks, not some manifesto about what photography is or should be. Even though he admits to not owning a camera, he actually seems to LIKE photography.

He also writes a hilarious description of Eggleston's work, 'Eggleston's photographs look like the were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis'. That alone is reason to read this book. He's also written one of the best fictional works about jazz called 'But Beautiful'.

2/12

2008-02-12T06:13:00.001-08:00

I had a chance to see some art last Thursday as I went to the MFA in Boston for the first time since the residency. I decided to look at Contemporary Outlook: German Photography again and came away as unimpressed as I did when I saw it back in the summer. With the exception of a photo by Andreas Gursky and the usual by the Becher's, nothing stayed with me at all. It all felt academic and unemotional. Just because something is enormous doesn't mean it's interesting.

I also got a chance to view the SMFA Traveling Scholars show which featured six paintings by Laurel Sparks, which I enjoyed.

There was also a smaller show called Drawing a Broader Definition which was really cool. It had the obvious drawings on paper, but also drawings on ceramics and other art forms which incorporated drawing. I liked the idea of putting a number of different uses of drawing all together in one exhibit.

The best thing I saw was Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints 1914-1939. A wonderful collection of posters, advertisements, linocuts etc that were just beautiful. I particularly liked the Futurist prints of factory workers and some others about World War 1 which were terrifying. If you've ever read any of Pat Barker's World War 1 trilogy (Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, The Ghost Road) you will never think of war, or World War 1 in the same way again.

The following day I had my eyes (instead of my head) examined and afterwards I ducked into the Fogg Museum. I particularly loved the sculptures in the Modern Art, 1865-1965 exhibit; especially Matisse's 'The Serf' and Brancusi"'s 'Caryatid II'. There were also tremendous pieces by Rothko, Ellsworth Kelly (I thought of Stuart), Miro, Franz Kline, Braque, Pollock and Alberto Burri.

In addition there was a small exhibit of Max Beckman paintings which were great.

2/4

2008-02-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting piece in the NY Times last Sunday (1/27) about a lost cache of negatives from photographer Robert Capa that had been found by someone in Mexico City. They had been been hidden in cardboard suitcases, but were presumed lost when Capa fled Europe for America in 1939. It was the contents of his Paris darkroom and apparently contains thousands of negatives shot during the Spanish Civil War. They had gone from Paris to Marseille to Mexico City where they were held by a Mexican general and diplomat.

What's amazing is that although they've been lost for over 50 years and were stored in flimsy cardboard valises, they are, apparently, in excellent condition. Curators at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York are working to catalogue the 3,500 negatives. I'm looking forward to see what they've found since although I've appreciated Capa's work, there was never that much to look at (he died in 1954 in Vietnam).

That discovery reminds me of a recording of the Thelonious Monk Quartet w/ John Coltrane that was found a few years ago. A live recording from Carnegie Hall in 1957 was found at the Library of Congress in 2005. No one had ever heard the recording, and although the pairing of Monk and Coltrane was legendary, they left behind very little recorded material. The performance was released as Thelonious Monk Quartet w/John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall in 2005 and was immediately picked as one of the best jazz records of the year. It's fantastic.

1/25

2008-01-25T06:37:00.000-08:00

Saw an incredible documentary last night on PBS about the playwright Eugene O'Neil. I had photographed a number of his plays back when I was doing theatrical production photography so I was familiar with some of his work, but knew little about his personal life. He grew up in a tragic, wildly dysfunctional family in Connecticut and only became a playwright after traveling the world as a seaman and then nearly drinking himself to death afterwards in NYC.

He was immediately successful as a playwright and managed to win three Pulitzer prizes and the Nobel Prize BEFORE he wrote his three greatest works (The Iceman Cometh, Long Days Journey Into Night and Moon for the Misbegotten). All the while suffering from depression and physical ailments that made it difficult to write. He won another Pulitzer posthumously for Long Days Journey Into Night.

It was fascinating to see such incredible work harvested from such a tormented life, but it was also painful to have a sense of how much he suffered as a result of his childhood.

I'm not sure if I could ever be as singleminded as he (he basically did nothing but write to the exclusion of almost everything else, and he left his second wife and young family without ever saying goodbye.), but it does gives you an idea of how much dedication is needed to produce great art. The film left me with much to contemplate in the upcoming months.

Monday 1/21

2008-01-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

Spent the last week catching my breath and trying to process all the information from the residency. I did manage to read most of 'On Photography', which I had read almost 25 years ago. I had forgotten a lot of it, but it still packs a punch. I agree with a lot of what Sontag writes, but some of it feels too academic. There are also a ton of sweeping generalizations that can be a bit tiresome. I can't help but wonder why someone spent so much time studying something she seems to have contempt for. Like she's fascinated and disappointed by photography at the same time.

I also had a chance to see three short documentary films by Chris Marker. He was written about in the readings for the Considering the Documentary seminar and Constanze mentioned him in her lectures. Apparently his films rarely get to the U.S. so it was a nice opportunity to see them screened locally. They were at MIT. I liked two of the three very much. 'Three Cheers for the Whale' was interesting in the way it was put together as it used mostly paintings and what felt like woodcuts or drawings of whaling with a voice-over and then suddenly shifted to actual footage of whales being killed and cut up. It's quite shocking. It also clear that Marker is disgusted by countries that continue whaling. I appreciate his point of view even if it feels heavyhanded. At least he's got an opinion.

'The Sixth Side of the Pentagon' was of the 1967 Vietnam War protest and march on the Pentagon in Washington DC. I had heard and read of this event (Mailer's 'The Armies of the Night') and had seen news footage, but this was completely different. Marker was right in the middle of the protest, photographing as he walked. It feels much more urgent than traditional news footage and you get a sense of what it must have felt like to be part of this event. I like the fact that he is politically engaged as a filmmaker and not just an observer. It's a short film, but very powerful.

1st entry

2008-01-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

Just checking tosee if this works.
More later.