How I Spent Last Sunday

One more weather story - only this time I was right there. This past weekend my wife and I went to Miami to take part in the first South Beach triathlon. It was a truly great event - beautifully managed, perfect conditions, and we both did well. The start was at 7 a.m. and as the sun was rising over the Atlantic and the competitors made their way to the start, a waterspout formed well offshore providing the most spectacular start I've ever seen. (A waterspout is a small tornado that forms over water drawing water upwards to a larger storm cloud.)

I was curious to see if any newspapers would pick it up and kudos to Joe Caveretta of the Sun Sentinel (top) and Patrick Farrell of the Miami Herald (below). It's interesting to compare how different an approach each photographer took on pictures that were taken no more than minutes or yards away from each other. FYI - Cavaretta's picture is the more accurate in reflecting the true light and conditions, but I think that maybe Farrell got the better picture by a hair. Your vote?

Cherry Blossoms - Part Deux

Following last month's post about Japanese blossom-cams, the cherry blossoms are now out in New York City. And as any dog-walker/photo person can tell you, they’re more interesting photographically at 5:30 in the morning (when I was not together enough to put a camera in my pocket) than when the sky is clear and blue as it is now at 8:55 a.m..

Nevertheless, I snapped a photo on my iPhone and sent it to The Sartorialist to let him know that Central Park would not be a bad place to shoot this week. I’ll be interested to see if he follows up.

Then I remembered Nan Goldin’s great photograph – “Honda Brothers in Cherry Blossom Storm, Tokyo, 1994”. For an artist best known for scenes of a bohemian lifestyle illuminated more by dim lightbulbs, the photograph above captures a wonderful moment of delight - delight in nature, in the power of photography to freeze motion, and in the crystalline moment that marks the approach of spring.

The Polk County 8

When I began this blog, I anticipated highlighting (among other things) the type of news photographs that appear in your local paper but have a pictorial resonance and an aesthetic and subtextual complexity that transcends the everyday news image. I felt I was seeing this kind of picture regularly, but no sooner did I start blogging than they seemed few and far between.

Then this Saturday, a number of papers ran a line-up pictures by Scott Wheeler of the eight Florida teenagers accused of savagely beating a classmate in order to film the attack and put it on YouTube. Bullying has been much in the news these days, but this time it seems to have created a tipping point of revulsion and concern.

The pictures of the accused are startling in the banality of the faces. (While the spelling of many of the names – April, Britney, Brittini, Cara, Kayla, Mercades, Stephen, Zachary bring to mind a revived Mouseketeers.) A number of the girls look surprisingly similar, but minus the prison garb, they could just as easily be reacting to a berating for poor schoolwork. The boys, who were posted as lookouts while the girls carried out the beating, look a little more ready for jail.

The pictures are fascinating in the narrow range of emotion they convey, from self-pity to sullenness, but to my mind all stop before genuine contriteness. (I’m reading this in, of course, but I have a hunch I’m right.) Yet there's an all-American look to these kids that can only remind us how narrow the line is between good and evil.

I imagine Andy Warhol would have loved these pictures as would Gerhard Richter. They have similarities to Warhol’s “Most Wanted Men” paintings as well as some of Richter’s early photo-based portraits, and deal with some of the same themes - the connection between crime and media and photography.

Sadly, this is a story and a group of pictures that are truly of this moment. A tale of two Britney's (and their friends) paradoxically too old to have been named after the reigning doyenne of dysfunction.

Weekend Video (and prologue) - Hair

Readers who have been following this blog have heard my praise for the book “Pictures at a Revolution. Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood”. It follows the five Oscar nominees for Best Motion Picture in 1968 from conception to the Awards ceremony. Careful readers might also have picked up on this blog's pleasure in serendipity and how unexpected things always happen at what seems like the right time. Well ….

No sooner had I finished “Pictures…” than I went to visit Ira Resnick, one of the most important movie poster collectors in the world as well as a talented photographer in his own right. I was telling Ira about the book and he was giving me a tour of his new office and there in the back room was the very portrait of Katharine Ross which Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson) uses to lure Dustin Hoffman upstairs in her house in order to seduce him in The Graduate. It’s the key prop from one of the most discussed movies in the book!

Shortly afterwards (as I was writing about the 60s) I remembered a passage in “Pictures…” about the movie-centric lyrics to the song “Manchester, England – England” from the musical “Hair”. So I went on to YouTube to see what they had from “Hair” and there was just about every song as well as the entire movie broken up into 10 minute or so episodes.

The amazing thing (to me) though, was how well the film, dancing and music held up, although this shouldn't have been surprising given the director was Milos Forman and the choreographer Twyla Tharp. The songs - as you will see - sound even better after not having been overplayed for a while, although I gather that the Public Theater will be mounting “Hair” as one of this summer’s “Shakespeare in the Park” productions. Book now! And in the meantime enjoy the clips below.

"Aquarius"

"I Got Life"

"Hair"

"Manchester, England - England"

The Fun of the Fair...

Things start off promisingly at the AIPAD fair with some of Alec Soth's giant "Fashion Magazine" portraits at the Weinstein Gallery. However ...

AIPAD – The Association of International Photography art Dealers – opened its annual show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City last night, giving reason to both celebrate and be depressed. It runs through Sunday, April 13.

The celebration is a celebration of community, in this case the photographic gallery community, now having its 30th year as a formal trade group. With 75 dealers, too often cramming as many of their wares into a small both as can fit, there are bound to be some good pictures, but if you’re looking for fresh ideas this is not the place. Nor is this really any sensible way to show art. The advantage of the multiples aspect of photography is the democratic subtext and opportunity. The downside is that after only a few booths it begins to feel more like merchandise and if I'm correct, a slightly desperate feeling of thwarted commerce hangs heavy in the air.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of greatest hits, and if you have the spare half a day it takes to really do the fair properly – which means going through the multitude of bins that many dealers love to load the tables with – you’re sure to uncover some hidden treasures.

Here are some things that caught my attention:

Esteban Pastorino's work has appealed to me before. But I also like his new work (below) which keeps him one step ahead of the selective focus hordes and with a fresh new outlook and subject.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s before she died at a tragically young age, Francesca Woodman experimented with images dealing with self-portraiture and identity. Here a kind of reverse-Mapplethorpe gesture. (At Gary Edwards.)

A cute, very Sartorialist, August Sander! (FYI - Sander is about to be the subject of a massive show at The Getty.)

This picture, at Keith DeLellis, produced the greatest visceral reaction. It's one of many Edward Kelty circus pictures from the 1930s in the booth. Be sure to click on the picture to enlarge!

A 1967 Irving Penn portrait of Janis Joplin and Big Brother along with The Grateful Dead.

I see that Robert Polidori has been copying Tim Davis' and my ideas about photographing parts of paintings.

This was probably the most expensive, important, and stunning print in the show. However, several hours earlier another Weston nude fetched a new world record going for $1,609,000 at Sotheby's. So consider this a bargain. (At Gitterman.)

Creativity

Ruth Ansel is one of today's greatest graphic designers. In a career that began as an assistant to Marvin Israel, she has been the art director of Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, House & Garden and Vogue, and designed books for Richard Avedon, Peter Beard, and Annie Leibovitz amongst others.

We’re old friends, having worked together at Vanity Fair and on many subsequent gallery projects, but every time I visit her apartment I am pulled in by the feeling that this is what creativity looks like. Her home/work environment is neat as a pin, but visual ideas sprout off every surface. In one room are the mini-layouts of a book in progress celebrating Elsa Peretti’s career. In another room - shelves of pictures given, bought, picked up on travels, sent by friends, or created on assignment. Somehow, there is abundance without clutter! Energy and calm.

I don't believe any magazine has ever photographed it - so, given my love of environment and installation, I thought I would share these snaps.

A Big Question

Kate Hutchinson (whose work I was alerted to by Joerg Colberg) is a Montreal based photographer who has done something quite simple but revolutionary. In her series, “Why am I marrying him?” she has turned the camera on her fiancé with an affectionate, but objectifying view that one sees frequently in men’s pictures of women, but rarely the reverse. She could have tweaked it by making it the simple declarative “Why I am marrying him.” (which I think is what she’s saying with her pictures) but the question is both provocative and sane.

The pictures intrigued me and so I e-mailed Ms. Hutchinson to ask a few biographical details, largely to do with the identity and reaction of her fiancé to the pictures and the status of their marriage plans. I received this reply:

Thank you for your interest in my work. Encouragement from strangers is always a bonus in this life.

I have been thinking about your questions this weekend and have been trying to understand why I didn't feel that I should answer them. First off I think that it is a great sign that you are interested in these personal details. The pictures and the character represented in them must intrigue you and leave you wanting to know more. Perhaps you feel that if you knew this person's vital statistics you would gain insight into why they act the way they do.

But that is not the purpose of this work. This is not a documentary project about a certain person. In fact it definitely would have to be disqualified from the documentary category since most of the images were directed. If it were a documentary then it would make perfect sense for all the facts about the person and the situations that he is in be made known to the viewer. Instead this project is meant to be the sketch of a personality. It is meant to shine a light on the typical early 30s North American white male, and how he interacts with the world around him. Many of my photos deal with this crucial juncture in a man's life, where he is still trying to find his way in life and is not yet ready to let go of his younger ways. A bit of a coming of age. Therefore, in my mind, to say: this is Chris who does such and such a job, takes away from the work's ability to stand in for every man. As well, I wish to leave the viewer wanting more. I want them, like you, to be intrigued by this character. I hope that this intrigue will lead them to create their own fictionalized story about the character in the photos. Then they can then make it their own and relate it to their lives and the people that they know.

Lastly I would like to stress the importance of this work's being made up of many portraits of the same person. To me the single portrait can be a very useful document of the sitter and can give us insight into one aspect of their personality; but I do not feel that it can come anywhere close to telling us about who they really are. Every person has many different personalities and ways of being. To even come close to showing these different elements, a photographer must study the sitter and follow them for a long period of time, capturing their different ways of being, and landscapes in which they live, along the way. For me, when trying to work in this way, it only makes sense that only those that are closest to me and that I am with on a daily basis are my chosen subjects.

Never one to let things rest so easily, I responded:

Thank you for your reply, which I completely respect. Given the title I still think the question of when (as opposed to why) is relevant.

Harry Callahan's pictures of Eleanor, to which I'm happy to relate your pictures, are not diminished by any biographical facts.

Best wishes,
J.D.

Kate’s reply:

We are getting married in May and have been together 7 years, if that helps. I do hope to continue this project after the wedding though. I think that I will always be photographing Chris and trying to understand him better so I don't really see the wedding as an end date. I love the Eleanor series and am completely flattered that you would relate the two.

Thanks,
Kate.

It’s nice when people can articulate so clearly what they think about their pictures. And congratulations and every best wish to Kate and Chris!

Weekday Update

A couple of updates on recent posts:

Before going away on holiday last month, I mentioned I was hoping to read “Pictures at a Revolution. Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood” by Mark Harris. It’s an account of the five films nominated for Best Picture at the 1968 Academy Awards and their journey from concept to the awards ceremony. (The five were: Bonnie and Clyde, Dr. Doolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night, but I have no intention of spoiling the ending.)

Anyway, I just finished the book – and enjoyed every one of its 426 pages. It’s a thoroughly engrossing, incredibly well researched, and never less than page-turning read. If you come away with one thing, it’s the mind-boggling difficulties every single one of the films faced in getting off the ground, and the tenacity and commitment of the creative teams behind each project.

A friend recently remarked that this blog was getting a bit caught up in the ‘60s. I understand her point, but to me 1968 keeps becoming a more and more interesting and watershed year, especially in the life and culture of the United States. Books like this just add to the history of better known events like the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the start of peace negotiations in Vietnam, and the election of Richard Nixon. So expect more ‘60s posts in the near future unless I hear objections. And please let me know what you would consider your watershed year.

Another recent video post featured Shelby Lynne and her new album of re-interpretations of Dusty Springfield standards, Just a Little Lovin’. Shelby Lynne was performing in New York City this past Friday and on a whim I went to see her. Suffering through one of the worst (and longest) warm-up acts ever, I was ready to leave before Shelby even performed, but was I glad I stuck it out! Her Springfield renditions have grown even deeper and more personal since the album was released and the selection of her own previous hits, none of which I knew, became instant downloads. She has a magnetic stage presence – tough on the outside but vulnerable inside, a little bit white-trashy, a lot world weary, but totally in control. (You can read a lot about her in the picture above.) And I should not forget to mention the incredible virtuosity of her band.

She’s done in New York, but her concert schedule over the next month has her criss-crossing the country playing in about 5 different locations every week. Don't miss her (or her new record).

Weekend Video - Casey Knowles

Casey Knowles is the now 18 year old girl who was featured in Hillary Clinton's infamous "3 a.m." ads, credited with maintaining Clinton's dwindling lead in Texas. (The stock footage, shot when Knowles was 10, was licensed by Getty Images.) As it turns out Knowles is not only an Obama supporter, but a caucus captain, a precinct delegate, and potentially even a convention delegate for her home state of Washington. In this video, released by the Obama campaign, she gets to speak for herself.

We Love the 90s!

Woman wheeling down Sunset Boulevard at 34 mph in Beverly Hills on an afternoon in the summer of 1990

Andrew Bush’s “Vector Portraits” – a series of pictures taken while driving alongside his subjects on the roads and freeways of California – was one of the signature photographic series of the 90s. Original, perceptive, and with a fresh conceptual twist, it explored the culture of Los Angeles as well as issues of privacy, danger, and the American dream.

Now, after a decade in which the pictures were slowly slipping from public sight, Yale University Press is about to publish a selection of 70 photographs along with an interview by Jeff Rosenheim, one of the Met’s brightest curators. (The book comes out next week.)

Bush took the pictures by mounting a 4x5 camera and simple strobe on the passenger side of his car and remotely snapping the picture while driving at speeds up to 70 miles per hour. Photographed when Bush is directly across from them, the subjects are framed by the car window to make a separate picture within a picture.

Deadpan titles record not only where and when each photograph was taken, but information about speed, weather, etc. These captions give a faux-scientific aspect to the work, recalling Ed Ruscha's books of the late 1960's in which Ruscha photographed and catalogued such commonplace symbols of Los Angeles as parking lots, palm trees and gas stations.

Despite their humor, Bush's pictures make for fascinating socio-psychological documents. The car is, after all, a unique area of personal space - half public, half private. And as much as we may be what we eat or wear, we are also what we drive.

Man heading south at 73 mph on Interstate 5 near Buttonwillow Drive outside of Bakersfield, California, at 5:36 p.m. on a Tuesday in March 1992

Woman heading northwest at 67 mph on U.S. Route 101 near Santa Barbara at 2:33:38 p.m. in the early 1990s

Man traveling southbound at 67 mph on U.S. Route 101 near Montecito, California, at 6:31 p.m. on or around the 28th of a summer month on a Sunday in 1994

Man and woman passing through the intersection of Cahuenga and Hollywood boulevards, Hollywood, at 33 mph on February 14, 1997

Man rolling along (and whistling audibly) on U.S. Route 101 at approximately 55 mph on a summer day in 1989

Woman meandering at differing speeds through various parts of Pacific Palisades, California, while singing, before noon on a weekend day in the early part of 1997

Spanning the Globe

While it was a chilly 36 degrees when I was walking the dog this morning in Central Park, those two great harbingers of spring – the Yankees home opener and the flowering of cherry blossoms in Japan – are in unusual sync this year.

A friend in Tokyo alerted me to o-hanami (the time of flower watching) and the proliferation of live cherry blossom cams throughout Japan. This one from the Chiyoda ward of Tokyo has a nice big picture, while this site links you to 135 different live cams throughout Japan. (Please note that if you click during the day in the US it will be nighttime in Japan. New York is 14 hours behind Tokyo.)

Meanwhile Melky Cabrera almost single-handedly won the opener for the Yanks with two amazing catches and a homer in the 6th to tie the game at 2-2. (The Japanese letters in the background of the Yankee Stadium picture are another of those unusual visual coincidences.)

And that’s the news….

Be There (or be square)

I can safely predict that the place to be in New York this week (if not this entire spring) will be the Team Gallery opening of new work by 30 year old photographer Ryan McGinley. The show, called "I Know Where the Summer Goes", runs from the opening on the 3rd of April through the 3rd of May. Team Gallery is located at 83 Grand Street between Wooster and Greene.

The title of this exhibition, taken from a song by Belle & Sebastian, is more than just a piece of poetic musing. McGinley does, in fact, know where his summers go. In the summer of 2007, as has been his recent practice, he travelled across the United States with sixteen models and three assistants, shooting 4,000 rolls of film. From the resulting 150,000 photographs, he narrowed down the work to some fifty images to be shown at the gallery.

The inspiration for the project were amateur photographs culled from nudist magazines of the 60s and early 70s. McGinley would sit with his models and look through pictures, discussing the mood he was hoping to capture that day. A specific itinerary was chosen to bring his troop through a range of photogenic landscapes and carefully planned activities. The artificial constructedness of the project allowed for situations in which the models could both perform and be caught off guard. The resulting pictures of young men and women playing in the great outdoors are both innocent and erotic, casual yet calculated.

At one point in McGinley's meteoric career, the question many people had was whether he was a Nan Goldin wannabe or actually had something original to say - an interesting question in the light of yesterday's post. He seems to have found his place in the great outdoors bringing a much needed breath of fresh air (no pun intended) to the increasingly stultified genre of constructed photography. The sky has become one of his great subjects to which he brings yet another fresh point of view. Finally, his equal interest (photographically speaking) in both men and women is a surprisingly rare and refreshing occurrence.