I &hearts L.A.

After going for a morning jog, I can report that Bel Air looks like pretty safe Obama territory. No McCain signs, no "Hockey Moms for Palin", just the bright blue of Obama signs nestled outside the multi-million dollar homes like alarm warnings. Clearly an appreciation of irony is more of a New York quality than an L.A. one.

Later in the day I was in the Century City shopping center and came across a cart offering engraving of any photograph onto silver I.D. tags. I thought they were pretty impressive and as you can see looked like something Damien Hirst would have loved for his forthcoming auction had he known about them.

Letter from L.A.

I‘m currently in Los Angeles and as I drove along the Pacific Coast Highway today, I happened upon this remarkable sight on the campus of Pepperdine University. A memorial comprised of 2,977 flags mounted on thin aluminum rods, the display stands for the number of lives lost during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It was installed this past 9/11 and will only remain in place for one week. It has not been widely written about and surprisingly few people pull over to photograph it, walk amongst the flags, and reflect.

The project, called "The Wave of Flags" was conceived of by Ryan Sawtelle. the president of Pepperdine’s College Republicans and funded by a number of strongly right wing outside donors. This, naturally, became a reason for much debate on the campus but the "Wave" was ultimately supported by both the university administration and the undergraduate Young Democrats. So it is at once a memorial, an almost Christo-like art installation, and a tribute to freedom of expression.

Set against the deep green grass of the campus front lawn on one side and with the Pacific Ocean across from it on the other, it does what so little of public art does - be accessible and profound, beautiful and mysterious, and constantly changing. It is both joyful and surprisingly abstract and conceptual. And perhaps most importantly and paradoxically, all these qualities serve to depoliticize a symbol that has for too long been co-opted by one end of the political spectrum.

Weekend Guide

With the opening of the fall art season upon us, I figured I might as well show what's going on right here in the heart of New York gallery land instead of the usual Weekend Video.

And as you'll see, there's a decidedly mixed bunch of shows. So if I sound a little cranky, well - you be the judge of whether it's warranted or not.

My first stop - literally across the road - was Mitchell-Innes & Nash and a show of new work by Martha Rosler. Rosler has been an important figure in art since the 1960's, working in video, photography, installation, and photomontage. Her series "Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful" (1967-72), which combined scenes of war with images of domestic comfort and style is probably her best known work. Now, in the wake of the U.S. involvement in Iraq, Rosler has revisited the photomontage format, updating it to reflect the new technologies of war and today's consumer culture.

Dare I say it was a little obvious for my taste, but for those interested in the better giveaways - the large poster (below) is being handed out free.

Whether by design or coincidence, Galerie Lelong which is next door to Mitchell-Innes & Nash, also has a photomontage show by a significant artist - in this case new work by Jane Hammond. Of particular interest are several large "snapshot" works in which Hammond has collected vernacular portraits and inserted herself into each one, presenting the viewer with a panoramic album containing an array of identities. Some of the other single collages also make for a interesting reconsideration of a genre not widely seen these days.

A block away, Bruce Silverstein presents his now annual offering where 10 well-known curators select 10 young photographers. The problem with organizing this kind of show is that you're stuck with whatever the curator chooses, and not unexpectedly the offerings are a very mixed bag, but the idea is a good one and if I had to pick my favorite it would be the Dutch photographer Rob Hornstra and his portraits from post-communist Russia.

Installation shot (below) followed by Hornstra:

At Sikkema Jenkins & Co., the normally interesting Vik Muniz takes a real misstep with a show titled "Verso" which consists of painstakingly crafted 3-dimensional recreations of the backs of famous paintings and their frames, labels, etc.. Laid out on the floor on wooden blocks they look boring and give off nothing. But don't worry - it gets better ... and worse!

Case in point for better: a show at Carolina Nitsch Project Room of a collection of seminal Japanese postwar photography books. While it seems that everyone has been all over Japanese photography, the show is done with great care and even includes a video projection of every page of every one of the many books that make up the collection.

Installation shot followed by a close-up of a rare Sugimoto accordion fold book:

At Sonnabend, Jean-Baptiste Huynh fails to get away with a shameless rip-off of Richard Misrach's seminal sky pictures, the only difference being a slightly more square format, a larger edition, and double the price. The pictures are 40,000 euros - sacre bleu!

At 535 West 22nd Street, Julie Saul shows Jeff Whetstone's large scale photographs of caves in Tennessee and Alabama that were mined for the saltpeter that was used to produce gunpowder in the civil war. These caves have since become hideaways for both explorers and teenagers as well as a waiting canvas for anything from love notes to graffiti. So much of the point of the pictures is the relationship between early cave drawings and the markings left today.

In the same building, an unusually restrained but typically elegant show of work by Masao Yamamoto - he of the pinned up distressed little silver prints. However, as you'll see, a few more works might have been in order here!

For some reason, meteorites are the thing this month. Jean-Baptiste Huynh has photographs of them at Sonnabend, and at D'Amelio Terras Gallery, Demetrius Oliver comes up with this boring combo. As the press release so helpfully explains:

Through large-scale photography, sculpture, slide-projection, and video, Observatory articulates a visual form for the cycles of thought, investigation, and experimentation endemic to artistic practice and self-discovery. Relying on materials encountered in daily routine and capturing their reflections off of curved surfaces, Oliver redeploys prosaic objects to unveil new contexts and sites of meaning ....

One day soon I promise to publish the best meaningless sentences from gallery press releases.

There's always a hip show of the moment and right now it's Roe Etheridge at Andrew Krepps. Etheridge is one of those photographers who works both the art and commerce side of photography and he seems to be quite influenced by the innovative color photographer of the 1930s, Paul Outerbridge. Again I could do without the conceptual layering with which the show is presented (something about Far Rockaway) but I particularly liked the photo of Etheridge's wife, Nancy.

And there's another good giveaway if you like poster size prints. (See bottom image.)

Alessandra Sanguinetti (at Yossi Milo) continues her series begun in 1999 following two young Argentinian cousins -Guillermina and Belinda. Having cultivated an intimate and collaborative relationship with the pair, Sanguinetti's images seem both fantastical and surreal as the girls transition from childhood to adulthood.

And the promised low point ... well, what can one really say about Andre Serrano's new show at Yvon Lambert (other than that it's a load of crap)? Or in this case different animal feces. Serrano who came to prominence as a result of his controversial image of a plastic crucifix submerged in urine (a surprisingly complex and interesting work) seems to have gone the route of the immature art school provocateur. And yet if my take on the contemporary art world is correct, he'll do O.K. with this show. Nevertheless, the thing I'd like to to see is the process by which a contemporary art collector comes in, selects, and purchases the work. That would help answer the pressing question - who buys this shit?

While Joel Sternfeld tries his best to deliberately avoid the picturesque in his photographs of a field in central Massachusetts, I was most drawn to the more picturesque of his un-picturesque pictures. Sternfeld was being televised as I walked into the gallery (Luhring Augustine) which I figured was as interesting as anything else going on and took a shot.

And finally ... phew! ... my last stop at Michael Mazzeo Gallery (formerly PEER) where they were still hanging the group show "How I Spent My Summer Vacation". What particularly caught my eye was the bottom picture by Cara Phillips - on one hand a head shot taken with ultra-violet light to reveal the damage sun can inflict to the skin, but on the other hand a visceral, luminous, interesting, original, and beautifully printed piece! And for those interested in the latest technology, it's apparently an example of the very latest digital black and white printing process.

The Circle of Life

Photos by Ina Fassbender. REUTERS

I've always tried to make this blog about positive things, but Brent Stirton's pictures of the slain gorillas were so powerfully and sensitively done (as well as conveying the respect for life and courage of the villagers carrying the bier) that I felt no qualms about posting them. However, as something of an antidote to the cruelty pictured yesterday, here are some much more cuddly and life-affirming animal pictures of the siberian tiger Shakyra and one of her five two-day old cubs at their enclosure at the Hamm Zoo in Germany. The birth of five tiger babies last Wednesday was completely unexpected, as the zoo had not even known that Shakyra was pregnant! But clearly mother and child are doing well, and the circle of life goes on.

Brent Stirton

Congratulations to photographer Brent Stirton of Getty Images. On Friday, Stirton won the 2008 Visa d'Or Award for feature photography at the prestigious yearly Festival pour L’Image in Perpignan, France, for his acclaimed project on the slaughter of gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Coming on the heels of Stirton’s being revealed as the photographer who took the Brangelina twins pictures that raised close to $20 milion for the Jolie-Pitt Foundation – it’s been quite a year. (In response to questions about the difference between the two shoots, Stirton had a smart response. “Photojournalism is education for change, Jolie-Pitt is about finance for change. Once you’ve seen the hospitals and clinics that money has built there’s no problem.”)

A brief history of the Virunga gorilla pictures: Last July, Stirton photographed the bodies of seven endangered mountain gorillas who had been murdered, execution-style, in the Virunga National Park. After discovering the bodies, many of which had been hacked and burned, park rangers and villagers covered the mutilated parts of the bodies with leaves and carried them on biers out of the jungle.

Virunga National Park is in the same region where researcher Diane Fossey studied the gorillas — and battled poachers four decades ago, before being killed herself. But the 2007 killings bore none of the hallmarks of poachers, who usually take the adult animals' heads and hands as trophies, and carry off the gorillas' young for sale on the black market. These victims were simply slaughtered — most likely as a warning message that Stirton has come to believe is part of an ongoing struggle over illegal charcoal production in the park's ancient hardwood forests — a struggle that involves corrupt wildlife park officials, Congolese army factions and the Hutu militia. A leading wildlife official is currently charged with the crime but has yet to be
found guilty.

The story is on one hand a microcosm of the war in the Congo and the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. But it is also a story of horrendous cruelty and inhumanity and of a moving human response.

In a recent NPR interview, Stirton described how the procession taking the gorillas' bodies from Virunga was unlike anything he'd seen in more than a decade of covering some of the planet's worst atrocities.

"I've never seen that degree of stoicism, or sobriety, or somberness," Stirton says. "There was no talking. ... For many moments at a time the only thing you could hear was the sound of people walking. ... I've never seen that before, even when people were collecting the bodies of humans, when I've seen massacre sites."

Is anyone else reminded of the scenes of Aslan's death from "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" (or other pictorial analogies) in these desperately sad pictures?

Meanwhile, mountain gorillas are among the world's most endangered species; only an estimated 720 of the primates remain alive today.

Veruschka

One of Veruschka's most famous shoots. Veruschka, photographer Franco Rubartelli, and then stylist Giorgio di Sant'Angelo were sent into the Arizona desert by Diana Vreeland with nothing but bolts of fabric and fur, and Dynel wigs. The resulting pictures published in July 1968 have become a legendary example in creating something out of nothing.

On Friday night I went to a book opening for the $500 book Assouline have just published celebrating the fabulousness that is Veruschka. Now a remarkable 69 years old, Countess Vera von Lehndorff-Steinort (her real name) was one of the great models of the sixties. A leaping whirlwind of energy, Veruschka brought what was for the time a rarely seen strength of personality to the job and soon became one of Diana Vreeland favorite models. The book, lovingly put together by David Wills in collaboration with Veruschka, is one of the few books that justifies its size and expense. (FYI - you can get it for about $150 less on Amazon.)

Veruschka’s background was dramatic and sad. Her father was a German army reserve officer and her mother a Countess. Her childhood was spent living in great wealth on an enormous estate, however, when she was five years old, her father, a member of the German Resistance, was executed for attempting to assassinate Adolf Hitler. After his death, the remaining family members spent their time in labor camps until the end of World War II, when her family was left penniless.

After studying art in Hamburg, she moved to Florence, where she was discovered at age 20 by the photographer Ulo Mulas. At over 6 feet tall, it was hard for Vera (as she was then known) to find work, but in 1961 she was spotted by Eileen Ford and in 1961 she moved to New York city to join the prestigious Ford Agency.

Work was still hard to come by for someone as distinctive looking as Vera so she returned to Europe with the self-imposed mission of reinventing herself. She changed her name to Veruschka, embraced her height and strength, and was soon brought to the attention of director Michelangelo Antonioni who immediately cast her in his 1966 film “Blow Up”. Her powerful five minute performance as a model in a rough and tumble with the photographer played by David Hemmings turned out to be all she needed to jump start her career. Bookings soon followed and she started earning up to $10,000 a day working with the best photographers in the world – an unheard of sum in those days.

Around this time, itching to create her own artistic work, she started posing nude wearing only body paint covering her entire body. Directing the entire process, she would paint herself as different animals or imaginary creatures, or create a painstaking trompe l’oeil that would allow her to completely disappear into the background. While the work was often published and exhibited, it failed to gain a serious hold in the art world most likely because of the difficulty of getting a model’s own artwork taken seriously.

In 1975, Veruschka turned her back on the fashion industry (reputedly due to disagreements with Grace Mirabella, the newly appointed editor-in-chief of Vogue, who wanted to change her image to make her more relatable to the average women). She moved to Berlin where she has continued to make her own work, and where she is regularly amused by the many requests she gets to return to modeling – now as a celebrated muse.

From "Blow Up"

Leaping for (and with) Avedon

Early body work - in collaboration with photographer Franco Rubartelli

A LIFE cover from 1968

Franco Rubartelli for Yves Saint Laurent

Veruschka by Nan Goldin. 2008.

Some snaps of the book from the book party: