Clark Little

My thanks to Edward Mapplethorpe for introducing me to the work of Clark Little, a surfer from Oahu who started photographing just three years ago and in that short time has pretty much become to waves what Atget was to Paris! That's Little below, showing how he does it. (If you click on the picture you will see a hand holding a camera.)

Little's photographic career began when his wife asked him for a picture of the ocean to decorate a bedroom wall, and with the confidence of an experienced surfer, Clark jumped in the ocean, and started snapping away. (He has since upgraded to more advanced equipment.) His photographs are almost too beautiful, but they record the power of Hawaiian waves from the inside out. It's a view few people could ever get, and yes - it is as dangerous as appears.

Signs of Spring (as seen in Chelsea this past weekend)

Weekend Video

Ricky Gervais on David Letterman this past Tuesday. I love his energy, his sense of enjoyment, and what seems to be his totally spontaneous and unscripted delivery. Here he is riffing on fat people. For the full interview click here.

Richard Renaldi

An interesting and culturally timely show coming up - Richard Renaldi will be exhibiting photographs from his new series "Touching Strangers" at The Gallery at Hermès, 691 Madison Avenue, New York, starting April 9.

In Renaldi's words:

Touching Strangers is an ongoing photographic project stemming from my interest in the dynamics of group portraiture. The premise of this work is simple. I meet two or more people on the street who are strangers to each other and to me. I ask them if they will pose for a photograph together with the stipulation that they must touch each other in some manner...

My objective was to introduce an unpredictable variable in a very traditional photographic formula: to create a spontaneous and fleeting relationship between complete strangers in front of my 8 x 10 view camera.

Though these situations involve orchestrated collaborations between subject and photographer, the emotions captured are both genuine and honest. Touching Strangers encourages viewers to think about how we relate physically to one another, and to entertain the possibility that there is unlimited potential for new relationships with almost everybody passing by.

Renaldi has been exhibiting since he was a senior at NYU in 1990 and his website is the most complete website I have ever seen. He is also one of the most consistent and prolific photographers I know of producing, new bodies of work, books, exhibitions, a blog, and various other projects at a pace that would exhaust even the most energetic person.

Clearly a person who loves to share, one of my favorite parts of Renaldi's site is his library of self-published PDF books ranging in subject from "Our Trip to Burning Man. 2007" to "Hot Italian Guys". But make sure you have at least half an hour to spare before delving into Renaldi's website.

Anyway, back to "Touching Strangers" - here's a selection of more images from the project below. I'll leave you to explore the rest of the site on your own.

Line and Form

So often when people are observing the change of seasons we get the same sky/horizon/ground composition with the straight line of the horizon dissecting the picture plane. Paul Octavious, however, had the originality to see that the curve of a hill had a novel and dynamic effect, and so in his series "Same Hill, Different Day" we are treated to a refreshing sight. As Octavious explains on his website:

For the past 2 years I have visited a beautiful mound of earth that I have come to call "the hill." Each time I have come to the hill a new story is told to me as if the hill is my stage and the locals are the actors in this daily play.

Nice job!

Likewise - James Reeve, who is one of the exhibitors in the forthcoming Hyeres Photo Festival, has refreshed the night landscape genre by covering so many different locales. I haven't seen the prints yet, but the j-pegs look beautiful. More by Reeve can be seen here and below.

La Rouviere, Marseille

Las Vegas

Beirut

Gulf of Thailand

Albert Bridge, London

Greetings from Punta de Mita

Turns out this is the only place outside of the Galapagos where you can find the blue-footed boobie. Who knew?!

And on that Darwinian note, I'm taking a break for the rest of the week. But thank you for all your responses to the wheelie story. Always good to know someone's reading.

A Travel Advisory and a Travel Tale

The Four Seasons in Punta De Mita.

The day after AIPAD, I headed south to Punta De Mita, Mexico, to join my family on spring break. (And now I sit blogging by the pool.) But getting here was no fun. Because of the current runway work going on at JFK, the delays have backed up all the way to LaGuardia and my wait in the security line at the Delta terminal at LaG was one hour and five minutes! So New York travelers beware. (See below.)

On a very different travel-related tack, a friend recently told me a true story about a passionate romance that recently took place between two Americans abroad. She was an artist and he was a banker, sparks flew, days and nights were spent in the rapture of new love. They agreed to meet several weeks later at some romantic island and the woman got there first. Would the man make it as promised? Would the sparks still fly? Waiting inside the lobby of the hotel she finally saw him come through the doors pulling a wheelie bag. And in that instant the dream shattered. She knew she could never love a man with a wheelie bag.

People seem to take different sides on this story. Either she was right and he was an un-macho fuddy duddy not suitable for our passionate life-embracing artist. Or she was a fickle neurotic clearly not capable of a relationship of any depth. What do you think?

I’m simply here to sing the praises of this wheelie backpack that was once my son’s that I’ve started to take on planes with me stuffed with computer, magazines, etc., and remark on how effortless it was to stand in line for the hour and five minutes pushing this along rather than to be carrying or picking up and putting down whatever wheel-less carry-on I might have had before. Viva el wheelie!

AIPAD - Aisles 1,2, & 3.

Tod Papageorge. Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus at MoMA. 1974. At Deborah Bell.

Unfortunately now a retrospective look, but as promised, here is my finished round-up of some of the many highlights of last week's AIPAD Art Fair.

Up for a second year at Joel Sorroka but still just as good - Robert Frank's 1955 shot of salesmen at a Cadillac showroom.

Also previously remarked on in this blog - Helen Levitt's 1988 New York image. At Robert Klein.

Two pictures at Bonni Benrubi - the humorously titled "Mount Fujii" by Massimo Vitale.

And Matthew Pillsbury's shot from London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Robert Kennedy on the campaign trail by Bill Eppridge at Monroe Gallery.

Also at Monroe, this impressive composite of Washington Square, going from day into night by Stephen Wilkes.

Above and below, two prints made from autochromes from the National Geographic archives at Steven Kasher.

And truly one of the highlights of the fair for me, three variants of Frederick Sommer's iconic "Livia". The two cropped prints came from the sitter herself.

And quite a curiosity - two photographs of silhouettes of none other than Stieglitz and Steichen. Photos by John Barrett Kerfoot, but prints signed by the sitters.

Twiggy, 1966 by Barry Lategan. At Peter Fetterman.

Also at Fetterman, Lillian Bassman's "Fantasy on the Dance Floor. Barbara Mullen, Paris, 1949.

Another picture I never tire of. Flor Garduno at Throckmorton Fine Art.

I liked these two so much I bought them myself! A rare vintage D-Day landing not by Capa, and a vintage NASA "Moonwalk". At Joseph Tartt.

At this point I'm afraid I was losing track of where I saw things, but I liked this picture of Ansel Adams at The California School of Fine Arts. The photographer, William Heick later got Adams to sign the mount.

Another great Winogrand - "Circle Line Ferry, 1971."

At Julie Saul, two handcut c-prints by Soo Kim make a novel collage.

"Guatemala, 1967." by Brett Weston at Scott Nichols.

The always sprightly Lartigue at Hyperion Press.

Carleton Watkins at Andrew Smith.

And last but certainly not least, Frederick Sommer's mysterious "Circumnavigation of the Blood" at Stephen Daiter Gallery.

Weekend Video

It's been hectic at AIPAD and given the time it takes to post dozens of photos I ask for your indulgence, In the meantime, here's a song that blew me away - "How You Like Me Now" by The Heavy as seen on David Letterman. (I particularly like the enthusiasm with which Dave greets the lead singer at the end and gets him to reprise the performance.)