I’m mentioning Evans b/c recently I’ve begun to look at his still lives and interiors.  They leave me enthralled and immersed and nearly stunned.  No hyperbole.  In these I see everything from Pop art to Roger Ballen.  This isn’t exactly internet work, so to speak, not wow work I guess: it’s quieter than that, but still, do not underestimate it.

photo: Penny Picture Display, Savannah, Georgia.. 1936.  By Walker Evans.

photo: Kitchen Corner, Tenant Farmhouse, Hale County, Alabama. 1936.  By Walker Evans.

photo: Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead. 1936.  By Walker Evans.

photo: Negro Barber Shop Interior, Atlanta. 1936.  By Walker Evans.

photo: The Cactus Plant, Interior Detail of a Portuguese House, Truro, Massachusetts, circa 1930.  By Walker Evans.

photo: Dressing Stand with Oval Mirror in Bedroom, Hobe Sound, Florida. 1934.  By Walker Evans.

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video: excerpt from Stereoscope (no sound), ©William Kentridge

Valerie Belin’s work, incredible black and white prints,

photo: ©Valerie Belin.

David Godblatt’s work, notably this portrait,

photo: Hillrow, Johannesburg, South Africa. ©David Goldblatt.

Karl Blossfeldt‘s work, so German, so exquisite, doing what much later the Becher‘s would do for industrial buildings,

photo: a picture of Monkshood by Karl Blossfeldt.

and also Blossfeldt’s uncanny resemblance to Dash Snow…

photo: a portrait of Karl Blossfeldt, 1895.

Finally, Nicholas Nixon‘s new book, Live, Love, Look, Last, which shows a 4 decade dedicated vision and Nixon’s adherence to something akin to a poetic form, showing how the singular becomes expansive, and furthermore how in the specific resides the universal,

photo: John Grady and Tesair Lauve, Cambridge, 1997, ©Nicholas Nixon.

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photo: Franz Roh, 1926, by Lucia Moholy

And then this is a portrait of Lucia by her husband and photographer, László Moholy-Nagy.  Both of these pictures are really something else.

photo: portrait of Lucia Moholy by László Moholy-Nagy

At nearly the same time as the Moholys, the painter Balthus was in Paris reaching a stride that would define his work as controversial, erotic, and, I think, brilliant.  It’s great to read his biography revolving around his early years in Paris and the circles he ran in, including, Giacometti, Many Ray, Camus, Miró, Picasso, Lacan.  The heavy hitters of culture, those that shaped our modern and even our post-modern sensibilities.  Which brings me to a discussion I was having last night w/ a friend in regards to movements in the arts and culture, those little sparks that ignite and burn and sometimes manage to change everything thereafter.  Namely we talked about how they’ve always been geographically based and how the internet has changed that old need to actually be somewhere and in a physically community to participate (Post-war Paris, NYC in the 50s and 80s, as two modern Western examples).  Does physical dissipation lead to cultural dissipation?  I think so.  Does that kind of ruin, or at least make much more difficult, the chances for those paradigm shifts of culture, the arts, and how people think?  Maybe.  Sure, it’s an over simplified view, b/c I really don’t know what I’m talking about, but I figure it’s something to roll around in your head while we have this discussion.  (Over our computers…oh, the irony).

painting: by Balthus

Anyway, there’s an excellent portrait of Balthus by Irving Penn, w/ Balthus in a chair wearing a robe and a belt made of simple rope, with that infinite air of human-ess reaching into eternity that Penn instilled in so many of his sitters.  I’d seen it in one of Penn’s books, and thought it’d go nicely here, but can’t find it online anywhere, so I guess for now the internet does have it’s limits.

Painter’s and photographer’s makes me think of George Bernard Shaw’s quote that if Velazquez was alive today he’d be a photographer.  I mean, could you imagine!  Conde Naste contract.  B/c the guy sorta was doing what Leibovitz does, except he did it over 300 years ago w/ a paint brush

painting: Las Meninas, 1665, by Diego Velazquez

Shaw, now there is a mind!  The guy must have been a photographers dream: self aware, smart, and, the icing, the cliche look of a wise man.  I mean, he was someone who believed death was only real b/c it was an idea put in our head, an idea that one really didn’t have to abide by.  Faaarrrrr out.  I guess he took the Nietzschian ubermensch literally.  If you want to get to know him, his plays Major Barbara and Man and Superman would be the two I’d suggest as seminal.

photo: George Bernard Shaw, ©The Estate of Yousuf Karsh

The threads holding this post together were thin to begin with, and they’ve completely disintegrated by this point.  So I’ll spare you any more of what was on my mind and will instead bid you adieu.

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painting: Untitled by Agnes Martin

painting: Untitled (New York City) by Cy Twombly

It was the painter, Alex Steckly who I who had a nerd-out over art today, that brought them both to the conversation.  He currently has a solo show up at Fourteen30 in Portland OR, showing some really impressive new sculptures.

painting: by Alex Steckly

On a side note, on a long weekend out of the city for the holiday, hiding out and working on some new web stuff with Benjamin Diggles that I’m really looking forward to sharing here.  Hopefully soon.

And really exciting, reading Roberto Bolaño’s book 2666, which is really really worth picking up and going head first into.  Goddamn good Lit.

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photo: Windowsill Daydreaming, by Minor White.

It is a photograph that poses ineffable questions while at the same time offering inherent answers.  One risks vanishing into it.

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This particular print, Untitled (from a fashion story), is a 20×30″ silver gelatin print in an edition of 5.  If you’re interested in purchasing or pricing, contact me through my email for more info.

photo: Untitled (from a fashion story), 20×30″ silver gelatin print, edition of 5,  ©Graeme Mitchell.

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Ever.

Period.

I see in it everything from Lynch’s central oeuvre to Missoni’s FW09 campaign.

photo: still from Il Conformista

and Lynch…

photo: still from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

photo: still from Il Conformista

Lynch again…

photo: still from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

photo: still from Il Conformista

Missoni…

photo: Missoni FW 09 campaign, ©Steven Meisel.

——

On a seperate note, get to ICP to see the Avedon show!…or if you can’t make it, at least you can see the NYTimes multimedia feature, here.

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The museum also posted it’s curator talks in 9 parts, which are a nice history of models and fashion’s social/cultural functions in general:

1 of 9:

2 0f 9:

3 of 9:

4 of 9:

5 of 9:

6 of 9:

7 of 9:

8 of 9:

9 of 9:

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photo: “Fragments, 2005″ ©Roger Ballen.

photo: “Cornered, 2004″ ©Roger Ballen.

photo: “Boarder, 2005″ ©Roger Ballen.

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photo: from Aperture #188, Lee Friedlander by Richard Avedon (left) and Richard Avedon by Lee Friedlander (right)

Both Aaron and I grew up racing bicycles, so then he started on about this Scottish trials rider, saying, “he’d ride up that tree over there and just chill out,” while pointing at this giant bloody elm that a cat could maybe climb. I called, hyperbole!, but then he emailed me this link and jesusmurphy…if you’ve ever ridden a bike you should be able to appreciate this video:

And, yes, I am in fact posting on extreme sports youtube video…sigh, probably a slippery slope, so I’ll post this to balance it out:

photo: Corvette I saw in soho which I voted best possible prop of the day and sent it to a fashion editor with a synopsis of a story involving Death Valley, Bottega heels, and a Camio by Dennis Hopper (as eminence grise, naturally). Fashion editor responded, I weep.

Note: “real photograher”: I was shooting on 5th ave by Tiffany’s on Saturday morning, and I saw this old timer shooting people fast with an old Nikon. I guessed maybe he was part of the old-Magnum-guard. I said, hello, asked his name, he said, Bill Cunningham, didn’t ring a bell. I asked him if shot there much, if he’d seen Bruce Gilden out, he’s always shooting on this corner. He said, I have seen him in the afternoon; how is Bruce? I said, I’ve no idea, I just see him, can’t catch him. He said, now that’s a real photographer. I liked that. Since there was truth in it. We chatted a bit more, then he took off after this super chic blonde to photograph. I thought, huh, mildly-licentious, but, yeah! It wasn’t until I mentioned it later in the day in passing that someone explained to me who Bill is. Love it. Before he ran of he waved and said, keep snapping kid. I offer the same good-bye, keep snapping, Bill!

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photo: still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Stalker.

Now I need to see Tarkovsky’s, Mirror and Solyaris.

photo: still from Andrei Tarkovsky’s film, Mirror.

Still, I appreciate that it’s not for everyone.  Talking movies while on set today I lit up and got really excited about having seen Stalker and I could tell pretty quickly nobody cared to hear me wax on about it, let alone log into netflix for it…

…so if it’s not your bag, here’s a link to some crackin-beats: Pete Tong Essential Mix. (FYI, download button is towards bottom of the song list.)  Thanks Mr. Diggles for that link; he’s my defenitive line to all things techno and all things Hi-Tech.

Segue.

Saw this gorgeous Lanvin look in the windows of Bergdorf’s the other day and immediatly sent it to a stylist on messanger:

“Me: LOOOOVE this Lanvin look!
Her: Love it and love each and all things Lanvin.
Me: Sigh”

(BTW, feel like you’re a photographer that gets the photos but is dumb on the clothes, well the Bergdorf windows are about the best crash course in fashion you’re going to find.)

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photo: Jeff Koons “Balloon Dog” on the roof the the MET, ©Lloyd Ziff (in NYMag, here)

I can’t help but marvel at most of his larger installations.  They’re beautiful in their grotesqueness.  Adorably troubling.  Like a child’s dream after going to Coney Island then watching Gilliam’s, Brazil.

photo: still from Terry Gilliam’s film, Brazil.

What’s attractive about that, about some subaltern-figment-of-the-psyche getting it’s say in huge colorful steel?  Well I’m not sure exactly.  Except to say that there’s a lightheartedness to it, a punctuated absurdity, a “b/c I can,” and there’s sometimes not enough of that in life that isn’t fabricated/fed to us, that is honest like art is.

I’m bringing this all up b/c Koons is speaking at Strand bookstore downtown on April 13.  Details, here.  If you live in NYC, and can sweat the crowd, I’d check it out.  (Although, last time I was there Eliot Erwitt was signing books and, maybe, 15 people showed up, which sorta depressed me (is this what it comes to?) but that’s another story.)

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Will be out for about two weeks.  Telling you this is getting old, right…

Now, complaining about any money job these days would be wrong, so I bite my tongue about having to vanish again, and I just keep pics like these open on my desktop, small, in the corner, to keep things legit, to keep sanity legit.

photo: Untitled, 1971, ©Kohei Yoshiyuki.

(Meisel did a play on Yoshiyuki’s park photos for Vogue Italia.  Supposedly it was too much, (see it, here).  And while I prefer the original, as is most often the case, still a fine fash ed.)

photo: Nude, Seaford, East Sussex Coast, 1957, ©Bill Brandt.

(As far as I can remember, I’ve yet to see a fashion take on Brandt’s work.  Ripe to be done though.  Ripe.  Inez, maybe?)

photo: Brooklyn School Children See Gambler Murdered in Street , 1941, ©Weegee.

(Wow)

All of those are from the Moma collection btw.

Enjoy.  Will keep you posted.

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Also read Beckett and chain smoked on the beach.  No, not Camus, but still…

yay

Then to London for some of their fashion week parties, meetings with mags.  Tried to spend time on the street shooting, but the streets of that city: stoic (read, snore), so I began to wonder if there ever was a seminal London street photographer?  Other than the bit of work Robert Frank did (in Wales?), but I couldn’t think of anyone…?  Anyone?

photo: from the book Robert Frank: London/Wales, © Robert Frank.

Then home, I hit Penn station out of Newark on Monday eve rush hour and the train station was like firecrackers going off everyplace, felt remarkable to be back in the crazy.  Never satiated with that, never ever.  Gluttonous for the madness.

IN THE STATION METRO
By Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

(That’s a well known imagest poem that was part of a one of the more short lived art movements dubbed, Vorticism, which also had it proponents in photography.  The photography bit. though ambitious in theory, was to not such great effect I think.  The best part was what it was called, Vortography, which would not be, I imagine, an easy moniker to live up to…yeah, in retrospect, the name may have been the origin of the movements failing.

photo: Vortograph by Alvin Langdon Coburn

).

Update, I just confirmed a job on the W. Coast for next week, fly out today, so I’ll be gone again for a week…maybe two.  The blog goes neglected again.  Golly.

I guess in the meantime, cruise to the newsstands and take a look at Katie Grand’s (formerly the force behind POP) new mag, LOVE.  Maybe not amazing yet, but most certainly promising.

photo: cover of first issue of LOVE magazine, Beth Ditto, photo by Mert and Marcus.

That or – going back to Beckett – read his trilogy if you haven’t.  I’d tried twice and never made it much further than Molloy, but I guess I’ve come to a place where I can read it and be absorbed by it, absorbed.  Someone said once, I forget who, that you really can’t read/enjoy/understand the greats until you yourself have lived for awhile, lived the things that the books are about.  Not that I’m old and wise, gawdnoiamnot, but suddenly the long long winded Russians seem exciting and Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the close of Ulysses seems, uhhh, doable.  I do hope by my 40s I’ll be able to get to Finnegan’s Wake, and even develop the patience for poetry.

[...]you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have caried me to the threshold of my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

-from The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett

That takes me to a different world.  Yes it does.

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It’s welcome relief, and also I think rare, in the visual arts to see someone do work that is thoughtful and technically interesting but moreover that is inspired with humor.

Nice start to the day.

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RIP

photo: “PENNSYLVANIA—Painter Andrew Wyeth, 1991.”  ©David Alan Harvey/Magnum.

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(

photo: E.E. Cummings, 1953, by Walter Albertin for New York World Telegram

)

Makes me think of smoking poets and then of Richard Prince‘s Untitled (Cowboy):

photo: Untitled (Cowboy) (1989), ©Richard Prince.

And that’s plenty for now.

Tons.  Masses.

Like when at the MOMA the other day and I saw for the first time Edvard Munch’s The Storm.

painting: The Storm (1893) by Edvard Munch.

I couldn’t possibly look at anything after that – it was entirely too much already.

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photo: “Canal Street – New Orleans, 1955″ from The Americans, ©Robert Frank.

photo: “Robert Frank, photographer, Mabou Mines, Nova Scotiam July 17, 1975″ ©Richard Avedon.

(Of course another artist initialed R.F. who defined a sort of America

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken”
-Robert Frost

.)

And as much as I try to avoid regurgitation by linking to blog posts elsewhere, this interview with Chris Buck is enough for an exception, part 1 and part 2.

photo: Philip-Lorca diCorcia for PDN magazine, ©Chris Buck.

That portrait by Chris is of, as you probably know, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who’s work isn’t trivial.  I thought he’d be a good end note to kick the week off with.

photo: “Gianni,” ©Philip-lorca diCorcia.

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It’s a beautiful show, the first retrospective of one of the fathers of modern fine art photography; it’s the kind of show that reminds one why; why photography; why take pictures; why get out of bed in the morning.

There were two things that distinctly crossed my mind.

1) How remarkable Eggleston’s early prints are.  There were lightjets, inkjets, C-prints, silver-gelatin, but his early dye transfer prints were in a different ball park.  They were interpretive and captivating and technically remarkable.

2) There’s no way to speak what it is or why it is or how it is, the only thing that is certain is that work like Eggleston’s is something that can’t be faked.  It’d be like faking being human or faking being in love.

photo: the Eggleston Retrospective at the Whitney.

“I’m at war with the obvious.” -William Eggleston

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photo: Lanesville, 1958. ©Saul Leiter.

photo: Reflection, New York, 1958. ©Saul Leiter.

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To say this short film is visually remarkable is a remarkable understatement.  And further, the minimal creativity of it will make you long for a time when work like this was conceived, let alone completed.  It’s at once brilliant and beautiful, which are two things not easy to couple.  Needless to say, it got into my head b/c I’ve never really seen anything like it.

But watch it for yourself, here in 3 parts.  It might be one of the best half hours of your week.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

(Amy also mentioned on her blog that there is a book version of La Jetée‘s images with the narrative as text by MIT press (here).  My notion is that it’d be excellent.)

(Also, it occurred to me by the end that this short was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys.)

(And while we’re on the video blitz of gloom.  T.S. Eliot’s great poem “The Hollow Men” as recited by Marlon Brando (playing Kurtz in Apocolypse Now (Redux version), which makes sense, b/c one of Eliot’s main inspirations for “Hollow Men” was Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, which as you know was the basis of Apocalypse Now.  The film does leave out the opening line of Eliot’s poem, “Mistah Kurtz – he dead”):

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper”
-final stanza of “The Hollow Men”

photo: T.S. Eliot at his desk, Jan 18, 1944. ©Bob Landry/Life Images.

…)

And it comes full circle, B/c the French film maker Chris Marker who did La Jetée also did a multimedia installation on Eliot’s “Hollow Men” titled OWLS AT NOON Prelude: The Hollow Men.  I’ve not seen it nor can I find it.

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So, to begin, last night I went to the Aperture Gallery for an opening for Luigi Ghirri, an Italian photographer who worked in color, sort of along the lines of Eggleston and Parr, or even Shore and his likes, but Ghirri’s work has a succinct surreal and meta-fictional-layered-realities-thing going on that really pulls you in and spins you around.  I was rubbing my eyes like I was in a house of mirrors.  A few people commented on how this surrealism was specifically European – and I agreed that an American couldn’t have done it so effortlessly and authentically, not without heavy irony (or tackiness), maybe this is b/c Europe’s heritage lies in all the old ideas of painting, while America’s photographic sensibility lies in Realism…

photo: “Rimimi,” 1985, from Paesaggio Italiano.  ©Luigi Ghirri.

photo: “Rome,” 1979, from Diaframma. ©Luigi Ghirri.

After that we headed to a film, Let the Right One In; well, it’s literally a Swedish vampire movie, but I thought it was much more of a love story.  Really really worth finding and seeing.  There’s an American remake coming out soon, but how anyone could possibly remake this…I mean even the Swedish language seems perfect for the film.  One of the better films I’ve seen in awhile.

video: clip from Let the Right One In

(Update: I went back and specified above “America’s photographic sensibility”, adding photographic, b/c I wasn’t clear to begin with that I’m talking specifically photography. Sparked b/c I had a long winded discussion with a friend who argued about my suggesting that there was different sensibilities in different cultures/countries, as I recently made a similar comment in a post on Japanese photogaphy.  They seemed to take it as sort of jab at their patriotism, which is not what I meant at all…admittingly, I don’t often do an excellent job of speaking my mind and keeping my foot out of my mouth, but I’ll stand by this comment…even though generalizations are meant to be over a beer at the bar top b/c exceptions are always rife.  In this case, after I told my friend I was talking only photography, they simply said, Dusseldorf school and Germany.  …Point taken.  But still, look at Ghirri’s book.  Then look at Eggleston’s (they’re compared and Eggleston writes the forward to Ghirri’s book).  It’s like speaking Italian and then speaking colloquial-american-english.  What do you think out there in internets land?)

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But Goya’s head…I don’t know why I’m bringing it up; maybe some might gloss over its missing as neat trivia, but I found it to be the sort of stuff odd dreams and fantastic tales are made of.

Painting: Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819.  By Francisco Goya.

Print: What more can one do?, from The Disasters of War, 1812-15.  By Francisco Goya.

To tie this into photography…well, Sorrenti has always drawn a lot of inspiration from the old masters, a lot of time in very literal interpretations or homages.  He did a Goya inspired story years ago for Another Magazine.

photo: “Silent Scream” in Another Magazine Fall/Winter 04.  © Mario Sorrenti.

Or a more true reference to the spirit of Goya would be the most Classically alluding contemporary photographer, the prince of photo darkness, and the taker of heads himself: Joel-Peter Witkin.

photo: The Kiss (La Baiser), 1982. © Joel-Peter Witkin.

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photo: Wilmington, North Carolina, 1977. © John Rosenthal

And of this second picture I’ll quote Kimmel again who explained the print to me, “Rosenthal was walking through a cemetery in Wilmington, NC, and he came across this man digging a grave.  It turns out it was the family’s cemetery for three generations, and they allowed no machinery over the graves, so everything was dug by hand.  Bellamy [the gravedigger] was a man of intense pride and dignity.  Rosenthal asked him if he could take a photograph of him, and Bellamy, ‘You may take one.’  And this is it:”

photo: Pine Hill Cemetery, Wilmington, NC, 1990. © John Rosenthal

I feel like the universe just grew.

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Making work that is autotelic like this is something…well, let’s just say it’s not exactly the style of the moment; that is, creating with politics that refuse conventional politics/content – and it’ll have trouble ever becoming fashionable b/c in a way it is something that has to be done in silence, and silence, needless to say, doesn’t sell.  To be clear, I don’t write here thinking in terms of the old Romantic vain of l’art pour l’art, but I mean something in the post-post-modernly sense of, say, the “inaesthetics” of Alain Badiou, were art can be “immenent” and not mimesis (see his text, The Handbook of Inaesthetics).  Though, stubbornly, I’m still grappling with the mathematical and inhuman definitions of art in Badiou’s approach, but that is another discussion for another time.

Philadelphia, 1963. © Ray Metzker.

Pictus Interruptus, 1977. © Ray Metzker

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This is not meant to overlook the content of this photograph though, as it might as well be a example in perfect composition, rhythm and balance.  I dare anyone to start, “well, if I had of shot it I would have…”

photo: Ches Mondrian, 1926, by Andre Kertesz.

(I know for sure I had the same sort of, jesus that’s good moment while seeing Sander‘s prints for the first time.  I’d have to think for a bit to come up with others.)

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Check out her blog here.

photo: screenshot from the style rookie’s blog.

Keep it up kid-o.  For the time being you’re my blog idol.

——–

(And as a pointless except-for-a-smile follow up, a correspondence thanking Diggles for the link.

Quote.

Unquote.)

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photo: Hands, 1918.  By Alfred Stieglitz.

In case you’re thinking you’re a fan too and would like to have it for the ol’collection, it went for nearly 1.5 million U.S. at a Sotheby’s auction two years ago…  Worth every brass penny imo.  Not to mention probably a brilliant investment as I would imagine it would fetch much much more today with the hungry Russian and Asian art markets.

And on the topic of Steiglitz: there’s an excellent PBS documentary in the America Masters series (here), which is worth picking up.  It thoroughly explores his relationship with O’Keeffe, and shows how much he spearheaded photography and, more interestingly, modern painting.  A tireless activast for the arts.

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photo: Chuck Close’s studio entrance, Bond St. NYC.

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video: Party scene from Midnight Cowboy, 1969.

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