Busy again, and I will be away for a week, so it’ll be sleepy here, but I wanted to leave you with some pictures by a photographer that a wonderful stylist, Deborah Afshani, just turned me on to. The photographer’s name is Lillian Bassman (here too). You’ll know right away her taste is straight up my alley.
photo: ©Lillian Bassman. Mary Jane Russell, Harpers Bazarr, New York, 1950.
photo: ©Lillian Bassman. Anneliese Seubert, Paris, NY Times Magazine, 1996.
On a side note, looking at Bassman’s work makes me think of women photographers’ work in general, and that there is a honesty of emotion that comes through clearly in their aesthetics (think Sarah Moon and Sally Mann also for instance). Whereas mens’ work often has a technicalism to it that affects the images in a different way. For example, take the picture directly above, it could almost be a Penn photo but somehow is still very far from being a Penn photo. It lacks a certain technical refinement I think Penn would have consciously employed, but in it’s place it has an etherealism and fiction to it that would not exist had Bassman not approached it in this, how should I say, impressionistic manner. Just a generalization that crossed my mind.
Of course, there are always exceptions to such ideas, and maybe in this case we don’t have to look any further than Bassman’s husband, Paul Himmel…
photo: ©Paul Himmel. Ballet Sylvia “Pas de Deux“
[audio:AnomalyGirl.mp3]
song: “Anomaly Girl” ©Mano-Destra
This is a treat. I was clicking around on my server and found Mano-Destra’s “Anomaly Girl” mp3. Now, I’ve no idea from where it came, but that’s not the concern: what’s important is that you get it on your ipod and listen to it on the subway.
Unfortunately, he’s currently revamping his site, but I hear his new site will be up soon and it’s full of big ideas.
photo: Mano-Destra ©Graeme Mitchell, 2006
I’ve know of Andrea Modica’s Treadwell series for sometime, and each time I come back to it I’m equally engrossed. First and foremost, Treadwell is a fictional town she’s created, photographing the children of it in a manner of the Gothic grotesque, and any sort of fiction this elaborated always garners my respect and inspires my imagination. Secondly, she is shooting 8×10 and the prints are platinum, and while I try to avoid letting technical aspects like this influence my viewing of photographs – b/c it’ll often end up weighing in too heavily – recognition still must be made that these are exquisite platinum prints.
photo: Treadwell, NY (1992) ©Andrea Modica
photo: Treadwell, NY (1993) ©Andrea Modica
Now Alessandra Sanguinetti I just discovered, seeing three Fujiflex prints from her series On The Sixth Day at the MOMA. I stared at them longer than any of the other prints there, longer than the Andreas Gursky print, longer than the Philip-Lorca Dicorcia print, longer than the Jeff Wall print, and this is to Sanguinetti’s credit, b/c as far as I know she’s much their junior. The reason for my staring at them so long was b/c I couldn’t figure out what I felt about them (which makes them good right?). There’s something accessible and nearly plain about them; almost like they’re too “pretty” to hang where they hang – but at the same time there is an apparent tension and violence in them that somehow correlates so well in juxtaposition to the simplicity and beauty. Maybe too I found them a relief b/c they seemed not to be reaching so hard for intellectualism as so much contemporary photography is…
This first photo of the goats – I think they’re goats anyhow – I kept coming back to…there’s something in it, something tremendous. If I collected photographs, I would certainly desire it. Thanks so much for it, Alessandra.
photo: Untitled from On The Sixth Day ©Alessandra Sanguinetti
photo: Untitled from On The Sixth Day ©Alessandra Sanguinetti
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
Spring floated down onto the city like a billowing blanket, wafting away the turpid guise winter paints gray over everything, leaving the soft noise of glasses clinking and children’s laughter rubbing up against my window screen. Yet despite this fecund season of sex and bird song I’m followed where I go by an air of aimlessness; I lay awake at night and think: what is it, after all, I’m getting at with this Journal. I wander and wonder and I tell myself, it must end in August, one year is enough, then you have to move on, even if to another project, even another Journal, b/c this is leading absolutely nowhere, it is an insipid void, a cyclical series of questions that lead to answers that lead back to the original questions, one year is enough, then onward, even if onward is in fact regression, one step back two forward… This is what I tell myself…before beginning it again.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
The thing of it is that I started this Journal because…well, I can’t even remember why anymore; it’s that kind of thing. But the thing of it is that it has come to be that thing I do which I possibly shouldn’t be doing, a bad habit; in this regard it is much like a depraved wonderful ruinous lover. She is fun and lusty, but awfully time consuming and energy consuming; in short, there is a lot of other work that needs tending to.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
This is too serious, I know. But taking pictures is very hard for me, something you should understand, a dire own worst critic sort of situation, so it’s necessary that I consider these things heavily.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
Back to the point though, for me (or my sanity) I’ve recently managed a reason (excuse), being that the unifying theme of this Journal is the attempt to reveal hope. It’s not nearly as profound as it makes itself out to be, but in amongst the strife, fear, loneliness, laziness, and all else we as people are gloriously skilled at, I wish to reflect that which is otherwise, to lift a rock and find, well, anything really. All of this is in explanation of the new official title: NYC Journal, or an Exploration into the Origins of Hope.
I once said to my Grandma while waving a bottle of something from it’s neck that I was going to drown my sorrows. She responded, they’re good swimmers.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
When I was quite young I said to my Dad while trying to fold a letter evenly that I could not fold a letter if my life depended on it. He responded, it does.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
I’m only mentioning these things b/c I thought if you took nothing from these pictures, then at least maybe I could pass on some words from those much wiser than myself.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2007
The once school and then once communist Security Prison 21 in the capital Phnom Penh, Cambodia is now a museum. In this museum is displayed the “before” portraits of prisoners. These portraits were taken of the people immediately preceding their executions. (See here and here for more.)
These go far beyond photographs, far beyond any conversation of what a picture can do. They summarize everything shitty that we do and/or ignore, human weakness and corruption and failure and hate, and they should be in history school books b/c this is what so much of history is and shouldn’t be. There is nothing good or redeeming about these images except the small chance that we can do better for having seen them.
collage: copyright/credit unknown, found image here.
It’s been an interesting and sordid few weeks, which as usual doesn’t leave me much time to post here, but excuses excuses… During this time I’d been thinking of the old adage that there is nothing new under the sun, thinking of that school of literature that was dubbed the literature of exhaustion (exhaustion of ideas/narrative, that is), and thinking even that which is new is based on the same premises and motivations of what’s come before. This is neither bad nor good. What it is is a perspective of humility, as the stories we tell have been told before, the wars we fight have been fought before, and the ordeals we face have been faced before…
This theme came to a head today in a very simple way as I was heading out to shoot more NYC Journal stuff. I saw this flier for Erwitt’s own NYC Journals (so to speak) on auction at Christies (credit goes to Alec Soth posting it on his blog where I found it). The thinking of nothing new under the sun had been abstract, but this Erwitt flier made it specific and material. My little notebooks of pictures I take pride in, have not only been done before, but done by Eliot Erwitt. His look beautiful too:
