"DEAR LEADER"

Free is good and free I like, but sometimes it can be quite the; proverbial arse. The crowds, the hot urban muthas, in all manners of disinterest and fashionista, the laboriously fermented paragraphs dripping off and on the whitewash, seasoned with more than a whiff of bourgeoisie docent docent bag.
School of neuron-art effluvia; masters of curation, celebrity chef guru rug-rats, half and half and all confuse-a-bourgeoise; in all manners of enlightening vocalula-blubba-ephemera…. Some be it, I beanz to the SFMOMA.

But please don’t get me right, I do like most the art, and having been around quite a few of my art producing mecca bruthas I find them generally pleasant, fun, and not too terribly full of pretenses or flashy farts, that is if they are good ones, tis the mediocre ones who tend to be those you might wish to consider utterly insuffra-bla…

It’s not he art I grippe; it’s the para-ggraphs, the literary curatorial arts; inducin’ nausea, words of the talentless curatorial class, the scholarly rabble, nipping at the heals of those who for better of for worst, feel compelled to spend their lives making art, which is as we mostly know by now, broader than Chronos’s spatulas….and that’s not half bad a phenomena…

Being that the place was crawling with members of the sexes I like to have, dressed in all manner of interest, to my one and only salacious spineless vertebra; I, in desperation, duly copied words from afore mentioned museum whitewash; in the hope that I may purge these feverish words from me minds:

Scanned from no less than six short paragraphs:

” …..haunting, evince, frank, unflinching, carefully tended relationship, psychological terrain, balancing formal and aesthetic refinement, enigmatic evocation, uncanny, room-size tableaux, dreamlike, multicultural community, critical eye, unflinching gaze, favoring myths and legends, jewel-like, historical narratives, tableaux, seamlessly moves between, haunting and disturbing, juxtaposing, metamorphosis, pervasive concerns, alter egos, personae, metaphorical meaning, grapple, synthesize, cosmological narratives, thermodynamics, phenomena, overlap thematically, fantastical narrative, quantum mechanics, question the phenomena, weaving together, rainbow celebration, naive, exuberant, residue, formally, rationalism, obstinately strange, nonsensical, absurdist, anarchy poetry jam session, intimate spaces, repertoire, exuberant, reside, manifest, nourished visionary work, compel, upends, elaborates, speculative work, conceptual concerns, appropriation, translucency, ephemerality and permanence, relentlessly, coalescence, ephemeral, conceptualism….”

OK, I am officially a fan… Russian criminal tattoos…

An Afghan War Rug I picked up in Afghanistan….. I have two in my collection of two…. Plus ça change……

and the Bayeux Tapestry……, plus c’est la même chose……War Rugs.

……couldn’t resist……

Recently, I have begun to take walks in the city. It’s the rainy season and I can’t stand the rain, which, if you have ever lived in Paris for any length of time, you’ve grown to hate.
At the slightest sign of a break in the clouds I put on my overcoat and step out into the California winter haze. I leave the umbrella behind, a willful thought and hope for the best; and damn the consequences.
Today I walked straight down Market, from my house on Castro, without even stopping for gay porn, on the way. So as I said, down Market and onward to the feces district (the Tenderlaid, that would be between 6th and 7th street).
Onward…..and by Bloomingdales, by the make up counter ladies taking languorous cigarette breaks, trying not to plant face from all those samplers they’ve meticulously applied to their faces; passed Old Navy, thru the Metreon and into the light, where there it is, the: Museum of Modern Art, all brick and mortar and eighties fugliest.
Into the lobby where monitors rudely remind me that I should not be loitering here any more than those poorly covered feces I recently passed on 7th and Market. My way of saying, ‘I’ve seen this shit before and even wrote about it. So what to do? I did not plan ahead nor did I consult the internet before I left!

So, I bowed to the inevitable and quickly retraced my steps to reluctantly open the door to da YBCA, or Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, as it is also known to the verbosely minded. (BTW, for yall hippies out there, Yerba Buena (Clinopodium douglasii) is a sprawling aromatic herb of western and northwestern North America, ranging from maritime Alaska southwards to Baja California Sur, and NOT what you imagined it to be).

Apparently the YBCA, in a thinly disguised attempt at placating the flower child community into driving East, from Berkeley, North from Willits and South from Venice, is now featuring some half baked exhibit curated to venerate his holiness, the ‘Dalai Lama”.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Dalai Lama and he is certainly worth a walk down market street but besides what I think about him, the show is an unmitigated piece of shit.
Enough said, but despite what I think, at least you get to live vicariously through me, and experience, for a brief moment, what it’s like to live here, in this soiled City by the Bay.

So, I perfunctorily went thru this display, cursing my fate, invisibly mumbling words so rich in sexual degradation as it would shame me to repeat them here, with impunity….. when at the corner of my eyes, what do I see; a side chapel, a votive assembly, right there in front of me, a notebook, left by one of the artists, to share your thoughts and feelings with the him and the community; ” Bingo! bitches!”, I exclaimed, “tis not in vain that I ambulate….!”

Here you go, excerpts, with my comments (apparently nasty, I hear, DL:). From the book of life, at the YBCA. Actual comments from visitors, regular folks, like you and me, carefully noted:

“We are the cusp of great AWAKENING“.
DL: Personally, I was thinking pandemic…

“Let peace and love prevail all over the world. Let all people love each other beyond borders. Fight for humanity and not for land and religion.”
DL: Do I detect a thinly disguised “Peace in the Middle East” message, massaged within an inch of saying it, but too “site specific”, too narrowly minded; I’ll replace it with a more non-denominational cliché?

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams“.
DL: Fair enough, roll it, package it, and I’ll smoke it….

“The world is a complicated place to live in! Yeah I know it blows, its pretty weird but it is“.
DL: I don’t know what to say but try a Garmin, it usually works for me, until it tells me to take the 10 to Venice at 9 in the mornin’ (LA drivers, you’ll know what I says, the rest of yous can ask them what I am just trying to say).

“Reveal, expose, do not deny eternity.”
DL: Expose eternity….! Is that a call to arms, a political statement or did you just parfumate with one of those samplers on sixth and Market.

“Dear god,
Just as every stream and ocean are connected, some how I must believe…..its hard to believe in you. Bless the falling with compasion. The architecture of the sea creates its own laws; why can’t humanity create as a matter of architecture? Let us begin buildings peaceful society, NOW-”
DL: Who does not want to chant a prayer that starts nice and easy and ends by screaming… “NOW”.

“You fucking killed it brutha, you inspire the revolution. Burning free and bad…, love“.
DL: I am sensing some innate contradictions, but never-mind me, I am far too cerebral for this….

“Words are not enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,enough,……….”
DL: That’s the great thing about mantras, if you repeat them long enough, they start to mean something else.

“Keep that spirit flowing breathe your art until your last breath. Oliver.”
DL: This one startled me for a micro-second. I thought to myself, did I sleep walk to this bitch and signed my name. No, that’s signed Oliver, not Olivier.

“You are perfectly complete and whole“.
DL: (Accompanied With a drawing of what looks like a butt with flowing gas coming out of it). And I am a complete ass whole for thinking it.

“I really like your exhieibit very much!” (Lightning bolt and a house drawn, a kid’s handwriting and drawing).
DL: He/she is innocent until Early Onset Adulthood.

“Derek,
I have always been in awe of your creativeness. The passion for what you do always shine thru. Don’t ever stop believing in your capabilities.
You are a true artist. I knew this from the day you were born.
Love and forever
Yours forever yours sincerelly,
Mom.”
DL: This one is a little tricky, as the artist’s name is actually spelled Derik, not Derek, so I am to presume that his own mother does not know how to spell her son’s name, or she did not get the memo as to why Derek is now called Derik; or some clever little trickster wrote this, but failed to properly read the wall’s” “My name is..and I did this…”

“Derek,
You are now an art fag
Welcome to the club. Vital power takes you right there wherever there is, Leighton, Dad”
DL: So dad is in on this too, but I find his message a little more masculine, a little more type A, in a gentle sort of way. Go get the “WHEREVER” Derek….!! I mean, Derik…!

“I am done, I am complete”
DL: and someone else wrote next to it, making my work easier, but more indirectly ” You are a fucking hippie“

“Thank you brother, I am so proud of you and your vision to wake each and everyone of us from the dream into the living dream of our own potential. Many blessings- reverence.”
DL: Shoot the messenger, and the message.

“Whoahhhh, whoahh, wwe,…..whoahh, wwwaa,….”
DL: Next time I am in a museum I’ll shoot for the orgasm, the wine and cheese buffet sucks anyway.

“I honor the place in you where the entire universe dwells. I honour the place in you that is of light, love thruth & of peace. When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me. We are one. Namaste, Infinite gratitude & love”
DL: Hey brother, I want to come with you but before we begin, please to point me towards the nearest consulate.

“Wubba wubba ….Wubba wubba ….Wubba wubba ….Wubba wubba ….”
DL: The afterglow, I presume….

DL: and to conclude, MY PERSONAL FAVORITE:

“I want to face fuck that girl in the video, she’s hot“,
DL:Comment circled and note added next to it ; ” Wow, how sad and insulting that that is all you got out of all this love and work. Micah(the girl in the video) the artist’s wife.-”
DL: No comment…..

Epilogue:

As I stepped out of the side show and into the lobby, it was now filled with old ladies, when before it had been empty. The place now smelled like chlorine, that public pool smell old people tend to retain after bobbing in it, to sooth the years away. I presume the YBCA was part of the day, a retirement tour date.

Being of less than sound mind, and urgently needing to pee, I made my way to the latrines but overshot and ended up in the women’s bathroom. After vainly looking for urinals, it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place. I retraced my steps, only to run into an old lady just about to step into the man’s toilets. She had seen me go in the ladies’ room and wrongly assumed the other door was where she also needed to do, her business.

How ironic, to get all turned around at the YBCA, where every other exhibit is about some gender specific group show, exploring some sort of gender based “ism-é”, or, “Feminism and the subversion of identity, bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex”.
…..humm, remind me not to have sex with that one, too damn intimidating.

PS: MDM, I wrote this one with you in mind, hope it helps lift your spirits, and Alyson too, they had a bit of a rough week.

“…………… those affected foragers, manipulating other, less disingenuous characters, elephantine rogues and agitators who rise to pomp and circumstance by playing to that imminent and gullible mind, of a market of believers.

Perpetrators, thinly disguised speculators, obstructionist and talented frocks, biding the acrimonious bile of some authority or power: The backslapper, apple polisher, flatterer and glad hander; within whose easy compliance lies the carbonized core of a hateful, bullying and fearful deceiver; a coddling messenger who seeks compliant listeners, like so many fools before them in respectful demeanor…. you shall forgive me, should you derive any pleasure from thy efforts, but ….. ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture as crawling.” Jonathan Swift.

DL: Photographers out number editors a million to one but given the fact that you may well be the one and only photo editor who did it, what does that “intuit” about your esteemed colleagues?

RB(AKAPE): I think there’s a huge misconception about the number of “professional” photographers in this industry. I’d say 20 maybe 23 tops. Everyone else is just vying for one of those slots by shooting jobs for free as marketing material. So, as you can see there’s absolutely no reason for photo editors to do anything with the internets.

DL: Something tells me that you are trying to sell us something, are we all unsuspecting pawns in an elaborate marketing scheme of your own making?

RB(AKAPE): There is absolutely no obligation to buy but I think once you hear the stories of people making 1000, 2000 and even 10,000 dollars a week you will want to buy my 10 disc set turning your vacation photos into cash. Money back guarantee except in the 50 states not available outside the US.

DL: OH. MY . GOD…! Is that expression learned, or innate?

RB(AKAPE): I normally say “holy fucking shit can you fucking believe how fucking great that fucking photo is a just want to shit myself and donkey punch my mother.” Oh. My. God seemed more user friendly.

DL: There was a lot of brown nosing the APE over the past four months. What does that say about photographers or the biz?

RB(AKAPE): If NY Times Magazine Director of Photography, Kathy Ryan were to suddenly come to a screeching halt the entire photo industry would find itself lodged up her ass.

DL: Winston Churchill once said, “You make a living by what you get; you make a life by what you give”, care to elaborate?

RB(AKAPE): No. That makes my brain hurt.

DL: You once had a dream, what was it?

RB(AKAPE): A reoccurring dream where the CFO and I enter a caged octagon.

DL: Why do you think you were so successful, so quickly?

RB(AKAPE): See above, they all thought I was Kathy Ryan.

DL: Anyone else that you know following your careless lead?

RB(AKAPE): I’ve poisoned everyone who tried. Anyone seen George Pitts lately?

DL: Photography is now a commodity like wheat, pork bellies or soy beans, care to disagree?

RB(AKAPE): Is this where you tell me I have to pay a digital processing fee and a digital transfer fee and a fee to ftp and a fee to burn a disk and a digital package fee and a digi-tech fee and a removable storage fee and a post processing fee?

DL: You share your life with a special someone, an ego, a wife, a pet monkey. What did they think of all this? Did you ever have to defend your compulsion and if so how could you and how did you justify it?

RB(AKAPE): Look Olivier I’m tired of calling your wife and telling her that blogging is anything other than online masturbation.

DL: Some may say that your taste in photography are rather safe, care to elaborate?

RB(AKAPE): Are you referring to my habit of saying in meetings “I’d like see what Annie Lebovitz would do with that” even though I’ve asked her agent 144,000 times to shoot something for me and the answer has always been no?

DL: Have you found your voice and is this it?

RB(AKAPE): No, I’m thinking more Backstreet Boys with choreographed dance but I just can’t seem to get Contientious, Jackaonary and A Visual Society to show up for practice.

DL: How do you like your feminine side shaped?

RB(AKAPE): Conical.

DL: Off the record and just between you and me, what made you do it?……guilt, shame…? and if so, are you easily intimidated?

RB(AKAPE): Interesting, I’ve never thought of it that way but now that I’m lying on this comfortable couch and you’re talking to me in that soothing voice I’d have to say there’s a fair amount of guilt involved in figuring out how many ways you can screw photographers out of a couple bucks on a daily, wait no, hourly basis as a chosen profession. This is my atonement.

DL: ….ever been gang banged by the Keebler elves…?

RB(AKAPE): Oh. My. God… is that where all these cookies came from… Olivier… Olivier… why can’t I move my arms… I can barely see you… it’s like I’m looking through a lens baby attached to a kaleidoscope.

DL: Anything to loose and if so, when will you loose it?

RB(AKAPE): Close to loosing my lunch every time I hit publish.

DL: Successful blogs tend to slowly become overwhelmed by their own successes. The audience becomes more and more self absorbed and see the “Top Blog” as a tool to generate traffic to their own site or start posting to turn the conversation unto themselves, as opposed to furthering the discussion. How will you negotiate success, has this already happened?

RB(AKAPE): Ultimately my goal is to turn the photo blogging community into a giant donut where all links and conversations lead back to the original post. The conversation will repeat itself in perpetuity throughout the universe in every medium known and unknown without additional payment.

DL: Please, be brutally honest!

RB(AKAPE): When I pee in the snow I write my name.

DL: (This Space left unintentionally blank).

DL: Unlike a painter, a photographer starts with something finished and works backwards….what about a “A Photo Editor”?

RB(AKAPE): Did you know aphotoeditor spelt backwards is rotideotohpa?

DL: I have to ask you this, how many Horse ladies in your apocalypse?

RB(AKAPE): She’s pullin’ six white horses.

DL: Favorite three layered cake?

RB(AKAPE): Ho hos.

DL: An old chinese proverb states: ” It does not matter if it’s black or white, as long as it catches light”, care to dignify this pronouncement with a reply?

RB(AKAPE): It matters if I shine a flashlight up your ass.

DL: Many of your fans had assumed, wrongly, that you were a lady, any thoughts, rebukes or responses?

RB(AKAPE): Not the first time someone told me “you write and photo edit like a woman.”

DL: “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention”, what exactly does that mean?

RB(AKAPE): In the FAQ section of my blog it states that by loading aphotoeditor.com in your web browser you are hereby signing a work for hire contract that governs all previous and future work as a photographer throughout the universe in all mediums known and unknown in perpetuity.

DL: The US department of Labor states that the Employment of photographers is expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations through 2016. Photographers can expect keen competition for job openings because the work is attractive to many people. Could this be?

RB(AKAPE): Sure, who doesn’t want to hang out with Mickey and Goofy and snap pictures of screaming kids all day long.

DL: There are currently 122,000 professional photographers in the US alone, with a median hourly income of $12 dollars and 58 cents. Please explain ?

RB(AKAPE): And with expenses of $12 an hour that leaves a pure profit of 58 cents an hour.

DL: Which of the following would cause the unemployment rate to increase?

I. A man who quits his job to spend more time with his children
II. A woman who has not looked for a job in two years and begins looking again
III. A woman who quits her job and begins looking for a new job in another city.

RB(AKAPE): IV. Blogging for a living.

DL: And to conclude this interview please explain:

1- Definition of social stratification
2- Social class in terms of wealth, income, education, occupation, and lifestyle
3- Concepts of power, prestige and status, both ascribed and achieved
4- Social inequality involving race, gender, class, age, prejudice, and discrimination
5- Functional and conflict theories of stratification
6- Horizontal, vertical, inter-generational social mobility
7- Poverty/life chances

RB(AKAPE): Ask someone who cares.

Walton Ford is one of my favorite contemporary artists. Taschen has just come out with a book I can’t afford but thankfully his work is readily available on the web, albeit a little small for my taste. I have not had the pleasure of seeing his painting up close but I am sure I won’t be disappointed but thankfully his work is readily available on the web, albeit a little small for my taste. I have not had the pleasure of seeing his paintings up close but I am sure I won’t be disappointed.

In 2008 I will be posting photo stories I won’t be doing, but which, if they have not already been done, you may “Artfully” shoot for yourself. Remember, you can shoot almost anything, and depending on how you package it, you can make a name for yourself. If you persevere and produce “a body of work” consisting of more than six, but no less than twelve of these stories within a calendar year, and in a somewhat recognizable personal style, you will ………

Begin here/Story One:

Go to strip clubs with a large format camera and shoot the audience watching the show(do not shoot the striper). Report to the authorities when you are done. You will need around 30 to 40 images of strip clubs throughout the country and the world, if possible. The rest is up to you. Good luck……

Photo by: Unknown.

This image is only meant to reference the story idea above, it was found online and should by no means be copied or imitated. It’s posted purpose should only be viewed and used as stated references.

WARNING: This electronic transmission contains confidential information intended only for the above named recipient. Any use, distribution, copying, or disclosure by any other above named recipient is strictly prohibited. If you received this transmission in error, please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete all copies of this message. Corsican lap dances are the registered trademark of Olivier Laude. The use of sexual innuendoes containing the words ” Lap, Corsican, or Dance” are strickly prohibited without the author’s explicit and prior consent .
This message is the property of Olivier Laude or its affiliates. It may be legally privileged and/or confidential and is intended only for the use of Olivier Laude or its affiliates. No one but Olivier Laude or its affiliates should forward, print, copy, or otherwise reproduce this message in any manner that would allow it to be viewed by anyone but Olivier Laude or its affiliates, not originally listed as a recipient. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized disclosure, dissemination, distribution, copying or the taking of any action in reliance on the information herein is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify the sender and delete this message.

My friend Richard emailed me this Newsweek article this morning and it set my blood a boiling. You’ll need to read Peter Plagens cretinous musings and come back to me but if you should feel unwilling to budge from this august blogging, I shall furnish you with an excerpt, which more or less sums it:

“Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can’t help but wonder if the entire medium hasn’t fractured itself beyond all recognition. Sculpture did the same thing a while back, so that now “sculpture” can indicate a hole in the ground as readily as a bronze statue. Digitalization has made much of art photography’s vast variety possible. But it’s also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography’s artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality. By now, we’ve witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers—formerly bearers of truth—into conjurers of fiction. It’s hard to say “gee whiz” anymore. Art and truth used to be fast friends. Until the beginning of modernism, the most admired quality in Western art was mimesis—objects in painting and sculpture closely resembling things in real life.”

WTF, what’s wrong with this Newsweek? Hasn’t he finally understood that any form of visual art will inexorably migrate from the descriptive to the imaginary, and sometimes all at once. As a new visual medium is created, most creative artists will explore its ability to record reality. It stands to reason, obviously, but shortly thereafter the artist will explore his or her inner thing thingies. That’s just the way it goes.

What happened with photography is that very quickly, in the 19th and early 20th century, photographers both documented, copied other visual arts like painting but also started to explore the medium’s possibilities as just another tool for self-expression. It’s the critiques and some photographers who are guilty of narrowing the medium by straight jacketing what photography should and should not do, or be.

It also happened that the 20th century was so incredibly violent and momentous that documenting these epics started to overtake the more imaginative aspects of photography. I mean really, would a self respecting talent continue exploring the joys of one’s imaginations when genocide and bombs are ripping the very fabric of the society he or she lived in. Probably not. Conflicts put documentarists on top of the “Photographic food chain”, and from which they comfortably dictated what it was to be a photographer, what photography ought to achieve and to what aims it should point its machines.

What is happening right now is that photographers and artists from around the world are rediscovering the medium thru technology, just like the camera, itself a breakthrough technology at the time allowed artists the freedom to go nuts with possibilities. Nevertheless, art tends to migrate from the pictorial to the conceptual or the imaginary, as a matter of maturity, and by that I do not mean that it get better or worst by aging. It is just a natural peregrination from the real to the dream, much as we ourselves live as we pass from day into night, the conscious to the subconscious. None of this is new, artists generally do not make the kind’s of discoveries which truly shape our societies, they generally respond to them and express them visually or conceptually, wether they know it or are unconsciously doing it. Darwin devalued the divine and Freud elaborated on the ego and the Id, Einstein equated the space time but Duchamps and Warhol only followed their lead, by sensing those earth shaking ideas and expressing them in cave paintings.

So when you try to figure out what is art or what photography is, don’t bother with the minutia, just remember that there’s good art and bad art only. It’s hard enough to divine those two out, as it already is. Never mind if photography ought to be representative, manipulative or imaginary. Is it good or is it bad, and good luck and good night….. bitch….!