"DEAR LEADER"

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I had forgotten how much fun it is to shoot what’s on broadcast TV. In the seventies and the early eighties, a lot of photographers built their entire careers on taking pictures of what was on the telly. The resulting images are somewhat gimmicky and never that interesting, but undeniably fun and entertaining. At the end of the day, the appropriative ease and speed with which you can take pictures of television screens is just too much of a no brainer; which is not to say that ease and speed are not photographically good things. I make enough sweeping generalizations as it is already. Come to think of it, TV stills are to photography, what comic books were to Pop Art in the sixties, it’s seen better days. Nevertheless, I am sure that somewhere, somehow, a lone genius is reviving the genre, and is being ignored because of flippantly opinionated people like me.

Still, I would not mind seeing a new wave emerge from that Phoenix’ ashes. Problem is, flat screens don’t flicker, which is unfortunate since half the fun is working with and around the cathode’s flickering rays. On top of it all, to add insults to injury, digital cameras are making the process ever cheaper, quicker and easier.

Case in point, last saturday night, after returning from Slideluck Potshow, which included my work in the mix, I sat in from of my TV, with my girlfriend’s new point and shoot and captured “digitally”, close to six hundred pics while she slept next to me. Out of those six hundreds, I’d venture to say that almost half turned out nicely, even if they are, in my mind, devoid of value. The other three hundreds fell victim to flicker and delay.

So, out of guilt and shame, I further combined some of them into diptychs to feel like I was actually being creative, as opposed to some late nite fingering perv, pleasuring the trigger for leisure. As for screen stills, the ones I like the most are those where the photographer steps back to include the TV dinner, a fork and a spoon. Something I did not do.
In order to make this photographic sub-specie more interesting one would need to create a story board and hunt down images* that best fit the script to create “cathodovelas” using found images available on TV, Youtube or DVDs. If I feel like it some day, I might experiment with it, as for now, I’ll stick with large format. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t be a bad way to spend an idle saturday night.

*which I am sure has already been attempted.

Andreas Gursky and Massimo Vitali (pictured above). Can’t I just say that I like Massimo Vitali but don’t care much about Gursky? Many happy returns to Mr.Gursky, but still, have I suddenly become French, or something? Do I not like him because he comes from a people who rapes our women and drinks our champagne, indulges in blitztkrieg, pre-cooked sausages and dubious sexual practices. Is it possible that deep inside, I equate German successes with grape shot and pillage. Is it possible that despite our common humanity, I still find myself looking east and wondering when Death Heads will violate our borders and grace us with their raves, chainsaws, black socks and speeches?

Do we really need another German theory of everything? Is it absolutely neccessary? Can’t I just jaywalk in Berlin, at four o’clock in the morning, without wondering if the Politzei will come out and slap me like a bitch? Do I really have to endure another lecture on American foreign policy, while his traveling companion reaches round to borrow my money?: “wir möchten etwas Geld borgen. Herr, wir möchte überwachen unser Kamerad sodomise Geschlechtsklaven….! Run it thru Google translate and see what it means…!!!!! Results may vary.

As for Gursky, have you ever walked up to one of his prints*? Don’t get me wrong, I love large prints, I have been dreaming of enlarging ever since my brother got me into photography, back in the mid seventies; but until recently anything larger than a 16by20 was so expensive that you actually needed to be rich to afford one; let alone two or three. It meant that you could afford to show the Jones that their 4by6s didn’t quite cut it.

Large prints can compete with paintings, if it’s big it’s easier to call it painterly, and that’s what they call it, besides monumental and panoramic. Afterall, color photography did not become respectable until the nineteen seventies, and black and white before that, was not considered an art until the 40s or 50s. In a perfect world, who gives a shit: “Who cares if its black and white, as long as it catches light”**.

I keep being told that Gursky is important in the grand scheme of things but I just don’t get it. For my money, I’ll take Massimo any day. His work is so much more interesting, cohesive and pleasing, it doesn’t feel contrived or labored. Unlike Gursky, Vitali’s images manage to make you feel that maybe, just may be, humanity has some redeeming qualities. Am I partial to Vitali because he’s more stilettoed than jackbooted? Who knows; I’m so over big ideas anyway!

I know fine art, isn’t supposed to be funny but does Gursky really need to remind me. Call me Ishtar but it seems to me that contemporary German art’s schickt is to exploit our need to believe that, if it’s disciplined, dark, tortured and haunted(!), it has to be deep, important and arrestingly ravishing(!), well worth paying with those chocolate coated Prozacs you’ ve been hearing so much about these days. Kinda like Mao and contemporary Chinese art. Without the Great Helmsman***, how the fuck are you supposed to know where it’s made! Afterall, you’re never too happy, as when the passion of your Christ happens to be a canvas, techno, straw and bee’s wax.

Fame is frightening isn’t it, doubly so because it has become so neccesary to achieve, especially when a simple “I love you” from your girlfriend or your kids is all you need to keep you happy. Unfortunately, I would like nothing more than to have enough cash to do as I artfully(!) please; without having to think about market forces, audiences, or the foods and staples that graced the tables where I ate. I’d rather not have to perform financial miracles and multiply the fishes, but just the same, fame too often means that to get what you want often involves bringing attention to yourself, and doing so over and over again. May be someday, after years of repeated efforts, I’ll manage to squirrel enough cash to pay the ransom I’ve put on my head. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining …… it’s just that my piriformis hurts like shit. I hear that at this age, it’s perfectly normal to feel pain in my ass when it pisses down my leg and tells me it’s raining.

* They look like shit.
** Personally adapted from the words of the powerfully diminutive Deng Xiaoping.: “It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice”.
*** Or the “Mao Lisa”, as I like to call it.

#

Since all we get these days are data files and images, is it too much to ask to get to know what Mars sounds like….?

Like any self respecting fan of all things celestial, I take great pleasure in reveling in the facts that no matter how self-obsessed or delusional I may get, there is always a place, far from where I dwell, where I can go and marvel at the unmentionable vastness of the known universe.

A few weeks back, in early July, I went camping in the Sierra Nevadas where, as luck would have it, this god fearing, prostate packing, 42 year old’s tool, made him get up and take a mid-summer’s night piss on the closest evergreen he could see. Not too close to my tent as one might suffer the consequences….. le lendemain…..but not too far either, as to not fall, and off that precipitous cliff he might have imagined. Being that it was the middle of a dark and moonless night, it seemed reasonable to assume that a precipice might be harder to anticipate if your neck is cranked way back, looking up and away.

I like to wonder as much as the next guey**, but plunging to my death while relieving myself, is a stunt I’d rather wait to taste just before I finally take my last steps and kiss The Little Prince’s cape…… But when I do, we’ll kiss and greet on both cheeks, and I’ll finally get to piss on that snake, the one that looks like those hats men used to wear, before JFK caught a bullet with the back of his head (if he had worn a hat, that fateful day in Dallas, instead of baring his head to an assassin’s rifled gaze, he might have lived out a more lead free and prosperous presidency).

There’s nothing like looking up at the sky and pissing on the ground beneath it. There’s still nothing like reminding the forest and the beasts that a man will pay twenty bucks to stay the night, eat a steak and drive home the next day. It’s not every day that he gets to piss on a stump beneath the Milky way……Just another way to further remind this here Universe, that free will and a tank of gasoline brought me here, while ‘they’, will spend the rest of their natural living days trying to open garbage pales or chase down four legged protein shakes…….
At the very least, not bothering to treck on over to the latrines, at three o’clock in the morning, feels better than splitting open my chin on the bathroom sink…….and it’s good way to keep my feminine side humming………since whatever estrogen I have coursing through my veins needs as much tending, as the peaches in Voltaire’s silk breeches; those same treatises where Buddha meets Plato meets Rousseau meets snow globes or the cold wet steel of a French Guillotine (I have a hard time believing that Voltaire did much gardening and will presume that he meant it metaphorically).

As I stood there, I thought about the fact that there are millions of great images of Mars, Saturn and the Moon***, but that galactic sound files are not that easily found or downloaded on the information super highway. I understand, but regret that because there are no molecules for sound waves to travel within the vacuum of space, that there is no sweet celestial music for us to hear. Nevertheless, Mars has an atmosphere and that ought to be worth at least an MP3.

The only space recording I have ever heard came from what the Cassini/Huygens probe sent back and recorded while descending into Titan’s atmosphere. That was sweet… but in the future, can I please listen to other atmospheres.

In other news, landslide and meteor strikes; how on earth are we supposed to get out of the way if there is not a sound to be heard on either side of the Moon.

* Multi-year mission to Saturn and it’s moons.
** Guey. That would loosely translate as “dude”, in Spanish.
*** Hell, as we speak, they are sending a giant camera to Pluto which will reach the icy body in a little more than a decade.
# Also commonly known as the Red Eye nebula.

My friend Raul posted an image by Peter Henry Emerson who “was one of the first vocal proponents of “naturalistic” art photography (photography done out in the field) at a time when most art photographers worked exclusively in the studio” and it got me all thinking and shit.

Looking at these photographs reminded me of how great it would have been if photography had been invented by amphibians, in a Cambrian swamp the size of Switzerland. I’d kill to see some pics, of the first flowering plants, Napoleon and Josephine or Polynesia, circa 1465.

Emerson(1856-1936) quoted*: “I have…I regret it deeply, compared photographs to great works of art, and photographers to great artists. It was rash and thoughtless, and my punishment is having to acknowledge it now… In short, I throw my lot in with those who say that Photography is a very limited art. I deeply regret that I have come to this conclusion…”

History proved him wrong, even if it took far too long. After him came the throngs who blissfully ignored the ruminations of a man who lacked the imagination to understand that, given time, any new form of self expression will eventually blossom.

Over time, artistic expression accrues and grows like those interest rates your bank charges. Despite what he thought, there is nothing like traveling back in time and seeing what it really looked like; at least through someone else’s eyes. To my eyes, it’s actually more interesting, than any thought he might have ever had in his lifetime.

*Via Raul Gutierrez.

If I am not mistaken, I think I first saw “The treasure of the Sierra Madre”, the 1948 John Huston film by the same name, in January or February of dos mil tres. I might rank it as my all time favorite, not just because it is a film fantastic, but because it so closely matches my own aesthetics. Anyway, I have little to say besides professing my love and admiration for such a great movie. Rent it, buy it, steal it, do whatever best suits your spirit, but see it before you meet, “The” Great Spirit; which, as you may already know, can happen, quite suddenly, to you and me. Please to admire the scouting, the light on the cacti, the cinematography, and the acting, if you fancy that sort of thing.

I do not own a copy of the film and have only seen it once but I remember watching it soon after having a psychedelic black and white dream, which found me skinny dipping, under the keels of World War II battleships. Bathed in moonlight, the great ships were being shelled by unseen and murderous aerial bomb attacks. Thankfully, they seemed to always miss the mark, their blind and angry marksmanship resulting only in creating beautifully lavish underwater vortices. To my submarined eyes it looked like mixing galaxies with egg whites, sea salt and half and half. My dream had matched the mood and contrast of the Sierra Madre’s black and whites; if not for my bit parts.

Way way back when, so far back in time that I can’t remember exactly when, someone mentioned in passing, that if you were going to be a poet that you should never use abstract words or concepts to express yourself. May be they/he/she said something else but overtime this is what I remember hearing somewheres in my head…
So remember, if you are an artist, an amateur artist, a curator, a critic, an amateur critic or a gallerist please keep big words far from your nimble and feverish mind and snuggly tucked somewheres in inaccessable body parts. Otherwise, you’ll sound like a tool and will only impress those of you who are dumber than you; the rest of us will be forced to ignore you.

Steer clear of Art speaks like these: Narrative(!), resonant(!), dissonant(!) meditative(!), discourse(!); cathartic(!), organic(!), dialectic(!); mediate(!); appropriate(!), gender-based(!), textured(!), imbued(!), fractured(!), manufactured(!); pioneering(!); fractious(!), contentious(!), heterogeneous(!)….

They may not have the heart to tell you but when you write like this, you sound like a fucking prick. Construct(!) phrases others might like to read, instead of making the rest of us skip your entreaties(!)groaningly.

Take Hiroshi Sugimoto for example, whose show I just saw at the De Young, in San Francisco. Try him on for size and see if this is a paragraph you might be able to craft. Lo and behold, it’s actually interesting and informative(!)….After reading what he has to say I find myself liking him and his work even more. Go to his site for more.

Portraits: “In the sixteenth century, Flemish court painter to the British Crown Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543) gave us the imposingly regal portrait of Henry VIII now kept in London’s Royal Portrait Gallery. Based on this Holbein portrait, the wax figure artisans of Madame Tussaud’s in their consummate skill recreated an absolutely faithful likeness of the king. Which allowed me—based on my own studies into the Renaissance lighting Holbein might have painted by—to re-do the Royal Portrait, substituting photography for painting, the sole recording medium available at the time. If this photograph now appears lifelike to you, you had better reconsider what it means to be alive here and now.” (see portraits above). You see it’s not that hard, just come out with it and stop giving the Arts and your fellow artists or critics a bad name.

So, yesterday I went to the De Young in San Francisco’s Golden Gate and saw Hiroshi Sugimoto’s. I have always liked his work. Let me re-phrase that, I have always really liked half his work. I like his Portraits, his Dioramas, his blur-chitecture, theaters and Chambers of horrors. The rest of it, the conceptual forms, Joe and in Praise of Shadows are less interesting to me personaly. I may not appreciate his more “cerebral”(!) works, but at least when he writes about it, I respect it and understand it. I am interested in what he has to say, and do not, as I often do, find myself wishing I could strangle him, or you, with a shoe lace. Check it.

Over the pass and into the valley, and to the lake we went. Here is what dem woods made us done do! Es ist, aber wie ein preiswerter scan einer Kontaktseite jedoch I Liebe es noch. Lieben Sie es auch? Will there be more little Holzfällers…?

Fuck, fuck, fuck….today is one of those fucking days…!

Today is a beautiful day. No hurricane fog winds, just sun shinning, which got me to thinking about them “Friendlies”, bible thumpin’, door knocking, ape hatin’, door slamming, sun settin’, watch tickin’, bright lighting, two timin’, book burning, run screamin’….. So I did a little googlin’ for Jehovah imagery but came up with nothin’ like I remember seein’.

I was about to give up when I eventually came upon what looked like prize winning, lip smacking, eye catching, toe tappin’ Jehovah landscape pornography.

Back in May, I reluctantly picked up blogging because my friend Steve, at Robyn, kept on needling me; and I kept on telling him to “blow me”. And then, my mother mentioned that I should write more regularly; I listened politely. Maren kept harassing me too but what else is new. So, Thing one led to Thing two, and Thing three led me to reading other people’s diaries; or as they say “bloggentries”.

In the world of photography, Alec Soth’s blog is high up on the people’s list, but frankly, anyone who regularly posts “Friday Poetry” is a little too Garisson Keillor-ish for me. I’ll have to go back and read more of it, but so far I glaze over quickly. Maybe, Ritalin and me have our very own theory about Alec’s poetry: Maybe, he is to photography what John Philip Sousa is to infantry; but more twenty first century. If you don’t know what I mean, that’s okay, I’m already knee deep in shit with this entry. So nevermind poetry….

Meanwhile, back in May and in New york City, I spent one night in Brooklyn. Raul, Jen and I had finished eating dinner when I began to contemplate the long trip back to New Jersey so I begged them to let me stay and play.

The very next day, I tearfully went back to the City, leaving them to potty train and spoon feed purée; rode back to New Jersey and back again to the City. Later, I got on a plane, landed, drove home and waited.
Later, after a few days, during those hours between night and day I had a dream about Raul, Jen and Raul Andres. It was one of those dream within a dream, a personal favorite I must say. A dream within a dream; how fucking great? Like Turducken*, but meatless, guey…!

I don’t really remember the dream within the dream, just the dream about waking up from the dream within the dream, and it went like this: Raul and Jen had since become “Yurt-parents” and had once again let me stay and play, presumably to save me from the long overnight trip back to Alma-Ati.

Upon waking, I noticed that two of Jen’s Korean relatives were covered in frost; the kind of frost you might see ruining a farmer’s crop. I too seemed frosty but felt perfectly dandy underneath my flowery quilt. They just told me that this was the best way to keep your cheeks rosy and stay healthy, so, why not me! Next thing I know, Raul Andres saunters over to proudly sit on his potty, right next to me; releasing quite a stink and waking me back to reality.

I have had every possible dreamable dream there is to dream, but smelling shit, in a dream, while dreaming about waking from a dream within a dream, was positively, weirdly dreamy. There is something to be said for waking up to a toddler’s feces, I’ve lived it, but to dream it…and survive it, NOW, that’s a blog entry, if I’ve ever smelled it.

* A Dreamdrucken.