More Collecting Opportunities

Anchorage, AK 2009 Zoe Strauss


Frog Todd Deutsch

1. Zoe Strauss has posted the 2009 prints available to support the 2009 iteration of her I 95 project.

2. Todd Deutsch seems to be having an early mid-life crisis and is offering c prints at ridiculous prices.

Never let it be said that I hog all the good stuff for myself. It may, however, be said that I post after I have placed my order.

To Helen!

page 85, Slide Show Helen Levitt

"I wanted to be a photographer because I wanted to be an artist and I couldn't draw."

What a wonderful thing, to live to be 95. To have made a body of work which not only stands the test of time but can be discerned as seminal. Still collected, still taught. Slide Show is a testimony to her spirit, unbroken by circumstantial hardship, as much as her artfulness and skill. She received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation in 1959 and 1960 to make color photographs of the New York streets and neighborhoods she had so thoroughly caressed in black and white starting in the 40's. In 1970 the majority of that work was stolen from her apartment and she had to start again. What a wonderful thing to start again. What a wonderful thing to have left us an image of implied abject sadness consoled by a gentle hand. Inviting us to attend (unlike the men in the distance) to the fragility being played out, with the advertisement with the hand holding the egg serving as scenic backdrop to this moment of human drama. A long life and a long career, what a wonderful thing.

Improvised City: Helen Levitt's New York, an article from the November 19, 2001 issue of The New Yorker by Adam Gopnik is a highly entertaining and enlightening way to offer a toast.

500

This is my 500th post. As we all tend to do with nice round numbers (why not 498 or 503?) I suppose I should mark the milestone (interesting word choice since a milestone is exactly as it sounds. A stone placed along a roadway at regular intervals to mark the distance traveled from, or to, a location in order to give the traveler reassurance and establish their bearings.)

I saved this piece written by Andrew Sullivan for the Atlantic last November for just such an occasion. Why I Blog is a wonderful examination of the phenomenon and form as well as his experience of it. As he establishes the etymology of the word log, he writes,

"As you read a log, you have the curious sense of moving backward in time as you move forward in pages—the opposite of a book. As you piece together a narrative that was never intended as one, it seems—and is—more truthful. Logs, in this sense, were a form of human self-correction. They amended for hindsight, for the ways in which human beings order and tidy and construct the story of their lives as they look back on them. Logs require a letting-go of narrative because they do not allow for a knowledge of the ending. So they have plot as well as dramatic irony—the reader will know the ending before the writer did."

Cigarettes and Purity has taken on the role of making me mindful. It serves as a series of bookmarks for the information that I take in as well as thoughts, ideas and events which I experience. I fall well outside the statistics of bloggers and certainly outside the niche of fine art/contemporary photography blogs. Almost daily I think that I am finished, that I have nothing of interest to say (there are those, no doubt, who would heartily agree). Perhaps there will be post 501?

Mad matting/framing skills

In a concession to the fact that the inflow of prints has totally overwhelmed the cash to have them framed I bit the bullet and purchased a mat cutter and necessary accoutrements. Here is a display of my first foray into framing. A vertical, a horizontal, a double window and a weighted bottom. I am quite pleased with myself. 4 down, 60 or so to go. I hate having them just sit in the flat file.

The pieces above by (left to right):
Sonja Thomsen
William Lamsen
Kevin Miyazaki
Susanna Raab

"Those who do not learn from history

are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana

This is a picture of the BCBG Max Azria spring line magazine I got in the mail yesterday. Hammer pants? Really? Hammer pants. No wonder magazines (and thus commercial photographers) are struggling. They are showing 20 year old ideas to a culture where just yesterday is old news.

Moratorium

Can we please have a moratorium on the bed. The bed as landscape, the bed as environment, the bed as psychological/psycho sexual metaphor, the bed as implied intimacy. It has been done....and done....and done. I feel as though, in the last last few years, I have seen enough sheets, pillows and comforters to fill a Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Extreme Shepherds

This made me laugh out loud. Brilliant mash-up of skill and technology. One of these days I will be posting on photography again.....


via Wooster Collective

Extraordinary experience

My flight home Sunday evening was delayed by about 15 minutes to load some additional baggage. As a result of the delay we were able to watch the launch of the Shuttle Discovery from ignition through booster separation with an unobstructed view at 25,000 feet. As a child of the space age I don't mind saying it was one of the most extraordinary sights I have seen. If you click on the top image you can see the launch pad glowing at the bottom of the image as the shuttle rises through the center.

Day 4

Day 3.5

Nothing says vacation like a $50 dead animal head!

Day 3

For Sonja...

Day 2

Day 1

I'm headed to the beach

Walking the dog

Eadweard Muybridge

In order for a photograph to be an authoritative document it must first be consulted. Fascinating article on how the divergence of perception and intuition continues even among scientists.

Scary...

Adworkers - The Clown from Paul Conigliaro on Vimeo.

The part of The Clown is played by the little boy who used to live next door and grew up (and is still friends) with my daughter. How's that for scary?

Technical note: If you're able, click through to watch full screen in HD. The credits say this was filmed with a Red camera.....

Carmina Burana

Last week Conscientious posted in his usual enlightening fashion on this piece of music. Here is an alternative version.



via Eyeteeth

Science

Unlike the de-certification of Pluto as a planet it appears that regardless what the Neurostimulation Technology Portal says magenta's status as a color is safe. Good, because I wasn't sure what word I was going to use to identify that nasty color cast on prints.

via Eyeteeth

Testing

Thank you Justin

Free is the new priceless.

This video

posted on the Art 21 blog last Friday in their Bomb Magazine edition has stuck in my head all weekend. I thought I would take their suggestion and annoy you with it too. I'm sorry.