Blindnessand The Road are two of the best books I’ve read in, well, ever. Both books are being made into major motion pictures to be released this year. I am excited and nervous as all hell. On paper bothmovies look pretty good, but you never know with these things. Fernando Meirelles and John Hillcoat, I beg you not to fuck these up.
Stephen has always been drawn to secretive and old places, and has been visiting abandonments and off-limits places since he was 13 years old. His fascination with graffiti has taken him to roof tops, drains and abandoned buildings all over the states and some foreign
countries.
Stephen says, “I realized how much beautiful and unique stuff I was seeing in these places and finally combined my exploration with my latent photography urges. Now every weekend I’m shooting and going to further and further lengths and occasional legal risks to photograph abandoned places.”
Flickr user AntyDiluvian has posted some shots of the “Darkness, Darkness” exhibit’s new home at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (Boston, MA, USA). Unfortunately, the show is only open to the general public during specific time slots when curated by Lance Keimig (it’s not unfortunate that Lance is the curator, on the contrary, but it is unfortunate that there are only limited time slots for public viewing).
(Photo by AntyDiluvian)
From the Guardian:
“As a foreigner in New York,” Eno explained, “I was surprised by how little attention Americans paid to their own great indigenous musical invention: gospel. It was even slightly uncool - as though the endorsement of the music entailed endorsing all the religious framework associated with it. To me gospel was a music of surrender, and the surrendering rather than the worshipping was the part that interested me. This idea has informed my music ever since: I guess it’s the reason I use modes and chords which are easy to follow and easy to harmonise with. I want the music to be inviting, to offer you a place inside it.”“I think David responded to this with sensitivity and skill, and his natural edginess made those familiar progressions sound new to me.”
For Byrne the challenge in this “electronic gospel” style is to write songs that are “simple but not corny, basic but heartfelt. The results, in many cases, were uplifting, hopeful and positive- even though there were lyrics about cars exploding, war and similarly dark scenarios.”
I am not naive. I live smack dab in the middle of our mass consumer culture and know that every object, institution, idea and tradition carries at minimum a small stain of commercialism. This modern fact of life causes minor tremors of nausea when I ponder the specifics in detail, so mostly I avert my eyes and hum to myself. However, every once in a while there is a cataclysmic lowering of the bar that manages to catch my attention and drain the few remaining drops of optimism I have left.
Case in point, these two recent stories from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times:
Chew on This: Hit Song Is a Gum Jingle
Sharp-eared pop-music fans may have noticed a brief reference to an old chewing-gum jingle buried in “Forever,” Chris Brown’s top-10 hit. “Double your pleasure/double your fun,” the R&B singer croons in the chorus.What listeners don’t know — and what Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. planned to reveal Tuesday — is that the song is a commercial.
A Product’s Place Is on the Set
In recent weeks, anchors on the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas, KVVU, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on their desks during the news-and-lifestyle portion of their morning show. The anchors rarely touch the cups.Executives at the station, one of 12 owned by Meredith Corporation, say the six-month promotion is meant to shore up advertising revenue and, as they told the news staff, will not influence content.
Again, I am no Pollyanna when is comes to the pervasiveness of product placement and both of these events seem kind of inevitable, but I’ve always been slightly buoyed by the pretense that the content of music and news are sacred ground. Now it looks like all pretense has sunk and the race to the bottom has begun.
This got me wondering whether fine art might be the next sacred cow to tip and, more importantly, how I can ride that product placement vanguard all the way to the bank? I had it all wrong when I dreamed of mass merchandising my work. Clearly, the surer path to riches can be found by charging others to place their products in my work. Bridgestone Tires, please call me now.
Here now a musical editorial from our correspondent, Neil Young:
Over the past four weeks I have been aggressively focused on making new images for Domesticated. This typically involves weekday trips to Matamoras with my intern, Olga, to scout locations and work out the details and then a return trip on the weekend to shoot. The trip to Matamoras is about 200 miles round trip and on the weekend it can take upwards of 2 hours to get out there because of summer traffic.
I think I have a couple of new winning shots in the bag, but I want to make at least four or five more over the next couple of months. Every trip to Matamoras is an adventure.
The weekend before last we were shooting with rabbits. What a disaster. Rabbits are little bastards with sharps claws and the predisposition of a meth addict. Don’t ever be fooled by their cuddly appearance or their cute names. Little Bunny Froo Froo my ass. A couple of hours and endless rabbit scratches later we called off the shoot.
This past weekend was an experiment with fireworks, a raccoon and trash dumpster. After a visit from Matamora’s finest and a small dumpster fire, we again decided to quit while we were ahead and call it a night. It was almost 9pm at this point and we had been in Matamoras since 1:30pm. We were a little hungry and dubious of food possibilities at that hour so we set out for nourishment.
A short drive down I-84 and we found ourselves facing an unholy trinity of theme-restaurant options: Outback, Chili’s and T.G.I. Friday’s. Typically I don’t eat at these restaurants and when I do I feel like I need my stomach and my soul pumped. We rolled the dice and picked T.G.I. Fridays, the only major brand in the US with an implied “God” in the name. As we prepared to enter through the front doors we noticed the glowing restaurant sign which suggested the Friday’s in the name was not a reference to the day of the week, but some kind of of Dada-esque motivational acronym. Food-Real-Innovative-Drinks-American-You-Service. Genius.
We ate as fast as we could, put on the Black Keys and made the long journey back to the friendly confines of New York.
We will back at it again next weekend and the weekend after that and the weekend after that…
For San Francisco Bay fine art photography fans, two of our local night photographers are each having independent shows/signings this Friday night (August 1st).
Joe Reifer will have the reception for his show Toy Camera Dreams with Robert Holmgren at Lucky Ju Ju’s vintage pinball arcade (713 Santa Clara Ave, Alameda, CA) on August 1st from 7-10pm. Although most of us know Joe as a night photographer, this show will feature his daytime toy camera work which, I believe, will consist of 35mm film shot in a 6×6 Holga and cross-processed in some sort of out-of-spec color chemistry. Robert Holmgren’s work, I believe, consists of monochrome Holga photography. Although I’m familiar with both of their work on the internet, I’m looking forward to seeing both sets of work in real prints. The entire show runs from August 1st-30th.
(Oscar, by Joe Reifer)
On the same evening, just across the Oakland Bay Bridge, Troy Paiva will have a book-signing and slide show for his second book Night Vision: The Art of Urban Explorationat 111 Minna Gallery (111 Minna, San Francisco, CA). The book-signing will be from 7-9pm.
(Cover of Troy Paiva’s latest book: Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration)
Here’s the best news. If you noticed that both shows are on the same night at approximately the same time, you’re right. This means you only have to make one excuse to your spouse to get out of the house, and you can hit two receptions and see a total of three great photographers all in one swoop across the San Francisco Bay! What a great way to spend a Friday evening.
I will attend both receptions. If you see me there, please stop by and introduce yourself. I’d really like to know who is reading this out in the blogosphere.
I just received two copies of the wonderful new photo book, Hijacked Volume One: Australia and America. The book was edited by Mark McPherson & Max Pam and is an excellent survey of emerging photographers in Australia and America. They were kind enough to include eight of my photos over twelve pages in the book. Also included are friends Jon Gitelson, Lisa Kereszi, Bill Sullivan, Shen Wei and Grant Willing.
Mark McPherson has been quite the hustler and has managed to set up book launches and exhibits in New York, Berlin and Australia. The video below is from ABC Australia about the exhibit at The Australian Center for Photography in Sydney.
Pick up a copy today.
I just watched NAS perform “Sly Fox” on the Colbert Report and it immediately struck me that every time I visit or promote MySpace I am supporting News Corp, Fox News, The New York Post and the whole Rupert Murdoch evil empire. Screw that! I am done with MySpace. Just pulled the plug. And if you are sick of Fox News and their “fair and balanced” propaganda pap you should cancel your account too.
Flavia Sollner is a German-born photographer who works in London, UK and Oslo, Norway. Her portfolio of night photography includes work that is mysterious and seems to include more dark space than lighting. She writes:
(”The Tail of Our Purloined Breath”, by Flavia Sollner)
There’s definitely a difference between Flavia’s work and most of the contemporary night photography that we see in galleries and on the internet today. Most of today’s work seems to focus on heavy, careful lighting, whereas Flavia’s work seems to focus on the lack of lighting across the frame.
OK, that description may not make sense, but it’s the best I can think of right now. What do you think? Can anyone explain this more eloquently?
Found in Jorg Colberg’s Conscientious blog.
