Getting a real letter from anywhere is a good thing, but one from Derry, Ireland is an especially good thing.
As requested these are the answers to your questions:
1. Under a tree somewhere in Texas.
2. Paul Klee once wrote, "I comfort myself with the thought that my words do not address themselves to you in isolation but will complement and bring into focus the impressions, perhaps still a little hazy, which you have already received from my pictures."
4. Is there anything finer than a naked woman in your bed in the morning?
5. Once again I must produce a quote, this time from Fitzgerald (Tender is the Night):
I want to give a really bad party. I mean it.
I want to give a party where there's a brawl and
seductions and people going home with their
feelings hurt and women passed out in the
cabinet de toilette.
6. They don't serve fish in aquarium restaurants. When you ask why, you always get the same answer: "It makes the kids cry."
A few weeks ago at PhotoNY I stopped by the booth of AM Richards Fine Art where the gallery was exhibiting the street photography of Andrew Garn taken in Times Square during the 80's. Looking at the prints today you can't help wonder what happened to all the people in that darker, grittier New York which has been all but erased. Garn's website doesn't do justice to the images the gallery has selected, so if you happen to be in Brooklyn, check them out in person.
328 Berry Street (Williamsburg)
Brooklyn NY 11211
USA
tel: 917 570 1476
Today, like so many days with a spent with a young child, sort of drifted away. We played cars. We ran in the park. We went to a birthday party. We read books. He saw the moon for the first time though (not seeing the moon until you are almost 2 is a hazard for the early to bed). That was something. He was impressed. I was too.
Livia Corona produces a wide range of work from commercial illustrative images to art photography. If you're someone who grew up going to bullfights in Mexico you'll understand the appeal of her Enanitos Toreros series... to me it feels distinctly Mexican...
Say no, not because you mean it, but because it's funny.
Repeat: Noooo. Noohhhhh. No.
Be delighted by small things.
Spontaneously kiss the ones you love.
Refuse to look at those who disappoint.
Be wary of the wind.
Hide. Be found. Hide again.
Walk bottomless throughout the house.
Practice closing your eyes remembering to squeeze them tight.
Giggle until you roll over.
Read books about alligators or cars or better, alligators AND cars.
Live for today.
Run. Whenever possible, run.
This evening I heard photographer Holly Lynton speak about her current show Solid Ground. We happen to work with the same printer (Ben Diep at ColorSpace Imaging on 20th Street) so I had seen some of her images a few months ago around the print studio before I knew anything about the show. They are luminous prints, each one exotic and yet familiar. Taken together they put the viewer in a distinctly feminine and mysterious dreamworld full of blossoming life but also full of hidden dangers and even death. Looking at the images and having heard they had all been taken in the artist’s backyard, I formulated what I thought was a strong theory about the motivation behind the work. I was certain that the artist was trying to show us a child’s perspective where the back yard is indeed the entire world. The low angles, tight crops, short focus and subject matter all seemed to confirm my theory.
For me the work recalled the deep forest I remember behind an apartment that was our home for about a year in the 70’s. I was 5 then and would go exploring with my 3 year old brother. Each journey like all good adventures was fraught with giddy joy and perceived danger. Would there be trees to climb, wild blackberries, or kidnappers and snakes? The trips often ended with us running full tilt, simultaneously laughing and yelling at the top of our lungs, back home.
A few years ago I returned looking for the forest and was puzzled to find only a grouping of tightly bunched thin trees. Convinced the forest must have been leveled I looked back at old photographs to find the scene virtually unchanged, a small stand of trees behind a parking lot ... and yet even with irrefutable proof, it is hard to resolve the memory of the deep dark forest dimly illuminated by occasional shafts of light.... endless.
All this is a roundabout way of saying I had convinced myself I knew what the artist had intended... and of course I was totally wrong. In her talk this evening she said the series had been inspired by a trip to Tanzania shortly after September 11th. In Africa she found death and beauty lurking all around in a real and visceral way. The unresolved feelings the trip inspired, as well as returning during a time when imagined boogiemen were being touted daily led her into her backyard searching for the kind of beauty and danger she experienced in Africa... and to this project...
And yet like that stand of trees, even knowing the truth, it is hard to resolve my original conception of the project. Both narratives remain in my head and both seem equally true.
At least 3 or 4 nights a week at around one in the morning the black car pictured above will stop in the middle of Syndey Place, with it's lights on. The drivers of the car are always men with mustaches and they usually growl in animated bursts into a cellphone in what I'm guessing is a Slavic language. Assuming these were car service drivers cooling their heels, I tried to flag the car and was turned away with a brusk bark, "Get away from car." Sometimes a cop will walk by and the car will circle the block to return to exactly the same spot a few minutes later. Once a second man in a mustache sat in the passengers seat arguing loudly with the driver. Once a fancy looking lady sat in the back, lips pursed without saying a word. Usually by 3am the car is gone leaving behind only cigarette butts thrown from the window.
Rineke Dijkstra is photographer whose work always makes me stop in my tracks. I was reminded to look up her work from this post on MAO. Her portraits of bullfighters who have just left the ring are new to me. I don't think this show ever made it to New York.
My brother-in-law Paul carries his dad's face. But his dad died when he was three and Paul has almost no memory of him. My wife who is six years older than her brother remember Paul chasing other toddlers around the coffin and laughing at the funeral in the happy unawares of childhood.
I used to look at Paul wonder what it feels like to carry your dad's face when you didn't know him, but now that I am a father myself I think of it from the dad's perspective. Did he know his son would look like him, have his personality, his laugh? How sad that he never knew Paul, especially when Paul turned out to be such a good guy. Mr. Yun would have been proud.
Years before I ever stepped foot in India or Pakistan I traveled to those places via the words of Eric Newby, the great English travel writer. Newby died yesterday at the age of 86. If you are a fan of great tales told with understated humor pick up A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush or Slowly Down the Ganges. You won't be sad.
