Photo of the Day

Photo taken while on a fotowalk with my brother, Steve.

Elsewhere:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/danito

Reclaiming History

What you're looking at is one of the earliest photographs of Manhattan, a daguerrotype taken in 1848, and which was expected to be sold earlier today at auction by Sotheby's for up to $70,000. The image, which depicts a farmhouse on a hilltop in what is now the Upper West Side, is one of the few to show an area north of 14th Street, which, at the time, was considered the upper limits of Manhattan. (Imagine New York ending at Union Square!) Without context, this picture probably doesn't hold much interest for the average viewer, but for New Yorkers, most of whom I suspect cannot imagine our City, our shapeshifting, ever-developing City, as once existing as a swath of pristine, unsullied land, this daguerrotype is a reminder that history has a way of coming back in ways both unexpected and revelatory.

Oh, and that stretch of road in the foreground? That's Broadway.

*

You may be familiar, without knowing it, of the work of Terry Richardson, photographer, artist-about-world, bon vivant. Richardson has taken commissions for some of the world's major fashion houses, and has shot album covers for acts as varied as Bad Religion and Justin Timberlake. Most recently, Richardson photographed the lead actresses of the televised teen drama "Gossip Girl," for a cover that is perhaps the most suggestive that Rolling Stone has ever printed (this from a magazine that has shown Blind Melon and Christina Aguilera without so much as a guitar pick).

As a photographer and, I suspect, an everyday person, Terry Richardson relentlessly holds, without any sense of shame, to some pretty base instincts: physical passion, hedonism, and, above all, unbridled fun. While Richardson's work can be described as vile, prurient, and even juvenile, it cannot be argued that Richardson doesn't enjoy what he does; the man likes to play, not only with his subjects, but with his viewers: He makes us uncomfortable, makes us question whether what we are looking at is art or a cheap excuse for pornography, but in the end, it is his sense of bonhomie that is inescapable. How else to explain the twisted feeling one gets when looking at a picture of a gun, a condom wrapped around its barrel?

It's hard to make artistic arguments for Richardson's approach, given that just about anyone can pick up an Instamatic (nostalgia, anyone?) and shoot one's sexual exploits or the raging party from which you're still recovering, but there's no reason to come up with one, really. Richardson's pictures, however graphic, disturbing, and unnecessary, still point to one of the reasons why photography remains so essential: Without it, the moments in our history, however mundane, collective or otherwise, would be relegated to the library stacks of memory, left to fade in yet another drawer, yet another folder, inundated with yesterday's papers.

Link:
Richardson, in interview, on YouTube

*

Anyone ever read Susan Sontag's On Photography? It is absolute genius, and I can't believe that I've lived this long without having been aware of its lessons. If you've read it, let us know what you think...

[D | R]

Waters of March, by Antonio Carlos Jobim

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground,
The flesh and the bone,
The beat of the road,
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash,
A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,
The range of a bow

The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike,
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun
in the dead of the night

A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme,
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house,
The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck,
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift,
A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail,
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick,
It is John, it is Joe,
It's a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain,
A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard,
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle,
A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle,
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains,
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone,
The end of the road,
The rest of a stump,
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A knife, a death,
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.

{gc}

Like the first bird

Black syntax filled me on the third day. Children are talking about trash and heart chocolate.

There was laughter but no one heard it.

Winter gave its last f, handing me a soft blanket, a reminder of beauty sprung. It was desperate, showing off, building up.
Morning broke.

I think I lost the game for us but I can’t remember. I just whispered tell me to go to.

Every time I hear Spanish, I get sad.

The turf came apart and clumped together, soft black mounds in the white and green. Fake soil peppered my feet and shoulders. It didn’t feel cold. I wanted to gather.

How do you say, I want to run to you, too?

This morning it snowed on the first day of spring.

The Night Dances by Silvia Plath

A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ———
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ———
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting.
Nowhere.

Storytelling by Barbara Guest

(introduce pavement)

Old-fashioned people in clothes.

Passage to friendship (details, momentum. firefly)

wave "bye-bye,"

idly unfolds.

(dark, light, etc.)

(separately, form,)

indifferent combinations. (jest, tears.)

( Rhythm upswing) ( collision with serpent),

repeat and repeat moonlight

as suspense, moonlight.

Neither Hello Nor Goodbye

There are some songs, by virtue of their arrangements or lyrics, carefully laid out, which ask you, time and again, from the deepest recesses of your brain to the most open of tunnels, to give them your undivided attention, and which remind you, with all sincerity, that there is more to your simple life than the waiting to which you've grown accustomed. Oh, these songs are rare, they offer infrequent visits, but when they do arrive, you cannot help but say yes, cannot help but be taken by their insistence; the only disappointment, like an orchid past its glory in a shaking hand, is that brevity continues to be their name.

For me, such a song is Bonnie "Prince" Billy's "I am Goodbye," from his new record, Beware.

Please follow the link, and enjoy.

Love,
[D | R]

Absolute Power, Absolute Terror

Alec Soth
The Last Days of W.
Gagosian Gallery
January 20, 2009 through March 7, 2009

Taking cues from predecessors such as Robert Frank and Stephen Shore, Alec Soth, in his extensive travels, has shown us with a large-format camera a view of the United States (and in the instance of Dogs Days, Bogota, South America) which for the average person remains secretive and out of reach. Soth's latest show, The Last Days of W., which ran for a couple of months at Gagosian's outpost on Madison Avenue, solidifies his position, in this reviewer's mind, as one of the artists whose interpretation of American life, and any sense of dissatisfaction and ennui therein, as one of the major photographers at work today. Mixing politics with religion and social commentary, Soth is eager to discuss that which many would like to forget, in this era of "change," about the Bush administration's work in eroding Americans' civil liberties and the global goodwill that was engendered following the 9/11 attacks. Soth reminds us that American history hardly ends with the turning of a page, and that if we remove the lens away from ourselves, we are prone to become the same (political, ideological) enemies against whom we fight.

Religion, in one manifestation or another, plays a heavy, thematic role in Last Days. This focus is no surprise, because as Bush once noted, rather infamously, that God wanted him to run for the presidency. Elsewhere, but at the same time, the conservative right, along with the Republican Party, took up the mantle of righteousness, and positioned itself to represent proper American values, in an effort to counter the immorality of the "(g)odless," to quote Coulter, and the liberal left. Soth plays up this dichotomy of good versus evil, of light against dark, rather beautifully, in ways which escape the heavy-handedness of lesser artists--especially in photographs such as "First Baptist Church, Bemidji, Minnesota." This photograph features a rec room--with a ping-pong table devoid of players--on whose walls we see a mural depicting Jesus, over rough seas, saving a man from certain death; in the background, there are eleven men in a boat (is the man being saved Judas himself, and are we to see ourselves in this man?) extending their hands, supplicating for divine mercy. There is a touch of humor in this image, as the mural itself is clearly the work of an undeveloped artist, and because it hangs over an area meant to relax the nerves of even the most faithful of followers. God, it seems, for the powerful and the meek alike, is everywhere, and pursues you relentlessly.

The photograph that best crystallizes Soth's ideas, and which speaks so eloquently to the false starts and failed promises of the Bush presidency, is "Ron, San Antonio, Texas," (above) in which the titular subject, in the wide expanse of an open field, looks forlornly at a toy rocket--a flame adorning its side--and whose face expresses the sort of frustration shared by many Americans when confronted by so much (masculine/military) hubris. Thousands of miles away, in "West Point, New York," the viewer is presented with fresh-faced cadets in their fresh, crisp uniforms, milling about the grounds of the Army's fabled military academy, a grey building sitting rather ominously in the background. One can only wonder if these young people, who stand to represent their nation's core, if not twisted, values, will survive to see the passing of another generation. A pervasive sense of sadness saturates this image, despite the bright, clear sun, despite the optimism of youth and hope inherent in its subjects.

For this exhibition, Soth decided to self-publish the photographs in a forty-five page artist book that was printed on newsprint, a material so prone to the effects of time and the environment. It is possible that the decision, seemingly self-conscious, to release Last Days on newsprint is political in its own way, given that the medium is falling out of favor thanks to the rapid changes in technology; the suggestion here is that, much like those who fought against Bush, Cheney, et al., there is very little that can be done when one is set against absolute power, either natural or man-made. (I, for one, am not so cynical.)

If there is one criticism that I have of the show, it is that Soth is speaking to an audience that, in all likelihood, already understands and believes in his message; in this respect, the images lose some of their shock and awe, their gravitas removed at the expense of what ends up as a civics lesson. Having said that, I found myself taking deep breaths at a number of the images in this show, some of which stand as Soth's best work.

You can see The Last Days of W. here.

For more information:
Soth at Magnum, the photo agency;
Soth at Gagosian Gallery;
Soth at his website

[D | R]

Fuck You Poem

fuck you to porn and poem industries. fuck you to NATIONAL blah blah blah MONTHS. 

Fuck you DENTISTS.

FUCK YOU TO THE EX-CONVICT WHO SWERVED INTO MY CAR AND GOT US BOTH STUCK IN THE INTERSECTION. fuck him and everyone like him who makes me back up so he can get by. fuck that COCK-GOBBLER IN JACKSON HEIGHTS WHEN I WAS ON MY WAY TO GET ALL-I-CAN-EAT BUFFET. fuck the waiters and weirdos who stare at single women for a living. fuck everyone who says gurgle with warm saltwater. FUCK holes. fuck them. FUCK YOUR SUPERHEROES. fuck you mom and dad. fuck you puppy and chi. fuck you hippie disneyland. I HAD A FINE OLD fragile little tooth. NOW I HAVE YOUR fake fragments in the sink mixed with my blood and spit. DAMN RIGHT I HAVE AN OVERBITE. fuck me? fuck your silver-spooned ass. I love you. You've exceeded YOUR minutes, fucking phone company. 

Single-Minded (March 2009)

Here are some songs, both old and new, that I've been listening to lately. Perfect and delicious. The format is vinyl unless otherwise indicated.

1. Dan Auerbach - "I Want Some More" - [Nonesuch]
2. Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos" - [Sub Pop]
3. Morrissey - "No One Can Hold a Candle to You" - [Attack]
4. Servotron - "Matrix of Perfection" - [Amphetamine Reptile]
5. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Yeah! New York" - [Polydor/Universal]
6. Bad Religion - "Atomic Garden" - [SFTRI]
7. Tom Gabel - "Anna Is a Stool Pigeon" (Acoustic) - [Sire/Sabot]
8. Rocket from the Crypt - "Killy Kill" - [Interscope]
9. Eddie Vedder - "No Ceiling" - [Monkey Wrench/J]*
10. Black Dice - "Cone Toaster" - [DFA]
11. Trans Am - "Cocaine Computer" - [Thrill Jockey]
12. Barrington Levy and Beenie Man - "Murderation" - [Yaga Yaga]
13. Toots and the Maytals - "54-46 Was My Number" - [Trojan]
14. Enon - "Disposable Parts" - [Touch and Go]*
15. Fucked Up - "Black Hats" - [Matador]*

*MP3/AAC

Border Crossing

A few years ago a young musician, Zach Condon, under the guise of "Beirut," released an album called Gulag Orkestar, a record that displayed a fascinatinon with sounds from Eastern Europe, and which became a favorite with the cognoscenti over at Pitchfork. I must admit that I find the recent tendency in indie-rock to absorb, if not appropriate, "world" music and repackage it for a hipster audience rather unsettling, as though the music somehow needs to be reworked, reformulated (read: watered down and bastardized). Having said that, there is no denying that Condon's songwriting talents are genuine and immense, and there is no doubting his sincerity; his music, and our troubled ears, would suffer otherwise. As Beirut, in releases like Lon Gisland and The Flying Cub Cup, Condon has taken the best of disparate, wide-ranging rhythms and taken them on as his own. In this way, Condon uses a very post-modern approach to music; he is not, as some might suggest, a cultural thief who is only interested in the new and "exotic."

Beirut's newest release, March of the Zapotec/Realpeople: Holland, finds the ever-precocious Condon, a young man still in his early twenties, looking southward, to the Mexican state of Oaxaca, from which he drew inspiration for the record's first half (more on Realpeople: Holland, later). Working with a local, nineteen-piece brass band called the Jimenez Band, Condon relies upon traditional instrumentation and patterns to striking effect, resulting in songs that look to the past as much as they look to the future. On March of the Zapotec, Condon and his bandmates come through as restless recorders of the troubled and weary, and turn on a new definition of popular music, but make no mistake: this is not the soundtrack of nostalgia, this is not the diary of dusty, backwater afternoons. No, there is something far more important here, if only felt and not seen.

My favorite track of the first half of the album, "The Akara," is a mid-tempo song with enough pathos to suffocate a class of wayward schoolchildren. The song opens with a few measures of a plaintive horn line, making it sound like a funeral dirge, before that instrument de rigeur, the ukele, ushers in a steady, military beat. Once Condons voice, surprisingly deep and rich, enters, one cannot but feel the melancholy reflected in the track's lyrics: so long to these to these kite strings / so long / I've been saved before, I'm saved once more. One can only wonder what Condon may have experienced, or may have imagined, during his time in Oaxaca, a historical region of Mexico that has recently seen its share of political violence.

The second half of the album, credited to Condon's earlier musical incarnation, Realpeople, is electronic music that leans toward bouncy, glitchy beats, as in "My Night With the Prostitute from Marseilles." While electronic music--no matter how pop its sensibilities--can feel cold and removed from anything resembling emotion, songs like "Venice" do much to infuse Realpeople: Holland with a warmth missing so much from its contemporaries.

Beirut, the band, on the Internet:
Official homepage
Myspace

[D | R]