Walker Evans, “Many Are Called” (1938)
Everything changes
once we identify with being the witness to the story,
instead of the actor in it.
~Ram Dass
Categories: Art, Photography
Posts by Miss Rosen
Separation Wall at Bethleham, eight-metre-high concrete barrier, that cuts the West Bank city off from Jerusalem. An Israeli watch tower is also seen on the upper left. Israel wants to call this as Security Wall, because suicide bombings and other violent attacks have decreased since the construction of the barrier. On the other hand, it has created so many negative impacts to Palestinians, such as Loss of land, road closures, increase of difficulty in accessing medical and educational services, restricted access to water sources, etc. That is why it is also often called as Apartheid Wall.
eparation Wall at Bethleham, eight-metre-high concrete barrier, that cuts the West Bank city off from Jerusalem. An Israeli watch tower is also seen on the upper left. Israel wants to call this as Security Wall, because suicide bombings and other violent attacks have decreased since the construction of the barrier. On the other hand, it has created so many negative impacts to Palestinians, such as Loss of land, road closures, increase of difficulty in accessing medical and educational services, restricted access to water sources, etc. That is why it is also often called as Apartheid Wall.
A member of the Gaza Parkour Team exercises among the debris in Khuza’a in Khan Yunis, one of the most damaged areas by Israel Defense Forces during the summer’s 50-day war. Parkour is a dramatically growing sport in Gaza. The concept is to move freely and overcome boundaries and barriers, as most Palestinians cannot move freely out of Gaza.
When Q. Sakamaki’s photographs taken in Gaza after the 50 day war began to appear on his Instagram, a sense of reverence overcame me. What nightmares bring. The system of apartheid is unspeakable, and yet light must be shed. “The truth is on the side of the oppressed,” as Malcolm X said. Q. Sakamaki shares his work here, in images and words. I thank him for doing the work that hurts my soul.
Miss Rosen: Please talk about why you decided to go to Gaza at this time. As a photojournalist, what is the story that brought you to this devastated land?
Q. Sakamaki: First, this year marks 20th anniversary since I, at the first time, went to Gaza. And it is surely to assess and feel the aftermath of the summer’s 50-day war. Yet, The timing — I went to Gaza several weeks after the war – helps me see more freely and deeply what was happening, in the still fresh war devastated environments, through which I could view/ and or predict, about what is going on in future and what the international community should do.
Please talk about what you discovered upon arriving in Gaza? What were your expectations and how did the measure against the reality of life for the Palestinians ?
I expected the huge destruction. And it was really so. However, I was very surprised at children’s reaction or acts. Many children in Gaza have become very aggressive more than ever. They want to be paid attention, but if they don’t get, they often get violent. Or totally opposite: some get seemingly very depressed.
Can you talk the ways in which the Palestinian children express their aggression ?
If I ignore them, many children often turned their toy guns aggressively at me, sometimes firing the plastic bullets that often hurt people, if those hit on face. I’m also curious to know if you saw any distinctions between those who got aggressive, and those who got depressed (such as age of the children, the gender, etc). Boys in the middle teen are more likely to be aggressive than those in other ages and girls. Pre-teen or low teen girls are more likely to get depressed, compared to those in other ages and boys.
I was particularly struck by your photograph of “A Palestinian boy in Beach Camp” as it made me aware that this is not just photojournalism, it is history.
I am a more journalist, but in terms of photography, I am not the so-called photojournalist. Apart from that, I believe all captured moments are connected, related to the past and future, often very strongly and very importantly. By photographing such moments, I am exploring why human beings were born, why we love and/ or hate each other, and in the situations where we are heading. And, through photography, I want to share, or think together, with people to find those answers. Actually it is part of real core of Journalism.
What do you mean when you say you are a journalist but not a photojournalist ?
Photojournalist usually implies photographers who cover spot news in the style of the so-called news wire type of shooting. My style is in the visual and story base that often covers beyond/ or behind news. Also I don’t like to be defined by my photography—like photo documentary, or photojournalism, or personal or fine art. Each feature is always overlapped with others, and should be so, too. That is why I often feel I am not the so-called photojournalist. On the other hand, when I cover stories, especially for writing – most in Japanese, I try to check the details and facts of all related actors and elements as much as possible to be fair or not to have bias. In that way, I would be more journalist. Unfortunately, photography is very hard, or nearly impossible, to cover in the same way as that of writing, since by nature photographers have to face the subject in the shootable distance. In other words, I, as writer, feel more journalist, but as photographer, I feel less, or even not photojournalist.
Palestinians take Friday prayers at Al-Susi mosque in Gaza City’s Beach Camp, which was destroyed by Israeli air strikes during the summer’s 50-day war between Israel and Hamas. This was shot for @opensocietyfoundations and the last posting image. At my account @qsakamaki, I will post more Gaza images for few more days.
A Palestinian boy in Beach Camp, one of the biggest refugee camps in the Palestinian Territories.
Animal market is held at Alshjaia, one of the most destroyed areas in Gaza by the summer’s 50 day war between Israel and Hamas. An international organization involved in assessing post-conflict reconstruction says it will take 20 years for the rebuilding. However, the import of critical rebuilding materials, such as cements and other housing stuff, to Gaza remains extremely restricted, as Israel fears that the militants use them to build rockets and tunnels.
Categories: Art, Photography
Walter Pfeiffer: Cherchez la femme!, 2007
Karen Kilimnik: Photographs, 2014
.
Edition Patrick Frey was founded in 1986 in Zurich, Switzerland, as publisher/editor. The house provides young artists with a platform for a first publication, as well as engages in long-term collaborations with artists including Walter Pfeiffer, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, and Andreas Züst. Today, the house publishes 15-20 books a year (“Too many!!” as Frey says), with a staff of are two full time and three part-time collaborators.
.
Each book is wonderfully considered on its own terms, conceptualized and conceived as an objet d’art befitting its subject. Publisher Patrick Frey has graciously agreed to speak about book publishing today.
.
Miss Rosen: Please talk about the mission for Edition Patrick Frey (EPF). How do you approach visual book publishing as a medium to communicate and explore larger ideas about the culture in which we live? What themes and motifs occur in the list as examples of this vision, and in what way?
.
Patrick Frey; I guess the term mission is missing the point a little bit. It sounds almost religious, as if I had have a message as a publisher. In German, when asked your message, there is a nice answer: messages are for carrier pigeons. When I started in 1986, it was all about artist books, books with artistic content, beautiful books. First of all, books were a medium to translate an artist’s work in a very direct way. The book could be considered a condensed body of the artist’s artwork itself, autonomous, not to be modified and not to be mediated or even explained. These years left its marks on my attitude as a publisher. That is why, from the beginning, every single book of EPF looked totally different, specific. And why there were very few or no comments. It was a sort of the contrary of a branding strategy.
.
With the years, my vision or maybe perspective – because vision is another one of those suspicious-looking terms – got broader and the books more diverse. Now we publish all kind of non-fiction books, some of them even look like ordinary photo books or even coffee table books, and still – there is this unchanged urge to keep our concept of a book absolutely non-ordinary, to maintain a specific and highly artistic approach.
.
Miss Rosen: What I love most about your list is the energy each book holds, the way each title is an exploration into its own world, and in some way, each is like a visual poem that gives us a new way of perceiving the ways in which photography can be used to tell stories. I am particularly interested by the way in which photographs are used to create a narrative in book form. It is the photograph that one meditates upon after (or in lieu of) reading the word. As a publisher, what are your thoughts on how the photograph connects and imparts ideas, energies, experience? How do you think the book does something that other forms of photography (the print, the scan) can not?
.
Patrick Frey: A photograph can be a narrative by itself. But this narrative is entirely different from the narrative it takes in a book. It is non-sequential, non-directional. Looking at a single photography, one experiences more something like a narrative field, creating a multitude of associative possibilities, fragments of stories, narrative paths and crossroads. A print on the wall of an art space is a free-floating piece of art. There are some references, maybe a reference to the print next to it, to a certain body of work, to the history of photography, or to certain trends in contemporary art, but the contextual references are rather coincidental and mostly rather weak. A book is and always was by its nature a medium of storytelling and reflection. That is, if you put photographs in a book, you sort of force them into a strong contextual reference, and you expose them to a specific kind of reflection, for instance into the dialogical structure of the double page. And most of all, you force them into a totally different kind of storytelling.
.
In a book – if it’s not just a simple collection of pictures, a typical catalogue, so to speak – the narrative power of photography becomes directional. Somehow, a book tells a story always in one and the same direction: from a beginning on page one to the end on the last page. Books do not just tell stories sometimes, like a novel for instance. Books are embodiments of narrative, they are narrative blueprints, they lead you on a journey, or through a man’s life, or follow somebody’s trains of thought. Books will always be mementos of odysseys or Bibles or Madame Bovarys. That is the referential impact photography always will encounter if it is published in a book.
.
Miss Rosen: Where did your love for books begin? Do you recall some of your favorite illustrated books? What made them alluring to you in your earlier years? Do you see a connection between the influence of certain authors, art directors, or publishers on your work as a publisher today?
.
Patrick Frey: I grew up on the countryside, quite idyllic, and I think my first love in the kingdom of illustrated books was Beatrix Potter. I adored The Tale of Peter Rabbit or The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, and in my eyes everything was totally real and highly animated. I was really terrified each time I saw the Mr. McGregor, the evil gardener, coming round the greenhouse, knowing that Peter hadn’t seen him. I loved these kind of strong feelings, mostly the fear – or Angstlust, to use a German term, that were triggered entirely by the illustrations.
.
Like in Struwwelpeter, a famous German educational book, a collection of quite sadistic stories about misbehaving children that are severely punished. Like Konrad, the thumbsucker. He is warned by his mum: Stop sucking your thumb, otherwise the evil tailor will come and cut your thumb. But Konrad continues sucking his thumb. And then comes the evil tailor and cuts Konrad’s thumb off and you see the blood dripping on the floor. Over and over, I checked the thumb falling to the floor and the dripping blood. Or the history of the Suppenkaspar who is not eating his soup and gets thinner and thinner from picture to picture, until he is drawn like a matchstick man and then you just see the soup bowl sitting on the grave of most probably the first anorexic (a boy!) in literary history.
.
I don’t know if there are any connections between the book experiences of my early childhood and my preferences today. I know that I still love and that I am still looking for very powerful emotions, triggered by images, be it photographic or otherwise. It may seem a bit of a naïve concept, but it is not because it is always combined with an intensive need or even desire for qualities like complexity and referential ambiguity or extreme precision. Because it is telling me a lot about the relationship between the author and his / her object or subject of desire – for me one of the most important issues in photography at all.
.
Like for instance in Mom/Dad by Terry Richardson, published by Mörel Books, one of those books I would have died to publish myself, a highly unsentimental and hilariously funny book on the author’s parents that reports on this relationship in such extreme, brutal and tender intensity that it makes you cry.
.
Miss Rosen: As technology takes hold, we are relating to image and text in new ways. How do you think digital media informs our experience of print? How does this impact the publishing industry? What aspects of digital culture have made work in books more exciting?
.
Patrick Frey: As digital publishing has almost completely conquered the news and information market, the analogue book is shifting from an informational medium towards a more artistic medium. There is a growing consciousness for the book as a physical object, for the book as a work of craft or art, a feeling for the book as a fetish. Among artists, there is definitely a growing desire to publish a printed artist book. Our concept and our experience of printed matter will become more aesthetical. Even if you look at average hardcover books nowadays, you will already find an intensified sensitivity for aesthetic values. Many ordinary catalogues or fictional books look like artist books now. There is even a growing consciousness for the experience of reading a real printed book, for the smell, the touch, the paper, the binding. Printed books are pimped and pushed towards physical fetish-like objects with added value, collectors items. What has been already true for artist books like ours for quite a while, will become a general rule: Printed books will increasingly be bought by book collectors. Or by people who are looking for a gift.
.
On the other hand, digitalization created growing sensitivity for the waste of paper. Not only if I look at a book proposal, if I look at any printed book, the first question now is: Does this REALLY need to be printed? Because the problem is: To print a book doesn’t MEAN that much anymore, everybody can make his own totally okay looking artist book online or create an evenly nice looking 800 pages non-fiction book with Wikipedia texts in less than 15 minutes and get it printed in ten days for about 30 bucks each. Digitalization means speeding up analogue processes, digitalization means self-publishing, and both naturally is a blessing and a curse. Ten years ago, book proposals looked like book proposals, bundles of copied material, stapled or glued together by hand. Now book proposals look like state-of-the-art printed books. I call them phantom books because they look like books but they aren’t really, they are just first ideas from which the editing and publishing work starts. Editing is the key word here. One could say that digitalization caused a radical shift in perception: I think in the near future publishing a book means you have to deal much more with editing skills and coaching processes.
.
Maybe I have to correct on sentence from above: Among artists there is definitely a growing desire to publish a printed artist book with a publisher. Some of those authors are only hunting for distribution (they don’t really know that distribution in the tiny niche market for artist books is a disaster anyway!) but some others are looking for an upgrading of their editing process, for an intensive professional dialogue between author and publisher, who is not so much a distributor, rather than a curator – or even a midwife ! – in order to assist in creating and customizing this cultural high-end object named printed book.
.
Miss Rosen: There are a great many projects out there, and so many stories to be told. With the wealth of content made available today, how do you select books for publication? What kinds of stories appeal to you as a publisher? This is a big, broad sweeping question, but what do you think makes a book timeless?
.
Patrick Frey: No idea, I rarely think about publishing a “timeless“ book. Books are fashion victims like all other artifacts. Attitudes and styles come and go in waves, even content does. The best you can do, is try to be as radical and true to the cause as possible. And to be contemporary at least, or, as Rimbaud puts it, one must be absolutely modern. Which means you have to keep a sharp eye on everything that is out of fashion, fallen out of time. And then time will tell. As I said, no mission, no vision, just wide-open eyes and this everlasting love for intensity and for the eccentric. Try to learn from the authors. And what selection concerns: no method and no recipe. Even in times where the so-called “freedom of choice“ seems to become overwhelming.
.
For more information, please visit
Edition Patrick Frey
Roswitha Hecke: Irene, 2011
Patrick Frey, photograph © Daniel Ammann
Artists are here to disturb the peace.
~ James Baldwin
.
~*~
.
press PLAY
Categories: Art, Photography
E. 3 st., 1967. James Jowers
But luxury has never appealed to me,
I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.
~ Daphne du Maurier
Categories: Art, Photography
Photograph by of Maddie the Coonhound by Theron Humphrey
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.
~Epictetus
LILIACEAE
Gloriosa verschuurii
PASSIFLORACEAE
Passiflora alato-caerulea
.
Passion is a flower, a strange and exotic thing, an energy that burns deep within and underneath and through it all, the candle that lights the dark, the darkness forevermore vanquished, vanished, or at least it seems to be, for once we can see, we believe we know.
.
The photograph does this, reminds us time and again. The more passionate the photograph the more we return to it. And so it is that a specimen arrived the other day, between two long slips of hardboard were pages sewn together at the spine, and between these two large slips of board the pages turned. Long white layers upon which a flower appeared, not just any flower but dozens I had never seen until I laid my eyes upon Flora by Nick Knight (Schirmer/Mosel).
.
Flora is a garden of earthly delights, an archive of pressed flowers, each photographed like a portrait. Each plant is from the herbarium of the Natural History Museum in London, a collection which contains more than six million plants from all corners of the world. The book, first published in 1997. is being reissued on the occasion of the publisher’s 40 anniversary. And rightfully so, for Flora is a treasure trove, a magical portal, a veritable repository of soul.
.
In the book’s preface Mr. Knight observes, “I was struck by the fact that these plants didn’t look dead. Life was very apparent. I could see the movement of the wind blowing through their leaves ad petals. Sense the water flowing through their vessels and their flowers straining to turn and open into the suns’ rays. But these plants had one important difference—the fragility, the tragic urgency that had gone and they had taken on a new certainty of being; a statement like boldness. They have escaped their fate.
.
“There are few things that make me happier than discovering a new way of seeing the familiar. Seeing in a way I could not have imagined. It is a very liberating seeing and one that makes me feel very optimistic.”
.
Indeed, for a photographer, the act of seeing is the act itself. To be able to see anew, again and again, to take it all in, to set it down, on paper slipped between boards, to edit from a collection of hundreds until the final 46 came forth. Forty-fix flora taken at full size, collected in this bouquet unlike any other. To see is to believe is to know that we need to feed our eyes to serve the soul. We consume, effortlessly, endlessly in all that exists, but to charge one’s self with looking—that is the next level. Mr. Knight knows life, and now he knows death. The flora here are eternal, preserved forever more as we peruse the pages of Flora.
.
SCHIZAEACEAE
Lygodium palmatum
.
Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me.
If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition,
in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.
.
.
Sometimes I come to hate people because they can’t see where I am.
I’ve gone empty, completely empty and all they see is the visual form:
my arms and legs, my face, my height and posture, the sounds that come from my throat.
But I’m fucking empty. The person I was just one year ago no longer exists,
drifts spinning slowly into the ether somewhere way back there.
.
.
I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds in the sky.
I’m looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open.
I still don’t know where I’m going; I decided I’m not crazy or alien.
It’s just that I’m more like one of those kids they find in remote jungles or forests.
A wolf child. And they’ve dragged me into this fucking schizo-culture,
snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles.
.
.
Darkness has completely descended onto the landscape and I stood up
and stretched my arms above my head and I wondered what it would be like
if it were a perfect world. Only god knows. And he is dead.
.
.
Bottom line, each and every gesture carries a reverberation that is meaningful in its diversity; bottom line, we have to find our own forms of gesture and communication. You can never depend on the mass media to reflect us or our needs or our states of mind; bottom line, with enough gestures we can deafen the satellites and lift the curtains surrounding the control room.
.
Photographs by Guzman
Quotes by David Wojnarowicz
I ain’t got no home, ain’t got no shoes
Ain’t got no money, ain’t got no class
Ain’t got no skirts, ain’t got no sweater
Ain’t got no perfume, ain’t got no bed
Ain’t got no mind
Ain’t got no mother, ain’t got no culture
Ain’t got no friends, ain’t got no schooling
Ain’t got no love, ain’t got no name
Ain’t got no ticket, ain’t got no token
Ain’t got no God
And what have I got?
Why am I alive anyway?
Yeah, what have I got
Nobody can take away?
Got my hair, got my head
Got my brains, got my ears
Got my eyes, got my nose
Got my mouth, I got my smile
I got my tongue, got my chin
Got my neck, got my boobs
Got my heart, got my soul
Got my back, I got my sex
I got my arms, got my hands
Got my fingers, got my legs
Got my feet, got my toes
Got my liver, got my blood
I’ve got life, I’ve got my freedom
I’ve got the life
.
I’ve got the life
And I’m gonna keep it
I’ve got the life
And nobody’s gonna take it away
I’ve got the life
.
~*~
.
I first met Bonz Malone at Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street. I sat at a table in the back, which afforded the best view of the place, both the ground floor and the mezzanine. When Bonz arrived it was as though, and he sat down beside me and composed perfect sentences out of thin air, and made me conscious of the elegance that comes with precision. He also made taking notes utterly delightful. He never spoke so fast as to out run my pen, and more often than not, I could sit quietly, reposed with pen in hand and pd in palm and listen, really listen, as the words fell from his tongue and his lips and splashed on the page.
.
And so it was, the inevitable needs no plan, as I put fingertip to keyboard to send this note, and it took form in words because it be like that. Words, these words, they never stop, they are but are like limitless flows from the fountain of thought. And so it is that I asked questions and Bonz Malone replied, much to my delight.
.
Miss Rosen: I have quietly admired your way with words for so long I can’t even remember, but I feel like Ricky Powell is the dude who put me on. He has a photo of you that has a certain je ne sais quoi, and when I first heard your name, I thought to myself, “I better go find out.” And so I did, and thus, my admiration grew. I wonder if you might speak about when you first realized you had a way with words, both in the spoken and written worlds, and how that became a source of power, pride, and .. pleasure ..
.
BONZ MALONE: Growing up in New York City, you unconsciously pick up a unique swagger that can only be appreciated by someone else who has it or someone who wants to copy it. At home, my mother (An English major from Cambridge) trained me in the King’s English. Whenever I made a mistake in pronunciation or I misused a word, I was quickly corrected and had to look it up. She never told me what anything meant. But in the streets, I paid attention to the way others expressed themselves and it was very different. It was relaxed, abrupt, more general and less deliberate than a scholar of Oxford or Cambridge would ever care for. So I knew not to give anybody grammatical lessons or I’d be picking up teeth. I did notice that there were a selected few “Street Guys” who were very charismatic and had the knack for making people either laugh at everything they said or they made people piss on themselves with their life-threatening statements. Either way, I was diggin’ the way these guys communicated and quietly studied their poetic parlance. I thought that it would help me get “connected” and make me seem more cool and it did, but it took many years. It wasn’t until I began writing graffiti that I started to understand the power that words really had. As a Christian, I had been taught to tell the truth and I believed that nothing was more liberating or more powerful than walking the path of the righteous man. As a criminal, however, nothing was more important in the streets as loyalty, courage and honor. These are part of a code and when they become intrinsic, you become real, which is the street equivalent to True. When I realized that I could both “Keep it real and be True to the game” that’s when I started writing what I thought, but in the way that others spoke. So then I became influential to both by unifying these principles.
.
I’ve been enjoying your posts on FB for the distinctive mix of brilliance and audacity. Please talk about how the word is a vehicle for awakening the mind, heart, and spirit?
.
During the 80’s and 90’s, I saw the spotlight shift from hip-hop the culture to rap, its selfish, yet talented sibling. The glamour of guns and violence was fueled by drug sales and record labels were their laundry mats. At night I was on the streets or in the train yards lookin for the “White Whale”, but during business hours, I was either Script Consultant for the movie “Juice” at Island Records/Island Films or at The Source, introducing the Notorious B.I.G. as “The King of New York.” That piece is significant because I created that title as the name of the cover story on him. No one called him that until I wrote that article, in fact, the title (which is coveted by rappers that aren’t even from NYC to this day) didn’t even exist! If I could do that and even now, 90% of his fans don’t even know it, then I most certainly know that writing can do all three of those things you’ve described. If Jehovah God (Yahweh) himself uses written communication to enlighten us and instruct us on how to benefit ourselves, there can’t be a better example of its power. After Biggie’s demise I began taking on social issues. I figured, I had already given hip-hop an alphabet being “The Father of Phonetic Spelling” just to get people who were illiterate in my neighborhood to read; now I was gonna drug the public with phat pieces of sweet gum, which was basically, MC’ing on a white sheet of paper to my own rhythm and makin’ niggaz dance to the “other beat”. The only difference this time was that I was committed to making them aware of their power through social change and not about glorifying rappers.
.
I am curious about the way in which people respond to your work. Like, for example, this interview is my form of response #moremoremore .. I trust there have been many deeply felt personal moments of on all emotional fronts, be it joy, sadness, anger, and surprise among others. Why do you think words have the power to evoke such powerful responses from those who read them? What does it feel like to receive such strong feedback to your work and how does this feed your creative process?
.
BONZ MALONE: I’ve had every kind of response I can think of. Just the other day I was in Dunkin’ Doughnut at 1am and a guy walked in recognized me and told me about an article I wrote years ago at Vibe in which I interviewed a Shi Yang Ming, a Shaolin Warrior Monk about the use of the Swastika as a symbol of peace. It blew his mind completely. He had never known that it was a peace sign and that Hitler reversed the image, thus making it a negative the way the Yin/Yan symbol demonstrates the two. We talked for hours. It was very humbling as it has always been such to see and hear the deep emotion that a reader expresses after being affected by your work, especially if it’s positive. I’ve learned, however, not to interfere with their interpretation. If it is something that leaves a positive outlook, then it’s all good. It’s important to say things that after years of understanding, we now have the courage to say. Never would I want to let my society tell me what to buy, what to do, what to think. You have to embrace power in order to use it and many are still afraid of theirs. The pen is only mightier than the sword when it’s in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Being a dope writer is only sexy to an intellectual. Being a great student of life and a better thinker and connector of principles to applicable situations is by far, more needed, yet both will inevitably make your words necessary should you have the courage to write with authority. It’s not the letters or the reactions from an audience or even the prestigious awards that can be won that you need to give you validation because most great writers don’t have those things, but all great writers know that their work is dope before it has even been proof read or they’ve clicked the spelling and grammar keys on their computer, if you have a computer. What if you don’t have a computer? Auto-Correct doesn’t make you an intelligent writer. Reading and meditating on the rhythm that the writer writes to and understanding it, even if you don’t agree with the reasoning, is making you better. Facebook has made me a better forecaster of trends and more knowledgeable about when to put the word out and to what degree of audacity. Twitter edits my thoughts, which sharpens my words into concise and powerful blasts, so when people come up to me and talk about my past work or my page or a cop recognizes me in a restaurant and asks me for my autograph, I feel the same way I did every time I walked into a subway car looking for my tag and saw my name up there and I remember who showed me how to speak, act and write like that. The ones who validated themselves and I just want the blessing to be able to do it forever.
.
I remember you said something to the effect that you would rather wait ten years to produce work that would last 100 years, rather than to satiate yourself with instant gratification. Where does that patience and discipline come from?
.
BONZ MALONE: 50% is conceit and the other 50% is procrastination. Writing is performing brain surgery on yourself! It is a reclusive form of art that’s lonely and that can lead to alcoholism and depression. Many writers hate writing. What they love is haven written something of worth and of interest. Edison failed for years before he stole God’s idea. Einstein meditated for ten years before he wrote the theory of relativity. That is truly amazing when you consider that although, he possessed considerable wisdom, he was smart enough to take the time needed to look at things from every possible aspect. If you are committed and honest and have the patience to perfect something, it could mean the difference in people’s lives! I believe that because I’ve seen proof of it in my own work. The things that I’ve written, both privately and professionally, have neither been outdated or undone. As a graffiti writer, I used Flo-Master because it had a dark, shiny pigmentation that made my name look good when I wrote over other niggaz. Plus, it was permanent and that is the whole point of doin’ dope shit when you’re alive is to leave a permanent mark on people’s minds and on history itself. As an Actor, Writer and Producer, I get paid every time my work appears in almost any form for the rest of my life. Even after I die, my name will still be making money, so I better earn that shit.
.
RADIKAL magazine *2002 Rock Steady Crew feature. — with R.I.P Frosty Freeze, Capital Q Unique, David Nelson, FeverOne Rock Steady, POPMASTER FABEL, Julio Cesar Umaña Rodriguez, Mitchell Graham, Bonz Malone, Rock Steady Crew, Brina AlienNess Martinez, Cookie Wear and Marc Lemberger. Photo courtesy Jorge “Fabel” Pabon.
I used to write poetry when I was young. Mostly to girls that wanted nothing to do with a introverted and timid me, hence the name SLUTLUST. I loved E.E. Cummings poetry when I was younger, The way he did whatever he wanted to do with a sentence and how it wasn’t the typical romantic I-love-you-you-love-me crap, you really didn’t get a sense of what he was trying to express unless you read it with a decoder or a kaleidoscope. So I would write my poems like that – they were as safe as they were intense and if the girl got it then I would pronounce it true love. Of course that never happened.
I grew up in a poor and emotionally/physically violent household. I didn’t identify with the machismo Dominicans are known for instead I identified with the suburban family’s on prime time sitcoms making growing up very awkward for me. I felt I was better than the constant bickering my family embraced as an everyday norm while my family viewed me as a coward for not. The older I got the further I’d tried to get away from them. At the height of my dark period I hid from my family for a year when I lived only a block away.
Many people don’t know this about me but the first time I tried cocaine I was about 26 years old with a 2 year old Sun and a woman that wanted nothing to do with me. I was so desperate to try to maintain a family built solely on responsibility and not love that I brought my 1st 50 bag and gave it to her as a gift – in hopes that we would have a good time and our “family” would have a fighting chance. She left, the addiction stayed. They say keys open doors, and when I started dealing coke opened up every door you can imagine in downtown New York and Williamsburg Brooklyn. Those photos you selected aren’t photos of people doing drugs and partying – they are photos of a underground NY scene from the last 4 years mixed with blue blood WASPs from the Hampton & poor Midwestern hipsters mixed with New York City natives doing MY drugs.
I loved pop art because of the colors and it reminded me of the comic books I would to hide from my family in. I loved Basquiat because he drew with whatever medium his personal history allotted. I love 35mm film because it can’t be corrupted or easily altered like digital. When I came across Reza (TheArabParrot.com) I became a huge fan, in part because we ran in the same circles and punished ourselves with the same substances while couch surfing with any pretty little rich girl that would let us inside. He didn’t write much though, he would just let his pictures tell the story – mostly shots of him hanging around LA/ NY/ Miami with his friends wasted in bed with flashy and artsy randoms. During that time I was a heavy and well known dealer – without the incriminating evidence.
One day while I was doing a “delivery” during the Memorial Day weekend in 2010 and I was hit by a hit & run in Brooklyn. According to the people that witnessed it I should have been dead considering I flew over 4 lanes of traffic.Instead I walked away without a scratch, only a minor limp as I turned down medical and police help due to my illegal cargo. I completed my runs and went home where I fell in a deep survivors guilt type of depression. The only thought was out of all the great people that suffer these tragic misfortunes why was I allowed to walk away from mine? I was nobody but a bottom feeder parading around like a sad clown from dive bar to nightclub abusing small talk to survive. I wasn’t a good son to my mother a good brother to my sibling nor a good father to my son.
Then I thought about my Sun and what he would know of his father. At the time he had just turned 8 years old and was a pretty smart kid. I was pretty sure all he would know of me is whatever poison my estranged and very bitter baby mother knew of me. So I said fuck it, the future is now and these kids grow up with smartphones and web access. The next day I brought a cheap Polaroid film camera from a 99 cent store. I wasn’t even sure the camera worked. I got a bunch of film and started talking photos of everything I saw and documenting them in a blog I started to write just for him. I used all I learned poetry wise and just stretched it into a autobiographical depiction of my every day life complete with crappy film photos. Thorns and all I didn’t hide anything. the one thing I wish I had from my father (who I wasn’t raised with and barely know and don’t have the desire to) was the truth, and idea of how he lived. I felt that was the greatest gift I could give to my Sun.
After a couple of posts somehow through Twitter my friends found it, loved it, then Mike (MINT) got a hold of it and the rest is history. The mother of my child always said that I was worth more to my sun dead. Now I do art to prove her right.
