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
Posts from the “Art” Category
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.
.
Back in the 1970s when New York teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, a new world was being born, a world of Do It Yourself (cause if it ain’t you, it might never be). It was during this time that Richard Verdi went out every night going with his friends to catch live music shows at CBGB’s. Verdi has just released his book, New York Punk, self-published, because that’s what D.I.Y. means. New York Punk is a charming number, like the paperback photography books of the 70s, the collections of printed matter done in small editions and halftone printing. Paper and ink, bound in hand, pages turning one after another, a story of how we lived then.
.
Verdi’s photographs are from a time before video killed the radio star, from a time before any of these artists were on the radio, when they were still at the clubs doing shows for the crowds. Style is everything, and it is here in high contrast black and white. It is where it all began, an aesthetic of destruction distinctly American. New Yorker to be exact. This is downtown when it was underground and more people were none the wiser to what would come next.
.
Read the Full Story at
L’Oeil de la Photographie
Black Panther Party headquarters, Harlem.
Angela Davis and Bo Holmström © Göran Hugo Olsson
It began as a series of interviews, of films made, of speeches taped, of conversations, ideas, people. It began when Swedes began sending journalists out into the world, and those that came to the United States were attracted to the civil rights and black power movements of the 60s and the 70s. They had access, and they had nerve, and they never shied away from asking uncomfortable questions, because they could. And what became of these moments caught on film forty, fifty years ago, was first a documentary film, and now a paperback book titled, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 by Göran Hugo Olsson (Haymarket Books).
.
The book and film feature vintage footage made available for commentary by contemporary artists and intellectuals invoking nothing so beautiful as a tapestry, a fabric that weaves together the past and the present, the ancestors, the heirs, and our shared inheritance. For what this era begat was nothing short of fearless, of an unstoppable force in the face of one of the most treacherous regimes known to humanity.
.
Attica Prison, Attica, New York, 1972.
The book is an expansion of the film, charting the course of the Black Power movement as a natural outgrowth of Civil Rights, charting the course of both movements that spoke truth to power. It was the American Revolution, this time from within, a period of resistance and rebellion sparked by the eternal flame of freedom and self determination, the very things that the United States had been founded upon, but denied the people it kidnapped and enslaved from the continent of Africa.
.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 takes us back to a time and a place where standing against the system was to stand in one’s integrity. It was to refuse to surrender, to submit, to be complicit in the exploitation of the status quo to line the pockets of the rich. It was a statement against the propaganda that projected the crimes of the oppressor onto the oppressed, and tells the truth about a time when the Truth refused to be silenced.
.
Beautifully illustrated with photographs taken during the filming of the video reels, the book includes transcripts from historical speeches and interviews with Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey P. Newton, Emile de Antonio, and Angela Davis. Offering a contemporary counterpoint to the vintage footage is commentary by Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, Harry Belafonte, Kathleen Cleaver, D.G. Kelley, Abiodun Oyewole, Sonia Sanchez, John Forte, and Questlove.
.
Stokely Carmichael with his mother, Mabel Carmichael, at her home in the Bronx, 1967.
The photographs are as raw and vital as the words themselves. With on pretense to being fine art, they do what photojournalism does best: give us a face for the disembodied voice that thunders across the page, the words we read with our eyes while they echo in our ears. We see the people whose words and ideas changed the course of the political landscape, forever burning bright in the sky, stars all one and the same. Whether it is a snapshot of a kid challenging the police in Brooklyn in 1968, taken from the vantage point of standing behind the cop’s right shoulder or a shot of King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, Dr. King, Harry Belanfonte, Coretta Scott King, and Gunnar Myrdal on the occasion of the awarding of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, we begin to see how it is, from the streets, staring down the opposition, a people rise.
.
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 deftly charts the course of the movement, its highs and lows, and ultimate demise at the hands of the U.S. government. But the book does not leave us bereft, for it ends on a note of faith, hope, and love, honoring those who came before and the legacy they built, the freedoms they won, that which we have all inherited and are charged to uphold.
.
First published at L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 6, 2014
.
Harlem 1974 © Göran Hugo Olsson
Harlem 1973 © Göran Hugo Olsson
Harlem 1967 © Göran Hugo Olsson
.
Who we are is how we are. How we live, love, hate, fear. How we are when we are alone, by ourselves, in our own room. In our space, in a place that we can truly call our own, when no one is watching and we are finally free, at peace, as one. Who we are is always in a state of flux, a state of evolution towards a truer or falser self, a being that we both expose and protect, that we exist as and exist with, throughout our lives. And perhaps one of our earliest declarations of self is how we live when we grow up, in our parents’ home, defining ourselves.
.
Photographer Rania Matar has just released A Girl and Her Room (Umbrage Editions), a collection of portraits of teenage girls from the United States and Lebanon photographed in their rooms and the affect is stunning in its simplicity. The girls share more in common with each other than not, even though the externals—wealth, religion, culture, fashion, and culture of femininity differ remarkably. Perhaps this is because external differences can only go so deep and once they are identified, we need to look beneath. Into the eyes of each girl to feel her energy, her pride and prejudice, her power and strength, her fear and discomfort, her love and grandeur, her sense of self as she understands it.
.
Matar has done the remarkable in creating continuity so that at first glance the very obvious differences between lives disappears. The unpainted, unplastered walls of a girl’s room in a Palestinian refugee camp melt away as we look at how Miriam, who lives there, has inhabited her space. She carefully hangs a few things, photographs, a prayer rug, a scarf and purse, from the window gate above her bed, in as much as a thin mattress on the floor serves as her nest. She sits on the mattress with eyes that tell of an awareness of self and of life beyond the walls of her room. We cannot begin to imagine what she has seen and known in her short time on earth but we feel from this image that she holds together, centered deep inside herself.
.
Opposite this image, something far more American, a girl named Sidonie lies across her bed with her head flipped over the edge, her hair tumbling down to the ground. Her bed is luxurious comfort compared to Miriam’s thin mattress, and her room is decorated with care. She hangs ten purses around her bed, along with the names of her favorite brands cut out from advertisements and hung to the walls. The contrast is remarkable in as much as we see how much some have and how little we need, and how comfort goes far beyond the physical world into a state of being. Sidonie, hanging her head so that we cannot see her face, is hiding from Matar, from this project, from herself.
.
Throughout the book the images contrast and complement until one is constantly checking the captions to see where each girl is from. The distinctions of décor and dress somehow fade away at first glance as the body language, gesture and expression of each girl becomes the thing that becomes most telling. And that’s the thing that is most remarkable. The less a girl has the more powerful her image feels. She has but herself and she knows this well. She does not rely on things to define who she is. On the other side are girls who appear to have it all but one look in their eyes shows they are no happier for it. Chances are likely they didn’t work for most of it; that which they own is given by others until it becomes something of a prison. A weight around each of their neck, a vision of the feminine that they try to live into by purchasing it. They paint their face and do their nails and pose underneath photographs of half naked models. They aspire to look like others, rather than themselves, so caught are they in the American Dream.
.
Return to Lebanon and we see girls with a different set of concerns yet all the same, they have more in common than they do not. They have the same issues facing their lives, their final years at home before they venture out into the world. On whose terms, it cannot be known, but as we look at Matar’s portraits we understand that each has her own destiny to uphold.
.
Vladimir Vyatkin: The Bodyguard, 1980.
Alexander Lyskin: The Walrus, 1973.
.
We know a culture by the way it shares of itself, the stories that it tells and exalts to the national stage. These stories are the place where the curtain lifts up and we are held witness to something that could only happen in that exact time and place. We call it “news” until it becomes “history” and we engrave the story into the permanent record as a means to keeping and sharing our memory. This memory of something we did not personally live but becomes part of our life through the reporting of it. This memory gets handed down as a matter of fact, preserved in image and text for all the world to see.
.
World Press Photo Laureates from Russia and the Soviet Union 1955–2013 (Schilt) features 450 unique works by 118 photographers, along with original texts that contextualize the images. When taken together as a look at six decades in Soviet and Russian life, we are struck by the stark intensity of this world, of images like “The Walrus” by Alexander Lyskin from 1973. As Lyskin remembers, “People who do winter swimming in Russia are traditionally called ‘walruses’, which can survive really low temperatures underwater…. I was very cold like everyone else when I finally saw my hero. Big, strong body, dynamic stride, heroic physique, not young—every detail of his appearance contrasted with the passive, grey, stiff audience watching him, and the falling flakes of wet snow made the scene even more expressive.”
.
Lyskin’s vision of the alpha male is one who trounces the elements, and inspires men, women and children alike. He is the kind of figure we enjoy for his discipline and commitment, who reminds us that it is not Man Vs. Nature but rather the two complementing each other. We see this theme arise in many forms, including the subversive scene called “Invasion” taken by Lev Porter in 1966. Here a flock of sheep have flooded the city streets in North Caucasus, and have effectively shut down transportation. In retrospect we can see this as a point in time where old and new worlds appear to collide. But the scene is gentle, friendly, and charming in its absurdity. Once again Man and Nature align themselves as a reminder that there is no hurry. Nowhere to be. No rush this day. It’s a lovely reminder of a time and a place that makes us ask ourselves: Can it be that it was all so simple then?
.
Indeed, in a country as powerful as this, a lighthearted scenario helps to balance the heaviness. Vladimir Vyatkin’s photograph of “The Bogyguard” taken in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1980 shows a man whose eyes are wildly alive, as he holds the neck of a rifle slung over his shoulder. The bodyguard resembles no one so much as Tony Montana standing guard over participants in a political press conference. The tension in this image is so palpable, one can almost imagine the bodyguard yelling, “Say hello to my little friend” before opening fire on the audience.
.
Part of the tension within the image reflect the tension surrounding the war itself. Vyatkin recalls, “It was a time when it was forbidden not only to photograph our troops or actual hostilities; one could not even talk about it…. Back in Moscow, I was asked to show my photographs at factories and culture clubs, during my talks about Afghanistan. However, I was forbidden to say one word, ‘war.’ What I showed and spoke about were supposedly peaceful events. It was only two years later, when the war became a subject in the official press and on television, that I decided to send those photographs to World Press Photo. In an accompanying telegram I explained that the pictures had been made much earlier, but due to censorship I wasn’t able to release them.”
.
War is an on-going theme throughout the book, as we bear witness to sixty years of armed conflict. War, in many ways, is the ultimate expression of man’s inhumanity in his brutal ascension to power. It is a world filled with true believers, people who are willing to give life and limb to a cause that they need to believe is bigger than them. This is why images, such as the portrait of veteran marine Anatoly Golimbievsky taken in 1989 by Ivan Kurtov received first prize in the Daily Life category.
.
Here we see Golimbievetsky saluted by four solider as he makes his way down the street, uniform adorned with dozens of medals, and he proudly looking up as he is wheeling himself along on a board, for beneath the jacket he has no legs. His story was one, like The Walrus, of man’s triumph against the odds. As Kurtov recalls, “In 1942, he was the only survivor in a landing party of marines led by Major Caesar Kunnikov; they landed on Malaya Zemlya beachhead on the Black Sea coast. He was wounded in the legs and arms, and they found him on the battlefield by chance as he showed little sign of life.”
.
Kurtov continues, “Doctors at a hospital in Tbilisi could not save his legs. Not only did he take this in stride, but Anatolyi excluded such a zest for life that he managed to win over and marry the hospital senior nurse, a Georgian named Mirtsa…. He lived to be eighty years old, and he worked almost until the last day of his life, a true example of courage and optimism.”
.
Indeed, when taken within the context of the stories told in this book, figures of strength, hope, and pride are necessary to balance the stark harsh reality of life in a country that has undergone massive upheavals that continue to shake the nation’s core today. The stories presented here show a nation committed to the fight for power, internal and external, as it moves stridently into the new millennium. World Press Photo Laureates from Russia and the Soviet Union 1955–2013 provides us with a history of a country that is still coming into its own, and reflects on that forces that have changed, shaped, and defined its evolution over the past sixty years.
.
Ivan Kurtov: Anatoly Golimbievsky, 1989.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
.
Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self.
~Jean-Luc Godard