Posts from the “Books” Category

Salut ! NYC, 1981 Nominated for Webby Award

Posted on April 8, 2015

SAMO IS DEAD, New York, NY, 1981. Photograph by Robert Herman

We are thrilled to announce that NYC, 1981 has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category of Website: Blog – Cultural, alongside the likes of Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NYC, 1981 is a culture website inspired by the film “A Most Violent Year,” and a TWBE x A24 production. For the site, I had the great privilege of interviewing Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Barry Blinderman, Joyce Chasan, Joe Conzo, Jane Dickson, Ricky Flores, Arlene Gottfried, Robert Herman, Douglas Kirkland, Joe Lewis, Christopher Makos, Toby Old, Clayton Patterson, and Jamel Shabazz. You can check out these interviews and more at NYC, 1981

We would like to encourage you to vote, and to spread the word, so that this great, independent site dedicated to New York City culture, politics, and art in 1981 will receive the recognition it deserves.

Vote HERE.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Fashion, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography

Patrick Frey: Absolutely Modern

Posted on October 21, 2014

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

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Nick Knight: Flora

Posted on July 2, 2014

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

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Bonz Malone: Flo-Master

Posted on June 16, 2014

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.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Richard Verdi: New York Punk

Posted on May 2, 2014

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

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Posted on March 6, 2014

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

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Books, Photography

Rania Matar: A Girl and Her Room

Posted on February 11, 2014

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.

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Categories: Art, Books, Photography, Women

World Press Photo Laureates from Russia and the Soviet Union 1955–2013

Posted on January 21, 2014

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.

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Peter Beste: Houston Rap

Posted on November 1, 2013

Peter Beste. Klondike Kat
South Park, 2004

Peter Beste. Resident of Villa America
South Park, 2005

Peter Beste. “Tiger Wood of the Hood” passerby
Fourth Ward, 2005

Peter Beste. OG Wickett Crickett
Club Konnections, 2005

Peter Beste. K-Rino at MacGregor Park, 2006

I been fanning Peter Beste since when ? I can’t even remember how we met, but I remember the day we sat at a cafe on Prince Street, me paging through his luscious prints. Page after page after page of madness. I was home as my fingers swept across the protective plastic and my eyes bulged out my head and my heart did a little dance, as each turn of the page took me somewhere else.

And so it has come, as the inevitable does, Houston Rap is now a book from Sinecure and an exhibition at Boo Hooray Gallery, New York, opening November 7. I like it like this. Peter graciously agreed to an interview, and to let me share of his work. These are a few of my favorite things. Enjoy ~

From Norwegian Black Metal to Houston Rap, you are bringing North & South together again. I am struck by your taste in scenes. Tell me about what brought you down to Texas, to document the Hip Hop community ? When did you begin ? How did you get down ? How did the project develop into a book over the years you worked on it?

Peter Beste: Since I was a young kid in the early 90s, I have been strongly intrigued by Houston’s rap underworld. My interest began in 1991 with the vivid and visceral rhymes of the Geto Boys and Gangsta N-I-P. Many years later while studying photography in college, I realized that documenting both the history of Houston rap and the neighborhoods that spawned these characters would make a perfect documentary photography project.

A few years later in 2004, I reached out to K-Rino, Street Military and others, and told them about my idea. Some of these guys were a bit hesitant a first. Obviously a white guy in the hood with a camera raises many eyebrows. It took a little time to get past their skepticism and for me to gain their trust. I did this by publishing some photos here and there in international magazines and by getting to know many of these guys on a personal level over time, which eventually convinced most of them that my motives were pure. In 2005 I brought writer Lance Scott Walker into the project to conduct interviews so the book would have more information and context.

The Willie D quote is killing me: “People ain’t been educated on fightin’ back unless it’s some street shit, like fighting your neighbors or beating up… fighting your family members, killing your best friend. And nobody like… fightin’ the government, the city. “What you mean, fight the city? You mean like… Houston against me?” What was it like meeting Bun B, Lil’ Troy, K-Rino, Paul Wall, (he died before I started this), Pimp C, Street Military, and Big Hawk ? What kind of perspective do they bring to the rap game ?

What differentiates these guys from the average American rapper, and what makes me respect them is their underdog status and drive to succeed on their own terms. For decades, it was extremely hard to make it in the rap game if you weren’t from New York or LA. Because of this lack of support from the mainstream, Houston rappers developed their own sound, became their own CEOs, and in the process they cut out the major label middlemen, built their own business model, and made a lot of money.

You got some ill shots, everything from the New Black Panther Party, the strip clubs, the cats hanging on the street, the dudes in the car sippinn syrup, all the grimy glamour captured on film in luscious color… What did you find most exciting about Houston as a photographer ? What qualities of the people you met were you most attracted to ?

One thing that really drew me to this project that went beyond the rappers themselves was the opportunity to document many of the changing neighborhoods. Houston has very few zoning laws, so huge portions of the city are torn down and rebuilt on a regular basis, especially the “economically challenged” areas. As a photographer and someone who is extremely skeptical about the motivations behind gentrification, I was drawn into the unique personality of the neighborhoods of South Park, Third, Fourth and Fifth Wards, their colorful hand painted store signs, their lack of chain corporate stores and general independence from the “white man’s world.”

One example of this is Fourth Ward, which was a beautiful historic neighborhood in the shadow of downtown that was filled with pre-WWII row houses, mom & pop shops, and BBQ joints where families had lived for generations. In the years since we started this project, it has been renamed “Midtown” and is now filled with high-rise condos, trendy restaurants, and a whole new set of residents. One of our goals with this book was to document these historical sites, many of which have since been demolished with few objections and little fanfare by the city at large.

I love that this is a photo book. It’s got so much energy. What’s been the best part of this project ? What has surprised you the most ? What would you like to see this book do ? Where can people pick it up ?

One of the most rewarding parts of this project for me was to gain access to this talented and dynamic group of self-made individuals that I otherwise would never have connected with. This experience has given me some dear friends who I wouldn’t have met otherwise, and has made me grow as an individual in the process.

As you can see from the book, we didn’t dwell too much on the typical topics that the mainstream press endlessly promotes, like over-the-top materialism, the glorification of drug dealing and prison life, and the objectification of women. While these elements are part of the music and the book to a degree, we wanted to present a bigger picture to try to empower people and educate them through the words of people like K-Rino, Willie D, Brother Robert Muhammad, Justice Allah, Wickett Crickett, and others.

One of the most important topics covered by these community leaders was how “the powers that be” have deliberately targeted and taken advantage of most of these communities by creating an unfair playing field by filling their neighborhoods with with unhealthy food, liquor stores on every other corner, poor education, government drug dealing, dirty vaccines, and overall lousy city services. These controversial topics are discussed directly by those interviewed rather than the authors in an effort to enlighten folks and hopefully keep them out of the vicious cycles of addiction, poverty and the prison-industrial complex. That is my number one goal with this book.

Houston Rap will be available in quality books stores on November 25, and a pre-order is now available at sincecurebooks.com for the special edition which comes with a Fat Pat/DJ Screw 7″ record, a double DJ Screw 12″ (first time on vinyl) and several other goodies. This version will not be available in stores.

Peter Beste

Categories: Art, Books, Music, Photography

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion

Posted on June 5, 2013

Music, art, fashion, style. For a glorious moment these things all combined in an ethos of Do It Yourself. In New York City during the 1970s and 80s, the culture of Hip Hop first began to assert itself as DJs, MCs, b-boys and b-girls, created a way of rocking unlike anything the world had seen before. At the same time, graffiti had taken hold, a kind of public art so powerful and profound it became the most epic form of writing on the wall. But as the police began to crack down, buffing the trains and issuing more than desk appearance tickets to its practitioners, graffiti found new ways to express itself.

Airbrush was just the thing to allows for a smooth transition to a new kind of surface. Customized jackets, jeans, sweatshirts, and t-shirts, became the means to express yourself. It was the Shirt Kings who took this form to its highest heights, as Phade (Edwin Sacasa), Nike, and Kasheme (Rafael Avery) joined together to form the Shirt Kings, the first black clothing line straight from the streets. They went on to produce a style of clothing so iconic that it has become synonymous with the place and the time from which it spring, a zeitgeist in the making as no one could have ever predicted, not even the artists themselves.

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion by Edwin PHADE Sacasa and Alan KET (Dokument Press) is a vibrant photo album of their greatest hits. Phade began his graff career while a student at Art & Design, during the years when its student body included Daze, Doze Green, Lady Pink, Lil Seen, and Marc Jacobs. Outside of school, Phade was bombing the trains, living the life as it was meant to be lived.

As he recalls, “So what’s so special about the 80s? For me it was the graffiti cars swirling through New York City like canvases painted for the world to see. It was watching school comrades transform into the next generation of graffiti artists and joining the Rock Steady Crew. Getting calls to mentor and give out the wisdom I got from Kase 2 and Butch 2. Going to clubs like Harlem World on 116^th Street and Lenox Avenue, Broadway International, T-Connection in the Bronx, Disco Fever, P.A.L. 183^rd, Galaxy, Skate Fever, Skate-City in Brooklyn, Roseland USA and Empire Skating Rink in Brooklyn. Watching the Old Gold Crew from Brownsville, Brooklyn, fighting with their hand skills. Hearing the Supreme Team Show on the radio. Mr. Magic and Eddie Cheeba late night on the radio. Listening to hip hop with a hanger for an antenna to get some bootleg station.”

With an education like this, Phade’s evolution as an artist was natural. In 1984, he Sound 7 taught him how to airbrush, and once he acquired this skill, he began producing work, selling “Money Making New Yorker” t-shirts on the corner of 125 and Lenox Avenue. He went on to partner with Kasheme and Nike to form the Shirt Kings and launched their business in the Jamaica Coliseum in June 1986.

Jam Master Jay, a personal friend of Kasheme, came through to the opening with a crew of at least fifty. Back in the days, as hot as Hip Hop was, it was still of the people and it was grounded in the art form itself; it has not yet gone pop, had not yet hit the suburbs, or transformed into an international powerhouse. Back in the 80s, Hip Hop had an edge and it was a language spoken in the art, the dance, the music, and the lyrics.

As Alan Ket notes in his introduction, “The Shirt Kings style of airbrush design became a fashion statement made popular by the hottest rappers and deejays of the day. It seemed like overnight that their designs were everywhere from Just Ice’s record to the Audio Two’s popular album to the stage of the Latin Quarters where all the best emcees were performing weekly. As the Shirt Kings’ business took off their style was copied across the Northeast and they themselves expanded and covered Miami. Pretty soon they had deals with rappers and singers alike to provide the wardrobe designs for tours and music videos.”

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion takes us back to this era like nothing else ever could, the casual portraits and snapshots of the people, the art, the love of style, originality, and glamour itself. The book features portrait after portrait of some of the era’s greatest stars, along with personal quotes that remind us just how deep the Shirt Kings legacy goes. As Nas notes, “It wasn’t just rap celebrities, it was like street celebrities that had them on.” And that makes all the difference to the culture as it began to transform.

There is a joie de vivre that appears on every page, that same joy that came from Hip Hop as it made its way off the block and before the world stage. The Shirt Kings take us back to a time when Hip Hop was on the cusp, embodying the spirit of greatness itself, from one work of art to the next.

Tasja from South Side Jamaica, Queens, a proud customer wearing Dapper Dan and Shirt Kings, 1986, from ‘Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion’ by Edwin PHADE Sacasa and Alan KET

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Fashion, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Martin Guggisberg: MISS

Posted on May 30, 2013

Shiny. Glossy. Fresh. Young. Competition to see who wins. The prize? A title, a crown, finishing big in a pageant of hopefuls, teenage girls who traipse about in evening gowns, bikinis, full hair and make up, heels and the commitment to win. Photographer Martin Guggisberg captures the all the awkwardness, the surreal and the banal, the tarnished innocence and the plastic naïveté, the thrill of exhibitionism, adoring the attention, the chance to shine bright in the spotlight as they walk across the stage. It takes a certain kind of Miss to win titles like these: Miss Bikini. Miss Wildwest. Miss Asia. Miss Do-It-Yourself. Miss Handicap. Miss Italy Switzerland. Miss Polefitness. Miss Pit Stop Day.

Guggisberg’s photographs are glossy double page spreads, recalling nothing so much as the glossy pages of a men’s magazine. The difference is that here they are unposed, unaware of the camera, going about the daily business of the pageant circuit, their bodies, faces, hair an industry unto themselves. This is the business of self-exploitation, of a kind of beauty that is not very pretty but it is not without its appeal. Gone is the grace of the feminine and in its place is the crass vulgarity of mass appeal. It is a kind of appearance, a physical poise, a way of beholding oneself that makes the pageant contender a spectacle to behold.

Presence, appearance, the ability to embody a feminine ideal, one that is both virgin and whore at the same time, to be seductive and alluring but unavailable at the same time. A tease, a tempt, a twirl, nothing wrong in that it is not indecent so much as in poor taste, like the original reality show contest, only this one is live and it happens just once a year. There is a tradition of this, of judging the fresh new picks, like the old school country fairs of yesterday when the prize pig was awarded the bright blue ribbon for having the sweetest flesh. In exchange for money and honors, these young women happily, and sometimes unhappily, compete for Best in Show.

It’s easy to be a hater. The photographs aren’t flattering. They’re not rude either, they are just terribly unglamorous. Nothing kills so much as familiarity. Once the mystery is gone the allure begins to fade and on women this young that’s a sad reality. Start early before the looks begin to ebb, and what will be there for these girls but a distant past. These are the glory days. That’s what makes Guggisberg’s photographs poignant. They do not mock or exalt, but rather show us those times the mask has been lowered.

The effect is one of vulnerability, which is in distinct contrast to the large format, glossy pages that turn effortlessly. Yet stop on any image and something changes, no longer are these just quiet moments but a kinf od desperation is felt. Consider the woman whose arm is missing, the Cerrulean blue of her gown quietly falling over her shoulder, her eyes wide set with worry, concern, her lower lip bitten with a visible tension that strains through her seams. It is all or nothing and she wants it bad. What will happen? Turn the page.

Bikinis. Yellow. Red. Blue. Puple. Black and White. Shiny stilettos, silver, gold, white patent leather. Strippers without the implants or the drug habit. Aligned backstage before the parade begins. Casual calm but only just so. As one girl looks off into the distance, her eyes focused on a thought that has her concerned. Turn the page.

Now we see them from the back. The girl in purple has a Chinese tattoo running down her back. She’s also pulling at the bottom of her bathing suit, while a girl in red is content to let it ride all the way up. There are barely any faces, but those that are shown are edgy with anticipation. We’re headed up the stairs on to the stage. This is what it all comes down to, isn’t it?

We don’t know, we won’t know, who will win. It doesn’t matter to anyone, really, except the girls in the photographs. And they are without name, the photographs without caption. Because it is not who they are that drives this industry but our desire to tell stories about them to ourselves.

Categories: Art, Books, Fashion, Photography, Women