Posts from the “Photography” Category

Guzman: Black Rose

Posted on June 26, 2014

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

Categories: Art, Japan, Photography, Poetry

Ain’t Got No (I Got Life)

Posted on June 19, 2014

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

~*~

Photographs by Liz Gomis
Lyrics by Nina Simone: Press PLAY

Categories: Art, Music, Photography, Poetry

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

Slutlust: A Love Letter to My Sun

Posted on June 3, 2014

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.

Art & Text by Slutlust

Categories: 1990s, Art, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography, Poetry

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.

tells-story-features-female-photographers-middle-east-4

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

Nat Finkelstein: Where the Underground Met the Underworld

Posted on October 1, 2013

Edie Sedgwick & Nat Finkelstein © Stephen Shore

A cat like Nat Finkelstein had nine lives before he died in 2009. A photographer, journalist, world traveler, animal smuggler, gun runner, drug dealer, ex-convict, revolutionary, and only God (and Nat) knows what else. Born in 1933 in Coney Island, Finkelstein studied with Alexey Brodovich at Brooklyn College before joining Pix and Black Star agencies before leaving the United States in 1969 to escape the Feds.

Possessed with blessings and curses in equal measure, Nat was drawn to the underground—and the underworld. As his memoirs recollect, “I am an anarchist and believe in the overthrow of Capitalism. I am studied and trained. I know that revolutionary victories are achieved through preparation, organization, stealth, and subterfuge, followed by violence only when victory is assured. I also believe in Lenin’s dictum that the problem with the bourgeois revolutionary is that the bourgeois revolutionary always believes that the STAGE of revolution in which they are participating is The Revolution. This accounts for my antipathy to certain insurrectionists (Hoffman, Ginsberg, et al) of the late 60s and early 70s.”

Never a follower, Nat set his own path, with New York City as his base of operations. His iconoclastic disposition landed him at Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1964 while on assignment from Black Star. With unfettered access to the creation of art, film, and Superstars, his documentation of the earliest years of the Factory reveal a scene that has influenced New York’s downtown identity ever since. The glamour of Hollywood with the grittiness of New York conspired to create Pop Art as a way of life.

In his superb book, Andy Warhol: The Factory Years, 1964-1967, Nat recalled, “Andy Warhol’s greatest work of art was Andy Warhol. Other artists first make their art and then celebrity comes from it. Andy reversed this. For me the Factory was a place of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, for some of the others it was: from ferment comes art.

“Andy’s strategy was organized like an air-raid though radar-protected territory. He would drop these showers of silver foil out of the plane to deflect the radar. Behind this screen of smoke and mirrors, there was Andy at work. That was the real function of the entourage. It was a way to get the attention away from Andy, while he hid behind them, doing his number. The entourage was there to distract the attention, to titillate and amuse the public, while Andy was doing his very serious work. Andy was a very hard-working artist, a working man. He hid this very carefully, creating the myth that his products just kinda appeared. I’m probably one of the very few photographers who actually has pictures of Andy with his hands on a paintbrush and the paintbrush touching the painting. He didn’t want to get paint on his hands. So like any great artist, he had an atelier. He manipulated people to do things for him. It was a very studied casual act, ‘Hey, you do it.’ While he was working, he also had others work for him… Well, what else is a Factory? It was a brilliant scam.”

Older than everyone (except Warhol), Nat was a macho from Brooklyn, the straight guy in a sea of Superstars and Pop Art, with a camera, a sharp tongue, and no time for most men. He called the Velvet Underground, “The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones.” Lou Reed’s response? “The three worst people in the world are Nat Finkelstein and two speed dealers.”

At a time when drugs became part of America’s identity, Nat knew the score, always able to access the counterculture’s inner core. In his memoirs, he recounts, “The C.I.A utilized psychomemetics in the MK-ULTRA Project, a secret experiment in mind control, AKA ‘Brain Washing,’ often on unwitting subjects, several of whom would kill themselves. Time-Life publicized and popularized LSD in a stream of articles and pretty (although bogus) pictures. And then, in 1964, the mainstream media appointed an academic mercenary, ex-West Point, ex-Harvard Professor Timothy Leary as their ‘New World’ poster child. Leary—sponsored, financed and supported by a group of old wealth American industrialists—peddled ‘The Psychedelic Experience’ from a 4,000-acre estate in Millbrook, New York. Buttressed by the intellectual cachet of Aldous Huxley, plus the financial backing of the Mellon family and the CIA, Timothy Leary founded an organization called IFIF (International Foundation for Internal Freedom) and recruited a coterie of academics with a mystical bent, who forgot that after Brave New World came 1984.”

Nat was invited to Millbrook, and the meeting with Leary was less than successful. For even a drug dealer as successful as Finkelstein was leery of the relationship between the government, the media, the figureheads that brought LSD and amphetamines into American popular culture. He eventually retreated to his home in upset New York, where journalist Al Aronowitz (who introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan in 1964) described him as, “Nat Finkelstein, Kokaine King of Woodstock.” Nat reigned supreme for a moment or two, and then, as is the case in the underworld, the cover blew.

In 1969, his lawyer called him to New York and revealed a document from the FBI that stated:

A NOTICE

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
HEREBY EMPOWER YOU TO BRING BACK THE BODY
OF
NATHAN LOUIS FINKELSTEIN
CLASSIFIED ARMED AND DANGEROUS
NONSUICIDAL

In fear for his life, Nat Finkelstein left the United States. He traveled the Silk Route in the 1970s, appearing in the most unlikely places, eventually sentenced to four years in prison in France for possession of hashish. Nat’s memoirs revealed, “While in prison, I petitioned the United States government, the CIA, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, under the Freedom of Information Act. Both the FBI and the CIA to this day have refused to release my records. However, the DEA records stated that in 1973, while I was still a fugitive, all charges against me were dismissed upon judicial review by a Judge Hector (Lopez or Gomez), with an extreme castigation of the Federal government for illegal actions against me. However, the government not only did not inform myself, my family, my in-laws, or my attorney that these charges were dropped, but forced me to live the life of a fugitive until 1978. Further, my agencies, my publishers, my family, et cetera, had been informed that if they were to publish any work done by me, prior to this dismissal, that they would be arrested for aiding and abetting a fugitive. My voice had been effectively silenced.”

When Nat returned to America in 1982, a free citizen, he inquired to Black Star agency and Life magazine about the whereabouts of his negatives. He notes in his memoirs, “Previously, Howard Chapnick of Black Star had told my ex-wife Jill that a woman purporting to be my wife, with a supposed letter from me, had come to the agency demanding that all my negatives be turned over to her. The only thing remaining of my work, aside from my Warhol series, were four or five prints which were made during various assignments.”

While many photographs remain lost, other come to light. In 1995, a collection of 170 color transparencies from The Factory was discovered to be misfiled under the wrong name at a London photo agency. Among the images are Warhol eating pizza, John Cale dozing off, Nico reading the paper, Edie Sedwick applying lipstick—the intimate moments Nat shared through the years.

His time at The Factory was but a chapter in one of those rare lives that crisscross the world at length, as photographs continue to emerge from the recesses of the earth. Photographs shot on August 8, 1965 at a civil rights protest in Washington D.C. came forth from the archives of Life magazine in 2004. As Nat recalled in an essay for The Blacklisted Journalist, there were members of, “The DuBois Society, CORE (Congress Of Racial Equality), SNCC (Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee). Fresh from voter registration drives in Mississippi, militants from Newark and Harlem were joining up with kids from Y.A.W.F. (Youth Against War and Fascism). White middle class kids and black militants coming together in an uneasy alliance. Together with the various Pacifist societies, as well as the followers of Martin Luther King, who previously had eschewed the anti war movement, they joined to form an Assembly of Unrepresented People, determined to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right of free assembly in order to petition their government and declare the war in Vietnam to be a racist war.”

Then things got ugly. As Nat wrote, “The first people to be accosted and intimidated by the police were the Afro-Americans. During the march, an apparently late Nazi threw some of his own paint, and was also roughed up by the police. However, he was not arrested. At this point, the police forces were led and instructed by a non-uniformed, unidentified man, who apparently commanded the police to be rough. In fact, you can see this man in the pictures. Who he was, no one may ever know. As you can see from the photographs, the other photographers stayed at a short distance from this action, whereas I was fully involved, as you can see one picture, to the point of being punched in the stomach by a policeman during the melee, even though I was wearing official press credentials identifying me as a photographer from Life magazine. I did my job recording the information before me; the brutality, the obvious concentration on people of color, the fingernails crunching nerve endings, the faces squeezed, the glee of the oppressors, the courage of the kids.

“As you’ll notice from these photographs, there were no “long-haired freaks?: no Abbie Hoffman, no Jerry Rubin, no Allen Ginsberg. No pot, no gratuitous violence on the part of the protestors. This came later. It is my firm belief this was done by the so-called capitalist “Free Press.” The mainstream media that appointed theatrical clowns such as Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Allen Ginsberg, and Timothy Leary, as representative of the antiwar movement. When actually, the antiwar movement consisted of the students and the ordinary American working class.”

Throughout his years on this earth, Nat was a champion for the underdog, defying the corrupt system through his art, words, and actions. His actions—while not always legal—held to another ethic; that integrity means holding firm in a raging storm. A typhoon like Nat Finkelstein may have left this earth, but his legacy is a life that challenged and ran counter to the hypocrisy of the world.

Originally published in
Le Journal de la Photographie
18 March 2011

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Photography

Some May Never Live, but the Crazy Never Die

Posted on September 19, 2013

.
Life has become immeasurably better
since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and — in spite of True Romance magazines —
we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company,
we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely — at least, not all the time —
but essentially, and finally, alone.
This is what makes your self-respect so important,
and I don’t see how you can respect yourself
if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,
but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone,
but they’ve always worked for me.

~*~
Photographs by Dave Schubert
Quotes by Hunter S. Thompson

Categories: Art, Graffiti, Photography, Poetry