Posts from the “Photography” Category

Jim Naughten – Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia

Posted on March 13, 2013

Herero Woman in Patchwork Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Cavalry Marching” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Woman in Blue Dress” (2012) ©Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Costume. How we define ourselves when we stand upon the world’s stage and read from the scripts we draft. In donning an ensemble, we assume a posture, an attitude, an aesthetic that we accept as how we see ourselves, and how we wish to be seen. Costume can shape identity the way the corset shapes a woman’s waist. It can take hold and command a sense of respect, of pride, and of purpose, and in this way it can become the most subversive thing on earth.

This is evidenced in Jim Naughten’s new series of photographs collected in Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia, both a book published by Merrell and an exhibition at Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn that opens March 14 and runs through May 4. In Naughten’s photographs, the Herero stand tall against a blue sky, radiant like flowers blooming across the desert floor. They are garbed in fine style, a look the world has never seen, a post-colonial aesthetic that commands authority as it illustrates the defiant spirit of the Herero peoples.

The Herero arrived in Namibia in the eighteenth century, bringing with them horses, ox-drawn wagons, guns, and Christianity. As Lutz Marten writes in the introduction to Conflict and Costume, “They also brought new styles of clothing, and it was during these early days of contact with the wider world that the Herero were first introduced to the military uniforms and Victorian-style dress.” As their economy developed, the Herero took to sartorial expression of their success.

“Herero Man in Yellow Suit” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

In 1884, Namibia was annexed by the Germans to forestall British encroachment. The Germans, however, made for cruel rulers, with their brutally enforced notions of racial supremacy, alternately slaughtering or enslaving the populace. The Herero resistance led to a full-scale war from 1904-08. About 80% of the population was killed. In 1915, the German colonial army was defeated by South African forces, which then annexed the country until 1988. But it was the brutal war against the Germans that became central to the rebuilding of the Herero cultural identity.

Shortly after the end of World War I, the Herero created the Otruppe, a symbolic, rather than actual army. From the uniforms of the killed or departed Germans, a regiment was born, and women joined in creating grand dame gowns that befit the most regal ladies in the world. The Herero have created a highly detailed and symbolic form of costuming for the regiments, which are donned at ceremonies and festivals to commemorate the past take on a level of radical chic. “To the victor go spoils,” it has been said. To assume the costume of the enemy in memory of those who gave their life is nothing short of a kind of victory that few could ever imagine.

As Naughten observes, “Namibia is an extraordinary country, and perhaps most interesting to me is the stories that we don’t know, the ones that have been lost or fragmented in aural tradition. There’s very little literature from the last hundred years or so, but there’s a tangible sense of history in the ghost towns, colonial architecture, cave paintings, and the landscape that feels otherworldly and timeless.

“Herero Woman in Patchwork Dress 2” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“When I look at the dresses and costumes I see a direct connection with this period with an almost a ghostly imprint of the German settlers. I see my images as both a study of and a celebration of the costume, and not as a formal documentary on Herero culture, and I the paradoxical nature of the story is one of the most interesting aspects. Why would the Herero adopt the cloths of the very people who cost them so dearly?

“I see the clothes as symbolic of survival and strength, but particularly of a kind of defiance. In that sense, they are heroic. The taking and wearing of their enemies clothing is considered a way of absorbing and diminishing their power. They march and drill after the German fashion of the period, and ride horseback with extraordinary skill (horses were introduced by the settlers). To me the Herero are undiminished and have an extraordinary grace and presence.”

Naughten’s portraits are as majestic as the people he photographs, imparting a feeling of beauty and power that many in the West rarely consider twhen they think of Africa today. Naughten’s photographs of the Herero show us what victory truly means, and how it is that every day we walk this earth, we honor those who came before us, embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly on mankind and transforming it into a symbol of cultural and personal pride.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 13, 2013

Herero Man with Cow’s Head (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Women Marching” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Herero Woman in Orange Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Nat Finkelstein: Defend Freedom

Posted on March 7, 2013

Nat Finkelstein was a photographer with the photo agencies PIX and Black Star during the 1960s. He was a successful mainstream photojournalist, published in major media outlets. In August 1965, Nat was assigned by Life Magazine to photograph protesters in Washington DC. The protest – known as the Assembly of Unrepresented Persons—was designed to link opposition to the Vietnam War with support for voting rights to create a broader peace and freedom movement. Urged on by a young woman holding a “DEFEND FREEDOM” sign, the protesters tried nonviolently to enter the Capitol to present a “Declaration of Peace.” But police intervened and a melée ensued—with Nat Finkelstein there to capture every frame of it.

After the protest, Nat gave his negatives to a messenger from Life’s Washington office. Those negatives promptly disappeared. For almost 30 years they remained missing and this hole in the historical record persisted. But fortunately, the contact sheets of the images Nat captured that day were recently re-discovered. Below is Nat’s story, as he lived it.

Defend Freedom
Photographs and Story by Nat Finkelstein
First published by The Blacklisted Journalist, 2004

The Free Press is free only to the man who owns the presses. —A.J. Leibling, The Press

Liberty is murdered when the Free Press is Murdoched

It was the eighth of August ’65.

There’s hardly a person still alive who remembers that date and time and year when insurrections were here and the protest was clear: all comparisons stop there.

I was a stringer with two major photographic agencies, Black Star and Pix. I specialized in civil rights, politics, and the counterculture. I was younger then and still believed that it was possible to change the world 35 millimeters at a time. That as a photojournalist working for nationally distributed magazines, I could contribute to change and betterment:

”Show them the light and they will follow” sort of elitism. The Liberal trap: a fallacy.

BULLET: True that Playboy helped bring about certain temporary changes in societal attitudes towards sexuality. But Hugh Hefner never was and never would be a politically progressive publisher. He was never much more than a brilliant huckster of titillations, sex, and lightweight literature: An apostle of materialism and masturbation, the perfect exemplar of capitalism…

LOOK MA! ANYONE CAN DO IT. GET ON THAT RAFT AND COME TO AMERIKA CARLOS AND ROSITA, LOOK WHAT WE GOT AND YOU CAN HAVE IT TOO.

I had a good reputation for handling myself in competitive situations. I had acquitted myself well during Pope John’s visit, Marilyn Monroe’s circus performance, Castro’s visit to the U.N., and the previous Civil Rights demonstrations (as well as fending off sneak attacks of Warhol’s pack of grave-robbers, whiners and sycophants).

Furthermore, I was deeply involved in what was then called “The New Left”—both as a journalist and participant. Long before the onset of “The Struggle,” I had joined the Y.P.A. in the Fifties and had friends and contacts in the movement. I was trusted. So, when Howard Chapnick, the president of Black Star, was asked by Life Magazine to cover an upcoming anti-war demonstration in Washington, he gave the assignment to me. Before I left, Howard warned me of a feud between New York and the DC office. New York, being slightly more liberal of the the two, was less prone to sucking the Luce/Chenault ass. Sabotage was not unheard of—the rivalry was intense.

I arrived at Union Station in Washington the day before the march was scheduled and met up with a group of kids from Columbia University. They were students of Professor Paul Goodman, a well respected, left-leaning political philosopher, and I spent the day with them. I was surprised that they knew who I was and some of the previous articles that I had published. (This was to rebound on me later.)

As the evening progressed, the group became more diverse, as veterans of the civil rights struggle came in: 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.

Neither Martin Luther King nor any of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference were present, here preferring to lend their support from a safe distance. They later lent their full support, but at this point in the struggle, the Afro-American section of ‘The Movement’ was represented by SNCC and CORE.

At this point I was encountered by a photographer assigned by Life’s Washington office (I believe Dennis Brock), who informed me that he was there to assist me and that I would get the best shots by climbing to the roof of the Smithsonian Institute, overlooking the parade route and getting an overhead view. This, of course, would take me away from the action and put me on the sidelines. I refused the advice.

Upon leaving the Mall, the march, led by David Dellinger, Stuart Lynde and Robert Moses was attacked by uniformed members of the American Nazi Party. They threw pails of red paint on the leading marchers, of which I was one.

The Nazis were gently led off by the Washington police. I followed, photographing the entire incident.

The Life representative then asked me if I was shooting in color, & I told him that I was shooting in both color & B&W. In that case, he said, you’ve got a cover.

When we reached the House of Representatives, the group was divided by Dellinger and Lynde, the pacifist wing. Those that wished to encounter the government’s forces should sit on the steps, while the pacifists would absent themselves from any physical action and stand on the side.

A short time after this was done, we were refused entry into the House of Representatives. A young Black lady (wearing a “Defend Freedom” sign) with a young white lady stood up and exhorted the crowd to exercise their legal rights and cross the police lines. At this point, I believe the photos speak for themselves. I was busy doing my job.

But you can observe that 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.

At the conclusion, I immediately headed to Union Station to return to New York. While at Union Station, a messenger from Life magazine sought me out, telling me they needed my color shots immediately as they were preparing for a cover. My ego, at that point bigger than my brains—I was thinking about my picture getting on the cover of Life magazine—handed the film to the messenger and returned to New York. Where I received a chewing out from Howard Chapnick, who told me these pictures would be lost forever, which they were. The black and whites—buried—were not retrieved until recently. Time-Life tells me they no longer have the negatives.

(Until recently I fully believed that there was a bureaucratic or interoffice rivalry that resulted in the lose of the story but in July the New York Times frontpaged a similar instance where an early civil rights [1964] story was similarly “lost”: More will appear.)

At that point, I decided to put down my cameras & pick up my militancy. The time for poetry ended, the time for political action began for me. I left for San Francisco soon after, and joined with people such as the Diggers (Emmett Grogan and Peter Cohen (aka Coyote).

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. The mainstream press persuaded middle America that William Burroughs was making opiates the religion of their children while their daughters were getting knocked up by commies and Blacks.

The culture war had begun.

www.natfinkelstein.com

Categories: 1960s, Art, Photography

Estevan Oriol: Portraiture of Los Angeles

Posted on February 27, 2013

Portraiture of Los Angeles © Estevan Oriol

Back in ‘93, Estevan Oriol was tour manager for House of Pain. His father, a photographer, Eriberto Oriol gave his son a camera, told him to take pictures. Oriol remembers feeling weird about it. “Most people with cameras were paparazzi or tourists. They take out the camera for everything and nothing. I don’t want to look like that. Even now I sorta feel weird taking it out,” he reveals.

Oriol always loved cars and the lowrider culture of Los Angeles. In 1989 he purchased a 1964 Chevy Impala from a friend for $1500. Over the years he put in work, rebuilding it to its original glory. Over the years the car has had four different looks; he is currently working on a fifth edition.

This kind of dedication comes to someone with a love for the tactile, the machinery of our age, the car, the camera. Both are integral to his work. He describes Los Angeles as his canvas, as he sets forth around the city taking pictures along the way. He explains, “My Los Angeles is the beaches, mountains, everything. Beverly Hills, Hollywood, South Central, East LA, Downtown. There re so many different parts of it. I go everywhere. That’s a 300-page book right there.”

Indeed, Oriol’s filing cabinets are spilling with images, photographs going back two decades of Los Angeles, it’s residents, it’s landscape, it’s culture. And from this diverse backdrop, he is currently culling a selection of images for publication in his second monograph, Portraiture of Los Angeles (Drago). This book focuses on gang culture, a way of life that he has seen from the inside. Oriol observes, “You got cool guys, crazy guys, assholes. Most people are cool that’s why I hang out with them. It’s more a brotherhood, the family. Got the barbecue, lowriding, hanging out, school days, guns, drugs, a little bit of everything.”

And then there is style, culture, pride, a way of life that Oriol embodies as a self taught artist navigating any number of industries using the photograph. He laments on the death of magazines, as we all do, those grand days where archives were open for editors looking for classic and cutting edge work. Now Oriol is thinking about how to share his work with the world.

“I’m doing the book so that people can’t afford prints can buy the book. I ended up making products: calendars, playing cards, t-shirts. Not everyone wants t-shirts. People buy books and put them in their library. I want people to buy my books. I imagine a 60 year old man is walking through the airport and he sees the cover of my book, L.A, Woman, and he wants to get it because of that.”

That, in fact, is exactly what happened to Oriol in Italy, while promoting L.A. Women in Italy. He asked them if they knew his other work. His iconic “L.A. Fingers” or the lowrider/gang portraits that have dramatized his black and white work for years. The old man knew neither. He just knew what he liked: the ladies.

L.A. Woman is Oriol’s love poem to the girls and the gun molls, the gansta bitches and the baby dolls. It is around the way girls from the City of Angels, forever cast in film noir they are vixenish kittens prancing before the lens. Oriol’s women come hither on every page.

Oriol’s women have brought him success, and now as he prepares for his second book, he can reflect upon what it’s all about. We talk about the way it was back in the days, when gangstas all dressed in a way that represented their neighborhood, until that became a tool by which the LAPD would oppress their civil rights, with injunctions passed against public assembly of three or more people. We talk about police harassment, search and seizure, police brutality. We talk about how you reach a point in your life where you can’t be hanging out. Oriol is a grandfather. He’s building a legacy.

Portraiture of Los Angeles © Estevan Oriol

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Music, Photography

Begin With What Remains

Posted on February 17, 2013

It begins in feeling. Vibrations wave through viscera. Deep, dark, rolling waves come over me, coming up from the center and taking hold. Taking me over, making me over, got me singing Dionne Warwick, Don’t—

But it’s too late. The center has exploded. The bomb detonates. The ground shakes, the air breaks, the sky rains down clouds of filth. Fire burns until it burns no more and all that is left are these fragments and shards, charred, burned beyond recognition and me, I am. Lost and found. Found and lost. The picture is shattered and what remains is a puzzle of how many pieces and what did it look like in the first place?

Don’t know. Can only find out when I sit still for long enough to go backwards through hell. Begin with what remains, all that is left, trying to see if there is some semblance of sense that can be made by putting words to print. To think in words is to trap myself but they are my métier, and so I use myself. As bait. As trap. As predator. As prey. The circle is complete when I am yin to my yang, yang to my yin, and I realize, this is why it hurts so bad.

I couldn’t, even though I wish I could, walk away. It’s too late. The show must go on. And I set it all up. I mean, none of this is by accident, even if I didn’t know exactly what it was for. It reveals itself, each and every step of the way, how this is the means to self mastery, self esteem, self respect. All the things I never learned, now I open the book to the very first page.

Blank page. That’s not so hard. Blank is peace, soothing me with its clear, cool charm. Blank is pure, untouched, unfettered pleasure of absolutely anything I dream. Possibility will always be superior to actualization if only because possibility hasn’t been touched. Blank I love. Blank is all I could be, to remove a little bit, each and every day. Blank one day, once again, when I return to from whence I came.

It’s not the blank that hurts. It is the act. Returning once more to discover what is left. If it is left. If there is anything there, or if I have to recreate it all, once again, deep inside my soul. I must, and thas where it starts. Or stops. Writer’s block isn’t the fear of writing, it is the fear of reliving the past.

But. I relive it anyway. It never ends. The screen in the eye of my mind, forever replaying clips from the past. Remixing them, splicing them along, so that memory is not the thing itself, but a pattern, a song. To put it to paper, this is the trick, to find the strength to discover the words that to allow me to simultaneously hold and release this feeling. That’s all there is.

Categories: Art, Photography

The Writing on the Wall: Egypt

Posted on February 12, 2013

Categories: Art, Photography

Nicola Lo Calzo: Inside Niger

Posted on January 25, 2013

Ominta / Barn / Tara 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo

The Republic of Niger, the largest nation in West Africa, ranked 186 of 187 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index for 2011. With over 80 percent of its land covered by the Sahara desert, the country’s predominantly Islamic population of 15 million is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the nation. The capital city of Niamey is located here, situated on the Niger River, the third longest river in all of Africa.

As photographer Nicola Lo Calzo writes in the afterword of his book Inside Niger (Kehrer Verlag), “The origin of the name Niger has proved enigmatic among modern researchers, and thus cannot be traced with certainty. The most accepted hypothesis is that the name derives from the Tuareg word: ‘gber-n-igheren’ or ‘river of all rivers’…. Since time immemorial, the Niger River has been a meeting point and a place of exchange among various ethnic groups. A genius loci, the river has served as a depository of myths and legends, as well as being the abode of great deities like Ba Faro (mother of humanity) and the all-important Noun. The Niger River is a fountain of living waters and a breath of life.” And so it was that Lo Calzo began to photograph the people of Niger as he followed the river some five hundred kilometers through the land.

Lo Calzo photographed people that work and live on the river, where most of the commercial activities take place, such as universities, public works, markets, fishing, slaughterhouses, vegetable gardens, and tanneries. The portraits show us people who are employed in a nation known by its high rates of unemployment, thus giving us a glimpse at the haves in a world of have nots, ensuring we understand how vital work itself is to the pride and identity of (wo)man.

The result is at once powerful and provocative, challenging any and all assumptions about Africa as anything other than a majestic world. As Laura Serani notes in her introduction to the book, “Lo Calzo’s empathy and respect towards his portrait models transforms them into heroes; a transformation that echoes the words of the Italian journalist Pietro Veronese: ‘No, all men are not equal; yes, races do exist and are divided between inferior and superior. Superior to all is the African.’”

Lo Calzo’s photographs reveal the heroism of a people living on the brink, caught in a web of poverty and environmental degradation that keeps them in harms way. Yet despite a quality of life that is virtually unfathomable to all in the first world, the people photographed by Lo Calzo maintain a dignity that belies their circumstances. Each portrait reveals only the subject’s first name and their location, bringing us face to face with the people who defy all odds by simply surviving in a nation facing constant hardship.

Most of Lo Calzo’s subjects are men of various age, and as they stand before his camera we witness a pride of being that challenges commonly-held Western perceptions of gender, class, and race as it pertains to the African man. Whether a ractor of the Catholic Church, clothed in the finery begetting his position, or workers in a slaughterhouse, covered in layers of blood, the men stand before Lo Calzo as they are, with a strong, silent, and somber masculinity that demands our attention.

Respect comes when respect is earned, and when it is given it is returned ten thousand fold. The men who stand before Lo Calzo like a mirror facing itself, and the honor and prestige bestowed upon the most common of men resonates like nothing else. His portraits recall nothing so much as the Biblical passage Matthew 20:16, “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few are chosen.”

Lo Calzo portraits show us that though we can never fully know what fortune has bestowed upon us, when we look into the eyes of his subjects we can see all that we have been given—and all that has been lost.

First published 25 January 2013 in
Le Journal de la Photographie

Assada / Tannery / Niamey 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo

Azize / Vegetable garden / Niamey 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Photography

Jim Jocoy: The Polaroids

Posted on January 18, 2013

Michael Jackson by Jim Jocoy

When the San Francisco punk scene took off in 1976, Jim Jocoy dropped out of UC Santa Cruz, got a job at a copy store, and went to punk clubs at night where he photographed his friends. Together the members of this small independent scene made art, music, videos, and other DIY productions. Jocoy had a few of his photographs published in local fanzines including Widows and Orphans, Search and Destroy, Research, and Punk Globe, and though he photographs were only exhibited twice, one of those included a slide show at the 70th birthday party for the great William S. Burroughs.

But all of that came to an end in 1980, when Jocoy stopped taking photographs. He recalls, “For me, when Darby Crash of the Germs committed suicide, it was the end of punk as I knew it.” Jocoy bowed out of the burgeoning scene, and of it, all that remained was a shoebox of 35mm portraits and Polaroids shot from 1978–1980.

Two decades later, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth unearthed Jocoy’s collection and from that came the book, We’re Desperate (powerHouse Books, 2002). This dense collection of uncaptioned portraits became an instant hit, having been shown at the Bay Area Triennial in 2006, as well as inspiring Marc Jacobs to have Juergen Teller shoot an ad campaign in the style of Jocoy for the Spring 2003 collection.

But greater than any accolades was the book’s greatest gift, for once it was in production Jocoy did something he had not done in two decades: he picked up his camera and began photographing again. Jocoy recalls, “When I had We’re Desperate published, I knew I would be contacting many people in the book. I wanted to take a follow-up photo of them 20 years later. I also knew I would be doing a little more traveling and meeting new people. It felt like it was going to be fun. It was. I decided to make it more fun by using my Polaroid.”

He continues, “It’s so easy to use. They take good photos. At least the kind I’m looking for. Nothing fancy. Lots of close ups. I like that a Polaroid photograph is an artifact of a close encounter with your subject. The idea of getting physically close to someone is important when you want to get a good Polaroid photograph.”

Indeed, it is. When Jocoy sets his eye on a subject to shoot, he graciously approaches them and asks for permission to photograph. More often than not, permission is granted and the results are phenomenal. In Jocoy’s world, everyone is a star. Celebrities are as casual as everyday people, while everyday people look like stars. Whether photographing the likes of Michael Jackson or Joe Strummer, Robert Evans or Shepard Fairey, Amanda Lepore or Charo, Bruce LaBruce or John Waters, Jocoy’s portraits are always up close and personal.

Complementing his images of famous faces are those who are less known, stars in their own constellation as they orbit the earth. Many of these photographs were taken on location at events like the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, at exhibition openings and nightclub parties, backstage at concerts or on the city streets. Combined with a selection of cityscapes, the result is a raucous collection of the poetry of daily life.

Jocoy explains, “I like to photograph people who do things. Creative people are the best. They are special people. They have special gifts and I find them the most interesting. That is the common denominator of most of the people I’ve photographed. They have good energy and usually look great. I like to capture some of it on film. I approach people with respect and try to make them look as best as I can. My favorite group of people I enjoy photographing is any taboo community. Many have extreme looks and I enjoy that a lot. I find much beauty and inspiration with people who are outcasts.”

As time has shown, Jocoy’s taste for the edge leads him into scenes that have the power to change the world through art, music, style, and culture. His ability to create images of the world in which he lives, to show the common man inside the celebrity and the celebrity inside the common man, leads us full circle, back to where it all began, to a man and his camera, capturing the world one frame at a time.

First Published in Le Journal de la Photographie
January 18, 2013

John Waters by Jim Jocoy

Categories: Art, Music, Photography

A Tribute to Gigi Giannuzzi

Posted on January 14, 2013

I believe that death is not the end, but a new beginning. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on life and discover its deeper meaning. Death appears to sever the spirit from the flesh but perhaps this is not true. Perhaps death transcends our understanding of absolutes. Death allows us to consider what matters in our lives: the people in our world and our purpose here, while on earth. Death, then, is the start of a new revolution, as we come around the circle once again. I believe for every loss there is an equal and opposite gain and I do my best to remember that the dead are not gone. So long as they live within us, their spirit lives on.

Gigi Giannuzzi died on Christmas Eve 2012 at the age of 49. Giannuzzi founded Trolley Books in 2001 and leaves behind more than a decade of art and photography books dedicated to truth, justice, and the beauty that lies in the darkest corners of the soul. A David among Goliaths and a hero among men, Giannuzzi created Trolley as a platform to stand against the exploitation and deception of our fellow man. Possessed with the heart of an activist and the spirit of a maverick, Giannuzzi’s passion for publishing brought into existence books that speak truth to power at any cost.

The nature of the book is one of permanence; we consider the book as part of the historical record. Once put into print, the book is a testament to the greatness and horrors of humankind, and Trolley Books bore witness to this in every volume. Under Giannuzzi’s direction, Trolley has released some of the most difficult stories to tell, stories that have been buried under a mountain of misinformation or ignored all together. Giannuzzi’s genius was to partner with likeminded souls, the artists, journalists, and truthtellers who give of their lives to change the world.

Read the Full Story at
LE JOURNAL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Ghostly Ruins

Posted on January 11, 2013

The Danvers State Hospital – Danvers, Massachusetts from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla

Ruins. Empty hollow shells of what once was. Disarray, deshabille, the beautiful poetry of decay. Buildings that once stood, fully functional, making themselves useful to the people that created them to serve a greater purpose. But time passes and use falls away, and buildings that once were designed to serve us are no longer necessary. And, if the land is not wanted, there is no need to tear them down. Instead they are abandoned, left behind, reclaimed by nature ever so slowly.

As Harry Skrdla writes in the introduction to his book, Ghostly Ruins: America’s Forgotten Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press), “We construct buildings not just as shelter, but as frameworks of life—templates within which to conduct the business of living. Each one is designed for a purpose: a place to reside, a place to bank, a place to make things. They are occupied by, and surrounded with, living breathing human beings…as long as they serve a purpose. But when their reason for existence is gone and the people drift away, only memories remain.”

Skrdla traveled around the country in search of buildings that are but remnants of their former splendor. Collected here are thirty such locations including homes and hotels, power plants and prisons, whole neighborhoods and even entire towns—what once was now becomes an eerie reminder of lives lived and long gone, haunting and poignant reminders of an earlier world. Skrdla explains, “An abandoned building is dead—as dead as any corpse left decaying in a field. But it too once lived, was animate, and in a sense, had a soul. Except that soul was us. We gave it life and meaning, motion and warmth. We put the spark of light behind the shade-lidded windows and the circulation in its corridors. It consumed supplies and excreted waste. The thing was alive and the life force was us.” The building, as we know it, is an extension of our lives themselves.

Ghostly Ruins is a cozy tome that takes us back to an earlier time in our country’s history. Organized by function, the book is divided into chapters that offer beautifully subjects for quiet contemplation in categories including Transportation, Industry, Commerce, Public Works, Home, and Amusement. It also includes two additional chapters on Reincarnation (restored buildings) and Epitaphs (buildings now permanently gone). In organizing the book by function, we begin to consider the larger way in which we, as public and private citizens of the world, conduct our affairs. We can consider all that we take for granted, all that seems permanent so easily can be stripped away, that buildings, most of all, offer us a sense of continuity within the ever shifting dynamics of so many lives that make the community strong.

Consider the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, Michigan, which was a first-class luxury hotel that, at 1,200 rooms, made it the second largest hotel in America when it opened in 1924. No expense was spared; the lobby had been furnished in breche violette marble, ornate iron railings, and gold leafed ornamentation. The ballrooms had crystal chandeliers. The restaurants were wood paneled. Every room had a a spectacular view and a private bath—a luxury of the time unknown to most people in the world. The hotel prospered until the city began to fall into disrepair, and by 1984 it shuttered its doors, never to re-open in the city’s whose decline stands for all that failed in twentieth century America. The hotel still stands, thirty-three stories tall. It has been stripped of its treasures, just like all the great ruins of civilizations that came before.

Contrast this with the City Hall IRT subway station in New York City, which had been built in 1904, and was more highly decorated than any other station in the entire city. Designed by the noted architectural firm of Heins and la Farge, and overseen by Spanish-born architect Rafael Gustavino, the City Gall Station—which stands abandoned and perfectly intact—with terra cotta tiles of buff, cream, and chocolate brown on the curving vaults of the ceiling over the tracks and platform. Three ornate leaded-glass panels admit light from overhead while chandeliers featuring the then-brand-new Edison electric light illuminated the rest. The station was the pride of the entire subway system, until it was abandoned when the sinuous curve that defined the station could no longer accommodate the train cars introduced in later years. Today the City Hall Station stands, entrances sealed and skylights covered, though urban adventurers know how to access it for their private photo shoots.

The abandoned buildings of Ghostly Ruins stand as a monument to the ingenuity and vision of the American mind, to its wealth and its greatness that is as easily lost as it is found. The photographs provide us with a dynamic history of these spaces, illustrating the inevitability of change in all facets of waking life.

The Danvers State Hospital – Danvers, Massachusetts from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: Brooklyn Represent

Posted on January 8, 2013

The Brooklyn Central Library stands proudly at Grand Army Plaza, firmly set in the Northwest corner of Prospect Park, shining bright with gold inlays upon its façade, recalling nothing so much as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Inside the library, the ceiling soars high above, opening its many collections to a public that loves books for pleasure, for knowledge, for enlightenment—much like Jamel Shabazz himself.

Shabazz, a native of Brooklyn, currently has a four-part exhibition on display at the Central Library now through February 28, 2013, which has been produced in conjunction with a self-published thirty-year retrospective of his photographs titled Represent: Photographs from 1980–2012. The exhibition is organized in four parts, each display in a different location on the first two floors. In the atrium of the ground floor stands an edit from Represent, a broad swath of color, spirit, and style as Shabazz see the people of the world.

He explains, “ Since picking up my first camera nearly thirty-five years ago, I was intrigued with how people within my community represented themselves. As time passed, I embarked on a self-imposed assignment to document the people of the world around me. I have been very fortunate to meet many wonderful and diverse people from around the globe, and each experience has enriched me in ways that far surpassed what I learned in history books.” His photographs bring that home, as we see people from all walks of life in their native dress, be it Dominican adolescents in their pageant best or two little Jamaican girls, with their afro puffs glorious in yellow, black, and green, or the Italian men, lined up in the window of a café in Little Italy, staring down the camera like they’re on the set of a Scorcese film. And we’re just getting started.

One of Shabazz’s many gifts is taste, his honing in on people killing it with their pride of purpose and the dignity that belies human greatness. It is seen in the dress, the posture, and the determination of spirit that he captures that make each person he pictures a king and queen. This is most evident in the installation along the balcony of the second floor, grandly overlooking the atrium and out the front doors. Here Shabazz gives us “Men of Honor and Women of Distinction,” a sweeping tribute to the heroes of modern life. In perhaps the most lovely social networking moment I’ve had in some time, Shabazz posted a brilliant portrait of eleven black women perfectly dressed in a bouquet of pastel suits and slinky heels, perfect coiffures and more than a couple of hats. To which, Spike Lee asked, “Who are they?” and Shabazz answered “Women of God.”

This is but one in a series that pays tribute to the traditions of family, community, nation, and global village, the very now that allows the earth to carry six billion people. Shabazz gives us a glimpse into but a few lives he has connected with over the years, as they organize themselves in groups or around distinguished individuals. He speaks of being influenced by dapper men of Caribbean descent, standing erect and proud. It is this bearing and carriage that Shabazz sees when he looks at law enforcement, military personnel, elders, social and political activists, and every day people organized for the greater good of our world. Whether wearing a uniform of Sunday best, in these photographs Shabazz bears witness to the men and women who uphold the principles of family, community, and civil service.

Nestled into the entrance of the Brooklyn Collection, just off the balcony, is “Reflections,” a series of over eighty photographs depicting the people of Brooklyn. There’s a lot of talk about Brooklyn, there always was. Maybe it’s something in the water, or it’s in the air. Shabazz’s photographs remind us of this, like nothing else; that despite all of the diversity of ethnicity, culture, and custom, there is something that unites these beautiful people together and that is the ground upon which they walk. I’m saying, it comes up through the ground. And in these photographs we feel it, Shabazz being a native and understanding that here we walk upon sacred ground.

Lastly, and perhaps most touchingly, is the installation up front, “Pieces of a Man” in the Foyer Cases, which you can catch when you are coming or going—both are good. Here Shabazz shows us an intimate glimpse into the art that inspires him, as a man and an artist and a native of this here Brooklyn. It begins with Leonard Freed, Black in White America, and it forces us to ask the question, what’s really changed, and what’s really good. Tough questions. We usually talk around them. But not Shabazz. He presses forth, he brings in the music of an era. 45s, 8 Tracks, we’re talking Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan. The list goes on. There are magazines, books, images, texts, stories, each one adding to the next, until the experience of these cases becomes a diary written by the voices of the world we know, but never fully see, until into it Shabazz brings his voice, like a bell tolling with perfect clarity.

Old School, ND, Harlem NY © Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works

Posted on December 14, 2012

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977

Chaka Khan most famously sang, “I’m every woman” and no artist embodies this quite as brilliantly as Cindy Sherman. She has been remaking herself in the image of others throughout her career, giving a spellbinding performance of gender roles assigned to (mostly) Caucasian women as they are created and lived by countless females. Her ability to transform reveal the plasticity of identity as it is defined by appearance and affect, by the way in which we unconsciously communicate our fears and dreams through non-verbal cues.

The photograph is the ideal medium for Sherman’s experiments and discoveries, the still image being a soundless, wordless, motionless space for eternal contemplation. Sherman’s uncanny ability to play a role, to construct an entire narrative into a single frame is nothing short of remarkable. What is perhaps shocking is that she has been doing this for close to forty years, and her earliest work is just as profound and compelling as that of her later years.

These works are collected together for the first time in Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975–1977 Catalogue Raisonné(Hatje Cantz). This volume is simply magnificent, a breathtaking tour-de-force that unfolds with image after image of the artist who would come to embody an iconography all her own, a kind of storytelling that has no precedent on this scale in the medium.

What makes The Early Works compelling is the simplicity of the work and the way in which this is mirrored in the production of the book. It is understood this book will be grand from the very opening of the front cover, as a bright orange matte jacket flap rest against silver endpapers. That and the book is 376 pages. It is substantial, and statuesque as gatefold after gatefold reveal themselves. The works inside are pure pleasure, presented against a vast expanse of white space. They sit there, one after another, variations on a theme, repetitions to derive an effect, a kind of very clever inside joke with yourself. Sherman’s ease into the odd characters she creates are clearly a kind of genius that is perfectly suited to the medium of photography. The pleasure of this book is seeing her brilliance in its earliest stage, and the way in which she was always born to stand before a camera in order to create the image in her mind.

As Sherman notes in the beginning of Gabriele Schor’s essay, “Even though I’ve never actively thought of my work as feminist or as a political statement, certainly everything was drawn from my observations as a woman in this culture. And a part of that is a love/hate thing—being infatuated with makeup and glamour and detesting it at the same time. It comes from trying to look like a proper young lady or look as sexy or as beautiful as you can make yourself, and also feeling like a prisoner of that structure.”

Indeed, that structure forms the basis of her iconography, and the sense of imprisonment is palpable in some of her more emotionally tense scenes, Her explorations extend far beyond the frame of femininity, giving us a sense of a certain femaleness that every woman is confronted with as she reaches maturity. The Early Works offers a larger context in which to place this new frame, particularly with the facsimile of Script Notes for “A Play of Selves” written in 1976.

Here Sherman puts into words what she has been saying with imagery, a cast of characters that include A Broken Woman, The Vanity, The Madness, The Agony, The Desire, The Actual Main Character, and The Character As Others See Her, among others. We are then given four acts and a finale, each outlined with scenes, and with these pages we are given a concrete look at the structure of Sherman’s mind during the process of creation as she maps idea into actuality. Following the acts, we are given two pages that tell us about the order of characters photographed, which are then illustrated in the actual works themselves.

For this project, Sherman cut out full-body portraits so that they appear as paper dolls, each posed in specific stances to communicate meaning through gesture, emotion, and juxtaposition with one another. The facsimile pages let us know exactly what we are looking at, creating a sense of silent film as the pages unfold. And it is just this silence that makes the photograph so profound, the way in which we are invited to fill in the blanks by creating meaning through the implications of Sherman’s work.

The Early Works is a deeply fulfilling experience, not only because of its dedication to detailing this period of the artist’s work, but also because of Sherman herself. Her clarity of vision and the proliferation of her ideas present Sherman as something of an Athena, springing fully armed from the mind of Zeus himself. There is something of the warrior in Sherman’s work throughout her career, a tireless champion whose commitment to the medium has forever transformed our ideas about photography, the female gaze, and the construction of identity itself.

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977

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