Lartigue

Jacques-Henri Lartigue, The ZYX24 Takes Off, Rouzat, 1910

Apropos Laurent Millet, further evidence that playful form, and formal play, are the essence of everything French.


Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Bibi, Eretat, 1920

Gonzo

Next?

Finally . . .

A blogger, obviously.

Kate

I know it's old news, but the story of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake - or at least the last chapter of that story - has gotten stuck in my head, and I can't stop it rattling around in there.

This picture, which I borrowed from The Wit of the Staircase, is one of the things that's rattling. Kate was kind of a hero to Duncan, a compatriot, maybe, or a fellow exile. And that's not so hard to understand, especially if you're one of those who can't help but admire Kate a little yourself.

But I would guess that the thing about Kate - like lots of people who live on one edge or another - is that beneath that flinty exterior is an even flintier heart. Without one, it would probably be hard to live that way for long.

Shannon Wright

I don't know much about Shannon Wright, and before Let in the Light had never heard her music. My loss. Her songs are musically simple but emotionally dense, sung in a husky, sometimes sad, sometimes scornful voice that's perfect for them.

I read somewhere that Wright was a denizen of the NYC punk scene in the 90's; when things didn't work out, she sold all her possessions and decamped to the wilds of North Carolina. Could be.

With Wright on guitars, vibes, and keyboards, producer Andy Baker on bass, Kyle Crabtree on drums, and Amanda Kapousouz on violin. On Quarterstick records.

Mendocino

Gesture

Nicholas Nixon, Couples, 2007


Ernie Sisto/New York Times, Phil Rizzuto, 1951

Very different pictures, but each conveys a world.

The Way of the Buffalo

Fay Godwin, Bison at Chalk Farm, 1982

When last I checked, the scene at The Online Photographer resembled nothing so much as the villagers' first encounter with the monster - the pundits in full cry, pitchforks at the ready. And the source of the sound and fury, God help me, was an essay by Michael Johnston proclaiming the death of photography at the hands of "digital imaging." Now, I can't tell you how many times I've promised myself never to become involved in that conversation, but there's something about this particular instance I just can't resist.

Johnston's argument - strange, at best, from this proponent of all things digital - began with a semantic distinction between digital imaging and photography, progressed to heartfelt sentiments regarding the sanctity of the image recorded by the lens, and concluded with the assertion that digital images, because they are so easily altered, do not deserve the respect accorded to real photography. Unspoken throughout is the embarrassing notion that if it isn't difficult it can't be art.

What occasioned all this, apparently, was an article by Erwin Puts, whose thinking about Leicas, anyway, is usually entitled to some respect. Puts's own pronouncement of photography's demise seemed motivated mainly by disappointment with the digital experience as exemplified by the Leica M8. (And who would argue?) In the course of it, Puts quoted a recent post by Jim Lewis, on Slate, eulogizing John Szarkowski. And that quotation goes to the heart of what interests me here:

"In the years just before Szarkowski retired, the best of photography underwent yet another deep change, becoming integrated into the broader concerns of art in general, influenced by conceptualism, performance, painting. It is only slightly overstating matters to say that there's really no such thing as photography anymore. It simply doesn't exist, except as one of many ways to make something that counts as art . . ."

In other words, says Lewis, it wasn't digital killed the photography star. It was art.

And that may well be true. Much of contemporary photography still suffers from the malaise of insufficiently digested conceptualism. Not everyone can be Ed Ruscha. Or Sherrie Levine. Or Cindy Sherman. Or even Richard Prince. But that doesn't stop a lot of people from trying. And that, if you ask me, in combination with the unfortunate revival of set-ups of all kinds, is what ails photography today.

But that problem, if it is one, has nothing to do with digital. On the contrary, the heyday of photographic conceptualism was over before digital tools were widely available. And the falsity of set-up photography has little if anything to do with post-processing; on the contrary, that lie is told before the shutter opens.

And so we come, full circle, to Johnston's discussion of Fay Godwin's photograph of Bison at Chalk Farm. It just wouldn't be the same, he says, if we thought even for a moment that it was faked:

"Really the only thing that gives [the] photograph its power is that, for better or worse, we really do believe that the pretext . . . is authentic—another way of saying that the hulking bison (even if perhaps he's stuffed) really was standing there in the road . . ."

I disagree. I couldn't care less whether it was there or not. In fact, my assumption would be that it was not. But what difference does it make? Inherently fantastic photographs, including those of buffaloes on city streets, don't demand literal belief. What they ask is complicity, and a sense of wonder.

If we've learned anything over the last 50 years, it's that photographs lie. And when they don't, we lie for them, by misunderstanding what they show. And it is that insecurity in our relationship with images - not Photoshop - that has stripped photography of its veneer of truth.

As for Fay Godwin, she gave an interview in 2002, a few years before she died, in which she was asked: "What is your dream as a photographer?" Her answer? "To learn to print digitally, using Photoshop which I love . . ." Go figure.

Holy Cow!

Yosemite

Yosemite

Nine

Michal Cala, Untitled # 4, date unknown.

"Jacek could see them out of the corner of his eye, could guess what they were talking about. The balls clicked on the table, like people who meet, do things for each other, go their separate ways, and meet different people, until the last one dies. . . .

"Why are you smiling?" asked Beata.

"No reason. Pool makes sense. Let's get out of here."

Andrzej Stasiuk, Nine

Andrzej Stasiuk deserted from the Polish army, went to prison and became a writer. In Nine, his third novel, people run, forget, hide, remember, dream, eat, sleep, beat, and get beaten, while Warsaw's trains, trams, and buses weave the gritty fabric of the city around them. It's pretty good.

Go Barry!

Isn't that great? (Except that we have tickets for Saturday and Sunday. Couldn't he have waited?)

And go Yankees!

(Speaking of) Salt of the Earth

I'm sure you will be as pleased as I was to learn (as the Times today confirmed) that Keith really did snort his dad's ashes.

Yosemite

Sic Transit Obama

The New York Times yesterday reported that Barack Obama says that if Pakistan won't eradicate terrorists within its borders, the United States should go in and eradicate them itself.

What the fuck?

Does that differ in any way from Bush's current excuse for remaining in Iraq? Or from the preemptive strike doctrine that got us there in the first place?

How hard is it to see that we're not going to be safe as long as we continue to act in a way that causes much of the world to hate us? And hasn't the Iraq debacle made perfectly clear that military action to eradicate terrorists simply creates more terrorists?

So there you have it. Democrats or Republicans? Cancer or polio.

It's Alright, Ma

For all the exegesis being shoveled at The Sopranos, no one appears to have addressed the burning question of whether it's still okay to think It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) was the best (and certainly the most important) song of the last millennium.

I mean, that AJ was clearly a callow fellow. On the other hand, his new girlfriend also liked it, and she was pretty hot. Even before the truck caught fire. So maybe it's really unnecessary to feel dumb just for liking something AJ liked. After all, he not busy being born is busy dying. Right?