Mare Island

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Albert Renger-Patzsch, Essen, 1928

Renger-Patzsch was a member of Germany's New Objectivity movement. But realistic photographers are often the most surreal.


Giorgio de Chirico, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, 1914

Bedtime for Bozo

Jill Greenberg

If you ask me, all that talk about Jill Greenberg and John McCain last week was just unspeakably tiresome. Who knew so many photographers could be so self-righteous? But the strangest thing was the universal assumption that the picture of the monkey shitting on McCain’s head had been photoshopped. Why would anyone think that?

(I mean, if McCain's not Brigadier Pudding, who is?)

Mare Island

Project Notes (3)

These pictures are from La Quinta, a resort near the town of Indian Wells in California’s Coachella Valley. The Coachella Valley is a desert. If you’ve been to Twenty-Nine Palms or Joshua Tree, or even to the music festival at Indio, you know what a sere and inhospitable place it is.

La Quinta, on the other hand, is not a desert. La Quinta is a wall-to-wall bed of roses. And petunias. And palm trees. With green, green lawns and cool blue swimming pools. And fountains, bubbling at every turn. A tropical paradise, under that cloudless and distant sky.

It's beautiful, in a surreal way. But also, when they come to ask, it's where the water went.

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went

Where the Water Went