Just finished watching Double Life of Veronique for the first time in quite a while. Still mesmerizing and mysterious, definitely the quintessential Kieslowski film. It has such a dream quality, the color palette with all those rich greens and reds. Every image is simply beautiful. And of course Irene Jacob…
For those who haven’t seen it, a short synopsis is here, and an old NYT review here.
The Waiting Room is the working title for my long-term photo series from Belarus. I’ve been shooting there since 2000, first driven by simple curiosity about this place supposedly stuck in a Soviet time-warp. As I spent more time and tried to really understand the situation on a more nuanced level, I realized that an underlying question was one of identity. Namely, how Belarus’ historically weak sense of national identity is a big part of what put them on a whole different evolutionary track than their geographical neighbors. If they face east there’s chaotic Russia, to the west is the expanding EU. Neither model feels like a good fit to many average Belarusians. Some chafe under the current political situation, but others fear change and are to some degree compliant with the status quo.
But the frequently-applied ‘frozen in time’ label is not quite fair. All places change, just in their own way and at their own speed. Belarus is no exception. I was there twice in 2009, and had a sense that Belarus is somehow finding itself, on its own terms, for better and worse. It isn’t becoming an appendage of Russia anymore than an outpost of Europe. It is becoming Belarus.
I hope this series gives a feeling of a people struggling to emerge, but not quite getting there. Not just yet anyway. The Belarusian people seem to understand that change will come when and how it will come. The fog of history hasn’t yet dissipated. In the meantime, they wait, and live.
RIP Lech Kaczynski, and all the others on the plane with him. I happened to photograph him in Warsaw in 2005, the year he became president.
Of course a plane crash is always tragic for loved ones lost. Add to that a president dying, along with so many from the top levels of Polish government; that it was near Katyn forest, infamous for the 1940 massacre of thousands of Poles; that they were going there to commemorate the massacre, with relatives of the victims onboard; that it was an older Soviet-built plane. Just unbelievably cruel and profound symbolism. A cursed place, reasserting itself.
Last night, I suppose around the same time, I had a brief nightmare that I was near the top of a skyscraper when an earthquake struck. The building began to sway, then it toppled over sideways. I had a physical sensation of falling from a great height.
I wonder if earthshaking events (sorry for the pun) can have a ripple effect and penetrate our unconscious.
I’m in NY, so I thought I’d check out the Twilight Visions show at the ICP. The subtitle sounded good: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris. Kertesz, Brassai, Man Ray… Photographers I’ve liked enough at some point or other. But wow, was it boring. I’m not sure why exactly, it somehow seemed anachronistic without being particularly charming. Or maybe I’ve changed.
Now, what WAS interesting was the Miroslav Tichy show, also showing there on the main floor (that’s him in the photo). I didn’t expect to like his work. I’d read about his wildly eccentric and shabby persona, his deliberately flawed (even mutilated) prints, homemade cameras from all kinds of unlikely junk… Also his clearly voyeuristic tendencies that made a lot of people (not least his subjects on the street, at the swimming pool) uncomfortable. Is it art, or is he no better than the proverbial guy looking up skirts with a mirror on his shoe? Is he simply mentally ill?
But give it a chance, the work and the man are pretty intriguing. For sure Tichy is a true artist at his core, funny, intelligent in a profound way, and if he’s being somewhat hyped by the art world at his ripe old age of 80-something, consider it his due. Yes, looking at his pictures he does like his women, no doubt. And his backstory does point to some mental illness, though how much is a response to living under totalitarian conditions is unclear.
But there’s an undeniable genius at work too, uniquely Czech somehow. In some ways he’s of the breed of Josef Koudelka, Vojta Dukat, and others who, like Tichy, built much of their work on a stubborn rejection of modernity to the point of spending their lives as true outsiders.
So, one show I expected to like and didn’t, and another I expected not to like and did.
It didn’t win an Oscar, but The Door is an amazing short film. So beautiful and haunting. It helps to have a sense of the history of Chernobyl, when people had to pick up and leave their lives on a moment’s notice, never to return. And people today need to know that Chernobyl is not ‘over’ or 'fixed’. Many experts say the health, environmental, and other problems are just beginning.
I’ve been involved with the issue for several years now. In 2006, in collaboration with Chernobyl Children’s Project International and others, I curated the Chernobyl20 exhibit on the 20th anniversary of the disaster, and I’ve been shooting in Belarus for almost ten years.
Still, a film like this moves me almost to tears, especially as a parent of a young daughter. Hope you’ll check it out, it’s a real example of art with a conscience. To do it justice, you should watch full-screen, with headphones, when you have a quiet 15 minutes.
Everyone’s showing theirs, so I’ll show mine. 1:00am on Snowmageddon night, couldn’t sleep so made a picture of my neighbor’s house from my fogged-up front door.
I’ll be part of an art exhibition/installation in NYC called Never Records, opening this Friday 1/15 in the former Tower Records space. The concept is art and photography presented in the form of mock album covers, music posters, etc (I did a 3x3 foot ‘album cover’ for my Eastern Europe project). Great to share space with work by, among others, X frontwoman Exene Cervenka and the late Dee Dee Ramone.
A Village Voice blurb is here, or visit the event website. Should be a cool show, thanks to organizer Ted Rierderer for bringing me into it.
A few photos from in and around Ed Becke’s house the other day. He’s my mom’s partner, or boyfriend I suppose. He’s lived in his bay community for most of his 80+ years. Going over there, he’ll show off the treehouse that’s as old as me, the shark tooth collection, old pictures, etc. All of it holds a strange kind of magic, I love hanging out there.
Here are a few photos from our last Modest Proposal band practice (Neal took the one of me and Danny) We’re in Steve’s basement, he’s got a great setup for recording. Which worked out well since we’re finally capable of playing the songs well enough for recording. David is on his way over from London in a couple weeks, we wanted him to have something to practice to in the meantime.
Our reunion show is a month away now, check out Neal’s latest blog post on WTOP.
Sunday night photos at Marvin this weekend, starting at 8pm! I’ll be showing a slideshow of my Eastern Europe work from the last ten years, running on a 15-minute loop. A print catalog of select images is available online (see sidebar), I’ll have free copies with me for the first twenty people who ask.
I’m happy to have been chosen for Foto8 magazine’s Summer Show, going on now at HOST Gallery in London. From their website:
2009 Foto8 Summer Show, 24 July – 5 September
The Summer Show provides London’s greatest spectacle of photography with over 100 images on display – an inspiring variety of framed and mounted images of all shapes and sizes, installed from floor to ceiling. From landscapes and portraiture to documentary, various genres of photography are represented in the exhibition.
The 2009 Summer Show saw an overwhelming response, with over 2300 images entered from 44 different countries, including Bangladesh, Iran, Mexico, Thailand and Turkey.
I just re-read some of the old posts from my original blog. Now there’s a guy with time and mental energy to think, write, spin little connections in the ether… Meaning there’s a guy without a three-year-old child and a teaching job!
For me, reading some of the lengthier posts now, just a few years later, feels like an old person watching an acrobat in rueful amazement. These days I would probably just post a link and roll over to sleep. I guess having kids will do that to you, but it was a good reminder to try to hold on to those little inspirations and musings. I actually have printed out the old blog for Sofia. Hopefully someday she’ll know her daddy a little better if she ever reads it.
Intriguing video of Sigur Ros playing acoustic and unannounced, during the day, in a little Paris cafe. While I think the camera work is pretty stingy with the environment (what’s the point of these things if you don’t get a better sense of the place??), it’s funny to see the few French patrons on hand sort of oblivious and wrinkling their noses a bit at the whole fuss.
More here.
After the Easter egg hunt, Sofia found some real eggs in the mailbox over at Ed’s place.
So the magician asks everyone in the crowd to choose a three-digit number. I think of 437. He calls on someone else to announce their number, and they say 437. And that wasn’t even the actual trick yet! Real magic in the form of bizarre coincidence…
View from my show at Galeria Zoya, Warsaw, 2008
I close my eyes
Every night
And I dream that I can hold you
They fill us full of lies
Everyone buys
About what it means to be a soldier
I still don’t know how I’m supposed to feel
About all the blood that’s been spilled
Look out on the street
Get me back home
On the day after tomorrow
from Day After Tomorrow, by Tom Waits
Artists have struggled to make meaningful statements about the Iraq War. Certainly compared to the Vietnam era, artists have been surprisingly quiet, even after early problems with speaking out (ask the Dixie Chicks) subsided. Movies about Iraq have pretty much bombed, no pun intended. Tom Waits got it right by stripping things down to a soldier’s poignant and ambivalent letter home. Great song.
I get a nice mention in the second paragraph:
https://www.popville.com/2008/11/obama-victory-celebrations-on-u-street/
14th and U St, Washington DC.
I’m honored to be part of the International Center for Journalists’ silent auction and exhibit called The Power of Elections, showing at the Paley Center for Media in NY from October 1 through November 5. Bidding on the auction prints ends on November 12 at the ICFJ Awards Dinner in Washington.
The bidding page for my Orange Revolution print is here.
