“On my last evening, Sašo and I sit in the garden of Georgi Marjanovski, a professor of law and one of Macedonia’s great liberals. We talk in the darkness, listen to the crickets who click their legs in time with a festival in the distance, the full-blooded celebration of a Romani marriage in Europe’s gypsy […]
Know yourself not your role, it’s hellishly hard. – Shere Hite When feminist scholar Shere Hite applied for a doctoral program at Columbia University, she wanted to study with acclaimed scholar Jacques Barzun. She was inspired by the elder scholar’s approach to history and was eager to learn from him. Unfortunately, he was very dismissive […]
Arnold Lane had a strange hobbyCollecting clothesMoonshine washing lineThey suit him fine Pink Floyd, Arnold Lane Given that Casa Susanna, a new book from Thames & Hudson, tells the story of a secret community of transvestites, I want to start with a confession of my own, something only a couple of people know about me. […]
My first exposure to Jim Goldberg was through his remarkable early books, Rich and Poor and Raised by Wolves. Both of these books demonstrated incredible innovation, advancing photography and the photobook into entirely new realms. With these titles, Goldberg utilized a loose approach to form mixed with a moving compassion and empathy for his subjects. Both […]
The opening section of Robert Bolano’s brilliant 1998 novel The Savage Detectives tells the story of a group of young artists, students, and revolutionaries pounding the streets of Mexico City. They called themselves the savage realists and considered themselves a radical response to the magical realists that defined art from the Americas for so much […]
In an effort to sell an advertising campaign to Kodak in Season 1, Episode 13 of Mad Men, Don Draper pitches an idea to the company’s executives for their newest product, the slide carousel. Draper says the key is selling a sense of nostalgia while also promoting it as the newest technology. He calls nostalgia […]
“Creative restelessness – it’s a good thing” – Paul Messier I met Richard Benson the summer of 1994. I was just out of college and knew I wanted to be a photographer. I’d recently purchased a Calumet 4×5, picked up a sink in a junkyard, and set up my first studio for just a couple […]
“I’ve got a blue motel room / with a blue bedspread / I’ve got the blues inside and outside my head.” Joni Mitchell The color we identify as Prussian blue was first introduced to artists in 1724 when a Swiss color manufacturer named Johann Jacob Diesbach was in Berlin experimenting with iron salts, and stumbled […]
Every kid in school a political prisonerEvery lawyer in a cubicle a political prisonerEvery doctor brainwashed by AMA a political prisonerEvery housewife a political prisonerEvery teacher lying thru sad teeth a political prisoner Diane di Prima, “Revolutionary Letter #49” This book, being about work, is by its very nature, about violence – to the spirit […]
In the presence of an instructional picture, I am called to mirror back: I attempt to work the air bubbles out of old clay and conduct self-breast examinations. It is all there, laid out for on the page across dozens of photographs and staged by a body double. This is part of their charge. These […]