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 […]
My parents divorced in 1976, during my first weeks of kindergarten. My memories of that time are fuzzy, but I do remember a t-shirt my mom wore as an expression of her new identity after her life with my dad. It was a yellow cotton shirt with a red stencil of an apple with one […]
“I buy six caterpillars so your grandchildren can watch them turn into butterflies. The company guarantees at least three of them will make it to their final stage of life. They all die. I write and complain. The email in which they offer to send me new caterpillars opens with the line, ‘Living things can […]