Unforgettable

If I have any regrets when I die apart from the tax evasion, embezzlement, loan sharking and murder, it’s that I had a chance to see Richard Avedon speak about his seminal book ‘In the American West’…and I forgot about it.

It just completely slipped what’s left of my mind. Unbelievable. The following year the chances of attending an Avedon lecture were greatly reduced by him suddenly dying. So I am now left with imagining how good it might have been to have seen him.

The only recourse I have left is to make up for this irreversible piece of imbecility by posting some of those great images.

I’ve heard people say ‘What’s so great about just holding a white backdrop behind some one and shooting it ?’ I’d advise you to ignore these people. They know no what they say.

These pictures are beautiful, elegant, simple, touching, soulful, unsettling and thought provoking by turn and represent some of the finest work of a photographic icon.

Pretty in Pink

 

Using old school infrared color film, Ireland’s Richard Masse took images of soldiers from militias and rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The contrast between the rather pretty and feminine looking backdrops and the gun-totting soldiers is interesting and challenges our idea of how a conflict should be depicted. But does it belittle the violence of what is occurring?

I’d argue that it makes us look again and something that is very familiar to us. We’ve all seen many images of conflict but how any of them have been pink?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bossa Jazz

I’m a big fan of Soul Jazz records and in particular of their new Brazilian compilation Bossa Jazz. It focuses on the period of Brazilian music from 1962-1973

I like Tropicalia the Brazilian movement that was more psychedelic in feel and featured such artists  like Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa and Milton Nascimento but I prefer this. It’s super cool and exists in a state of mind where everywhere is a summer beach in Rio.

If only…

 

 

Birth of Cool

Dexter Gordon

Looking through the ICP bookshop they other day I came across a book of Herman Leonard’s pictures of Jazz icons. I’ve always been a fan not just because of the people he shot but the way he shot them. You can tell he was a fan of the music and his enthusiasm and understanding of the Jazz medium translates into the shots. See for yourself……..

Ella Fitzgerald, Paris

Lester Young's hat

Miles Davis

Pearl Bailey

Sonny Stitt

James Moody

Dizzy Gillespie

The Divine St. Aubyn

What do you get when you cross drug addiction and child abuse with the upper class world of an Evelyn Waugh novel?

Why Edward St. Aubyn, the British novelist who I feel more than any other of his generation will stand the test of time.

This is strange for a number of reasons. Firstly, he’s writing about a dying almost irrelevant upper class world that seems completely at odds with the subject matter of a ‘modern’ novel

Secondly, the style in which his books are written owe more to the first half of the twentieth century then the beginning of this one.

And finally, it’s hard to write autobiographical/confessional work without it seeming painfully self-indulgent.

Yet perhaps because St. Aubyn combines to estranged formats together, the confessional and the comic novel of social manners, he creates something truly original

The hero of the novels, if hero is the right word, is the deeply flawed but charming Patrick Melrose. Patrick has been the victim of a vicious father, who amongst other thing sexually assaulted him.

His maltreatment leads to a drug addiction that sees him trawl the streets of 80’s New York for cocaine and heroin in ‘Bad News’.

Here lies the key to the success of the books. The wounded Melrose becomes empathetic. He begins, beneath his cutting remarks and withering disdain for practically everyone not least himself, to think about how to deal with what has happened to him. He also realizes during his Narcotics Anonymous meetings that however comic the notion of people standing up and confessing their addiction is, it’s making him feel.

A writer like Waugh would have just exposed the ridiculousness of such an ‘American’ concept as the 12 step program. St. Aubyn understands, probably first hand its value.

In the wrong hands such material could get rather earnest and sentimental but St. Aubyn uses his gift with the bon mot to undercut any such tendencies brilliantly.

Indeed throughout all of these wonderfully entertaining books there are some staggeringly good one-liners and superb set pieces, notably the dinner party held for the late Princess Margaret in ‘Some Hope’, which is even better than Evelyn Waugh.

I could write much more about these books but I won’t. I would just encourage anyone who has a love of British fiction to get the hold of them.

 

 

 

Neil Krug

I don’t imagine Neil Krug’s images will prove as timeless as Irving Penn’s but I do like the visual style he injected into his fashion photos

He’s recently been used by ‘The Horrors’ for the cover of their ‘Skying’ album with a great effect.

Hip and cool rather than classic but great stuff nevertheless.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Cunningham: New York

How would you like to spend your life living in a bedsit with just a bed and a dozen filing cabinets?

How would you like to have no car, just a Schwinn bicycle that you ride everywhere, even though you’re over 80 years old?

How would you like to dine on cheap food and wear cheap clothes?

How would you like to be an octogenarian facing the prospect of being kicked out of your home?

 

If you’re Bill Cunningham you wouldn’t mind at all because you have something you treasure more than money or status, you have the ability to do something you truly love every day.

Bill Cunningham is a photographer who for forty years has recorded the fashions of the New York streets for the NY Times.

In the fascinating documentary ‘Bill Cunningham: New York’ we get an insight into the very private life of a man who seems a mystery even to his friends.

Here is a man who lives for what he does; photographing fashion trends. Anything that stops him from doing this in the way he wants, he dismisses. When people offer him free food at social events he declines (after all he wouldn’t to feel beholden to his guests and photography them in a dishonest way because of it?) when people add cruel captions to his photos he resigns( how can he earn the trust of the women he photographed if they are betrayed in a such a way?) when people offer him money to sell out his vision he declines( after all without integrity you have nothing , right?)

The result is a person who, even though he has never had a romantic relationship, seems convincingly happy. Proving that the most important thing above all else is staying true to your vision.

He may not be Horst or Penn or any other great fashion photographer but he is clear about what he wants to do and what he needs in order to do it well.

I would bet that 30, 40 or 50 years time you will continue to get exhibits of his photos depicting street styles of New York during its heyday, in the way you get exhibits of Atget depicting the buildings and courtyards of old Paris.

Bill Cunningham is the fashion documenter par excellence.

 

Murder is my Business

Having recently seen one Weegee exhibition at the Steven Kasher Gallery, it seemed I hadn’t got quite enough of the man.

So I went to see another exhibit of his work ‘Murder is my Business’ at the ICP Gallery in midtown.  This proved to be one of my better decisions.

The tile is a bit of a misnomer because the exhibition doesn’t just focus on his images of murder. Really it’s all his presswork, plus a couple of documentaries shorts he made.

You tend to forget sometimes that Weegee was a tabloid photographer. If he was around today he’d be working for Murdoch but it’s this that gives his images a raw punch. They need to ‘grab you’ by the throat if they’re going to sell papers.

Interestingly it turns out that Weegee was an unlikely member of the ‘The Photo League’, a radical left wing group including such luminaries as Helen Levitt and W. Eugene Smith.

I say unlikely because Weegee doesn’t seem to be making any political point with his photos. In fact, I would go as far to say he is quite non-judgmental about everything he shoots. He makes no point about poverty when he shows young kids at the scene of their first murder and no comment on the cops that stand over a newly killed mobster.

Weegee just records the murders and arrests like Brassai records the hookers he sees in Paris.

 

 

For all the cynicism and dark humor of his images (see the picture of a murder victim outside of a cinema showing the film ‘Joy of life’) there is humanism too. The face of a cop looking moved by a car crash victim or another holding two rescued kittens in the palms of his hands.

Then there is his ‘Coney Island’ film. It is starkly beautiful with a love of the subjects it shows, while at the same time there’s also a leery quality, as Weegee’s camera ogles the bathing beauties and kissing couples on the jam-packed beach.

 

 

I suppose right there is the odd dichotomy of the man. On the one hand, sleazy tabloid snapper and on the other, empathetic man of the people.

 

Whatever the truth, there’s no doubt Weegee never did what he did to get rich. A recreation of the small bedsit he lived in for much of his life, with nothing but a radio for company is strangely moving. For a second we imagine what it must have been like to be him, laying on his bed waiting patiently for the next murder to be lit up by his flash bulb.

 

 

 

 

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer.

Born in New York in 1926, Vivian Maier was a Chicago nanny who went out in her spare time and took street photos without seemingly telling anyone. Following her death in 2009, there’s been much interest in her work bringing her posthumous critical success worldwide. I went to see a showing of her images at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea.

I had seen some of her pictures before and been impressed but many of one’s in the Kasher show were new to me and revealed the depth and range of Maier’s work. I always think that it’s seeing the little things, the seemingly inconsequential, that make for a great street photographer. Maier certainly has that quality.

A couple in violently checked clothing embrace in a park and Maier is on hand to see the comedy of the moment.

An old homeless man sits on a park bench, his head lowered at a weird angle but his gaze fixed on the camera.

A black man crosses his hands behind his back and Maier is on hand to record the stark cleanness of brightness of his nails.

A school bus with the words fuck you scrawled on the glass in between the words ‘STOP ON SIGNAL’.

All are fantastic street images and all are unlike anything else. Yes her work at times is reminiscent of Helen Levitt but what is interesting is that I don’t think you’d necessarily guess a woman had taken most of these images.

I think we can talk now of something being Maier-esque. The images of the sleeping man on the beach and crumpled drunk on a curb seem to be uniquely her.

 

 

Blow Up

Artfully arranged Flowers are all very nice. But don’t you ever feel that what might make them more interesting is if someone was to get some explosives and blow the shit out of them? No? Maybe it’s just me and Ori Gersht then….