From Charis Wilson's obituary in the Economist, December 10, 2009...
"Soon she knew Weston's ideas well enough to write the text for his photographs,
his applications for grants and his articles for photographic magazines, for words
came easily to her as they never did to him. She took the notes, on her clackety
Royal typewriter, and also drove their puttering Ford on the giant western trips
they made in the late 1930s; the books that resulted, notably “California and the
West”, were as much hers as his, but she was seldom credited."
Transmute drunks into umbras,
nausea into abasement, debutantes into butter,
meerkats back into debutantes, butter back into butter.
Then what?
Then nothing!
No more drunks, umbras, nausea, or abasement!
No more debutantes!
No more butter!
"A sacred pause?" Are these cogs in the great machine of Time Inc. self-important or what?
"The pitch meeting is a moment for the department to come together to look at images and discuss
ideas as a group. It is a sacred pause in our very hectic week."
The sacred pitch meeting! Gag me with my Nikon!
But apart from the grotesque personality disorders of the staff, what I hate hate hate about
"Lightbox" is that you can look at 50 of their photos in which people appear, and there aren't
any recognizable people in them! Nothing but "examples!"
I'm looking through their Best Pictures of the Week for January 11-18 and after 22 just about
the most individualized is "A Hindu Holy Man."
Would you recognize this guy, or anybody else in the frame, if they all jumped out at you right
now, while you're looking at the picture? Of course not!
This is anti-human garbage, and it deserves to be "appreciated" with a hammer.
My name is Khalid Irfan.
Today I woke up in Skardu.
Tonight I will sleep in Mohenjo-daro.
Five stars are my fathers.
Five rivers are my sons.
In the mists above Karachi,
how many droplets jostle and coalesce?
Contracts and marriage vows dissolved
by the law of water.
From Kang Rinpoche to Sapta Singhu,
water woven into wind,
wind woven into water,
blue into blue.
I keep trying to conjure this image out of my brain. There are maybe five
or six versions of it floating around on the internet, all the way from black
and white to super-saturation, all of them attributed to different photographers,
but as far as I know, nobody lays a definite claim to it, and neither would I.
The traditional textiles of tribes from as far away as Oruzgan are represented
in one or another outfit here, and now they all dwell together in some God-forsaken
shed in Paktia, while 96% of American "aid" to Afghanistan is devoted to military
operations.
Did you learn how to fly?
Yes, I learned how to fly,
and I learned that
none of us
can
be
purified,
except by torture and humiliation.
I think with my feet!
Are you some kind of robot?
My heart is an artichoke!
I only exist in a Hollywood out-take!
Will you please be my bitch?
I think roaches are cute!
They got three little crotches!
They talk in trochees!
They eat candy for breakfast!
I think with my feet!
How Not To Paint -
Recent Paintings and Photographs -
Oil spray alla prima on Masonite
"In recent years the "wet-on-wet" (alla prima) practice has become
well known as the primary method of painting used by such television
artists as Bill Alexander, Bob Ross, and Robert Warren. Since colors
will usually mix if one is laid over top of another while both are wet,
full paintings (requiring at most only a few minutes of detail work
after the main work is dry) can be produced in a short period of time
– Alexander and Ross could produce an entire landscape in under half an
hour on their respective television shows, The Magic of Oil Painting and
The Joy of Painting."
Wet-on Wet Underpants!
People talk about money-laundering and bribes and
"dirty money" on the radio
and what they don't
understand is what they don't
understand is what they don't
understand is that it's all
dirty money,
every goddamned dollar in the world.
Two guys jump off the Empire State Building at exactly the same moment.
One of them is a suicide, the other is an artist.
Which is which?
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