herb ritts emulation part deux

I like the bottom two the best --- For some reason, I can't get them to show bigger. Please click on them if you'd like to get a better look.

Model :: Terry Marshall

Herb Ritts emulation

This is the first half of the shoot :: trying to emulate Herb Ritts

I'm shooting another model tomorrow, so more to come.

Danny Lyon

“I wanted to change history and preserve humanity... But in the process I changed myself and preserved my own.” 

McDonalization of Che

A new book is out by Michael Casey called Che's Afterlife (official site). It explores the ridiculously widespread Alberto Korda photograph seen and known throughout the world. (I read somewhere it is probably the most commonly re-purposed photograph ever shot.)

In really plain, kinda "guerilla" gonzo-esq language, Casey talks about how this one image of Che has been commercialized into an emblem of and for post-modern pop culture -- he says it's been diminished into a profitable "brand" for the "rebellious youth" -- I'm not giving all the details of his argument ... go to the links to read more if you have time/even want to.

I think this book could be really interesting -- or really long. You can read an excerpt here :: Che's Afterlife (part)

Anyway, it's a cool idea -- but a whole book's worth of goods? -- I'm not so sure.

Charting new courses

This is such a great poem -- one of those you want to memorize and keep with you wherever you go.

Some of Rich's work is too heavy on the lesbian/feminist themes for me -- but maybe her commitment to those ideas allows her 

to write such an empowering poem about a speaker whose sexuality is unclear -- it really doesn't make a difference

if the "explorer" is male or female. (("I am she: I am he")) Rich suggests we can share this pursuit together.

Adrienne Rich :: Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Editorial piece I shot this weekend -- still trying to put it all together -- had some major technical difficulties and lost a lotta files... not very fun losing files :: 

Sarah Moon

:: (full) interview by Ilona Suschitzky ::

(here's the end)

So how does it all begin?

-- It's never the same... of course I have a point of view, I make formal choices, but I prefer to feel my unconscious leading me before my will interferes. I appreciate that photography allows me to be uncertain, and for example, to have no idea why I might ask someone to hold a guinea fowl in their arms and then to scream as well. Maybe what suits me is that in one second I can't affirm anything because the next one can cancel it all. Sometimes I am not even sure of what I have seen. For me it is an enormous advantage to allow myself to be vague and to move by instinct rather than thought. I find it hard to be too precise, too definite... I like to go on searching, maybe it's the quest more than the ending that keeps me going.

Mark Borthwick

I'd never heard of this guy before -- but he is also a musician, cook, filmmaker, and all around pretty interesting person; he has photo gallery-installation-dinner parties at his home for like 100 people. 

I don't know, honestly, how interested I am in his images --  but he makes some really great statements in this interview. I copied and pasted the parts I really like :: (click here for the full link) ... really, though, please, read the whole thing.... it's good.

So you feel like when you are doing photography that you can accomplish all those multidimensional feelings?

MB: It's just attaching yourself to that feeling. For me, it was an enormous awakening to realize that there was a certain period in my life, maybe five years ago, for the ten years prior to that, where I struggled between the idea of Here I am today, I'm writing, the next day I'm drawing, the next day I'm taking pictures, and the next day I'm with the kids. Because there was no time, I never gave myself time to actually edit the pictures, or analyze the pictures, and question what I was doing and I realized that I never wanted to attach myself to that question. That question was never involved in the way that I was working; I was never practicing the idea of trying to understand what I was doing, what I was putting out there. I just wanted to leave it for what it was.


On why he doesn't shoot fashion anymore:

MB: No, no, it's exhausting in the sense that you're continually put into a position of a student. You have these hypocritical fashion editors out there, a few of them that try to attain their rules and put that forth. I don't believe in any of it anymore and fashion itself has become extremely unfashionable in that sense. Especially today, I think it's amazing to hang out on stoops here, where we live and see there's another way. There's always another way. Magazines took such a step backwards over the last twenty years trying to close the door to the other way. And I'm always interested in the other way, and I attach myself to that, whether it's with the clothes, the music, the cooking or just the idea of bringing people together. There's so much joy to be had with the small little events that happen to you daily. Te last couple of days have been magical. I walk out of this place, vibrating at a pace that's just phenomenal. There could be two or three people walking down the street, could be a kid and its mother and they sit down on the floor and... that's very precious. That lasts forever.

Answering what you said before about reaching a larger audience again with this, that's what I'm interested in now. I'm not trying to make it bigger than what it is, but at the same time, I'm interested to see where it can go. I like putting myself in a position where I'm back at the beginning again, and just nurture that. It's so much less about me and so much more about communicating and listening to the audience and people around. Maybe that's what this is about: that I gave myself the opportunity to take a step out and just listen for a while.

We were sharing love for joni mitchell today in one of my classes. It got me listening to her all day.

But I really love this song. I've loved it for a long time --

work in progress

Here's what I have toned and edited so far for a catalogue  I'm working on (collaboratively with another designer in my class) for sumgirls, local boutique -- more images to come. These were shot at green lakes state park in Syracuse last weekend.

so excited