Breakfast blogging

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random thoughts before coffee blogging

It occured to me the other night, after having watched my fourth episode of Ghost Adventures, that the same technology that brings us the glowing-eyed baggy-panted ghost hunters provoking the cantankerous dead in monochromatic green -- these are the same night vision cameras that brought us the Paris Hilton sex tape, in which she coitus interruptussed to answer her cell phone.



My new HTC Droid Eris cell phone is the modest little step-sister to the Motorola Droid, the streamlined Mini Cooper to its Hummer, the modest Joanie to its overbearing Chachi. It lacks a keyboard, and the spell check is quirky. Trying to text someone that I was feeling sick, I almost texted that I was feeling freckles.



A week ago I was in New York, where I saw Mama, Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away! , a film program of home movies at the Museum of Modern Art. Among the revelations were color home movies of Joan Crawford circa 1943. Sunbathing. Nude. She had freckles.

Bus blogging

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Dinner blogging

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Breakfast blogging

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Lunch blogging

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Bus blogging

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breakfast blogging

gyro and eggs

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pizza blogging

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curry blogging

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snack blogging

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bus blogging

B/W parkway

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lunch blogging

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bus blogging

constitution ave

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lunch blogging

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lunch blogging

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Fotoweek 2009: Fixation

original photo here.

Join Ten Miles Square and the Pink Line Project at Industry Gallery with the work of nine local photographers for the second annual Fixation exhibit, part of the FotoweekDC festival.

These photographers each create a narrative with a short series of images, differentiating the stereotypical image of our Nation's Capital from the people actually living inside it. Their photographs inspect our city's individual subcultures and the people who thrive in them, whether it's the intense rock convulsions of serious air guitar competitors or the eager characters at the local Renaissance festival. Some create their own scenes by simply coming together as bystanders, while others transit separately in search of the same something. What these images all have in common is a fixation on subculture carved out inside the story of this city.

Featured photographers: Nicole Aguirre, Karon Flage, Angela Kleis, Drew McDermott, Amit Mehta, Pat Padua, Jay Westcott, Aziz Yazdani, and Joshua Yospyn.

for more information see tenmilessquare.com/fixation-industry-gallery-november-7

*****
You can still see the work of Pat Padua and Jennifer Wade in Microsopy at Hounshell, 1506 14th Street NW.

bus blogging

connecticut avenue

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lunch blogging

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subway blogging

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lunch blogging

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bus blogging

16th street southbound

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bus blogging

16th street

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bus blogging

Georgia Avenue

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clean plate blogging

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mouth-cam

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lunch blogging

Patricio's phone cam is steaming over

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Patricio wiped his glasses with a swatch of red velour

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lunch blogging

I put the croutons in before the dressing today.

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brought to you by the number eight

eight ways of looking from a short-circuiting sx-70 land camera, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

That's no Dialectical Materialism, That's My Wife!

Dušan Makavejev's most famous avant-garde film was inspired by a book called Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis. If that doesn't sound like a fun night out, you've never seen WR: Mysteries of the Organism. Criterion scored a hit with their release last year of Makaveyev's two best and most notorious films, WR and Sweet Movie. Now they've done us all a service by releasing his first three films in Eclipse Series 18:Dušan Makavejev, Free Radical.

Fellow iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard similarly pushed the celluloid envelope, but while Godard's narrative-busting seemed like so much calculated exercise, Makaveyev's approach was genuinely omnivorous, hungry for ideas and excited about the possibilities of going beyond narrative. "But don't you see how this is connected too?" you can imagine him waving his arms and throwing his shot glass down, drunk on filmmaking.

Dr. Zivojin Aleksic as Criminologist in LOVE AFFAIR, OR THE CASE OF THE MISSING SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR. Courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
Makaveyev's films came out of and celebrated the sexual revolution with an equal accent on both words of the phrase. Within the first five minutes of Man is Not a Bird (1965) Makaveyev has set up his two major themes: Marxism and sex. After a credit sequence typeset in stark Gill Sans, "Opening remarks on negative aspects of love" offers a Marxist hypnotist itemizing and railing against the local superstitions. This leads into a sequence with a burlesque singer entertaining a rowdy bunch of factory workers. The film is one of his more straightforward but is peppered with striking imagery, as in a car wash that sounds like a roaring tiger.

Love Affair or: the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (1967) is based on a true story, though again Makaveyev's technique is leagues beyond that of Unsolved Mysteries. Part procedural, part collage, this is one of Makaveyev's more conventional works, though where this director is concerned that's a relative statement.

With Innocence Unprotected (1968), Makaveyev lights the fuse that would explode with WR. It is here that he hits his stride with his unclassifiable collage form - not quite fiction, not quite documentary. He wasn't the only one breaking free of narrative structures - Godard, Chris Marker - but nobody did it with this much fun (pace the preciousness of the Czech New Wave) - and this much sex. Here, he takes as his starting point copious amounts of footage from the first Yugoslavian talking picture, the 1942 film Innocence Unprotected. With just stock footage and a series of interviews, Makaveyev made something remarkable — and he was just getting started. He selectively tints and hand-colors sequences of a stiffly photographed, over-acted melodrama and frames it with interviews of surviving cast and crew members, and intercuts these with scenes of bombed-out occupied Belgrade. The effect is something like juxtaposing a Fred and Ginger movie with shots of bread lines. A work of brilliance and passion, sex and politics - and it's hilarious.

The original Innocence was made under German occupation in 1942. It was written, direct by, and stars Aleksic Dragoljub, a stunt man and love interest. Contemporary footage of the grey-haired acrobat show him still unafraid to test the limits of physical endurance. At one point he takes a steel bar and bends it using his teeth as a fulcrum. He spits out the tooth or two that succumb to the show of strength. Cameraman and sound recordist Stevan Miskovic boasts "Our modern cinema today came out of my belly button." Makavejev's most famous films are joyously sexual; Innocence may be less so, though it is no less a celebration of the human body.

the circle theatre

the circle theatre, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

A program ca. 1984 from the late, lamented Circle Theatre, now the site of an office building, not a parking garage as the link says. In the '80's, the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue that housed The Circle also had a bar (the 21st Amendment, being near 21st Street NW), a science-fiction bookstore and a liquor store. That entire block is gone. View large.

things i found in the attic

things i found in the attic, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

Yesterday I found my copy of Ghostly Men, a small non-fiction book about the Collyer Brothers, the most famous of the old-time hoarders. It was right under my nose, or rather on a three-shelf case under the nose of a five-shelf case, most of whose latter's shelves are doubled-up with books. I knew it was here somewhere.

The hit reality show Hoarders, which appeared on basic cable just after I decided to do something about my pack-rat's environment, takes us into the homes of contemporary Collyers, and I'm relieved to say that the terrible conditions in which these capital-H Hoarders try to live don't look much like the crap I've accumulated over the years. But I still have decades of clutter to go through and have been steadily weeding and making discoveries (as fans of Sheena Easton may have already discovered) and clearing space and the soul.

This morning I took a shot at the attic - not the crawlspace as I've previously written about, but the main floor area. I only spent an hour up there but I filled a garbage bag of junk and also found school and other papers I'd like to hold onto, some of which I'd been looking for for a long time:



The Circle Theater was where I learned about the movies. I saw hundreds of filsm here when I was in high school, many of them one-dollar matinees. The most unusual double-bill was Fast Times at Ridgemont High paired with Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence; I didn't much like either of them, but this was the place where I first saw some of my favorite movies; Badlands, Chinatown, North by Northwest. It was a run-down, vermin-infested theater but Washington, DC is a poorer place for its loss.



My late mother was a seamstress, and I've long wanted to see if the accoutrements of her trade were still stashed away in the house. I found old patterns in a bag that was again right under my nose.



I found school papers and old drawings, more of which I'll post anon, but this most intrigued me, from a Social Studies folder. What an awful vision of community was presented to our young minds ca. 1977.

The six-pack of Coors belonged to one of my brothers and was acquired ca. 1972, when the brand was hard to come by in these parts.

Except for the beer, I'm not planning to throw any of these out. The struggle continues.

gravestone portraits

See the full set of gravestone portraits here.

Gravestone portraits at The bloggy, bloggy boo

Movie Review: People *LOVE* Photos - Blogcritics Video

Movie Review: People *LOVE* Photos - Blogcritics Video

As a photographer, I'm always curious how other photographers work with models, whether they be friends or strangers. The tritely titled documentary People *LOVE* Photos (couldn't they have come up with anything else? The Naked Eye? A Thousand Words? Look At Me? ), directed by Christian Klinger, looks at three very different women photographers, and what struck me most are the very different ways they interact with their human subjects.

Tanyth Berkeley works in the Diane Arbus tradition of street photography. A street photographer has a number of choices to make in her quest for subjects: do you shoot inconspicuously, as Robert Frank and Walker Evans often did? Or do you interact with your subject, as Arbus did? Berkeley is not a gregarious speaker but her unassuming personality helps her interact with strangers, as we see in sequences that follow her on a photowalk in the streets of Manhattan. She dresses in a kind of New York photographer's camo, in dark hues and with only a single camera, but the spare arsenal is a way not to hide but to approach strangers with all her cards out.

Ashley MacLean and Traci Matlock (aka Rose and Olive) were discovered on the photo sharing/social networking site Flickr, of which I am a member. They are extroverts with a capital E, as also suits one of their specialties — erotica. I don't know if it's just coincidence or if it's a result of their personalities, but their interview segments are the best sounding parts of this documentary. No attempt was made to mix down ambient noise in other segments, and in some scenes, particularly those on the streets of Manhattan, this is very distracting.

The sub-heading of this segment is "Sexuality," and at one point I started to get the feeling that the director was exploiting models in a way that the photographers didn't. It's one thing to photograph the female form in the nude; it's another to show the photographers spraying down a model's breasts with a water bottle. But when the artists start feeding each other raw eggs while topless, you realize that letting it all hang out is just part of the their work. Sexuality is not always portrayed in comforting ways — bloody and bruised bodies are not unexpected sights in their work.

Elinor Carucci is probably the best known of the photographers shown here; her monographs have been published by Steidl and Chronicle, two of the major art-book imprints, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. Her work seems to be the most personal of these artists, and the most intimate: Carucci's subject is her family. She examines her relationships with herself and her blood kin in a way that combines the family surveys of Sally Mann with the diaristic and sometimes sensationalistic work of Nan Goldin. Throughout the simple nudes, even those of her C-section scars after giving birth to twins, are about her relationships. A photo of her crying, snot-nosed child has apparently upset some viewers but Carucci feels it's simply an ordinary shot of childhood.

The original score to the documentary is a circular piano figure that sounds unresolved. The music lends a dramatic tension that does not at all suit the proceedings. The music reminds me of the tinkling Ligeti piece featured in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and that alone should tell you how inappropriate it is for a documentary about photographers who go about their work with eyes wide open.

One of the marks of a good photographer is the ability to edit. Robert Frank shots hundreds of rolls of film for the project that became his iconic book The Americans. People *Love* Photos is only 97 minutes but, though no fault of the subjects, seems much longer.

Photo of Tanyth Berkeley courtesy Amadelio Film.

song of hernando county

song of hernando county, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

from a book put out by the Hernando County YWCA

HERNANDO COUNTY
(by Edith Fulton?)

("I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from which cometh my strength"
--Psalm 121:1)

There may not be in all of earth
A region totally without lure,
Without a modicum of worth.
If man but labor and endure;
But living at its thrilling best
Is yours in such a land as this
Which nature lavishly has blessed
With ocean's tang and sun's gold kiss
Upon the dark and loamy soil
That folds the gift of seeds away
And by some swift and secret toil,
Brings forth their yield in sweet array.

Come down, ye seekers for a land
Of wondrous favor, bright with peace,
Where quickened heart and mind and hand
Reap harvests of untold increase!
The shining pines await you here,
And wooded hills are redolent
With pungent fragrance all the year;
When miles before you have been spent
And you have reached your journey's end,
You'll find delight indigenous,
And every citizen a friend
To welcome you as one of us.

it's showtime

, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

Join Ten Miles Square and the work of Pat Padua and Jennifer Wade in Microscopy at Hounshell (1506 14th Street NW) this Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Padua and Wade take a closer look, literally and figuratively, at the minutiae of life. Padua's photographs feature the quirky side of Americana that constantly seesaws between the oddly humorous and vaguely depressing -- images like a shiny, bright red gumball machine encouraging us to enjoy hugs (and not drugs!), left to rot full of decaying, colorless candies, or a wide-shot of a packed bingo hall parking lot on a gorgeous day. Padua takes his microscope to a modern society that seems to have little interest in (or perhaps knowledge of) any world that exists outside the frame. Heavily influenced by Martin Parr, these images also document our strange relationships with consumerism and collectibles -- Jesus and Mary figurines suffocate silently in plastic wrap waiting for the true believer to save them.

Jennifer Wade takes a more literal approach to her Microscopy. A scientist by trade, she uses a scanning electron microscope to turn every day items into the soaring patterns of mountains and sheer cliffs of a cracked ring, swirls of atoms on chunk of coral, or the rushing current of fibers on a cut piece of paper. Much like Padua's photos, they remind the viewer that it's possible to both lean closer and step way back, and encourage the viewers to find their own perspectives.

Hounshell is at 1506 14th Street. Head down Saturday night to also enjoy openings at Irvine Contemporary, Hemphill, Gallery Plan B, the Hamiltonian Gallery. Many thanks to the Pink Line Project for helping make Microscopy possible.

Image of "The Real Mount Dora" by Pat Padua.

the big bands

I'm weeding files on my PC and found a few images from the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. If you think the Library of Congress has lots of images on their Flickr stream, there's even more on their website. Happy browsing.

The new and old Dodge City Cowboy band



Eagle Rube band #2:

incident at Spook Hill

incident at Spook Hill, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

new on the bloggy, bloggy boo - what is that red light? there's nothing behind that Carol Channing ventriloquist dummy but woods.

crawlspace

I had the day off monday. I usually spend it running errands, maybe getting drunken fried rice for lunch and seeing the latest Adam Sandler movie - and, more often than not, shedding a tear at its sentimental resolution. (The only Adam Sandler I saw that *didn't* make me cry was REIGN O'ER ME, the post-9/11 stress syndrome picture which was slathered in Very Important Resolution and seemed far less emotionally convincing than LITTLE NICKY). But this monday I spent the day off weeding, and perhaps apropos of Sandler, I went back to my childhood.

I don't much like the language of twelve-step programs, but to be honest, living in a big house enables the shit out of me. My present and past acquisitions are scattered to the far corners of three floors and an attic, and part of the task of weeding is clearing out one space in my room only to bring in something I've left elsewhere in the house, more or less negating the space gained upstairs. It's like the world's least inefficient conveyor belt with no chocolate shop at the end in which to sell my irregular samplers. I can work for an hour or two and know I've made a quantitative difference, but then take a look at the resultant space and see hardly any aesthetic difference at all.

It goes both ways. Last month, in the early stages of my weeding renaissance, I dragged a copy-paper box full of old New Yorkers out of my room and took it up to the attic. The most recent issue in the box was late summer 2001, and the issues went back to the mid-90's. That I didn't just empty the box outright has been gnawing at me, and I pictured its contents, sitting on an old cocktail table in the attic, crashing through the floor and sending decades of clutter and pithy columnists all the way down through to the basement.

So I went up to the attic with that simple goal in mind - to bundle up the spawn of David Remnick and mercilessly drop them in the recycle bin. (If you open up the recycle bin right now, you'd see Gore Vidal's sour puss, advertising whatever it is they advertise on the back of a 1990's New Yorker, peering back at you through the twine. Don't let him sway you, he means no good.) And I did just that, but not before taking a detour into the crawlspace.

I don't remember the last time anyone went up into the crawlspace, but if you calculate years by the number of seconds it takes for the rattle of dust and dirt to pour out of the corners of the crawlspace door and trickle down the attic stairs and finally come to a stop; clearly it had been decades. Another temporal indication would be the 70's-era shopping bag from Woodward and Lothrop department store, which had closed in 1995.

The bag contained parochial school papers I'd long forgotten, and if I had remembered them I'd assumed they were thrown out long ago. The cavemen photos, from the Smithsonian Museum of Natrual History, are most likely the first photos I ever made, for a school project on Neanderthal Man. I think they were taken with a Kodak Instamatic 110. Not bad. Although I'd grow into photographic influences like William Eggleston and Martin Parr, in these photos I see a budding Nan Goldin.






On the back of this drawing (the stains under the title at the top of the page are fresh sweat), I wrote "Eleventh Station [of the cross]," which is the Crucifixion. But I'm not sure even the advanced abstractions of what must have been my seventh-grade mind would have made the leap from crucifixion to a puppy caste system. It's not unlike an Adam Sandler movie.

kitchen, 1902

kitchen, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

A 4x4 glass negative found at the Antiques Garage in Chelsea. Among the provisions on the kitchen counter are a couple of tins of Hooton's Cocoa.

cemeteries of hernando county

cemeteries of hernando county, originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

Read about Spring Hill Cemetery on my ghost blog, The bloggy, bloggy boo.