Lynda Barry Rules

Lynda Barry, one of my favorite American authors, got a nice piece of recognition in the Times. Barry is now teaching writing and offers workshops around the country. Her students come from all walks of life and often never thought of themselves as "writers." Right on Lynda. Power to the People.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/cartoonist-lynda-barry-will-make-you-believe-in-yourself.html

http://www.marlysmagazine.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynda_Barry

New Friend

This little cat found us on our walk this morning.

Two Photos from NYC

The first picture was taken into the window at International Center for Photography, where Elliot Erwitt has a terrific show of over 100 images. He's always been one of my favorite photographers and is one of the few truly funny photographers out there.

Also at ICP is an exhibit about Ruth Gruber. She was a terrific photographer in my opinion, whose work has not been acknowledged until now.

The second picture above was taken on West 43rd Street as I was walking toward Times Square. Both were taken with my iPhone.

In the morning I went to MOMA and one of the exhibits I saw was Boris Mikhailov's exhibit, "Case History." I'm still trying to figure out what I was looking at. I'm planning on writing more about his work here in the future but for now here's a link to a review of the show in the Times.

Dinner at Ayurveda Cafe on Amsterdam at 94th. There's no menu, they prepare a different meal every day and that's what you get. You can also ask for seconds as many times as you want.

Police Report

This morning I'm writing a police report about my neighbor's dog, who has already earned three citations for attacking residents of the neighborhood. Can't go into more detail here for obvious reasons.

Twitter Comments on Vegan Living

Here's a quick sampling of remarks directed at vegans on Twitter today:

-- Q: How can you tell a person is vegan? A: Oh, they'll let you know.

-- i'm not a vegan because i don't believe in killing animals for food and clothing. i'm a vegan because i want to live forever.

-- Shut up, Moby: How the "But I'm a vegan" problem is ruining progressives.

-- I'm not even remotely interested in eating vegan products until someone can figure out a way to make them scream out in pain.

-- i just ate a vegan cupcake and it was great but i feel bad putting chickens and cows out of work in these hard economic times.

-- I hate it when vegan women treat men like a piece of tofu.

Come to your own conclusions.

Pennsylvania Pickerel Frog

This pickerel frog must have been killed shortly before we found him this morning on our walk around Cherry Valley. At first I thought it was a leopard frog, however when I looked it up, the leopard frog has similar markings but the background color is greener. The resting heart rate of a frog is about 60 beats per minute. When they go into hibernation, it slows to 2.

Yesterday I researched the heart rates of different animals that somehow or another have made their way into the Zorki manuscript. I had no intention of including animals when I began the story, but in building the world of the novel it just made sense and one by one they began to appear. Miles, the narrator, is vegan so naturally he cares about animals, but their mention is just an incidental part of the larger story. Here are a couple of my findings: Cat 150, Hummingbird 250 at rest/1200 when feeding, Pit bull 90, Pigeon 600, Mouse 530, Elephant 30.

Greetings From Provincetown

Just returned from a week at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony in Provincetown. The workshop was on longform nonfiction articles, which according to traditional internet wisdom (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) are not of interest to today's readers. Not so, I found out, and I also found out a great source for the articles and a way to read them on your phone or Ipad: check out Longform.org and Instapaper.

Our instructor for the week, Alana Newhouse, managing editor of Tablet Magazine, ordered, er, suggested the other writers and I do some blogging, so I'm going to make an effort to post here regularly and see where it goes. Feel free to comment.

Norman Mailer called Provincetown the "Wild West of the East." In some ways I see his point, as in the nightly anything-goes parade on Commercial Street. Most scary thing I saw: a gaggle of old men dressed in babydoll drag. If I'd seen them as a kid I'd still be in therapy today. On the other hand, for as much as the open-minded-artsy image Provincetown tries to portray, the art on display all over town is hideously bourgeois, romantic, sappy, and, above all, safe. Paintings and photographs of sunsets, leaves, lighthouses, seascapes, ships, an occasional well-muscled man can be seen in every gallery and shop window. While a lot of them fly rainbow flags and tolerance slogans, there doesn't seem to be much of a reception for progressive art.

The Cracked Mirror of Miles Ladin's Photographs

Miles Ladin's photographs of the rich and the beautiful are fascinating because they simultaneously show why celebrities attract some people and repulse others. I fall into the second category and for me Miles's images confirm the reaction I've had since I was a teenager. These days when I'm subjected to celeb images it is almost always against my will. I've stopped watching television altogether; likewise Hollywood movies. I avoid places like malls and big retail stores (for other reasons besides this). But I still have to deal with them in supermarket checkout lines, when driving in my car (highway billboards), visiting NY City (everywhere, especially subway stations) and at my Mom's house (television, though she usually turns it off).

I admire the edginess of Miles's photographs. It's interesting that he regularly publishes in magazines and newspapers with little or no backlash. Recently, his work was also featured in the book, Celebrity & Performance: The World's Top Photographers. The images presented here are more ambiguous, but I'm hoping you will take a closer look at Miles's work to see what I'm talking about. I'm going to contact him about running additional images here, because I'd like to write something about them. In the meantime, this is an introduction and you can go to his website,
Miles Ladin Photography.

Miles and I became friends about twenty years ago when we both studied photography with Larry Fink. While he is not a hardcore traditionalist and occasionally shoots digitally, Miles continues to produce most of his work using Nikon 35mm cameras, making both traditional gelatin silver prints and large scale ink jet prints from scanned negatives.

Double Rainbow

7:00 p.m. this evening, from our back patio. Viva le snapshot.

Martha Posner

Martha Posner is showing at Dalet Gallery, 141 North 2nd Street, Philadelphia, PA, from April 30 – June 6, 2010. Opening Reception: Friday, May 7, 5 – 9 p.m. Gallery Talk: Saturday, May 15, 3:00 p.m.

Martha Posner’s work disturbs me – in the best possible way. Much of the time, I don’t know what the hell to make of it. I’m not sure what it’s about. It bothers me. And that’s a good thing. I think that’s what art—at least some art—should do. Robert Rauschenberg’s work has that effect on me. So does Francis Bacon’s. So do the stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Franz Kafka. That’s not bad company Martha.

When I drive down the long dirt road to her farm to visit Martha or her husband, photographer Larry Fink, I’m always tempted to sneak away and peer into her studio upstairs in the 1812 barn to see what’s cooking. And cook she does, melting, stirring, then brushing beeswax from bubbling crockpots onto the dresses, shoes, and other, more amorphous forms she has mounted on wire armatures.

On my recent visit to talk about her work, she's not cooking -- she is in the studio preparing everything for transport to the gallery. Strewn among the quiet figures that feel like they are slowly turning and lifting, are screwdrivers, pliers, paint, nails, brushes, tattered clothing, tree roots, and older sculptures and paintings. On a small table in the corner, laid carefully next to a pile of two dozen not-so-neatly-piled paintbrushes, are a dead bluebird and a dead cedar waxwing. Delivered by Martha’s cats as presents, for now, they are to behold. Eventually, they may become part of an assemblage.

When discussing Martha’s sculptures recently with another artist, the person said to me, “I can’t understand why she would make her work out of materials that are impermanent.” Looking around her studio today, I remember what I said, and why I said it: “That’s exactly what attracts me to her work.”

Martha tells me the figures in her new series have come together quickly after she thought about them for months while working around the farm and tromping up and down the surrounding hills with her Yellow Lab, Max.

Several years ago, Martha completed a series of sculptures entitled Physical Memory, a phrase that seems to apply to all of her work. Like memories—my memories at least—her constructions feel incomplete, unfinished, unresolved. The materials and colors she uses suggest familiar, fundamental things: dirt, blood, hair, feathers, and bone. While familiar, in combination they both repel and attract. I’m drawn to touch them, yet a little frightened. “The last thing I would want,” Martha tells me, “would be for someone to think I’m trying to make angels.” She grits her teeth, as if dreading the thought.

What she does want to explore, she explains, is the “deeply physical and sometimes painful process of crossing between two worlds.” While her figures have both human and animal features, to Martha, the “categories are porous.” Although she doesn’t come across as a mystic, Martha’s work asks the viewer to wonder why wouldn’t spiritual and physical transformation be possible? The figures leave me without an answer, but their physicality has a resonance that causes the question to linger in my mind. Martha Posner’s work is of this world, but it’s also of another world—one I’m still trying to define. I hope I never succeed.

My Uncle John Polachek, Roselle Park, NJ, Circa 1960

Photocommentary is back. Upcoming posts to include more scans of family pictures, a write up on artist Martha Posner, photos by Zev Jonas, Jonno Rattman, Erica Luisi, Larry Fink, Annalisa Gonella, and more.

For now, I hope you enjoy the postwar security of my Uncle John in his parents' back yard in Roselle Park, NJ. He only kept that '57 Chevy (which was orange) another year or two because his two sons, Joe and John Jr., were getting big. I love the way the crease on his pants and the zipper on his bomber jacket line up with the trees in the neighbor's yard-- not unlike the way the trees line up with the suspender and leg of the little boy in Diane Arbus's famous 1960 photograph Boy with Toy Hand Grenade, Central Park. Of course my grandfather, who took this photograph, was not the sophisticated photographer that Arbus was, but his instincts were pretty good, eh?

My Uncle John had been in the infantry in World War II, notably the invasion of Italy. His eyes are just shaded by the brim of the fedora, allowing him the relaxed expression and self-assured stance of someone who has been on the winning side. In his right hand and echoed so nicely in the shadow on the car door, he cups his cigarette. GI's were taught to do this in order that the glow from their smokes would not give away their position at night.

Overhead, the neighbor's laundry waves like Tibetan prayer flags, thanking the oil yards in Bayonne, the Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery in Newark, and the Kelly Type Foundry in Elizabeth, where my Uncle John and my Grandfather worked, for jobs.

My Uncle Joe and his friend Louie, Perth Amboy, NJ

That's my Uncle Joe on the right, at his friend Louie's house in Perth Amboy New Jersey. The picture was taken sometime in the late 1990's with a Holga. I had to do quite a bit of repair work to the file after scanning the negative, which was in pretty bad shape. So I'm not sure whether using the Holga in that instance was a good idea -- they create a distinctive look to the images but if you're not willing to work a lot with what you get on the negative, the results are usually very muddy and, for some strange reason, full of spots. I probably spent a good half hour in PhotoShop just getting rid of the spots. If you're not familiar with Holga images, notice the way the focus falls off around the edges, and the vignetting in the corners.

Of course all of this technical stuff is skirting the main thing to be discussed about the picture, namely my Uncle Joe. He's the reason I became an artist. I'll be editing this post with more of that story when I get some time. I recently set up my new digital studio, with a film scanner, printer, etc., and I'm looking forward to posting more Holga images scanned from film, along with wide-lux shots and pictures taken with several other cameras.

Erol Morris NY Times Blog about Photographs

Documentary filmmaker Erol Morris has begun an interesting blog for the New York Times about the hidden truths of photographs. He discusses the now-famous image of the hooded man from Abu Graib prison in Iraq as well as family snapshots, photographs of the Lusitania, etc. Hundreds of Times reader comments follow Morris's essays.

Morris's documentaries include The Fog of War, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, Mr. Death, Gates of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, and A Brief History of Time.

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/pictures-are-supposed-to-be-worth-a-thousand-words/

Josef Polacek, Roselle Park, NJ, 1969

I could write at great length about the genius of applied geometry that went into the composition of this picture, which I believe was taken by my Uncle Joe. But it is even more interesting to know that on this fine September afternoon my grandfather, painting calmly at the top of the forty foot extension ladder, was 78 years old.

Lookin for the highway

What is it about a car that makes a man strike a macho pose? Like most Americans, cars have always had a significant place in my life. My mother took both of these pictures, and I remember each time choosing exactly where I wanted to stand. The white car is a 1964 Studebaker Lark, one sweet, safe, modest middle class car, which I remember having tons of room inside and a pretty noisy ride. How I wish now that she had kept it for me to drive instead of trading it in for a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle. Trading it in, however, was the only logical thing to do since I would not be old enough to drive for several more years, and the second picture shows where my mind was headed by then.

The 1977 Camaro, whose color was described in the catalog as “Firethorn Red,” had a small-block 305 and an automatic transmission on the column, proving I was not a hardcore motorhead. I had just finished washing it this summer evening and probably had beer on my mind. Equally important, I had recently discovered Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, and was to read it several times in short order over the following months.

On an April evening a year later, two days after they got the reactor at Three Mile Island under control, I started out from this very spot and drove 1100 miles straight through to West Bend, Iowa. After a night’s rest, I drove 1100 more miles straight through to Logan, Utah. When I say “straight through” I mean stopping only for gas, bathroom and food, not sleep. Unlike Neal Cassady, who along with Kerouac was my hero at the time, I used only legal substances to stay awake. It’s amazing what a combination of youth, coffee, and inspiration can accomplish. Of course in another sense, I accomplished nothing, but that’s pretty much what youth is about. From Logan, it was a mere 800 more miles to San Francisco, and I would have knocked that off in one final session, save for a snowfall in the high Sierras that forced me to take refuge. Not being very socially adept at that age, I walked all over San Francisco alone for four or five days, hopped in the car and headed back East.

The Women and the Men, Roselle Park, NJ, 1967

That’s my aunt Anne and my mom in the top picture and my uncle John and my dad in the bottom one. I doubt they planned for the Polacheks to stand on the left and the Lowenburgs to stand on the right in each picture, but that’s just the way it worked out. Also interesting is that when I think of these family gatherings, I always remember my mom talking with my aunt Annie and my Dad drinking beer, smoking, and talking with my uncle John. The spouses rarely conversed, and when they did it was things like, “Did you remember to bring the pickles?”

I prefer the vertical shot to the horizontal one, because it shows more of the house in the background. I like the way the men are framed against it, the vertical corner line between the two upstairs windows running down between the two buddies, their suits contrasted against the strongly defined white aluminum siding with its horizontal slats.

Both guys were World War II veterans and had served in Europe. My dad landed in France shortly after D-Day, got frostbite in the Battle of the Bulge, and afterwards rolled all the way into Germany on the heels of Patton's army. I still have a piece of stained glass from the bombed out Cologne cathedral he sent home to my mom. Dad was on a ship headed for Japan when they dropped the A-bomb, which allowed him to return home to Jersey City. My uncle John was with the infantry in Italy and his unit liberated the town Anne’s parent’s lived in. Can you imagine the reception he got?

Sometimes after they’d had a few beers around the dining room table, my Uncle John would start to talk about army life and my dad would say, “Tell us how you won the war John.” Everyone would laugh and that would be the end of that. My dad never spoke about his war experiences except in the most general terms or about day to day Army life. He was in the medical supply corps and spent a lot of time around battlefields after the fact, so he probably saw some grisly things. Here, on this sunny spring day twenty years after they did win the war, things looked pretty good.

Bill Lowenburg and Joe Polacek, Roselle Park, NJ, 1956

I’m the guy with the round head and ten toes in the swing. My Uncle Joe, whose profile is so nicely framed in the dark rectangle on the side of the porch, is trying to get my attention while my mom snaps the picture. What a wonderful contrast of textures is presented in this image, between the horizontal slats of the porch siding and the shrubbery behind my smooth baldie. Uncle Joe, however, doesn’t know that I’m already looking directly into the lens as revealed by zooming in on the image with my computer. Even then, with less than two years served on the planet, I seemed to be interested in the process of picture-taking. One of my first memories, sometime around when this image was made, took place upstairs, on the floor above where my grandmother was standing on the porch: I’m fooling around on the kitchen floor with my mother’s camera, the one that took this picture. I’m looking through the viewfinder, trying to figure out why when I look down through the top I can see out through the front of the camera. “Of course, silly,” I say to myself, “it’s a twin lens reflex with an F 3.5 anastigmatic coated 60mm lens and a waist-level viewfinder!” Thirty five years later I buy a Mamiya with similar specs and use it to shoot my first book. Tonight, forty-nine years after this picture was taken, my mom’s camera is here next to me on the shelf in the studio as I write.

Josef Polacek, Jersey City, NJ, 1937

During the Depression my grandfather ran a bar and pool room at the Sokol Hall on Pine Street in Jersey City. The family of five lived upstairs. My grandfather was a gregarious fellow, not above spotting a countryman a drink, and allowing others down on their luck to run a tab. Naturally, this led to financial distress, and it was around this time that he sold the business to a friend. More than thirty years later I had the opportunity to watch my grandfather shoot a game of eight-ball, and he still handled the cue stick with authority.

This picture was probably taken by my mother and it immediately makes me think of the photographs of Andre Kertesz, the great Hungarian photographer, and Josef Sudek, my grandfather’s countryman, who became known as “The Poet of Prague” for his lyrical photographs of the city. While Kertesz and Sudek both served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, my grandfather escaped to the United States several years prior to the war. Sudek, incidentally, lost an arm in the war, but afterwards continued his photographic work undaunted, living until 1976. My grandfather survived him by five years, and Kertesz, in turn, outlived him by another five. I only wish my grandfather could have met the other two, especially Kertesz, because from what I know of his character I think they would have gotten along famously. Both men had warm, gentle, and for the most part, optimistic personalities. I also believe my grandfather might have cultivated his interest in photography if he had had the opportunity to study it. It is because of his humble but meticulous efforts stretching over six decades that the album containing this image survived.

The viewer’s eye is immediately drawn to the brightly lit area on the wall. Given the opportunity to reprint this image, many photographers might darken, or “burn,” this section slightly so as to focus attention on the subject. To my mind, it still works pretty well, to say the least. The Rembrandt-style light streaming in diagonally through the window creates a palpable texture on his shirt sleeves while also contributing to the mood. A shadow line falls just above his Josef’s brow, while his face is bathed in a softer light, which in many ways is the key to the success of this image. Also of interest are the parallel lines formed by the diagonal edges of the shadows on the wall, echoed by his left arm across his torso.

In addition to the handling of the subject within the space, which probably could not be improved upon, the dynamic tension of many different lines works greatly to this picture’s advantage. The line of his cuff extending up into the line of his vest serves to return the viewer’s eye to the subject’s face, rather than the “hot spot” up on the wall. Even there, the gods of geometry and photography graced the photographer, with the Josef’s head lining up near the point, just under the hypotenuse of the right triangle in the bright area. The top rail on the wainscoting behind him is also perfectly placed, serving as the backdrop for Josef’s chin while the lighter wall above provides contrast for the outline of his head.

Josef’s solemn glance up and out the window could be assigned to any number of fanciful imaginings, but let’s just say he is shown as the thoughtful individual he was. The ability of a great portrait to describe the subject’s character is evident in this work, which was snapped by a nineteen year-old girl with a box camera. Such images give all the weight necessary to the position that it is not the camera that matters, but who is in front of it and, more importantly, who is behind it.

Susan Polacek, Jersey City, NJ, 1913

My grandmother is on the right, photographed in a studio with an unknown friend. The matching outfits are probably Sokol uniforms, the Sokols being a social organization for Slovaks which revolved around gymnastics, dance, and camaraderie. I love the way the photographer placed them so that the fake window in the backdrop is on the right edge of the frame, the diagonal line of the curtain continuing down into my grandmother’s right leg and foot. Though stiff and somewhat contrived, he girls’ pose is still graceful and resolute, made all the more poignant by the debris scattered on the studio carpet. The horizontal line made by my grandmother’s left arm combined with the perpendicular white sash running down her leg serve to anchor the duo perfectly in the space. The other girl’s stance, by comparison, is less resolute. Her eyes show just the slightest tinge of doubt, and her grip on my grandmother’s raised hand seems somewhat tentative. Likewise her body seems a bit more frail, having not quite the presence of Susan’s stocky peasant build.

Susan Polacek arrived in the United States at age 14, penniless and with no relatives to meet her. She cleaned houses for “rich people,” later taking the ferry across the Hudson each day to clean offices in Rockefeller Center. She claimed the bathroom fixtures in “the big boss’s office” were made out of gold.

Consequent to these experiences, Susan was a resourceful individual, and could be tough when she felt it necessary. My mother tells the story of when one day, sixty or more years after this picture was taken, Susan ambled out of the kitchen to find my grandfather sitting at his desk, staring out the window, tears streaming down his face. Though we’ll never know the exact reason, my mother believes my grandfather was pining for the old country.
“Whatsamatta with you Pop?,” she said. “Come in de kitchen I just made nice coffee. Forget about it.”

A few years after this photo was made, my grandmother gave birth to my mother in 1918, my Uncle Joe in 1921 and my Uncle John in 1923. By the time she was twenty one, she had three children and her Sokol career had ended. Unlike my grandfather, who loved his homeland and had emigrated reluctantly, Susan had been cast out by her family and never expressed any interest in visiting the old country. She believed the United States was the greatest country on earth.

Josef Polacek, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1913

My grandfather, Josef Polacek, not long after he arrived from Czechoslovakia in 1912. Actually there was no Czechoslovakia yet, and his mountainside village, Miloshova, was on land under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a boy my Grandfather was made to learn Hungarian and to speak it in school. Faced with conscription into Franz Josef’s Imperial Army, he emigrated to the USA.

Though he only attended school for four or five years, he was regarded as the smartest boy in the village. This was confirmed by other family members when I visited his village in the 1960’s. Even then, the only access to Miloshova was a muddy mile-long footpath from the road. There was no running water or indoor plumbing in the houses. He once proudly told me how on the last day of school the teacher gave out apples to all of the students, and he was the only one who was given two. It is no wonder that a man with such humble origins would stand so proudly in his finery for the solemn occasion of having his portrait taken. What a prize to send back to the old country.