The Patron Saint of Photographers

Saint Veronica by Hans Memling

The legend goes that Veronica lined the route to Golgotha to watch Jesus carry his cross. She offered him her veil to wipe his brow and when she got it back it had a impression of his face.

How do you get a messiah face stain out of a veil? I don't know, but apparently Veronica did because she is the patron saint of laundry workers.

For her mad image capturing and printing skills, she is also the patron saint of photographers.

The Merchandising Empire Begins!

Guns and Keds are as American as preemptive war and apple pie. And now they're together at last! I just found Zazzle where you can customize your our pair of Keds.

Here's my pair.

Awesome.

Do You Believe?

January 1, 1939 - Organ Cave, West Virginia, USA

I grew up watching TV shows like In Search of... and Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and have always had a fascination with the unexplained. There is a certain irresistible kitsch factor with UFOs and mysterious beasts like Bigfoot or Champ, but what I find more interesting is how these stories and their visual motifs continue to pervade our culture. Photography has played a huge role in elevating these tales from legend to folklore with certain encounter images actually transcending photography to become part of our collective visual memory.

December 10, 1954 - Sicily, Italy

Yesterday I happened on the site UFO Evidence and spent the next couple of hours viewing their extensive gallery of UFO encounter photographs. I have seen a few of the photos before, but all of them feel familiar.

February 6, 1967 - Zanesville, Ohio, USA

I was taken by how UFO motifs seem to change over the years and match the visual aesthetics of their time. From streamlined metal discs in the 40s, 50s and 60s to colored lights and sleek modern designs in the post Close Encounters of the Third Kind 80s and beyond.

March 10, 1993 - Maslin Beach, Australia

May 26, 1987 - Waterbury, CT, USA

August, 2005 - Jersey City, NJ, USA

Do you believe that beings from another place or time are visiting us to record our way of life? Or, do you take the Jungian view that these photographs represent the symbolic projection of our psyche in uncertain times? Are they observing us or are we observing ourselves?

Not MySpace Anymore

I just watched NAS perform "Sly Fox" on the Colbert Report and it immediately struck me that every time I visit or promote MySpace I am supporting News Corp, Fox News, The New York Post and the whole Rupert Murdoch evil empire.

Screw that!

I am done with MySpace. Just pulled the plug. And if you are sick of Fox News and their "fair and balanced" propaganda pap you should cancel your account too.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

From National Geographic News:

Bees Enlisted to Attack Crows in Tokyo
Conservationists hope bees will repel the crows, based on the insects' tendency to attack anything dark-colored that approaches their hives.

This year beehives from rural areas were relocated to the top of a large water-treatment facility near Tokyo's international airport, where as many as 4,000 birds known as little terns nest after a long migration from Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea.

This has Bad Idea Jeans written all over it.

Friday Fun: Love In This Club

Bunny Hops to F-Stops, Part Two

© Scott Haefner

A couple of months ago I pointed out the strange correlation that seems to suggest riding BMX is an earlier indicator of latent fine art photography skills. I asked for more photo evidence and people responded with some great images, but none captured the hardcore caution-to-the-wind spirit of BMX youth quite like the fabulous photo above from Scott Haefner.

Battle Eruption: Eddie vs. the Volcano

© UPI

Just saw these breathtaking photos from the eruption of the Chaitén volcano in Chile. Truly awesome display of nature's power.

This got me thinking about another awesome display of nature's power. I speak of Eddie Van Halen melting terra firma with his guitar on Eruption.



Naturally this begs an epic question. If Chaitén and Eddie met in a back alley and staged an 'eruption-off' who's bringing the hot lava and who's going home crying Pele's tears?

Chaitén photos via Talking Points Memo

Trapped!

The New Yorker has posted a fascinating time-lapsed video of Nicholas White, who was trapped in an elevator for forty-one hours. Mr. White stays remarkably calm during his ordeal. I would have chewed off my arm and clubbed myself to death with it.

Send in the Clowns

© John Gordon

Today on Conscientious Jörg compared the work of Idris Khan and Jason Salavon. Both artists create composite images of preexisting photos that share a similar subject.

My husband John was inspired and gave the concept his own waggish spin. The above image represents every clown in the International Clown Hall of Fame (ICHOF). The results are quite frightening and yet strangely hypnotic.

Bunny Hops to F-Stops

Brian Ulrich and Todd Hido getting rad!

Last Tuesday at Aperture I saw a great lecture by the talented Todd Hido. As he talked about the long hours he spends driving around looking for his next subject and finding influence in the work of Robert Adams I realized that we share a very similar vision and approach to working. It really was an inspiration.

Much of what Todd said will soon become career canon for me, but one thing he mentioned really piqued my interest. His early years were spent in Ohio on a BMX bike.

This got me thinking about another photographer I know who rode BMX back in the day, Brian Ulrich. I started to wonder if there was a correlation here. Maybe the future stars of MoMA can be found getting agro on the dirt tracks and in the parking lots of America. Perhaps photography grad schools should cut the curriculum and just show this to incoming students:

Hmmm...

If you are a modern photographer genius who spent their youth doing tail whips, table tops and endos, let me know and please send me a photo. I think I can get a grant for this.

But She Has Blonde Hair Too

Madonna hitchhiking (from Sex), 1992 © Steven Meisel

From the AP wire:

Lawrence Nicastro, 73, said he found the grainy, poster-size photo last year while going through storage items at his home in Las Vegas. He believed it had been left by a customer at his service station in the Bronx in 1962.

Nicastro and his wife, Phyllis, said they had spent about four months researching the origin of the photograph and called in Chris Harris, a publicist and Monroe expert, for help authenticating it.

Harris said it was a dead ringer for Monroe and scheduled a Wednesday news conference to unveil the image to reporters.

The two men gave The Associated Press a sneak peak Tuesday.

"You're right; it's Madonna," Harris said after being told of the mix-up. Harris said he believed someone had slipped the poster into Nicastro's storage as a prank.

So, I can kind of believe that a 73 year old man mistook a very common photo of Madonna for a very rare photo of Marilyn Monroe.

Kind of.

What is harder form me to believe is that one, someone makes a living as a Marilyn Monroe expert and two, that said expert confused the two. (His Marilyn Monroe experting days are totally numbered.) What is super hard for me to believe is that neither noticed the '92 Ford Aerostar cruising down the road in the background.

My Big List of Lists

Cats of the Year, Fatty and Gilbert

Last year is so, well, last year at this point I don't even know why I'm bothering with my year end list. I could say that I needed some distance from 2007 to truly appreciate and evaluate what the year had to offer me, but the sad truth is I started this in December and forgot about it. So, without further ado, I give you old news.

1. Top 3 Photography Shows
1. André Kertész's Polaroids at Silverstein Photography
2. Kohei Yoshiyuki's The Park at Yossi Milo
3. Zoe Strauss' If You Read This at Silverstein Photography

2. Top 2 Photography Galleries
1. Silverstein Photography
2. Yossi Milo

3. Top 2 Movies
1. No Country for Old Men
2. Superbad

Ok, so I didn't see a lot of movies last year.

4. Top 4 Albums
1. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
2. The New Pornographers, Challengers
3. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
4. Feist, The Reminder

5. Top 4 Places I Ate
1. Yakitori Totto, New York, NY
2. Paley's Place, Portland, OR
3. Dumont, Brooklyn, NY
4. La Super Rica Taqueria, Santa Barbara, CA

6. Top 2 Book I Read
1. The Road by Cormack McCarthy
2. You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett

7. Top 4 Place I Visited
1. Laguradia, Spain
2. Biarritz, France
3. Mendacino, CA
4. New Orleans, LA

8. Top 3 Photography Books
1. Tod Papageorge, Passing Through Eden
2. Kohei Yoshiyuki, The Park
3. Alec Soth, Dog Days, Bogotá

9. Top 2 Cats
1. Fatty
2. Gilbert

10. Top 3 Career Goals of 2008
1. Finally get a solo show!
2. Finish my Domesticated book
3. Find a flippin' New York gallery (call me)

Wishing You a Hopeful and Happy New Year!

© Amy Stein

The Most Disturbing Thing I Have Ever Seen

Sleeping Rat Baby © Anne Geddes

I am back in New York after seven sun-soaked days lazing around the beaches of Orange County. I am mildly resentful, but ultimately happy to be back home. The OC is all about excess. Shiny expensive cars, big hillside mansions, Botoxed and pulled faces and everyone wearing Ugg boots for one more season. Over the course of a week the gross parts become part of the perverted whole and it's hard to be moved to comment by any single excessive fragment. But, amid this ocean of excess one thing managed to rise above and hover like a grotesque surfeit island of beautifully useless swill. I speak of the Anne Geddes flagship store.

After a day spent at Disneyland (don't ask) waiting in mind-numbingly long lines to ride their latest cross-promotional brand experience, I was not to be easily aroused by marketing clutter. But, as we walked through the chilly streets of Downtown Disney I saw the Geddes store in the distance and I became transfixed by the sheer totality and audacity of her vision. Inside the store were the typical cringe-inducing photos of her Doctor Moreau-like flower and animal babies, but that was just the beginning of the Geddes merchandise empire. There were baby clothes, hats, t-shirts, maternity kits, books, and most disturbing of all, a series of plushy dolls that resembled the hybrid monsters in her photos. These dolls were all around you, eyes closed and sleeping. Or were they dead? After a few moments I began to imagine that the local Union Carbide plant had sprung a leak and these babies lay peacefully departed, the casualties of a terrible industrial accident.

Then it hit me like a store full of dead plushies; Anne Geddes is a genius and my new inspiration for pimping dry every last bit of my art to maximize exposure and profits. Now, when I close my eyes I don't just see my work hanging on gallery and museum walls, I see my own flagship store hawking the Amy Stein logoed line of hats, t-shirts, golf tees and mouse pads. I see a line of plushy deers and coyotes playfully chewing away at plushy garbage. And, I see a touring ice-show featuring a bear and a little girl tensely skating to "The Final Countdown" around a chain-linked enclosed swimming pool. The sky and my own sense of decency are my only limits.

Thanks, Anne!

Thank You Science!

From the Huffington Post:

Three Turkish Angora cats were born in January and February through cloning with a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow in dark. One died at birth, but the two others survived, the ministry said.

The ministry claimed it was the first time cats with modified genes have been cloned.

Scientists from Gyeongsang National University and Sunchon National University took skin cells from a cat and inserted the fluorescent gene into them before transplanting the genetically modified cells into eggs.

To All My Friends

Five Sour Cherries © Neil Plotkin

I am very fortunate to be surrounded by a tight group of very talented friends and family members. They are a constant source of inspiration and each seems to firing on all their creative cylinders right now. Over the past week I have had the privilege of sharing in some of their professional and personal successes.

Saturday we took in an open studio event for my very dear friend Neil Plotkin. Neil is an amazing painter and his newest work includes beautiful landscapes from a month spent in the Loire Valley and a new series called Empty Studio.

Before Neil's open-studio we attended the wedding of my printer, Carl Saytor. The ceremony was conducted with fire by the Reverend Billy and featured a joyous assembly of friends and family. The whole affair was something like the cast of Rocky Horror meeting the cast of Cirque du Soleil at Burning Man. They even had a man in a banana suit stalk the aisle! Definitely the most entertaining wedding ceremony I've ever attended.

This past Friday my cousin, Andy Guthrie, rocked Galapagos to make it the semi-finals of the 2007 Williamsburg Live Songwriter Competition. Andy performed one of his amazing new songs, It Goes On, which you can listen to here.

Last Wednesday the always lovely Jon Gitelson stayed with us while he was visiting New York showing work to some A-list galleries and museums. While he was here, Jon shared plans for his massive new public arts project in Chicago. Very cool.

It's so motivating to see their efforts being validated by others and, more importantly, by their own happiness.

Confessions of a Bialy Hater

Last night we made a trip to our local supermarket to buy groceries. Not uncommon and barely worth mentioning, except that this evening the seeds of a rift in our marriage were planted in the bread aisle of Trade Fair. We usually do our grocery shopping after 10 PM because if you come earlier the supermarket is so teaming with humanity it's like trying to play Twister in the Black Hole of Calcutta. It was here that my husband, John, decided to take up Trade Fair on their three bialys for a dollar offer.

"I hate bialys!" was my response.

He claimed that bialys were the missing link between bagels and English muffins and that most people outside of New York hadn't yet discovered their deliciousness. I said they are a dead bread and that America has spoken loud and clear on the subject. Am I crazy? Do I have bialys all wrong?

It should be noted that I have been so busy scanning and printing of late that my blog posts have fallen off a bit. Sorry about that. I will post some new Halloween in Harlem images a little later today.

Nice Kitty

Any time you bring a catfish, a dead chicken, a hand grenade, and a large wildcat into your home you know the results will be magical. Via Best Week Ever comes a series of surreal photos of a Russian household sharing their life with a bizarre family pet.

Moustache Ride

This evening when I was coming home my subway car had seven men with moustaches along for the ride. Seven! That has to be the highest concentration of 'staces this side of a cop convention.