Tim Connor

Errol Morris: "Talking about the truth or falsity of a photograph is nonsense talk..."

2012-01-26T23:04:00.007-05:00

Check out this provocative video from The Guardian by writer & documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris. I particularly like what he says about "absence" -- what we don't see in the frame."We don't see above; we don't see below or to the left or to the right; we don't see before or after..."

"Wall dogs" featured in NY Times

2012-01-23T22:13:00.004-05:00

Today's New York Times slide show, called 'Wall Dogs' With Paint,' by Evan Sung, shows a wall mural painter at work. I photographed a wall dog crew, called Art FX Murals, doing similar work painting movie ads onto a 20-story blank wall.

See the results in my book, Big Movies.

See more of the pictures here.

Misha Friedman -- Ukraine, after the Soviet Union

2012-01-16T00:36:00.004-05:00

"Coal miners drink moonshine after work in Enakievo, " Misha Friedman, All rights reserved

"Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, much of Eastern Ukraine ended up ruined – many mines and massive factories are lying abandoned, people are unemployed or earn just enough to survive – abandoned by the government - and nature is taking over in full force. For decades this land was a symbol of Soviet Rationalism and victory over Nature, but it did not take long for all of that to crumble, leaving behind ruined lives."
-- Misha Friedman

Visit Misha Friedman's website

Donald Weber's "Drunken Bride"

2012-01-12T22:41:00.005-05:00

"From the portfolio "Drunken Bride / In Moscow," Donald Weber, All rights reserved

"This place is not Europe, despite the deliciously creamy raisin-and-pumpkin treats and the yummy, tummy-baring whiteskinned girls, the sleek legions of roaming black Mercedes…

No, this is a brigand border-town set down in Asia’s front yard, home
to a primitive tribe of unknowable savages… in wonderful suits."

See more of Weber's dark vision of contemporary Russia

New York Photo Review picks up my essay on Alex Webb's "Suffering of Light"

2012-01-11T15:47:00.010-05:00

"Saut d'Eau, Haiti, 1987," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

My recent review here of Alex Webb's "The Suffering of Light" reappears as this week's lead story in The New York Photo Review. If you don't already know about it, check out the Review. It features a scrupulously accurate list of current photography shows in the New York area , along with smart and knowledgable reviews. A built-to-bookmark publication.

Dmitri Mellos -- More street

2012-01-10T09:49:00.004-05:00

From Its Strangest Patterns, Dimiti Mellos, All rights reserved

"The conjunction of my photographic gaze with chance and happenstance is essential to my approach, as is an emphasis on the evanescence of these encountered poetic moments. I am interested in fleeting gestures and glances, the momentary field of interaction between passing strangers, the ephemeral dance of light and shadow and street life. I try to visually organize the chaos of the streets just enough to contain it in the photograph, but hopefully not much more than that." From introduction to Its Strangest Patterns

Dimitri's website

Alex Webb -- "The Suffering of Light"

2012-01-02T19:12:00.028-05:00

"Bombardopolis, Haiti, 1986," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

Alex Webb visits places to which he is instinctively drawn & walks around taking pictures in color with a small camera. He has not varied this simple method in over 30 years. He is, he insists, a street photographer, a wanderer at ground level, hoping to encounter “…the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known … just around the corner.”

Despite this simple formula, Webb’s work from the late 70s to the present – collected in “The Suffering of Light: 30 Years of Photographs” at Aperture Gallery -- is anything but simple. Made in Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, Congo, Turkey and other “places of cultural and often political uncertainty -- borders, islands, edges of societies … “, the pictures pay little attention to critical categories. They are loosely anchored in photojournalism -- Webb was elected to Magnum Photos early in his career. But they also freely cross and re-cross the increasingly blurry frontiers between journalism, documentary and so-called art photography (Webb’s work has been a major force in blurring those labels).

Colors are the deeds

The show’s title, “The Suffering of Light, ” is taken from Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe’s lovely metaphor, “Colors are the deeds and suffering of light.“ To Webb this is more than just a poetic formulation. Like most photographers of his generation (he is 59) he started out shooting black-and-white. In 1975, a few years before he shot this show’s first picture, Webb tells us, he took a trip to Haiti that “… transformed me – both as a photographer and as a human being. “ After a few more experiences in the tropics, he knew he had to deal with “… the intense, vibrant color of these worlds … somehow embedded in the cultures … so utterly different than the gray-brown reticence of my New England background.” In 1978 he began to work almost exclusively in color and continues to do so today.

"Kampala, Uganda, 1980," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

In the tropics Webb exposed Kodachrome film to saturate colors as deeply as possible in the full blaze of the southern sun. In the strong light, shadows become a rich, impenetrable black. In Webb’s palette these blacks are a sort of primary color. Far from denoting a lack of information, black becomes a fierce presence. It seems to tear away whole sections of pictures and swallow their hues. In some pictures doorways – or gorges and caves –open into a world of black, which seems to spawn abyssal shapes and creatures that cross back into this world. Like Webb’s clamorous reds and sensual pinks, or his alienating purples and melancholy blues (other descriptions may apply), black is here much more than a color.

Kodachrome is of course famous for its colors. When Webb began to rely on it in the 70s, it was a relatively slow film (ASA 25, 64 and 200), very contrasty, that gave bright, warm colors without overdosing into electric pop. The only drawback was that it could only be developed using Kodak’s proprietary process at major labs or the Kodak company itself. As new slide films proliferated, Kodachrome became hard to find outside cities or college towns. In the 80s many Kodachrome users simply accepted Kodak’s Ektachrome or the Fuji company’s Fujichrome , both decent but inferior films that could be developed by anyone using the E-6 process.

"Gouyave, Grenada, 1979," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

Interestingly, Webb stuck to his artistic guns. When the last two Kodachrome films went out of production (ASA 200 in 2007; ASA 64 in 2009), they had long been available only through specialized sources. But Webb continued to use Kodachrome till the bitter end, sending his film to Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas, the last place to develop it. Dwayne’s closed its processing shop on July 14, 2010. Webb is now experimenting with a digital Leica and other color films, both positive and negative (see an interview about his recent work on Magnum Blog)

Thirty years of photographs

If this show is a retrospective of three decades, as its subtitle suggests, it’s remarkable that the passage of time is almost invisible. In poor streets around the world, it seems, 1979 is almost identical to 2009. Our much-vaunted digital revolution is nowhere to be seen, for instance; even styles of clothing and accessories have barely changed. The streets are full of the same old junk, the same worn-out furniture and broken concrete, year after year.

This may be an important truth. On the other hand Webb’s interests and style over the 30 years haven’t changed much either. We can perhaps read “Thirty years of photographs” as polite information, New England-style. This show is not the usual survey through time, designed to sum up an artistic journey as it unfolds. The summary here could feasibly read: Alex Webb found his work and figured out how to do it. Then he kept on doing it. (Good.)

"Ciudad Madero, Mexico, 1983," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

I’m not implying that Webb has exhausted – or even, as far as I know, fully tapped – the human or aesthetic preoccupations that drive him. Covering distant conflicts by turning away from the usual cast of “newsmakers” and concentrating on the ordinary people affected by those conflicts has helped pioneer an open-form version of photojournalism that helps ameliorate the endless, boring shots of politicians as well as the bloodless navel-gazing so characteristic of most contemporary photography found in galleries. Although Webb’s images may sometimes provide an indelible glimpse of a time and milieu, they are not essentially about historical events or even places. They take us to new worlds and give us new ways to see them.

Styling reality

Webb’s solutions to visual problems can seem prodigiously complicated. Often his pictures are divided and/or framed internally by trees, statues, lampposts, windows, doorways, blast holes -- any device that marks off distinct worlds. The created mini-worlds are often oblivious or contradictory to one another; they may exist at different depths – and so be bigger and smaller -- in the larger picture frame. They may sport jarring colors, wild and domestic animals, dancing people or desolate landscapes. They may all seem to be going in different directions.

"Tijuana, Mexico, 1999," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

Add to this Webb’s evident fascination with doubling devices – mirrors, shadows, reflective metals, paintings, posters, billboards, photographs, graffiti – and his openness to intrusions -- truncated signs, mysterious limbs – from the unseen, out-of-frame world, and these pictures are pushing at the very limits of chaos. Yet the images somehow hold together. At the show’s opening I heard a young woman say about one of the pictures: “It’s a collage!” “Yeah, but no one put those pieces together,” replied her friend.” “No one could have ever put those pieces together!” said the first woman.

She’s right. These may be the most compositionally complex photographs around that don’t depend on photoshop for their effects. In a way, looking at Webb’s pictures is like watching an old-fashioned magic show. What transforms sleight-of-hand into magic is the ineluctable reality of the hands, sleeves and coins that we try to follow with our eyes. Here it’s the un-fakeable reality of children, women and men – shown in ensemble – as they spin from exuberance to despair in the kaleidoscopes of poverty and upheaval. If we saw these people conventionally isolated, picked out and framed to receive our pity or our anger, the impact would not be the same.

Webb takes us as far as an outsider can go into these realities. Perhaps the complexity of the pictures gives us a glimpse into the everything-at-once, grab-it-quick-if-you-want-it experience of living with no safety net in the developing world. There is irony in the fact that such near-to-bursting compositions are often achieved by traditional strategies. Graceful S-curves and Z-scriptions lead our eyes into the picture space; shapes entice; edges direct or surprise; colors repel or caress and, in the end, everything somehow balances, even if a horizon is skewed or a person left floating at an odd angle in space.

"Saut d'Eau, Haiti, 1987," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

It’s not reality. It's art.

What interests me about my own response is that I don’t find this artifice fussy or over-obvious. It’s because there is no corresponding attempt to stage-manage the meaning. These pictures avoid being didactic. They are what they are. In fact, after I have registered admiration at their mastery, they confound me more often than they explain. They evoke ambiguity – or sometimes laughter – instead of certainty. They might be lyrical or horrendous, but they rarely evoke a simple response. Like their form, the meanings of these pictures are probably multiple and certainly complex.

Dancing in the streets

I heard Webb tell a fan at the opening: “I never know if I got it or not.” He was referring to the improvisational way he makes many of his best pictures -- the jumping-in moment as he senses the parts coming together. We might call it the hunter’s moment. It is that instant when eye, brain and body align, adrenaline surges and the trigger finger begins to tighten. For Webb and other street photographers, by the time the shutter closes, reality has already become something else.

Did he get it?

Of course Webb never knows. Nobody working this way ever knows for sure. And, of all contemporary photographers, Webb may be the one who keeps the most visual balls in the air. (Lee Friedlander loads up his frames similarly, but often with unmoving objects.) I’d argue that Webb’s particular genius as a street photographer lies in two things: 1) an extraordinary ability to imagine/see pictures in the swirling midst of complex, unscripted reality and 2) unusual skills for capturing those pictures in visually coherent compositions.

"Nueva Laredo,Mexico, 1993," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

What goes into these skills? Well, not to be glib -- everything really. Everything read, seen, heard and experienced in a photographer’s life goes into his work. In addition, the photographer needs intuition, another gift. And he needs physical skills – not much discussed, but absolutely essential – to move to the right spot and shoot at the right moment while all the other elements in the picture are also moving.

In his book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner describes spatial intelligence – very roughly, the ability to manipulate spatial information as mental imagery – and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence – again roughly, the mastery of one's own physical movement, as exemplified by mimes, dancers and athletes. It seems to me that these ideas also describe what great “walking photographers” like Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winnogrand and Alex Webb actually do.

For photojournalists, shooting pictures has always been, first and foremost, about getting to the scene. For Webb and others who step on and off the photojournalism bus – who choose subjects for personal rather than news-driven reasons, come back to shoot over and over again and abandon the pretense of reportorial objectivity – it's like playing an old game in a brand new way. In this respect, it's interesting that in his book Gardner chose legendary Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky to illustrate bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

A Canadian friend once described Gretzky to me as. “Small for the pros, skinny, not a fast skater, not a great slap shot…and the best who ever lived.” Hockey journalist Peter Gzowski explained it more technically: “Sometimes [Gretzky] will release the puck before he appears to be ready, threading the pass through a maze of players precisely to the blade of a teammate’s stick, or finding a chink in a goaltender’s armor and slipping the puck into it … before the goaltender is ready to react. What seems like luck or magic is neither. Given the probable movement of the other players, Gretzky knows exactly where his teammate is supposed to be.”

"Palmapampa, Peru, 1993," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

From the evidence of these pictures, I’d suggest that Webb possesses a similar sort of talent. Seeing is one thing, but street photography also depends on highly-developed instinct, sure-footed physicality and perfect timing. Making his way down a street in the developing world, let's say -- physically “threading through the maze,” intent on “finding a chink” -- Webb is invariably an outsider. At least one set of eyes, possibly a dozen, are watching him carefully. He’s waiting for something to happen. What’s going on? What’s important? He’s taking in light, color, smells, shapes, the sky, buildings, signs, animals, machines. He’s registering the people as they move around him. Is that a picture? He can shoot more than one frame, but not many more, and maybe only one without changing the subtle mood he is trying to capture... No, it's gone. He keeps walking.

This is very different from a photographer shooting in his home town or suggesting changes to a model in front of his lens. Walking and photographing on the street in another country, another language requires an unusual trust in one's own inner resources. As well-known street photographer and teacher Tod Papageorge describes the process. "You walk out the door and—bang!—like everyone else, you're part of the great urban cavalcade...You're carrying an amazing little machine that, joined with a lot of effort, can pull poetry out of a walk downtown. All of the failed pictures you've ever made, all of the other photographs you've ever loved, even songs and lines from poems walk with you too, insinuating themselves into your decisions about what you'll make your photographs of, and how you'll shape them as pictures."

For over 30 years Webb has been brilliantly practicing his own version of living by his wits. The pictures in this show demonstrate a steadfast commitment to his ideas of what's important, what's true and what's beautiful. This reviewer agrees with him on all three counts. May he continue to walk and shoot pictures for another 30 years.

"Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 1979," Alex Webb, All rights reserved

Simen Johan says "Hallo dahling"

2011-12-27T23:00:00.006-05:00

"Untitled," Simen Johan, All rights reserved

Simen Johan is a Swedish photographer, born in 1973. I saw his show, "Until the Kingdom Comes," last week at the Yossi Milo gallery in Manhattan. The prints started at $20,000 each.

Unfortunately, the show is now closed, but here's a link to all the pictures.

This is from Yossi Milo's press release:
"Photographs from Simen Johan’s ongoing project, Until the Kingdom Comes, depict an unsettling natural world hovering between reality, fantasy and nightmare. Johan merges traditional photographic and sculptural techniques with digital methods. Having originally photographed a variety of plants and animals in natural preserves, zoos, farms, museum dioramas or his own studio, the artist then resituates them digitally into new environments constructed from images photographed elsewhere."

And this is from an earlier write-up at the Robert Koch Gallery.
"In his most recent images, from the series "Until the Kingdom Comes", Johan depicts animals in scenarios where their actions or demeanor mirror human conventions. The images allude to our inclination to anthropomorphize and domesticate what we see and find around us, and they speak to realms of emotion, our fears and desires, rather than reason."

Pictures from the world's newest country

2011-12-26T23:32:00.005-05:00

"John Rae, warming a polaroid," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

My friend & colleague John Rae has traveled to more unpronounceable places than anyone I've ever met. He takes pictures all over the world for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. A lot of this involves hard travel & rough living, not to mention daily immersion in the often grim realities of poverty & disease. But there is beauty too.

Here is his lightly edited take from a recent visit to South Sudan, the newest country in the world. I'm not sure why John desaturated the color in most of these shots, but I like the effect.

See more pictures by John.

Items for Extremists

2011-12-25T22:44:00.006-05:00

"A satisfied customer," photoshop by Alfred

Gourds by Cocksure
Browse Our Catalog

"Ruins of Detroit" by Yves Marchand & Roman Meffre

2011-12-12T23:26:00.009-05:00

"Packard Motor Plant," Yves Marchand, Roman Meffre, All rights reserved

Ah dystopia! As a culture, we seem to be wild right now for wrecked grandeur, for dramatic ruins (with or without zombies). Personally, I've always been thrilled with the notion (remember what Neil Young sang, "Don't let it get you down/It's only castles burning."). In fact, to this day I get a schoolboy jolt of pleasure from the grim ironies of Shelley's imaginary "...look upon my works, ye mighty, & despair" poem.

Unfortunately, the initial evidence suggests that our own real-life declineas a nation -- & as a world -- won't be nearly as much fun.

See Ruins of Detroit

Here's part of what Marchand and Meffre say about the city:

"Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city’s ruins are not isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural component of the landscape. Detroit presents all archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of mummification. Its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great Empire."

Thanks to Jessie Allen, author of The Blackstone Weekly, for the tip.

Guest artist -- Daniel Traub

2011-12-11T20:48:00.005-05:00

"Vacant lot, Philadelphia," Daniel Traub, All rights reserved

See the series by Daniel Traub.

See his website for more from Philadelphia and photojournalism from China & other far flung places.

Guest artist -- Thatcher Keats

2011-12-09T23:43:00.005-05:00

"Drunk on floor" from "DSM III (g.a.e.t.)," Thatcher Keats, All rights reserved

Take a look

The 1st pictures I saw by Thatcher Keats were flash closeups of very drunk & stoned teenagers. I got the impression from the friend who told me about him that these were taken early in his career, that he settled down some as he got older. I can see that. But the pictures are still as blunt as a whack from a hammer, even when they're tender & funny, like some of the shots in the The Kids series. I think this guy is terrific.

Tonight's guest artist -- Evgenia Arbugaeva

2011-12-07T22:37:00.004-05:00

By Evgenia Arbuaeva, All rights reserved

See more of this series at Photo Lucida's Critical Mass 2011 Winners. Arbuaeva describes the project this way:

"Tiksi is a small village located on a shore of Arctic ocean in Russia. It was built in USSR by people who believed in the future of the Arctic and were coming here from all over the country: scientists, explorers, the military. I was born in here and after fall of Soviet Union my family, as most of the population left Tiksi. But I could never forget this place with it's vast tundra blown off with winds so strong that if you are a little girl it can easily pick you up and bring to places. My playground with stars during Polar night, lighthouse in a blizzard... This year I came back to my home village for the first time in twenty years. It was a journey to surreal childhood memories. Some people say that Tiksi will be closed in near future because it doesn't serve a purpose anymore. Before that happened I wanted to capture this special place 'in the middle of nowhere'."

Today's guest artist, Greer Muldowney

2011-12-05T23:23:00.007-05:00

"6,426 per km2," Greer Muldowney, All rights reserved

From a series on the architecture of Hong Kong, the most densely populated urban space in the world.

More pictures by Greer Muldowney.

Today's guest atists -- Sebastian Liste

2011-12-04T13:00:00.007-05:00

"Young Bahia girl with bracelets," Sebastian Liste, All rights reserved

“And when the guitar whines in the hands of the serenade singer, in the bustling streets of the agitated city, woman, do not doubt for a minute. Attend the call and come. Bahia is waiting with its daily feast. Your eyes will be flooded with the picturesque, but also with the miserable. Grieve for these left-over colonial streets where modern skyscrapers rise -- violent, weak and ugly. "
Jorge Amado

See the portfolio I recently submitted, here.

Entering "Exposure 2011" contest

2011-12-01T21:34:00.007-05:00

"Painting 'The Town,' " Tim Connor, All rights reserved

The picture above is part of a portfolio I'm submitting in the "cityscape" category of a competition called "Exposure 2011."

See my portfolio here.

Read what I wrote about my pictures:

"I first saw these images through the 12th-floor window of my office in Manhattan. Gigantic in scale, they appeared on the outer wall of a 21-story-high office tower a few blocks uptown and gradually took shape against the sky. First they were colored paint in seemingly random patterns. Then they became star-crossed lovers; machines at war; bank robbers dressed as sinister nuns; a bulldog as big as an elephant.

What surprised me most about these images – really they are nothing more than wildly scaled-up movie ads – is how disconcertingly intimate they can be. At this size – the size of a city building -- they transfigure my neighborhood skyline like a new slide clicking onto the wall in a dimly lit room.

The images are created by an intrepid team of mural artists (artfxmurals.com), who sketch and paint each poster with rollers and large brushes in a day or two, then, after the movies have opened, crank their scaffolds up and down the wall again, whitewashing everything. I’ve been photographing this process for over three years.

The light in Manhattan changes quickly, especially above the rushing street-level canyons, which fill with shadow early. I love all the manifestations of this New York light, but most of all -- for this project -- I love it at the end of day. As darkness gathers below in the grumbling rush hour streets, I'm blown away by these fierce (and/or silly) outsized fantasies, thrusting insistently into the light . Sometimes I enjoy imagining them as visitations from our cultural gods. Other times I'm just glad they make us look up and forget ourselves for a moment."

Preview the book from which the portfolio is taken.

Newsha Tavakolian: Iranian feminist photographer

2011-11-29T23:42:00.005-05:00

Newsha Tavakolian, All rights reserved

See more of Iranian photojournalist Newsha Tavakolian's powerful work here.

Overheard in the herd

2011-10-18T20:45:00.004-04:00

Joseph Karl Stieler

"I realized that Beethoven has no idea how much I love his music -- because he's dead."

Back to Bensonhurst

2011-08-02T23:16:00.001-04:00

In the pines

2011-07-26T23:08:00.003-04:00

White birches

2011-07-24T14:43:00.003-04:00

"Birch again," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"With purple flowers," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

See more.

Bride & groom

2011-07-13T23:36:00.003-04:00

WE BUY BUY GO

2011-07-10T21:50:00.001-04:00

Red Hook graffiti fence

2011-07-07T23:04:00.003-04:00

North shore phragmites

2011-06-29T22:58:00.000-04:00

"North shore," Tim Connor

Grape boy at the orgy

2011-06-27T23:34:00.001-04:00

Painting faces

2011-06-25T23:02:00.003-04:00

I couldn't walk past

2011-06-24T22:58:00.001-04:00

Boy in garden 2 (without the chain link)

2011-06-19T13:07:00.002-04:00

"Boy in garden (no chain link)," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Lately my pictures don't please me. I have experienced this before. I protect my fragile self-esteem by doing other things.

Bike shooter

2011-06-12T22:59:00.003-04:00

"Boy in garden,Crown Heights," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Today I got out & did some shooting. I rode my bike to Prospect Heights in a few minutes, then dawdled east into Crown Heights, where I made the picture above. I realized biking is an excellent way to explore for photos (it helps to have a lock -- which I now do -- so I can leave the bike & walk around). I've biked with camera before of course, but the shooting was always secondary to the transportation -- to getting somewhere. Also, I was typically intent on getting some exercise. This time I didn't care that I'm out of shape. I had no destination. Hello, summer.

Too real

2011-06-11T23:44:00.006-04:00

"Farmer, Napoleon, Ohio," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

I shot this on assignment a few weeks ago & like it very much. But at that time the spring still hadn't popped in N.E. Ohio & not even weeds were showing in this farmer's corn field. Also, the one day I had out there was heavily overcast or raining from first light to last. Dressed in muddy shirt & jeans & much-worn john deere cap, my subject met me at his barn & we walked out to his field . He was unfailingly generous and kind, but it was clear he had been working in the barn before I got there & was ready to go back to work the minute I left. We had a good session & I got a variety of framings & expressions.

When I got back to New York, no one wanted to use this picture or any of the others like it, including those in which the farmer is grinning. "Too depressing," they said. Luckily, I had made some lovely, friendly shots of the farmer & his dad & their little dog back by the farmhouse, & we used those. The writer & the editor liked it & so will the farmer, so there's nothing to complain about. It worked out fine.

But I like this one best. And I'm glad I don't have to argue against squaring up the horizon.

Good news

2011-06-06T14:17:00.004-04:00

"Madonna with gas and electric," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

At yesterday's auction for the Winter Summer Institute this photo at 6" x 8"(snappier in the print) sold for $220. Asking price was $150. Other two pix (see yesterday's post) also sold for suggested first bid or above.

Yay!

My pix at auction to benefit a great cause

2011-06-02T23:45:00.004-04:00

Original prints of two of my favorite pictures (below) will be featured in a silent auction next Sunday night to raise money for the Winter-Summer Institute's upcoming trip to the rural mountains of the Malealea Valley in Lesotho, southern Africa. These amazing New Yorkers will join theater contingents from South Africa and Lesotho to make theatre with the local villagers that reflects community concerns about the region's HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Read more here. There's also food, drink, awesome music, movies and more art. A night that will rock you...

" 'Backyard hanging laundry with cat' by Tim Connor," 11 x 14 original print

" 'Those are the hills of hell my love' by Tim Connor," 5 x 7 original print

Shrink-wrapped boats

2011-04-30T23:39:00.005-04:00

"Shrink-wrapped boat," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Shrink-wrapped boat 2," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

These were sitting in the boat yards at Montauk a little more than a week ago.

Visualizing (a tiny part of) the Universe

2011-04-11T21:55:00.002-04:00

Courtesy "All That Is Interesting" from the PBH Network

Check out this fascinating sequential visualization of our Earth scaled against various objects in the near-universe. The final images in the post are from the Hubble telescope, which focused on an ink black area in the night sky for over 4 months to collect light that had spent 13 billion years reaching its lens.

2 women

2011-03-31T22:18:00.004-04:00

Bushwick

2011-03-26T12:37:00.003-04:00

Hot dogs

2011-03-19T23:37:00.003-04:00

Are movies "cursed"? Are photographs?

2011-03-16T21:11:00.008-04:00

"Tim at 'Beast' opening," Lucy Winner phone cam

Saturday's opening of the show "Beast," in which I had two photos, was a big success. In the picture above, taken at the gallery, I can be seen crossing in front of one of my photos, the one titled "Esther."

Today a lady from the gallery called to tell me that last night the "Esther" picture inexplicably fell off the wall, shattering the glass in the frame & gouging the print. Part of a series of gigantic building-sized ads for upcoming movies that I've been photographing for several years, "Esther" advertised a movie called "Orphan." The tagline read, "Something is wrong with Esther."

Let me explain.

In the movie Esther is a strangely beautiful child adopted by a couple who are grieving their recently stillborn baby. These parents think Esther is nine years old, but in fact she's a 33-year-old woman named Leena Klammer who suffers from hypopituartisim, which has stunted her growth. Esther has escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane & is making her way across the country, posing as a little girl. Along the way she has committed a string of gruesome, bloody murders. In this movie she gets angrier & angrier. First, she kills an unfortunate nun & then the good-hearted husband. Finally, she tries to kill the wife and her two children. At the end of the movie Esther ends up getting kicked in the teeth by her new mommy & sinking beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

After all that, she must be really, really pissed, right? I mean poltergeist-smashing-glass-pissed? I mean psycho-killer-on-the-loose pissed? Am I right?

When the gallery lady reached me with the bad news, she said, "We couldn't figure out why the picture fell. The frame wasn't broken... In fact..." she said, it's as though... the picture... jumped off the wall."

Oh god...

"Beast" opens tonight!

2011-03-11T23:35:00.002-05:00

If you're in the NYC area & free tonight, visit "Beast," a show opening from 6-10 pm at Brooklyn Artist's Gym. There'll be wine, good art & interesting people. I'll have two large photographs in the show.

Directions: BAG is at 168 7th Street, 3rd floor -- between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. On the border between Park Slope and Gowanus, that's only 3 blocks from the 4th Ave/9th Street stop for the F, G and R trains. There's plenty of parking. The show is in the same building as the Mac Support Store.

My photos in "Beast"

2011-03-06T23:19:00.005-05:00

"Esther," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Blue eyes," Tim Connor, All rights

The two photos shown above will be in a show called "Beast," opening next Saturday, March 12, from 6-10 at the Brooklyn Artist's Gym, 168 7th St, 3rd floor in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn (it's only 2 blocks from the F, G & R train stop at 4th Ave/9th St). More info on the show is here. I'm really looking forward to this one. I'll be showing bigger prints than ever before. And I suspect that few if any of the other artists will be photographers. I'm anxious to see how the painters, sculptors & conceptual artists handle this theme.

Hope you can make it.

Too true

2011-02-25T23:16:00.002-05:00

"If cinema teaches us anything, it is that no tough guy has ever borne the name of Tim..."

-- Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Wallflower

2011-02-21T23:03:00.002-05:00

Quickly forgotten

2011-02-21T00:08:00.003-05:00

Snow sculpture

2011-02-06T23:50:00.002-05:00

"From my window," a series by Tim Connor, All rights reserved

See the others in this ongoing series.

Excite the beast, then tame him

2011-02-02T10:16:00.002-05:00

Appropriation

2011-02-01T22:35:00.002-05:00

Beware the wolf

2011-01-29T14:37:00.005-05:00

"Beware the wolf," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"The Rite" has had its week. This is the painters working Thursday on the next one, apparently a blood-spattered version of "Red Riding Hood," made by the director who did "Twilight." Watch out for werewolves!

Monster

2011-01-24T23:25:00.004-05:00

Against all advertising rules, the name of this movie was so overwhelmed by the image, I don't even remember it. This is my favorite in the "big movie" series.

"Big movies," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

A poem by W.B. Yeats

2011-01-23T00:03:00.006-05:00

The Coming of Wisdom With Time

Though leaves are many, the root is one:
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun
Now I may wither into the truth.

W.B. Yeats, 1916

Diablo's child

2011-01-22T00:01:00.003-05:00

America rawks!

2011-01-18T22:08:00.005-05:00

Yeah, this is for all you dickless liberals whining that America's greatest days are behind her. That we better get used to kowtowing to socialistic commy countries cause America can't think big anymore. America can't make things anymore. Well, I got news for you Comrade! We still got freedom in America & just like this video shows you, AMERICA RAWKS!!

Rent this movie? Down to the Bone

2011-01-17T23:38:00.003-05:00

Still from "Down to the Bone," All rights reserved

"Down to the Bone" is director Debra Granik's 1st feature ( last year's surprise hit, "Winter's Bone," was her 2nd). Made in 2005, "Down to..." stars Vera Famiga as Irene, a mother of two young boys in upstate New York with a dead-end job, a feckless husband & a cocaine habit. Irene checks into a rehab, gets clean &, against advice, returns too soon to her cash-strapped, overburdened life. No one in the small-time rural drug scene she comes from has any idea what she's up against; her creepy husband gets her high because he hopes it will make her want sex. Irene returns to the N.A. meetings at the rehab, where she gets support from Bob (Hugh Dillon), a former heroin addict, now solidly clean & working as a nurse to the other addicts. Irene falls for him. And Bob, who knows better, can't seem to help himself...

Anyone watching this movie can easily spot the foolish choices Irene & Bob make & foresee their tragic results. But Granik never allows us to feel superior. These two don't lack experience or willpower & their determination is real. In the end, the unbreakable grip of their compulsion is simply a fact. And human love, by itself, is not enough to change it.

"Down to the Bone" is as unsparing about the realities of addiction as it refuses to be didactic about recovery. I can't recall a movie that comes closer than this one to the grinding low-grade misery of wanting to get high -- knowing you can't handle it -- &, in a moment of pure insanity, doing it anyway.

After hard-won years staying clean, Bob shoots up at exactly the moment it seems he might have a real-life basis for hope. Irene -- left behind, distraught -- picks up the needle & follows him into the abyss. Bob tells her not to; they both know it's folly. And we're horrified too, but not surprised. We're allowed to see that their crazy act also promises a kind of peace ... as the hippies once used the word. For a short time the heroin gives them peace. Peace. And love? ... They have that too. It's not all you need. But the lovers at least are together.

Granik & the actors don't shy away from the perverse comfort of this. After their inevitable bust, Irene & Bob are arrested & cuffed by NYC cops. Still high, awaiting their fates on a station house bench, they press their bodies together, eyes closed, like babies seeking their mommies.

A passing cop matter-of-factly yanks them apart.

Based on more than three years of documentary research & set in real locations, DP Michael McDonough's stripped-down, mostly handheld video is relentlessly intimate as it follows the small cast's lives through shabby rooms & soggy parking lots edged with piles of dirty snow. Only inside moving cars are the cameras allowed to wander. Peering through grime-specked windows, as wipers push muddy mist aside, the lenses seem to marvel at fields & houses flipping past against wintry gray skies. It's a hyper real style that somehow -- maybe because I've become accustomed to Hollywood's overlit, too-perfect sets -- took on a dreamlike quality.

"Vera Farmiga," "Down to the Bone," All rights reserved.

Finally, a word about Vera Farmiga. I can't get her out of my head. I first saw her in the recent "Up in the Air," where she was glamorous & self-assured, a worthy comic foil to George Clooney's debonair super-traveler. In this film she's a bedraggled, working class country mom, a supermarket check-out girl, her lank hair sloppily pinned-up, her mouth turned down in defensive cynicism.

Playing Irene, Farmiga is no movie star. Her sylphlike beauty seems lost in scene after scene. But you don't forget her eyes. Shaped like almonds, a vivid green-blue, they register her tense, intelligent character's anger & bewilderment. And especially her pain. By the time this movie reached the final ambiguous scene, brilliantly played between Irene & Bob through a closed, slotted-glass backdoor, I wanted to cry.

Hand of God

2011-01-15T23:06:00.000-05:00

Big Movies: The Book?

2011-01-10T23:13:00.003-05:00

"Hannibal 1 and 2," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

I've been photographing these painted "upcoming movie" ads on the building wall across from my office since 2008. It's been fun, an excuse to take a break from desk work. It's been as easy as shooting fish in a barrel! Now I'm suddenly realizing the series could make a book. See my earlier book here:

Outer Borough by Tim Connor | Make Your Own Book

I have to go back now & pull together my files. I've shot these pictures carefully but without much purpose. Time to see what I've got...

Anthony's eyes

2011-01-09T13:50:00.003-05:00

Snow on Gotham

2011-01-08T00:17:00.004-05:00

Old blue eye

2011-01-04T21:26:00.001-05:00

Robert Rauschenberg: In the gap between art & life

2010-12-27T11:27:00.010-05:00

Robert Rauschenberg, 1963

Recently, Gagosian seems to be acting more like a museum than a gallery. Last week, I saw their Robert Rauschenberg show, just half a year after catching their dazzling exhibit of Picassos, The Mediterranean Years. I'm guessing these shows are intended as artistic potlatches to demonstrate Gagosian's greater glory -- we're only expected to admire. But, really, who's complaining? All I want to do is look.

I nosed around the web for info about Rauschenberg. A critical consensus calls him a rebel for, as one writer put it "...his rejection of the angst and seriousness of the abstract expressionists." That may be true (I don't know the history of the art wars during that period). Then again, it could be just the critic's version. After looking at his stuff, it strikes me that Rauschenberg doesn't seem like a guy to categorically "reject" anything. Instead, he may have gone in his own direction as naturally as a bird goes south for the winter.

It is true that, if abstract expressionists aimed to infuse paintings with spiritual truth ("the unconscious," to be found within each artist), Rauschenberg's pieces run ineluctably in the opposite direction. He called what he did working in "the gap between art & life." In practice that meant radical inclusion -- intake -- the continuous, open-ended transformation of "the mess of life" into art.

Aen Floga (Combine Painting), 1962, Oil on canvas with wood, metal and wire, Robert Rauschenberg

In his "Combines"(I love that word), Rauschenberg uses discarded trash & daily objects made from every kind of material: signs, clothing, pillows, sticks, cardboard boxes, dirt, furniture, bricks, printed fabric, rusted shapes of iron. Other works on canvas reproduce photo & art historical images ripped from the cultural mix as photographs, silkscreens, drawings, chemical imprints -- painted, overlaid, daubed, meshed. Rauschenberg's choices & juxtapositions are intuitive, never didactic -- if you look at them long enough, the meaning(s) become clear, but these are not always accessible to words.

"Untitled (Spread)," Robert Rauschenberg

Walking around the show I opened my notebook & started writing down what I saw. Here is an unsystematic sampling.

football fish cat flowers dancer aerial city waterslide posed chimps pinnipeds twinned roads blossoms bridges planets fruit horses thermostat oil tanks mountain peaks tractor Geronimo pedestians mustache arrow umbrella headlights rulers nudes blueprints Abe Lincoln monkeys traffic cactus Buddha skyscrapers scaffolding reflections bicycles Lady Liberty mosquitoes poppies roses cows lace cupolas drainpipes tenements Greek columns flywheel pediment assemblyline tires bodhisattva dormer Michaelangelo's Sistine ceiling mushrooms meat chairs steins juicers filmstrip flags maps boats broadsheets numbers statues Mona Lisa(s) children's drawings musical notation ideograms

Quoted for this show, Rauschenberg said, "...If I can possibly show to anyone that the world belongs to them, to each person, then the work is successful."

Amen

Fisherman

2010-12-24T00:16:00.005-05:00

Where is your mind?

2010-12-15T21:27:00.003-05:00

In this article the author asks, "Is it possible that... some of the activity that enables us to be the thinking, knowing, agents that we are occurs outside the brain?" Could, for example, "...iPhones, BlackBerrys, laptops and organizers ... sometimes be best seen as bio-external elements in an extended cognitive process: one that now criss-crosses the conventional boundaries of skin and skull?"

It's a fascinating argument. Read it at "Out of Our Brains" by Andy Clark. There's even a Pixie's video.

Millerton

2010-12-14T22:36:00.001-05:00

Elia Kazan on bohemianism

2010-12-10T12:17:00.005-05:00

"Elia Kazan at Cannes," courtesy The New Yorker

My suggestion: read this aloud.

"A dying race call them what you will: romantics, eccentrics, rebels, Bohemians, freaks, harum-scarum, bobtail, Punchinello, odd-ducks, the out-of-steps, the queers, double-gated, lechers, secret livers, dreamers, left-handed pitchers, defrocked bishops... the artists, the near artists, the would-be-artists, the wanderers, the would-be wanderers, the secret wanderers, the foggy-minded, the asleep on the job, the loafers, the out-and-out hobos, the down and out, the grifters and drifters, the winos and boozers, the old maids who don't venture to the other side of their windows, the good for nothings, the unfenceables, the rebels inside, the rebels manifest..."

-- Elia Kazan, from a letter to Tennessee Williams

Rent this movie? Lone Star

2010-12-07T10:57:00.010-05:00

"Lone Star poster," All rights reserved

Lone Star 1996
Written and directed by John Sayles
With Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Kris Kristofferson

With his 1996 movie, Lone Star, writer/director John Sayles may have tried to juggle one -- or two -- too many subplots, but the audacity of his ambition makes us buy it. Our most literary film artist, Sayles intends his interweaving stories to tell a larger overarching story -- about a community, not just its individuals. Lone Star is set in a sleepy Texas border town, where everyone falls into one of three groups -- anglo, Mexican or black. The film's murder mystery & love story bring out ethnic tensions in these characters but also their deep connections.

For me, the best thing in Lone Star is the strongest of those connections -- the love story between anglo sherriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) & Mexican school teacher Pilar Cruz (Elizabeth Pena). After many years away, Sam has returned to town to take over his father's old job. Pilar is now a widow with two teen-aged children. Gradually, we learn that Sam & Pilar were once passionate teenage lovers, that they were violently separated & kept apart by their respective families, eventually resulting in Sam's self-exile. Now they're free to do what they want.

We watch their tense middle-aged re-courtship. As Sam, Cooper is tall & lean & slow-moving (by the time he has taken off his Stetson, blocked it in his big hands, & put it back on, another actor would be done with the scene). But he's anything but relaxed. His long lugubrious, unhandsome face ticks back & forth between hard-won control & a kind of desperation as he tries, politely, to communicate his feelings to Pilar. Pena's Pilar, on the other hand, makes no attempt to hide her caroming feelings. She's a proud & beautiful woman in her prime, making her way in a small town with no eligible men, & she's lonely. But she's also still angry at Sam.

When Sam & Pilar finally make love near the end of the film, all their longing & regret, going back years, seems to explode. A short scene, it shows us heads & shoulders only, filmed from above. We're unable to see Sam's face, only Pilar's as she moves on top of him. We think we're watching a sedate version of the sex act-- cable but not HBO -- & then Pilar cries out; her orgasm surges through her face, again & again, more powerfully each time, leaving her gasping, her features smoothed-out, happy in Sam's arms. It's quite a moment. And not just because it's sexy (which it is).

Not long afterward, we learn the real reason Sam's & Pilar's parents kept them apart as teenagers (hint: it's not racism). In fact, it's a shocker worthy of Bunuel. But what do these two star-crossed lovers do with this dire revelation? They flip it aside. They laugh & reach for each other

I loved this movie.

God bless Bernie Sanders!

2010-12-02T23:13:00.005-05:00

"Billionaire," satirical protester at Republican National Convention, NYC, 2004, Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Bernie Sanders of Vermont told the truth on the floor of the U.S. Senate today.

It made me ashamed of the President & Democrats who have done nothing but backpedal & grin, trying to placate the Republican bullies. Why can't the Dems stand up & tell the truth too? I believe the middle class would rally around them.

Coming soon...

2010-11-29T21:58:00.004-05:00

Via Netflix have watched so far:

The Searchers
Thieves Like Us
Howard's End
Noises Off
A Passage to India
Out of the Past
Whale Rider

Now on order:

Lone Star
Bringing Up Baby
Down to the Bone
Kiss me Kate
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Sweetie

Nibbling at Netflix
Netflix ninny

When the hunter does the cooking

2010-11-26T00:07:00.011-05:00

"Behind the Gare St. Lazar," Henri Cartier-Bresson, All rights reserved

The great Henri Cartier-Bresson, apparently as good at concocting bon mots as making pictures, once famously remarked : "I'm a hunter, not a cook." In other words, 'I shoot 'em, somebody else takes care of the rest.'

I've always wondered about this remark. OK, let's say Cartier-Bresson gives the film to an experienced lab person to process & make contact sheets. C-B marks a few frames, then turns the contacts over to editors who know good work as well as what they need for their stories. A skilled printer takes care of enlargements, which are then sized, cropped & laid out by designers. C-B gives his blessing & takes another sip of his excellent wine. Voila!

Vraiment?

For me, shooting is always about chasing Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment." My pictures never do more than approximate what I envision. (That's why I keep shooting.)

It's only the decisions that come after shooting (the cooking) for which I am able to feel truly responsible. Those decisions -- hundreds of them -- are completely in my control.

Right now I'm at work selecting & presenting a set of my pictures for a contest. It's a form of self-torture. Issues of self-esteem arise (maybe I should say self-hatred). Deep-seated fears of inadequacy threaten to paralyze. Despite my best efforts, my fears morph into fantasies of bias & corruption on the part of the judges & a kind of childish anger that there is no perfectly realized picture, no perfect justice.

I wish I could be just a hunter.

i-Less in Gotham

2010-11-21T22:18:00.012-05:00

"Mark Zuckerberg, born 1984," photo courtesy The New Yorker

After a recent series of interviews with Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, Jose Antonio Vargas wrote: "Eventually, the company [Facebook] hopes that users will read articles, visit restaurants, and watch movies based on what their Facebook friends have recommended, not, say, based on a page that Google’s algorithm sends them to. Zuckerberg imagines Facebook as, eventually, a layer underneath almost every electronic device. You’ll turn on your TV, and you’ll see that fourteen of your Facebook friends are watching 'Entourage,' and that your parents taped '60 Minutes' for you. You’ll buy a brand-new phone, and you’ll just enter your credentials. All your friends—and perhaps directions to all the places you and they have visited recently—will be right there." ("Letter from Palo Alto," The New Yorker).

In Manhattan during my work day I watch other humans. Here's what I see. In public most of them seem mesmerized by small screens that they hold in their hands. They stare at these screens with unblinking attentiveness -- in the street, on the subway, in buses, on elevators, in restaurants, waiting on checkout lines, idling in cars, on benches, walking, hunched over in entryways, climbing stairs, peeing in urinals, windowshopping, pushing strollers, talking with friends, eating sandwiches... At every possible moment.

Occasionally my fellow humans move their thumbs. Sometimes they raise their screens to their ears & talk or listen (Aha! It's a phone!). You can tell by the wires going from their screens into their ears that they're listening to music or a podcast. If it's music, they sometimes close their eyes & bop to the beat. I like that. Occasionally, someone stops in mid stride & punches frantically with index & 2nd finger at his or her screen, then -- without looking up -- walks on.

A stranger to our culture would certainly conclude that something very important is happening here. I don't necessarily disagree. But why, if I'm witnessing something significant, does no one else even seem to notice? And why -- poor, sad isolato that I am -- do I not feel inclined to join in? Why do I not desire my own magic screen to keep me company all the way home?

Relax

2010-10-31T00:19:00.003-04:00

2 from Times Square subway station, last night

2010-10-25T22:52:00.003-04:00

Christine makes it to the Met!!

2010-10-24T23:41:00.006-04:00

"Christine's photo in Met poster outside the museum" by Paige

The little girl in red sprinting up the Met's grand staircase is pure Christine Acebo (ahem, she's my streetsnap & schmooze buddy). Kudos to the quickest shooter I know (she makes wondrous magic).

See more photos by Christine.

Happy ending

2010-10-21T23:14:00.002-04:00

3 days in October

2010-10-19T22:22:00.004-04:00

During the time these pictures were made, four of my women friends independently confided to me their huge crush on Robert Downey Jr.

Process of painting an ad for the upcoming movie, "Due Date," on the south wall of 351 Park Ave. South, NYC. Photos by Tim Connor, All rights reserved.

Brooklyn Space Program shows how it's done

2010-10-15T11:08:00.004-04:00

A giant step for all kind! Using an orange foam takeout container and a weather balloon, a Brooklyn group of grownups & kids sent an HD video camera 19 miles into the upper stratosphere. When the weather balloon burst, the camera (recording footage the whole time) plummeted back to earth at over 150 mph, landing only 30 miles from where it was launched.

See the video (6 min.) here.

More about the Brooklyn Space Program.

Shooting for the man...

2010-10-09T17:07:00.009-04:00

For these pictures, shot in the last hour of light on the one day I had in the California Bay Delta, I didn't worry about what I liked; I tried to shoot what I thought other people (my bosses) might like.

Subtle, but important, distinction. Good for me to do this. Maybe I'll actually learn how to use my equipment!

"Two fishermen," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Open fruit," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Boats at marina," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Cattle in landscape," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Ask a broke-ass grouch today

2010-10-07T23:28:00.004-04:00

WASP lady with tasteful pearls goes baby-mama bonkers on the mean streets of Brooklyn.

Go ahead, Ask her!

Twin Peaks, San Francisco

2010-09-21T22:30:00.004-04:00

Homo plasticus

2010-09-12T11:53:00.004-04:00

"Paris," Phillip Toledano, All rights reserved

Though we might sometimes wish otherwise, most people go to photography shows for the subject matter. Thus, it's probably a safe bet that "A New Kind of Beauty" -- Phillip Toledano's nude and semi-nude portraits of men and women who have opted for extensive plastic surgery -- will draw big crowds at Brooklyn's Klompching Gallery. What's questionable is whether the gawkers will get what they came for.

Toledano works against his material's unmistakable tabloid tow, staging his subjects coolly in classical large-format studio-style & then toning them a homogenous golden brown against deep black. Still, the subjects' personal surgery choices -- for larger breasts, impervious to gravity; smooth, wide-cheek-boned faces; bigger, softer lips, & enlarged, sometimes slanted eyes -- seem designed mainly to enhance sexual animality. I'm guessing the subjects are sex workers (an earlier book by Toledano pictured phonesex workers). Would a wider cross-section of people who have volunteered for plastic-surgery reveal a different aesthetic?

"Steve," Phillip Toledano, All rights reserved

It's probably an answerable question. According to Wikipedia,"Nearly 12 million cosmetic procedures were performed [in the U.S.] in 2007, with the five most common surgeries being breast augmentation, liposuction, nasal surgery, eyelid surgery and abdominoplasty. The increased use of cosmetic procedures crosses racial and ethnic lines in the U.S., with increases seen among African-Americans and Hispanic Americans as well as Caucasian Americans. In Europe, the second largest market for cosmetic procedures, cosmetic surgery is a $2.2 billion business. Cosmetic surgery is now very common in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. In Asia, cosmetic surgery has become an accepted practice; currently most widely prevalent and normal in South Korean society... "

Quoted in one of the press clips on Klompching's site, Toledano imagines the trend going much further : "We're looking at a new stage of human evolution," he says. "Twenty years ago, getting your tongue pierced or having a full arm tattoo was considered outrageous, but now they're commonplace, and perhaps the same thing will happen with plastic surgery ... Perhaps we could even say a new species of human is evolving, the Homo Plasticus. "

Blue mountain

2010-09-11T00:13:00.003-04:00

At my 45th high school reunion

2010-09-05T12:04:00.008-04:00

Goddesses with tennis rackets

2010-08-31T21:11:00.003-04:00

"Elena Dementieva," Dewey Hicks, NY Times Magazine, All rights reserved

For the article, "How Power Has Transformed Women's Tennis, " in Sunday's NY Times Magazine, a special camera that makes over a thousand exposures a second was used to shoot top female tennis stars in action. The resulting animated videos are shockingly beautiful. I feel I am watching focused inexorable acts of will, performed by young women whose beauty is inseparable from the power they summon. This is hard to explain. Before I say any more, see the video for yourself:

These women seem to me goddesses the way the ancient Greeks conceived them. They are physically & emotionally conjoined to human women; formed from the same template -- but from finer, more perfect materials. Stronger, more beautiful, they are naturally above the mortal plane -- but not separate from it. As immortal goddesses they are somehow more intensely, vividly mortal than their human sisters.

Like their sisters, too, the goddesses have a touching vanity. Their long, beautiful hair is not tied back; it swirls around their faces. Their costumes are each a little different; the styles & colors are carefully chosen. They are jealous, competitive. It is perhaps an important source of their power. And they understand passion -- & vengeance. Look at their faces. Like Hera, the Queen of the Goddesses, they are not above turning a rival's long hair into snakes, or turning their husband's mistress into a cow, then driving her mad with biting flies.

"Serena Williams," Dewey Nicks, NY Times Magazine, All rights reserved

Leonard Cohen: young man in a cold city

2010-08-30T10:29:00.007-04:00

In 1965 or so, before the world went crazy, Leonard Cohen was a poet, not a songwriter. He was actually famous as a poet, at least in the small sophisticated city (Montreal) where he grew up. Seeing this movie made my heart ache because Cohen is exactly who I wanted to be at that time -- I was finishing high school. He's witty, lyric & tender without being soft (I could never have pulled that off). And he has impregnable self-confidence without ever losing his sense of his own absurdity. No wonder the guy later ran away to a monastery for his middle years. Who could have retained any kind of humanhood as the genius rock star hero poet guru prophet lover the media (all of us) wanted to make him into, starting about 1967?

I loved this film. Listen to Cohen talk about hotel rooms and about the generous beauty of women.

Thanks to brother Tony for the tip. Go here for hundreds of other free Canadian documentaries & animations.

Will shows a snakeskin he just found

2010-08-23T23:32:00.003-04:00

Closeup: Arts & flowers

2010-08-16T08:48:00.007-04:00

The five pictures that follow are my submission to a group show of closeup works. If accepted, they will appear in September. My artist's statement about this series is at the end of this post.

"Heart beacon: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Stars moving inland: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Trying to get to heaven: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Pink star: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Tendrils: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Artist's statement

I love it when different kinds of subject matter and forms of representation mix & ricochet off each other. The subject matter of this series of close-ups – from a garden wall painted with landscapes & flowers by an unknown artist, then grown over by actual plants – juxtaposes living nature & its created representations in paint. Framed close-ups of the juxtapositions are then represented by digital photography, which, in its illusion of timelessness, mixes ironically with the series’ themes of (relative) permanence & change.

Netflix Ninny project continues

2010-08-14T10:21:00.004-04:00

We watched the 1st movie from the new Netflix list (see "Nibbling at Netflix"). It was "Noises Off," from a Broadway play, dir. by Peter Bogdanovitch, with Michael Caine, Carol Burnett & Christopher Reeves. Supposed to be a satire on the theater, a farce of a farce. It got stupider & more repetitive as it went. Yes, we know theater & theater people are professionally unembarrassable. "The play must go on." Bravo. So what? It sucked.

Wins The Grand Raspberry Award. Gets minus 8 stars. Don't watch it, even if you're stuck on a 12-hour flight.

New additions to NN list:

Weekend -- Jean Luc Godard
Nights of Cabiria -- Fellini
Dr. Strangelove -- Stanley Kubrick
Akira -- anime
Ghost in the Shell -- anime
Princess Mononoko -- " " Hayao Miyazaki
Castle in the Sky -- " " " "
Fanny @ Alexander -- Bergman
Dead Man Walking -- Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, great soundtrack
Slacker -- Richard Linklater
Where Angels Fear to Tread -- Helen Mirren
Hudsucker Proxy
Cinema Paradiso
Breakfast at Tiffany's -- Capote novel, Audrey Hepburn
Jean de Florette
Death in Venice -- Visconti, Dirk Bogarde
Gotterdamerung -- " "
Rocco and His Brothers -- Visconti
The Leopard -- " "
The Haunting of Hill House
The Innocents -- adapted from Turn of the Screw, Deborah Kerr
Silence of the Lambs -- Jonathan Demme, Jody Foster
Might Must Fall
Night of the Hunter -- -- written by James Agee, dir by Charles Laughton, with Robt Mitchum, Lillian Gish (I think), Shelley Winter
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Legend of the Drunken Master -- Jackie Chan, kung fu
Kill Bill I & II -- Quentin Tarantino
Fight Club
The Shining -- Kubrick from Stephen King novel, Jack Nicholson
The Big Fish
The Commitments -- from Roddy Doyle novel
Crooklyn -- Spike Lee
Meyerling(?) -- 1936, Charles Boyer
The Warriors -- NYC gangs, 70s
The Year of Living Dangerously
Our Town -- Paul Newman
The Bad Seed
Heavenly Creatures -- Kate Winslett
Compulsion -- Leopold & Lowe (sp) story

Bodhisattva in metro

2010-08-12T23:09:00.004-04:00

This lovely short film seduces you instead of hitting you over the head. Masterful pacing & a true eye (& love) for faces. Check it out.

We love our machines, so we tell stories about them

2010-08-09T18:14:00.017-04:00

NY Times op-ed illustration by Ji Lee

We're all familiar with the well-worn science fiction trope: Humans build a vast network of powerful machines; the machines become sentient & take over the world. Software designer Jaron Lanier doesn't necessarily believe this story, but he thinks it's important. In a recent NY Times op-ed, "The First Church of Robotics," Lanier argues that this machine-mind creation myth is fast gaining currency in our culture as a real -- not sci fi -- near-future event. At the well-heeled & well-connected Singularity University, for example, many of Silicon Valley's technological elite expect that "one day... the Internet will suddenly coalesce into a super-intelligent A.I. (Artificial Intelligence), infinitely smarter than any of us individually and all of us combined." In fact "...these are guiding principles, not just amusements, for many of the most influential technologists," Lanier reports.

Crazy? Who knows. Meanwhile, let's talk about the present. For good or ill, A.I. is seen right now as a new kind of god. I think the idea thrills us. Even if our new god turns out to be cruel (witness the recent explosion of literary & cinematic dystopias), we are ready. Perhaps we welcome AI because we can't help loving our own intelligence. Encoded within the AI, our small isolated stores of knowledge -- our data -- may become part of something much greater. The AI needs us. Thus, the master machines share our humanity & give us immortality.

"What we are seeing is a new religion , expressed through an engineering culture," says Lanier.

What's interesting is that Lanier makes this provocative point as an unreconstructed engineer & Silicon Valley insider. When he says that IBM -- which recently unveiled a question-answering computer designed to play the TV game show 'Jeopardy' -- could have "...dispensed with the theatrics [and] declared it had done Google one better and come up with a new phrase-based search engine," he clearly knows what he's talking about.

Not that we don't all understand why IBM listened to its ad people. Just a search engine? How boring. Why not a talking machine, a smart robot, something like a ... person? Think R2D2. Think WALL-E. Let's face it, there's something irresistible about those little mannikins. Even their old neurotic granddad, HAL, felt like part of the family. What's not to like?

Lanier warns that our identification with our technology is "allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood... we think of people more & more as computers, just as we think of computers as people...The very idea of A.I. gives us the cover to avoid accountability by pretending that machines can take on more and more human responsibility," Lanier says.

What a bummer this guy is! He's no fun at all. But, hold on, his suggestions of what to do about the fatal attraction of man & machine aren't really radical. For example, listen to his comment about the recommendation software on Netflix or Pandora: "Seeing movies or listening to music suggested to us by algorithims is relatively harmless, I suppose. But I hope that once in a while the users of those services resist the recommendations; our exposure to art shouldn't be hemmed in by an algorithim that we merely want to believe predicts our tastes accurately. These algorithims do not represent emotion or meaning, only statistics & correlations."

Spoken like an engineer. Factual. Unembellished. This is the way Lanier thinks we should look at our technology. What he's warning against is the way artists (& clergy) -- who typically know next to nothing technically -- look at it. They make up stories, invent metaphors, assign meanings. It's not very likely, after all, that a true scientist will fall in love with his iPhone. He may find it useful; he may admire it. But he is not likely to adore a mere tool. It's the artist who is smitten, who praises his iPhone every day, who thanks it for its loyalty & brilliance, who regards it as his secretary, amanuensis, his dear little friend.

"Technology is essentially a form of service," Lanier counters. "We work to make the world better. Our inventions can ease burdens, reduce poverty & suffering, and sometimes even bring new forms of beauty into the world. We can give people more options to act morally because people with medicine, housing and agriculture can more easily afford to be kind than those who are cold, sick and starving... But civility, human improvement, these are still choices. That's why scientists & engineers should present technology in ways that don't confound those choices."

And finally: "When we think of computers as inert, passive tools instead of people, we are rewarded with a clearer, less ideological view of what is going on -- with the machines and with ourselves."

My review transmutes to ink on paper

2010-08-05T23:17:00.007-04:00

"Little Neck Parkway," Zheng Yaohua, All rights reserved

The picture above is from "On Their Sites: landscapes with private monuments," a fascinating project by New York-based photographer Zheng Yaohua (known as zeyez on Flickr) that explores private memories as they attach themselves to specific places. I am honored that a short essay I wrote about Zheng's work was included in his recent brochure about the piece.

You can read my review here.

The photo/childhood memory about George Tenet that I analyze is here.

Nibbling at netflix

2010-07-30T22:30:00.007-04:00

For too long I have been a netflix ninny, paying for the service but failing to actually order my movies Why? Because I never get around to it. Too daunting. Instead, at the last minute, I scramble for whatever decent disc is still on the shelf at the video store & usually end up paying a late-return charge. No more!

I have begun carrying a small notebook around, listing movies I want to see or have seen in the dim past & want to see afresh. (See below.) I'm also asking my friends & readers for suggestions. Have I missed one of your all-time faves? Tell me.

Expanding must-see list
(Titles & notes are not google-checked)

Blade Runner -- replicants in steamy future L.A.
Desperate -- Anthony Mann, called "the perfect noir"
Shadowlands -- Anthony Hopkins as C.S. Lewis, Debra Winger
Noises Off -- funny
Howard's End & A Passage to India -- Merchant/Ivory style, great novels
Mutiny on the Bounty -- Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh
Six Feet Under -- the TV series, redhead is adorable
Lars & the Real Girl
Spring Summer Fall Winter -- and Spring - Korean Buddhists
Whale Rider -- enviro theme
Waltzing with Basheer
La Strada -- Fellini, Anthony Quinn as circus strongman
McCabe & Mrs. Miller -- Altman, Julie Christie , Warren Beatty
The Long Goodbye -- Altman, Eliot Gould
MASH -- Altman, Alan Alda, E Gould, "Hotlips Houlihan"
Thieves Like Us -- Altman
Taxi Driver -- Scorcese, DeNiro
Danny Darko
The Searchers -- Ford or Hawks? I think the latter. John Wayne at his angry best
Chinatown - Nicholson, Polanski, Dunaway, John Huston
Mrs. Brown -- Judi Densch?
Bonnie & Clyde -- Faye Dunaway & W Beatty
Stay Hungry -- the young Arnold Schwartzenegger as politically astute bodybuilder
A Slave of Love
The Conformist -- Bertolucci
Last Tango in Paris - Brando
Jules et Jim -- Truffaut, Jeanne Moreau
Loves of a Blonde -- Milos Forman
The Fireman's Ball -- " "
An American Friend -- Werner Herzog
Ali, Fear Eats the Soul -- Fassbinder??
Out of the Past -- Robert Mitchum, noirish thriller
The Lady Eve -- Preston Sturges
Laura -- not Hitchcock
Philadelphia Story
Bringing up Baby -- Hepburn
King of Comedy -- Scorcese, Jerry Lewis
The Deerhunter
The Conversation -- Francis Coppola, Gene Hackman
Cisco Pike -- Hackman, Kris Kristofferson, Karen Black
Five Easy Pieces -- Jack Nicholson, Karen Black
The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner -- Herzog documentary
The White Diamond -- about dirigibles, also " " "
Born Yesterday -- Judy Holiday
South Pacific
Kiss me Kate
Last Picture Show
Sugarland Express
Badlands
Blue Velvet
Contempt - Jean Luc Godard, Jack Palance
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her -- Godard
Slings & Arrows -- TV series
Anvil -- Mark said best movie he saw last year
Crimes & Misdemeanors -- Woody Allen, panned because not a Woody Allen picture
Lone Star -- John Sayles
Brother from Another Planet - J Sayles
Scenes from a Marriage - Ingmar Bergman
Cries & Whispers -- " " "
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control -- Errol Morris
Murder Ball -- sci fi?
The Big Lubowski -- Coen Bros, Jeff Bridges
Knife in the Water -- Roman Polanski
Macbeth -- " "
The Tenant -- " "
The Pianist -- " "
The Piano Teacher -- Michael Haneke
The Piano -- Jane Campion
Sweety -- " "
Angel at my Table -- " "
Holy Smoke -- also by Campion, Harver Keitel as deprogrammer, Kate Winslet as his subj -- is the name right?
Welcome to the Dollhouse -- Todd Solondz
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie -- Luis Bunuel
Belle de Jour -- " " "
Diary of a Chambermaid -- " " "
Atlantic City -- Louis Malle
My Dinner with Andre -- " "
The Natural -- Robt Redford, from Bernard Malamud novel
The Apartment -- Billy Wilder
Sunset Blvd --- " "
Winess for the Prosecution -- " "
Double Indemnity -- " "
Elmer Gantry -- Burt Lancaster
Sweet Smell of Success -- " ", Tony Curtis
Black Widow
Petrified Forest -- Bogey, Ida Lupino
What Makes Sammy Run?
A Face in the Crowd -- Elia Kazan, Andy Griffith
I'm Not There -- 7 Bob Dylans
No Direction Home -- Scorsese documentary on Dylan
Don't Look Back -- Dylan
The Company -- Stephen Sondheim
Black Robe -- from great novel by Brian Moore
Names of all the Saints
Further Tales of the City -- Laura Linney

Venus if you will...

2010-07-29T23:37:00.003-04:00

Pauly

2010-07-05T22:06:00.004-04:00

"Pauly, Brattleboro, 1" , Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Pauly, Brattleboro, 2", Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Pauly, Brattleboro, 3", Tim Connor, All rights reserved

"Pauly, Brattleboro, 4," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Brother T

2010-06-24T23:47:00.006-04:00

"Warrior cut," Santa Cruz, 6/10

"Shut yo mouth, sucka!! ... I pity the fool."

Lymphoma-inspired, preemptive do. So retro it's fashion-forward. Go, Teddy!

Montana

2010-06-06T01:21:00.003-04:00

Kilroy in California

2010-05-20T23:53:00.004-04:00

Brown lady revealed

2010-05-18T22:53:00.003-04:00

Hill country

2010-05-17T22:58:00.003-04:00

Before sun-up

2010-05-08T15:35:00.003-04:00

Brother man

2010-04-27T23:03:00.004-04:00

Fragments of empire

2010-04-25T00:57:00.008-04:00

The two photos below inspired a post by the witty & industrious Michael David Murphy on his whileseated site. He imagines an installation of life-sized, distortion-free photographs of the fading mural in a nearby gallery "free and clear of the elements."

"I'd really like to see that," he says.

I remembered the one-paragraph Borges' story about an empire in which the science of cartography has become so exact only a map on a one-to-one scale with the empire itself will suffice. The story ends, "...succeeding Generations… came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome... In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar..."