The Soul Music Section, by Robert Sengstacke
“To put one brick upon another,
Add a third and then a fourth,
Leaves no time to wonder whether
What you do has any worth.
But to sit with bricks around you
While the winds of heaven bawl
Weighing what you should or can do
Leaves no doubt of it at all.”
Philip Larkin, 1951
Emiko Suo, “Mizuhiki”
“It is quite probable that the adaptation of thought to experience is an infinite process and that ‘complete model’ is a contradiction in terms.”
Erwin Schrödinger, 1935
“There is a bridge in the north of South Africa called the Beit Bridge, named after the villain financier and art collector Sir Alfred Beit. He was the German-Jewish friend of Cecil John Rhodes, advocate of Anglo-Saxon as the super race, who persuaded him to become a British citizen. If you venture beyond this bridge you only find jungle and wildlife lurking. Benighted and dark Africa of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” lurks in the beyond, the perimeter of the realm. And that is what I was raised and taught to believe. Beit Bridge is a ‘so be it’ bridge.”
Santu Mofokeng, 2008
Interestingly, it’s hard to find an obituary of Sir Alfred Beit that is not spackled with fond memories of a fine, albeit unlucky, British philanthropist. It is famously said that history is written by the victors; in Africa’s case, the lineage of victory is international in scope, with voices from home few and far between. Santu Mofokeng’s photography and social philosophy provide new voice to a civilization long used to being spoken for.
To an African, the concept of home must be a complex one. Geographic lines are lengthened, redrawn and sometimes disappear altogether, all according to the whims of another (the contextual Other?). What is left, when a community no longer has concept of “home,” no name to give an amoebic and amorphous landscape? What remains to decipher the importance of land and place but spirituality, politics, and people; in effect, those forces that define who we are and where we come from?
International recognition of Mofokeng’s voice is in itself a victory for African history. Will it now have to be rewritten, and our own pasts examined from the detritus when worlds, and memories, collide with equal force? If so, so be it.
Alexander McQueen, VOSS, Spring/Summer 2001; Razor clam shells stripped and varnished
Mimondo Wave 1 Bed, Gudiksen, 2011
Alexander McQueen, Jellyfish Ensemble, Plato’s Atlantis, Spring/Summer 2010; Iridescent Enamel Paillettes
California Green Academy of Sciences, designed by Renzo Piano
Alexander McQueen, Dante Corset, Autumn/Winter 1996-97; Lilac silk faille appliquéd with black silk lace and embroidered with jet beads
Torre Verre, Atelier Jean Nouvel
Shaune Lean for Alexander McQueen, Spine Corset, Spring/Summer 1998; Aluminum and Black Leather
The Very Many and Mark Fornes, Vertebrae 1
Alexander McQueen, Highland Rape, Autumn/Winter 1995-96; Green and Bronze cotton/synthetic lace
Synergy, photographed by Leif Podhajsky
Alexander McQueen, The Horn of Plenty, Autumn/Winter 2009-10; Black Duck Feathers
Photographed by Todd Selby at Alexander Wang’s Private Residence
Alexander McQueen, Widows of Culloden, Autumn/Winter 2006-07; Pheasant feathers
Salvador Dali, Leda Chair, by BD Barcelona
Alexander McQueen, Eshu, Autumn/Winter 2000-01; Dress of beige leather; crinoline of metal
Eiffel Tower, Lomography
Alexander McQueen images and captions courtesy of The Met Museum Blog
Michael Wolf, Arguing with Otto Steinert
Fuck you Google Street View, by Michael Wolf, 2010
Street View Manhattan, by Michael Wolf, 2011
Street View Manhattan, by Michael Wolf, 2011
Fuck you Google Street View, by Michael Wolf, 2011
Michael Wolf, born in Munich and raised in the United States, has been working as an author and photographer in China for the past ten years. The images above convey an interest in unsolicited portraiture run rampant in today’s tech heavy world; someone’s always watching, so an impassioned fuck you to “the Man” (or quick panty line check) will be seen—and maybe even captured—at one point or another.
Corduroy Magazine’s coverage of Wolf’s latest series, “Copy Artists,” features Chinese reproduction artists alongside their masterfully executed copies of famous works—a booming trade, and fitting for a country that can’t let go of Ford’s early and explosive 20th century production model when it comes to everything else. (I know, if others have already covered it, does that make US copy artists, too? One more thing: FUCK YOU GOOGLE STREET VIEW)
Self-Portrait, NYC, 1986 © Laura Levine
From 1980 to 1995, Laura Levine—a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist and photographer—immortalized herself in the rock and roll lexicon with her startling portraits of the period’s most notable faces and personalities. Hers was a period when MTV still played music videos, rockstars walked among us with abandon (and without fear of insidious mobile phone uploads) and a Rolling Stone cover made kings of men, and all overnight.
Best known for her black and white portraits of everyone from Madonna to James Brown, Levine’s images capture a raw yet elevated essence of those iconic visages that we have come to know, love and perhaps hate. Levine sits down with The PhotoSynth Project to discuss her life as a professional photographer, then and now. Her latest exhibition Musicians, a retrospective, debuts tonight, July 21st, at the Stephen Kasher Gallery, Chelsea, NYC.
Afrika Bambaataa NYC 1983 © Laura Levine
PS: What inspired you to pick up the camera?
LL: I‘d seen a Diane Arbus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art when I was fourteen, and walked out of the museum thinking, “I want to do that.” Her work absolutely inspired me. I signed up for an after-school darkroom class, borrowed my dad’s Konica camera, and started taking street pictures in my Lower East Side neighborhood.
PS: As a multidisciplinary—and self-taught artist—which was the initial medium, experience, or interaction with the art world that made you consider the depth of your creative ability, and confident in its range?
LL: Although I’ve worked in photography, paint, film and animation, I started out in still photography and that’s probably the medium I still feel most connected to and most confident about. Once I started to be regularly published in magazines and included in gallery shows, I felt pretty secure that my work was going to be taken seriously. Being included in a show at MoMA this past year certainly was a nice confidence boost!
Lene Lovich, NYC, 1981 © Laura Levine
Tina Weymouth & Grandmaster Flash NYC 1981 © Laura Levine
PS: Music and Photography. Is this is a difficult marriage? What difficulties did your subject matter pose to you personally, as an artist? To the industry as a whole?
LL: When I first started to photograph musicians it was usually a very intimate one-on-one situation and smooth sailing (aside from the occasional hung-over subject). But as the record industry changed, there were often too many cooks in the broth: label reps, fashion stylists, managers….at times there’d be as many as ten other people in the studio during the shoot, each with an agenda or an opinion, and I found that to be stifling and counter-productive to creativity.
Though I understand that they had needs as clients. The difficulty was rarely with the artists themselves, but with the infrastructure. The music industry was putting more emphasis on packaging their artists (style over substance), and as that began to happen with more frequency, I left.
Madonna NYC 1982 @ Laura Levine
PS: Your subjects are what many would call “iconic;” though, arguably, no one can become an icon without a Rolling Stone cover, and an unforgettable image. Does a great rock photographer make a great rock star; the chicken or the egg?
LL: Without a doubt it’s the iconic rock star the makes the iconic rock star. I don’t think there’s any one photographer or image that could take the credit for making a rock star “iconic.” That said, I do think certain images are iconic and they can add to the aura. I’m not sure how relevant a Rolling Stone cover is anymore. (Is it?).
PS: What’s up with the curtains?
LL: You know, I hadn’t noticed that until I put together this grouping of images and noticed Madonna and Siouxsie side-by-side! In the case of Siouxsie, we shot that in her room at the Gramercy Park Hotel, and there weren’t a lot of visual possibilities, so I worked with what I had. Hey, out of five hundred sessions, two with curtains isn’t so bad!
Boy George London 1982 © Laura Levine
Public Image Ltd., NYC, 1981© Laura Levine
Henry Rollins NYC 1993 © Laura Levine
PS: You haven’t shot since 1994; arguably the most interesting time for musical documentation a la MTV, when it was actually Music Television. Audiences only familiar with their favorite artists on album covers and live in concert now had access to them via music videos, interviews, and rockumentaries. What is the value of Rock Photography to the music industry today? Is there a place for it in a post-MTV and CD world?
LL: I firmly believe that nothing has greater visual power than one great still image – not TV, not videos, not rockumentaries. People remember certain frozen moments in time.
PS: Why did you use black and white photography so often in your portraits? For you, what is the aesthetic value?
LL: The practical reason is that I was able to develop the film and make the prints myself, at home. Aesthetically, I’ve always preferred black and white over color. It gets to the gist of the picture without the distractions of color. It’s timeless and classic.
PS: Being self-taught, who guided you through the technical aspects of photographic production—who were your mentors?
LL: I used to develop all of my film and make my own prints in the darkroom in my loft until the mid-Nineties. I learned darkroom basics when I was a teenager, at the Henry Street Settlement down the street. My teacher, Nestor Cortijo, was a photographer himself, and I learned so much from him.
My other mentor was Fred McDarrah, the photo editor at the Village Voice and a wonderful photojournalist who had covered the Beats. I did an internship with Fred at the Voice after I graduated from college, and among other things, he taught me priceless information about how to protect my work and stand up for my rights as a photographer. There’s a group of us – former Voice interns – who all owe a huge debt to Fred.
PS: Do you still print your own photographs?
LL: I now entrust my silver gelatin printing to LTI-Lightside (formerly 68 Degrees), a wonderful b/w lab in midtown. Kent is a master printer who has printed my work for years…I miss making my own prints – I really do – and would love to get back to it someday. I was a pretty good printer!
R.E.M. Walter's Bar-B-Que Athens GA 1984 © Laura Levine
Alan Vega NYC 1983 © Laura Levine
PS: What is the best concert you have ever been to? What makes a great musical experience?
LL: The best shows have been the ones where I feel like I’ve been levitated off the ground. Al Green on the river in Memphis did that once.
PS: You inserted yourself into a subculture fueled, as the saying goes, by “drugs, sex and rock and roll.” What was the most difficult lesson you learned, working within this industry?
LL: Hang on to my originals!
PS: How does fame change people, for the better or worse?
LL: I’m still not sure if it changes people or perhaps just the people around them.
Captain Beefheart NYC 1980 © Laura Levine
PS: What drew you from the camera, and to illustration and film? When did you know, or feel, that it was time to walk away—at least for now?
LL: When stylists and make-up artists started to become more important than the musicians or the photographers, I decided it was time to move on. I wasn’t a fan of that month’s fashion trends being imposed on such creative artists (unless, of course, it was a fashion shoot). At the same time, I’d started to paint and was enjoying the independence, the freedom, and even the colors. That was in 1994, about fifteen years into it.
PS: What projects are you currently working on, or have an idea of working on? What, in essence, excites you these days?
LL: I’d very much like to put together a book of my work.
Musicians will be on view July 21 through August 19, 2011 in conjunction with Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post Punk Graphics 1976-1982 at the Stephen Kasher Gallery, 521 W 23rd st, NYC
“I was getting to know myself and started bringing women subjects with antique clothes, objects and my camera to greenhouses. I wanted to work in this fecund, warm space where there was some protection and freshly tended growth”
Self-Portrait, Yosemite National Park, Nude in the Landscape Workshop, Ca.1974 by Linda Troeller
Self-Portrait, Backyard, Bloomington, Indiana, 1976 by Linda Troeller
Snowbird, Bloomington, Indiana, 1976 by Linda Troeller
“I didn’t identify with the flat, unglamorous mid-west and I made this self-portrait in my backyard as a way to create a fantasy world where I was a Hollywood starlet.”
Self-Portrait, San Jose Purua, Mexico, 1976 by Linda Troeller
“After my engagement broke off, I went to Mexico to find my way as the famous photographer Tina Modotti had years earlier. I visited Leonora Carrington, a surrealist painter, at her gracious home in Mexico City. She told me, ‘We know how to heal people here — take the mushrooms in Palenque or go to the mineral waters.’”
Self-Portrait, Buzz Cut, Los Angeles, 1980 by Linda Troeller
“Little Miss Point Pleasant, freshman and sophomore year prom queen, Miss Ocean County Fair, ‘groomed’ for Miss America, dreaming to be a professional model, how could I remake my pretty surface?”
Self-Portrait, Buzz Cut II, Los Angeles, 1980 by Linda Troeller
Self-Portrait with David, San Francisco, CA 1974 by Linda Troeller
“In a letter dated October 10, 1974, David wrote to me, ‘It all came on very suddenly last evening —around 7 PM. I noticed the quality of light that existed. Bordering on Darkness — with a clear sky above – white objects seem to float amidst a sea of black and very softly indeed -‘”
Self-Portrait, Paris, France, 1995 by Linda Troeller
“Using the self is to take a risk. I’m showing, visually, an experience. I’m revealing something. As much as my images reveal, autobiographical works conceal. I want to point out that I am real. Making the images is as important as presenting them.”
Self-Portrait, Hot River, Italy, 1996 by Linda Troeller
“When I lit a match to this slide and burned it, the colors blended, the bubbles swelled and it worked for me. It had unexpected hues to awaken consciousness.”
“Lyme arthritis had attacked my wrist joints, so my featherweight, digital Nikon Coolpix became my new companion…Reflections are reassurances for our psyche.”
Self-Portrait, Dorm, Syracuse University, 1973 by Linda Troeller
“The 1970’s were a period of unrest, women’s liberation, women’s groups, burning bras — finding a new place for ourselves. We wanted to expunge some of the rules of marriage, of the art world pecking order, of class. We started asking how much more can we own of our bodies?”
Self Portrait, After the Fall, 2011 by Linda Troeller
“I was often told that my mother had sexy, gypsy eyes, very dark black-brown, darting, dancing eyes. My father’s brown eyes had a hint of silver – soft, forgiving, lovingly inviting. As an older woman I saw fear in their eyes from all the damage that had been done in life. My eyes have scanned the world searching for clues as why I am here, and who am I? They’ve projected the green hues of peace and calm, but after falling, I see fear in mine too.”
Self-Portrait, Dad and I, Toms River, NJ, 1975 by Linda Troeller
Images and excerpts courtesy of Linda Troeller, part of “Self Portrait/Self Reflection” Exhibition. Troeller has remained a resident of the Chelsea Hotel for the past 15 years; this latest series explores the artist’s reflection on life, age, sex and human identity via a collection of self portraits. A telling portrait of an artist, both seen and heard.
Danish street artist Huskmitnavn (“Remember my name”) has an uncanny, almost Shakespearean ability to distill the qualities of every day life into universally relatable figures,forms and situations. Huskmitnavn’s work—whether sprayed as graffiti in the street or drawn for an interior space—provides his audience with a sense that life and the seeming mundanity of the human experience is in fact brilliant, startling, simple and worth remembering.
Images from Huskmitnavn and Matthew Craven, May-June 2011 joint exhibition at Allegra LaViola Gallery, NYC
Egon Schiele, Self Portrait with Red Eye 1910
David Bowie photographed by Bob Gruen, NYC 1974
Egon Schiele, Self Portrait
David Bowie Makeup photograph by Mick Rock, 1973
Egon Schiele, Scornful Woman, portrait of Gertrude Schiele, 1914
David Bowie photographed by Bob Gruen, NYC 1973
Egon Schiele, Friendship, 1914
David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor, photographed by Terry O’Neill, date unknown
Egon Schiele photographed by Anton J. Trcka, 1914
David Bowie photographed by Lynn Goldsmith, NYC 1973
Photographs of David Bowie from the Morrison Hotel Gallery NYC
Images of Egon Schiele from egonschiele.tumblr.com
Berlinscapes #23, 2009
Berlinscapes #26, 2009
Berlinscapes #1, 2009
Berlinscapes #18, 2009
Berlinscapes #17, 2009
Tuca Vieira, winner of the 2010 Premio Porto Seguro—Brazil’s most prestigious art photography award— is showing his latest series, Berlinscapes through July 30, 2011 at 1500 Gallery, 511 W 25th St. #607.
1500 Gallery is the first in the world to specialize in Brazilian photography; it’s about time someone injected a bit of bossa nova novelty to the Chelsea art district. Lindo Maravilhoso!
FFACTOTUM 