Andy Warhol: Business Artist

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*unless otherwise credited)

“So you should always have a product that’s not just ‘you.’ An actress should count up her plays and movies and a model should count up her photographs and a writer should count up his words and an artist should count up his pictures so you always know exactly what you’re worth, and you don’t get stuck thinking your product is you and your fame, and your aura.” Andy Warhol1.

Andy shopping for products. *Bob Adelman, Andy Warhol at Gristede’s Market near 47th Street. New York City, 1965, near where he lived with his mother. Countless millions went shopping in American grocery stores in the 1960s. Very few made Art out of it before he did. Click any picture for full size. 

That being said, leaving the Whitney Museum’s Andy Warhol- From A to B and Back Again, the first Retrospective in NYC since MoMA’s in 1989, I was left believing Andy Warhol’s greatest creation was himself.

The use of gold here, and on the exhibition catalog’s cover, is interesting. It mimics Gold Marilyn, at MoMA, and also reminds of the background color of icons from the Eastern Orthodox and other churches. And? It’s a color often associated with money and “value,” so could it be a veiled reference to the high prices paid for his Art? Which of these is the intended meaning?

But, no matter how I feel about his Art, even I can’t deny that today, it can be said that we are living in his world to a greater extent than we realize. Look around you. His influence is everywhere. His innovations are now used by countless other Artists and businesses.

“A friend of mine named Ingrid from New Jersey came up with a new last name, just right for her new, loosely defined show-business career. She called herself ‘Ingrid Superstar.’ I’m positive Ingrid invented that word2.”

The everyday people he made into “superstars” presaged today’s television “reality stars.” His square portraits are now instantly recognizable as the Instagram standard. Andy Warhol came to define the Contemporary Artist working with a team of assistants at his Factory and his example is to be seen being followed by Artists all over the world today. How often do you see one of his color variated group of (4) portraits or flowers emulated by someone else? And on and on. These are only a few examples. Andy Warhol’s influence is incalculable. If it could be totaled, it might well rival that of Steve Jobs among THE most influential people of the past 75 years on our lives today.

Commodore Amiga computer equipment used by Andy Warhol in 1985-86. Andy’s interesting computer Art was extracted from this machine by a team led by the Andy Warhol Museum in 2014! *Photo by The Andy Warhol Museum.

But, it was Andy Warhol, not Steve, who said,  “A computer would be a very qualified boss3 decades before the time when many people’s lives seem to be run by their devices. A-hem. Sometimes I wonder if the internet is nothing but a cyber projection of Andy Warhol’s brain.

Artistically, I respect him as an Artist who was continually innovative in so many mediums during his surprisingly short career. Yes, short. It feels like he was around forever, but he was just 58 when he passed away on February 22, 1987. This insatiable creativity now strikes me as a function of his innate ability to see the world in his own way, which led him, continually, in different directions, to try new things, and explore new ways of doing old things.

It seems to me, however, that THIS may be the peak moment of Andy Warhol’s influence- the influence of Warhol, the Artist and his Art.

Warhol books, and ONLY Warhol books, seen in the Whitney Shop, March 27, 2019.

I wonder if the level of his fame may, in fact, work against its longevity from here. Virtually everything he did has been shown, written about, analyzed and assimilated. If you don’t think that’s true, take a look at this picture I took of part of the book shelves in the Whitney Museum’s Shop during the run on Andy Warhol- From A to B. I used a 28mm lens and even though I stood more than 20 feet away, backing into the middle of the admissions cue, I still wasn’t able to get ALL the Andy Warhol books on sale in the shot. There are books on his pre-Pop work, his newspaper-like work, his portraits, his posters, his prints, his record covers, his career as a publisher, his films, books on the Factory (including one of Photos taken by a teenaged Stephen Shore), a few about his Photography and polaroids, including a collection of Photos of him in drag, AND a multi-volume Catalogue Raisonne of his Paintings (on the far left of the bottom shelf). Oh, and Andy Warhol: Knives. ? This is not to mention all the books, by the Artist, and others, about his life, including the infamous, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again), published in 1977, which seems to have inspired the name of this show. My copy, bought from the display, is the 46th printing of the paperback. In all my many years of looking at Art books, I have to say the only other Artist who has as many books written about him and his Art is Picasso. 

Start here. In the first gallery, which contains early Pop work, like Dance Steps, 1961, and a wall of Campbell’s Soup Cans in the back.

As I headed to the 5th floor for the main part of the show, I wondered- What’s left for the future to learn about Andy Warhol’s Art? Given his popularity, I’m sure people will find things for yet more books.

Andy’s mother fixed him Campbell’s Soup everyday for lunch, including after he became famous, until she passed. The family was poor. Beyond the comfort of the warmth of soup, having a lot of food around represents something of an ideal, a dream, even cheap food, like this soup was at the time, at 15 cents a can. Originally, these Paintings sold for $100 a piece at his first show at Ferus Gallery in LA, where Dennis Hopper bought one.

As I looked at his Art, it also raised questions. Questions that the passage of time has only intensified.

Brillo Boxes, 1969 (version of the 1964 original). Yes, a copy of a copy. The interesting thing about this work for me is that this “Art is everywhere around us” work of so-called “Pop Art,” which helped to mark the end of Abstract Art’s hold on the Art world, is based on the Brillo Box design of James Harvey, a moonlighting Abstract Expressionist Painter! Beyond that, and wondering if  Sol LeWitt was influenced by it, it’s lost on me.

First, and most importantly, Andy Warhol’s Art is accessible. This has been the most important factor in his achieving success and fame and it may be the most important factor in the longevity of both. Popularity doesn’t necessarily equate with quality. Since the future is unwritten, as Joe Strummer reminded us, it’s impossible to know what posterity will value, if anything. To this point quality has definitely been a factor. I wonder- Where does that leave Andy Warhol’s Art?

Arising at a time (the late 1950s) when the Art world had been fed a steady diet of extreme abstraction by the Abstract Expressionists, Andy Warhol’s Art burst on the world with images featuring things, yes, things, that everyone living in the country recognized. Brillo boxes, Campbell’sl soup cans, dollar bills. His work was instantly accessible in an Art world dominated by Art that was becoming more and more obtuse and remote. I’m not saying Andy Warhol’s work was “understandable,” or even “more understandable” than that of the Abstractionists, only relatable. Even in today’s world where fewer and fewer living beings remember S&H Green Stamps, walking through this show, this seems to still be the case.

Marilyn & Elvis. Andy Warhol was always drawn to stars, and beautiful men. Personally, and in his Art.

But, the world has changed in the, now, 60 years since Andy Warhol’s career first took off. A lot of Artists have grown up with what he did and it’s become part of their work, even if it’s only unconsciously.

129 Dollar Bills, 1962, among the very first uses of silkscreening in Modern & Contemporary Art.

How many Artists have created with silkscreens since Andy Warhol introduced the possibilities of the ancient technique to the modern world in 1962? Even one of the other innovators and endlessly creative pillars of American Art in the late 1950s and 1960s (and after), Robert Rauschenberg, picked up the technique from Warhol. Since, silkscreening went from creating edgy Art to being used to create the large majority of the world’s T-Shirts, among countless other uses.

“I had by that time decided that ‘business’ was the best art. Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called ‘art’ or whatever it’s called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business—they’d say, ‘Money is bad,’ and ‘Working is bad,’ but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art,” Andy Warhol. (Note- Not to be confused with my capitalization, caps and lowercase usage are Warhol’s own, reproduced exactly as the quote appears in TPoAW P.92.)

Ethel Scull 36 Times, 1963, jointly owned by The Whitney & The Met, was the first work commissioned from Andy Warhol. It’s a work that, in my view, has outlived its cachet as “Art,” and one that I don’t think posterity will look kindly upon.

Looking at the show, a takeaway for me was the distinct feeling I got was that there was his work, and then there is the work he did on commission (i.e. “Business Art,” a term he mentions in The Philosophy of, quoted above, but doesn’t define). After a while, I thought I could tell even before reading the card or researching the work, which was which- which were the work he did “for himself,” which were the works he did on commission, and I came away feeling there is a world of difference between the two. Wait! There’s a subject for a book I don’t think anyone’s written yet! For Andy Warhol, the business of Art was an Art in itself. Few before (maybe Rembrandt, Picasso and Dali in their ways) understood this and used it, but no one before him mastered it to the degree that Andy Warhol did. Its testament to how well he did it that a good many of his commissions, which detract from his other work when seen along side them as Ethel Scull 36 Times does in my opinion, hang in museums around the world, at least for now.

The American Man (Portrait of Watson Powell), 1964, a pseudo-companion piece to the Ethel Scull piece, above, and another commission, has aged better and still manages to speak to 2019 viewers.

To be fair, looking at some of his commissions now, we might well see in them a “commentary” by the Artist on matters beyond the mere representation of a given subject. The American Man, 1964, commissioned after seeing Warhol’s Ethel Scull piece, struck me that way. I’m still looking for that in a good many others, though.

After a couple visits, I was able to choose a few works in the great guessing game I like to play, and encourage everyone else to play- “Which works will be considered Art in the future- if any?” I came up with eight including the Campbell’s Soupcans and the 129 Dollar Bills already shown. 8 out of the 350 works the Museum says were on view. Personally, I don’t believe the passage of the centuries is going to be kind to most of Andy Warhol’s Art. Part of the reason for that is his pervasive influence. History doesn’t often look back favorably on who was first, particularly in Art. (Quick- Who “invented” oil painting? When I was growing up, I believed what Vasari wrote in The Lives of the Most Excellent Artists, 1550,  that it was the great van Eyck brothers, Jan and Hubert, who happened to be my first favorite Artists.) More recently there is no consensus and evidence of oil paint may have been found going back to 650AD.) Given the overheated state of his prices (still, in spite of a recent leveling off), his Art is definitely not where I’d put my money now. That ship has sailed. NOTHING goes up forever! Look elsewhere in 2019. (See my Post On Buying Art for additional considerations, all of which apply to the Art of Andy Warhol.)

Marilyn Diptych, 1962

Let’s look at numbers 3 to 7 on my list for the ages (in no particular order). Next, Marilyn Diptych, 1962 – The duality of this work painted shortly after Marilyn Monroe’s suicide is revolutionary. On the one hand, Warhol shows Marilyn the idealized, beautiful, glamorous movie star, repeated radiantly in a sea of gold not unlike that of the religious icons of the Eastern Orthodox and other churches. On the right hand, the work seems to reference the darker side of both Marilyn’s life and death. This work is striking when one also considers that Andy was someone who sought autographs of movie stars as a child. Here, all the illusions of the silver screen are gone.

Thirty Are Better Than One, 1963

Thirty Are Better Than One, 1963, The multiple Mona Lisa as a commentary on the original’s visit to the USA at the time present an interesting counterpoint to the da Vinci- even in black & white. This one barely made my list, but given the precedent of other Artist’s commenting on or reinterpreting the Mona Lisa, like Duchamp, I think it will be of interest indefinitely.

Nine Jackies, 1964

Nine Jackies, 1964. Something revolutionary in portraiture, the Artist captures the beauty of the Kennedy “Camelot,” and the horror and disbelief of what took place on November 22, 1963, as I remember it. A work that relies on the power of the Photograph, it’s one of the strongest uses of it in a medium outside of its own.

Mao, 1972

Mao, 1972- Created during the year of Nixon’s breakthrough visit to China, Andy Warhol’s image takes the portrait of Mao from the infamous Little Red Book of sayings and statements by the Chairman, which may have been the most reproduced image in the world at the time. Here, over 14 feet high, it symbolizes the Charman’s looming over all things in China, a different kind of manifestation of fame. Andy would make a brief trip, himself, to China in 1982, where he posed for a few pictures looking very stiff and uncomfortable.

Mustard Race Riot, 1963.

Mustard Race Riot, 1963- Without a doubt, the most powerful work in the show, in my opinion, it sold for only $15,127,500.00 in 2004. “Only,” when you consider the current record price for a Warhol is $100 million (Eight Elvises), and when you consider another Warhol Race Riot, one that had been owned by Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe, sold for almost $63 million in 2014. As Artist Hank Willis Thomas, and others, have pointed out, this work looks as prescient as almost anything else in the show. Standing in front of it (which means standing a ways distant since it’s  114 by 82 inches), pondering it over multiple visits, I came away feeling that it may be one of the most important works of the 1960s, and for 1963, certainly gave those putting Andy Warhol in the “Pop Art” box pause for thought,  pointing out yet again the pointlessness of such terms.

Then? Something occurred to me to sleep top me dead in my tracks. ALL FIVE of these works involve the use of appropriated Photographs taken by others. Did Andy Warhol pay the Photographers for using them?

Gene Kornman, Photograph (Marilyn Monroe ), 1953. *Publicity Photo of Marilyn Monroe for the Film, Niagara.

This subject was not brought up anywhere that I saw in the show. They did mention (and exhibit) the Gene Kornman Photo Andy Warhol used, perhaps more than any other, was originally a publicity shot of Marilyn from her classic 1953 Film, Niagara. Also exhibited were the source Photos he used in Nine Jackies, which I subsequently learned Andy Warhol was sued over his use of. Charles Moore’s 1963 Life Magazine Photos were the source for Warhol’s Race Riot works, including Mustard Race Riot. Frankly? For an Artist who was so endlessly creative? That he did this, and did it for so long and so often surprises me. It took lawsuits for Andy and Robert Rauschenberg, who was also doing it, to decide to exclusively use their own Photographs henceforth, which, I think, improved the results for both. Yes, at the time, this was new territory for Artists. Copyright infringement was not a term that was not as common in Art in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and he had made his name using copyrighted names and trademarks for Campbell’s Soup, Brillo, etc., without issue- the companies involved, no doubt, relished the free advertising and attention, so giving his restless creativity the benefit of the doubt might apply here, I think (easy for me to say, I’m not Gene Kornman, who’s Photo of Marilyn wound up in Art that’s, no doubt, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more, today).

I still think these are powerful works, among the best Warhols I’ve seen, but this does tarnish them a bit. It’s hard to ignore today. But, let’s move on.

Self-Portrait, 1950s

I’m always interested to see any Artist’s Drawings, and I made a point of spending a considerable amount of time with the Drawings, mostly early, of Andy Warhol displayed here. It’s interesting that they reveal a wonderful sense of, and control of, line, which I’ve long thought to be the most technically difficult part of Drawing. So confident is the young Artist in his line that he dispenses with almost everything else- even parts of the composition! Shading is only hinted at once in a while. Throughout, it’s his line that carries the work. This style is reminiscent of one Picasso used in the early 1900s to create works like this. In addition, he shows an economy that makes it fascinating to consider what he’s left out, a uniqe way of using what Artists call “negative space.” This Drawing is markedly different from the “scratchy” drawings with halting lines seen in some of his commercial work of the period. He changed his style to fit the subject, and it always worked. He was a very successful illustrator and store window designer. But? Shoes and shoe design held a special place in his heart.

A wall of shoes. In each of the works in gold, Andy created a shoe as a caricature of a person.

It turns out that Andy Warhol had a shoe fetish. A real one, that surpasses the most shoe obsessed of my female friends, which John Giorno describes in graphic detail in the Documentary Andy Warhol: The Complete Picture! At 24:30, Mr. Giorno says, “There was Andy Warhol on his hands and knees kissing my shoes…”

Andy’s Truman Capote Shoe, with calligraphy by his mom, is seen over his The B.J. Shoe. Given his shoe obsession, it’s interesting that there are no works after this period that feature shoes, as far as I know. Also interesting is that Andy, himself, wore the same pair of paint splattered shoes for 25 years, which are also shown in The Complete Picture.

Even in the midst of his intensive period of Drawing for his commercial illustration clients, he was always looking for ways to create multiples of his Drawings. This led to his use of silkscreens. But yes, he Painted. This early Painting is the one work in included that would meet the definition of a Painting for most of Art History- prior to Warhol.

The charming Living Room, 1948.

From there, his Painting skills were used to modify and enhance works in other medium, like silkscreens, in works that were multi-media Paintings.

Self-Portrait, 1966, Acrylic, silkscreen ink, and graphite on linen.

It seemed to me walking through the show that Warhol’s Self-Portraits are stronger than just about any of his other portraits. Downstairs on the first floor, an entire gallery was devoted to his square portraits, which alternated between the famous and the already forgotten with a fascinating portrait of his mom almost hidden among them.

Julia Warhola, 1974, upper right, a year or so after she passed away in 1972. Interestingly, it’s in the collection of Roy Lichtenstein, and that’s Dorothy Lichtenstein, Roy’s wife, below her. To her left is Met Curator Henry Geldzhaler, who was also painted by David Hockney.

Along with fame, Andy Warhol’s other big theme was death. It’s a subject that makes an appearance early on in his Fine Art career, in works like 129 Die in Jet, 1962

129 Die in Jet, 1962

It carries on in his Electric Chair Paintings, and is an element in his Marilyn and Jackie pieces, both created shortly after deaths- Marilyn’s and JFK’s. The hold death has on visitors struck me on one visit while I was considering Mustard Race Riot. Given its large size, I had to stand a good distance away from it to take it all in.

I couldn’t help noticing a steady stream of visitors who entered the gallery and stood in front of me, facing to my left. They were looking at this-

 

Lavender Disaster, 1963.

I heard someone say, it takes away the power of the electric chair as an image of fear. I don’t get that. I, for one, don’t get the point of multiplying the electric chair. I prefer these, individually-

Both, Big Electric Chair, 1967-8, top, 1967, bottom.

And, of course, there were the car wrecks, also featuring repeated Photos, which led into the next gallery, where the equally death-soaked Nine Jackies awaited, facing a wall of Most Wanted Men, 1964, Andy Warhol’s works based on wanted posters that hung at the New York Pavillion at the 1964 World’s Fair, and works from Flash-November 22, 1963, also about the JFK Assassination. But, of all the works related to death in this show, the eighth and final work on my “Art” list is Self-Portrait with Skull, 1978, in which the Artist brings his obsession with death home.

Self-Portrait with Skull, 1978

On the left, the red is hard to miss as the color of blood, and therefore, of life, while the grey/black image on the right recalls those in the Marilyn Diptych, which speaks to her demise and death. This work is based on one of Warhol’s own Photographs.

Andy Warhol- From A to B and Back Again was a good, but not a landmark show, in my opinion. In NYC, MoMA’s Warhol: A Retrospective remains the benchmark Warhol show. Part of the reason it’s not better is possibly due to the popularity and value of his work making loans very hard to get. After the silkscreen gallery with Mustard Race Riot, I felt the rest of the show continually declined, with isolated examples of better work. In much of the rest of it, I felt lost, adrift in galleries of work that either hadn’t held up to the passage of time (if they ever did stand out) or that contained ideas manifested on a gigantic scale, like the “piss paintings,” that were probably either left in the studio or done on a smaller scale. At this late date in his life and career, to suddenly go fully abstract smacked of running out of ideas, which is something that seems impossible for Andy Warhol.

A camouflaged visitor scrutizies the left half of Camouflage Last Supper.

The culminating gallery with the also gigantic Camouflage Last Supper also struck me as a poor choice. Here, Warhol reprises the idea of the multiple Leonardo da Vinci’s, this time with 2 huge Last Supper reproductions side by side, which makes a point that escapes me, and then covers them with camouflage, perhaps to try and add some interest to his idea. Camouflage is, in keeping with Andy Warhol’s instantly recognizable images, a military artifact and symbol. What that has to do with the Last Supper is, also, lost on me.

Andy famously collaborated with Jean Michel Basquiat, as seen here in Third Eye, 1985.

And then there were two of his collaborations with Jean Michel Basquiat. Though extremely colorful, looking at them I have as yet to see them as more than each bringing what they do to the work. The feeling of a true collaboration bringing the work to someplace else escapes me…so far, but I know people who love them.

If these walls could talk. The site of Andy Warhol’s Factory when it was on Union Square, seen in Winter, 2018. Ironically, the scaffolding seems to be making an “A” for Andy.

Andy Warhol opened the doors to whole worlds of possibilities in the world of Art, and, indeed, the world. In doing so, he taught all of us how to see new possibilities in our work, and our lives. (And I am not speaking about his life or lifestyle in any of this.) There are very few Artists who even open one new door. For this, the world owes him a debt. A debt that might be best repaid by following his example of seeking new possibilities. He sought out, encouraged, and worked with, young, even beginning Artists, and so played a role in the creation of world renowned Artists including Stephen Shore, Robert Mapplethorpe, and  Jean Michel Basquiat, and treated them every bit the same as he did established Artists.

Regardless of what the world comes to think of his Art, these are the contributions of Andy Warhol I choose to remember and celebrate.


BookMarks-

As I showed earlier, a list of books written on and about Andy Warhol could fill a book itself. I have only seen a minuscule number of this vast library. Of those, a few stand out to me, particularly for those looking to keep from having a wall of Andy Warhol books that rivals that in the Whitney’s Shop!

The best overviews of his Art I’ve seen are these two-

Andy Warhol “Giant” Size: Gift Format has been issued in a few sizes over the years since it’s first release 10 years ago. Whatever size works for you, this “visual biography,”which includes over 2,000 images, remains the best one-volume survey of Andy Warhol’s Life & Work.

Andy Warhol: A Retrospective The catalog for MoMA’s 1989 Retrospective. Out of print, it’s reasonably priced in hard or softcover on the aftermarket. It remains the most comprehensive overview of his Art, and serves as the catalog for the most exhaustive show of his work yet mounted.

Factory: Andy Warhol by Stephen Shore is a fascinating book for Photography lovers. It preserves, both, the earliest body of work yet published by one of the most important American Photographers of his generation, and the most comprehensive look at Andy Warhol’s legendary Factory we have. Wasn’t it Andy who said, “It’s like an auto wreck you can’t take your eyes off of”? If not, he should have.

Finally, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) is a must read, as much for its entertainment value as for its life experience advice, which is given on almost every page, though it’s light on Art and technique for Artists looking for a “how I did it.” Rumor has it a team “helped” Andy write it, but it’s hard to tell from the distant outside if that’s true or who did what. It’s something of a classic among pseudo-autobiographies, and plays a seminal role in the creation of Andy Warhol, as a work of Art in himself.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is, what else? “Andy Warhol” by David Bowie, who memorably played Andy in Julian Schnabel’s Film, Basquiat, looking for all the world like he was having a blast doing it.

Oh! PS- Andy? 4,627 words.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, henceforth TPoAW, P.86
  2.  TPoAW, P.26
  3. TPoAW, P.96

Shy No More! Josh Kern Breaks Through

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*with Photos and Video by Josh Kern)

Shyness is an affliction that affects millions- around 7% of the U.S. population. For those who’ve dealt with it, it can, at times, feel like you’re living in a glass box while life in the world goes on outside. But, shyness isn’t something that only Americans suffer with, of course. Josh Kern, a college student in Dortmund, Germany was locked inside of himself by his shyness, with his writing as a means of recording his feelings and thoughts. Like these on his phone a few years back-

“But there’s also this endlessly deep pain because I want to express all of this, but have no clue how.” All Photos in this Post by, and courtesy of, Josh Kern from Fuck me. This one appears in the introductory pages. Click any Photo for full size.

His words record his frustration and yearning to break free. They also record the moment he did. As he recalls in the opening pages of his new, first, PhotoBook, Fuck me, “But I discovered a way to do it…I became obsessed with documenting the world around me. My camera was with me everywhere and it somehow became a part of myself. It gave me permission to not be shy and the ability to show how intense and beautiful I perceive life. I found something where I can shamelessly express what I feel, my critical view of our generation and myself and my love for life in general.”

The very next page is the defacto title page, reading “Fuck me,” with “from the inside out” scratched out.

Having dealt with shyness myself, Josh’s way out of it was one that caught me by surprise. One I’ve never heard recommended.

He picked up his camera. 


From then on, it went with him everywhere.

When I think of breaking out of shyness, it looks like this…

And lo and behold, seemingly as soon as he stepped out his door he found himself in a fabulously rich world of sights and incredible fleeting moments in the company of his great group of friends.

And this.

Having taken the first steps of getting out there and creating a body of Photos, he then went further. Josh compiled his work and created a book dummy of it. Then, he started a kickstarter campaign to fund its publication. 31 days later, 556 backers contributed over $20,000. towards its publication.

Personally? I find all of this utterly remarkable. That he was able to break through his shyness and discover himself in the process is an amazing achievement on its own- an invaluable real-life accomplishment that you get no “grade” for.

And then? There’s his PhotoBook. 

Fuck me’s covers reproduce one of Josh’s well-worn notebooks that he carries everywhere he goes, and that live his life with him. See BookMarks at the end for info about getting one.

Josh’s Fuck me was published by Calin Kruse’s Dienacht. I asked Calin how he came across Josh and this body of his work. He told me, “Through his teacher, Christoph Bangert, a great photographer himself, and an amazing person. We’ve known each other for a while, and he knows what I publish and what I like. I had a booth with my books and magazines at the Photobookfestival in Kassel. Josh was there with his school and Christoph, who encouraged him to show me his book dummy. That’s the first time I came across his project. I liked it, and I suggested some changes, but we didn’t talk about publishing the book together. This was in June, 2018. Very soon after that, Josh started a super successful kickstarter campaign to fund the printing cost, and he asked me in the middle of the campaign if I could imagine publishing it. It was released in September, 2018, so everything went very fast.” 

Now, 6 months later, almost 1,200 people have just about bought out the first edition. Including me. What do I think of it? I find Josh has developed his own style, that while it reminds me of the work of Nan Goldin and Ryan McGinley is resolutely his own. Interestingly, Josh shares a skateboarding background with fellow Photographers Todd Hido, Ed Templeton and Jason Lee, among others, and we see that, and possibly some of the resulting physical damage in his book. Perhaps, it’s from the same well-spring of daring that the edge in some of this work emanates from. He has a sharp eye for the intimate moment at its most expressive, which is aided to no end by his personal knowledge of his subjects, which he’s able to communicate to the total strangers looking at his work, transmitting bits of insights into them as well. Fuck me is a book that works on a number of levels. There’s the “breaking through shyness” level- a potentially invaluable example for countless others. Then, there’s the “documenting our lives” level. More on this later. Third? There’s a level where it becomes apparent how much Josh has learned from his influences and his teachers, assimilated them, and then created his own book. For someone in his early 20s? That’s remarkable, too. Having carried it around with me for a few months, I find that it’s a book that holds together in a wonderful way, passing through peaks of adventure followed by moments of introspection and repose, a book that positively drips with compassion and love for its subjects.

Fuck me strikes me as something of a throwback- in its technology and its values. Its shot on film, and not one digital or cellular device is seen in any of its subjects hands! It opts for real life, face to face interactions, which in contrast to those that take place online, are photographable and actually worth remembering and seeing again. In the end, Fuck me is a book that is a beautiful testament to the joy and intimacy of REAL Friendship, at a time when the word “friend” has been usurped and trivialized to the point that countless millions wonder who their REAL friends are. It’s a book that creates its own world (most of the time we have no idea where the action is taking place- it simply doesn’t matter), while leaving our world with wonderful images of time and experiences shared growing and evolving, right before our eyes. that most of us only carry around in our memories.

And, ALL of this is even more remarkable when you realize that Josh Kern is STILL a college Photography student.

See for yourself. Here in this video, Josh Kern, the Filmmaker(!), introduces Josh Kern, the Photographer, and Fuck me

Better still, I’m very pleased to say that Josh agreed to answer some questions for me, taking time from his studies, creating new work and making more history with his friends to do so.

Kenn Sava (KS)- Josh, you’ve spoken about how “Photography gave me permission to not be shy and the ability to express myself which completely changed my life. If I can only inspire one person to do the same- I’m happy.” I’m curious how it happened. A number of the Photographers I’ve spoken with speak of it as a “solitary” craft, which would seem to reinforce shyness. Could you elaborate on how it gave you permission, how you were able to use it that led up to your breakthrough?

Josh Kern (JK)- My whole life, there have always been a few artists, who made me feel less alone. Whenever I felt like I don’t belong here, I turned to their work and biographies and although, most of them are dead, I immediately felt connected. It was like I had an anonymous club of misfits that only existed in my head. It made me believe that in this very moment there must be thousands of other people feeling the exact same things as I do.

When it came to creating my own art, I somehow tried to turn it around. I always felt everything so intensely and I had the desire to share it, but at the same time I was afraid what the people in my life would think about it. If someone would reject my work, that would mean that they would reject my true self, who I really am – and that would hurt a lot.

But I did it anyway and it was completely liberating because I felt like the people around me could finally see me and I don’t have to pretend anymore. It probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, but for me it was everything. I started to believe that connection is only possible through vulnerability.

KS- On your site, you list quite a few of your friends who are artists and creative people. Did they, or others, help you, or was it something you had to do yourself?

JK- I would never have had the courage to share my work to this extent without the support of my friends. It was like, even if everyone hates me tomorrow, I still have them by my side to love, create and express ourselves how we want to. I always decline the common idea of the “lonely artist“ and I believe that every great work comes out of a close group of people who support each other, give feedback and exchange ideas.

KS- Was there a moment when you went from being a causal photographer to taking it more seriously? (If it’s not related- When did the body of work that became Fuck me start?)

JK- No, actually not. I just started taking pictures and since then my love for it increases day by day.

Also, I’m very careful to take my work seriously. I’m not sure how to explain it but I just love when an artist calls themselves an “amateur“ because to me it means he or she sees themself as an enthusiast who creates out of pure love and joy for the act of creating and not for fame or career.

KS- It seems like it would be hard for a shy person to take the next step to turn this body of work into a book, to reach out to the world for funding, as you did. Yet, you sound confident when I read things from that time. It sounds like substantial growth had occurred by that point. Can you speak about how were you able to do it?

JK- It all started in a seminar in the university. I slowly started to show pictures and notebook scans and because of the lovely support of my fellow students and my professor, I found the confidence to show more and more. But I had never really overcome my shyness when it came to people reading my writing while I’m in the same room. So we somehow came up with the agreement that no one reads my words and just looks at the scans as a picture, for editing. I always had in mind that publishing it is something that I will deal with in the future and when the day comes I will just close my eyes and hope for the best.

That’s probably also the reason why I sound confident in my writing – although I’m not – because I always tell myself that right now I’m only writing for myself and no one’s ever going to see it. I somehow treat the thought about sharing it or not as something completely separate that I will deal with in the far future. I’m even doing this right now. It’s funny how we can trick our mind.

But don’t get me wrong, it was still one of the scariest things to do. It will forever be frightening to open myself up. But to be honest, I don’t even want it to be easy, only interesting and as an opportunity to grow. I guess that’s what all this is about for me.

“I really want to come to the point where I have nothing to fear anymore. I want to be free. I want to be the most vulnerable person in the room. I want to bleed. I want to puke blood. I want to suffer and I want to go through every single thing that could harm me.”

KS- In the book it appears you are shooting your Friends and people you know a bit. Are you able to shoot strangers, or would that be another step?

JK- I only tend to photograph very good friends. Probably because they are used being photographed all the time and because of that they act natural in my presence.

Also, most of the time I’m very, very nervous around people I don’t really know and because of that I have a hard time focusing on taking pictures.

Shooting strangers would be definitely something different, but I’m working on myself and would love to try out new things.

KS- It seems you have a remarkably open and camera friendly group of Friends. Did you get any push back, any “Don’t take a Photo of this!” from them?

JK- Yes, they are amazingly open and I feel very, very lucky because of that.

It’s really important to me that if someone doesn’t want a picture to be published, I simply don’t and keep it only for us. Probably because they know this fact, they trust me and don’t really care what I’m doing with my camera and I’m completely free to photograph whatever I want.

KS- What are you own rules for what not to shoot?

JK-This is an uncomfortable question because sometimes I feel like I’m an asshole when it comes to this point. But when someone gets hurt and/or needs my help, I put my camera down, although I have to admit that these situations are mostly the shots that I admire the most.

Also, I always have to remind myself to enjoy the time with my friends because it happens that I only see them through my camera, as a story, and it feels like I forget to really live my life and to be present with them.. which is tricky because I feel that I’m the most happy and fulfilled by living my life through my camera.

KS- What was the reaction of the Friends you photographed  when they saw the book?

JK- Since they already knew every photo in it and I asked most of them to help me editing and to look through a new dummy every few days, it wasn’t a surprise to them. But they were all really proud of how it came out, which made me very happy.

KS- We see your iPhone in the book. Can we see a photo of your camera now? I’m curious what it looks like after having been through all of these adventures.

Josh sent this great shot of his Minolta X-300 in response to my request. March, 2019. I’m so glad I asked for it.

JK- I’m really good at destroying my cameras and I always bought a used Minolta for like 20 Euros on eBay every few months again.

I recently got a Nikon FM because I wanted something that lasts a bit longer, but I miss my Minolta and I’m planning on getting one again.

KS- You’ve mentioned a very wide range of influences from Petra Collins to Ryan McGinley to Luc Delahaye and Jim Goldberg, among Photographers, as well as films, and books. Who’s been influencing you more lately (since Fuck me)?

JK- Somehow I cant get off the book Winterreise by Luc Delahaye, which also inspired Fuck Me very much.

From Winterreise by Luc Delahaye. I know that my many Russian readers and friends take issue with the way Mr. Delahaye and other Western Photographers show their country. I understand and respect they feel that way. I’ve never been there. Still? I agree with Josh about Winterrieise, and I find it to be one of the exceptional PhotoBooks of this young century. Though only published in 2003, I see its influnence in so many books being released today.

Also from Winterreise by Luc Delahaye. Along with the pathos, I find quite a bit of beauty in what Mr. Delahaye depicts, and of course, in his work.

I discovered it almost a year ago and still to this day, I take it with me on every trip and flip through it almost every day. The same goes for Hermann Hesse. My love and affection for him increases every time I reread his books and letters.

There’s something about these two artists that I cant put into words. It’s like they sacrifice themselves and their whole being only in order to create. They would die for their work – probably not, but thats what it feels like to me.

Josh Kern, Self-portrait, not included in Fuck me.

I’m really missing this mentality in a lot of people today. Somehow I feel like everyone is afraid to take themselves or their work seriously.

I don’t want to sound too negative, there are still so many great artists out there, but somehow I cant find anyone that keeps up with these two. At least for me right now.

KS- How about Painters? Are there any who’s work has spoken to you, earlier or now?

JK- Although I really admire the art of painting and some of my friends are painters, I never really got into it. But from what I have seen I really like the work of Malcolm T. Liepke.

KS- What do you listen to?

JK- Lately I’m a bit lost when it comes to music. But I will forever stick to Car Seat Headrest, The Strokes, The Cure,  The Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, Wolf Alice and Sonic Youth.

Josh Kern, in his Raymond Pettibon designed Sonic Youth Goo cover T, doesn’t let brushing his teeth keep him from getting the shot. He wrote this about this Photo- “A Saturday night. We were beaten up by two or three guys and ended up at my place, where I took this photograph. It’s funny, but you’d never imagine that Naomi is the kind of girl who won’t let people get away with saying shit. She is though.”

KS- You’ve talked about going in a different direction with your second book. Very exciting! Can you give us any hints what it might be like, or how it’s “different?”

JK-Ah, yes, haha. Somehow I have a new idea about how I want it to be every day anew. At first, I wanted to dedicate the book to my younger self, with notes in it about what I wish I had known a few years back. Then, I wanted it to be more like a novel, with writing and a story.. and now, I’m back at the classic photobook, with no notes and writing at all. I have no idea what I will come up with next. I just take photographs and create journal like before, make a lot of dummies and try things out. And I’m in love with it. Making books is by far my favorite thing to do.

KS- How do you feel about school now? Has it been worth it for you, or do you feel you’ve learned mostly on your own by getting out there and creating?

JK- I’m so grateful for studying photography! Not really about the stuff we learn in classes, but more about the people I got to know. Theres no other place in the world where you meet so many people who are as passionate about photography as you are. Also, I had a teacher, Christoph Bangert, who inspired and motivated me like crazy and somehow gave me the courage to publish my book. It would have never happened without him and I would have never met him without the university.

KS- From where you are now, what would you say to someone who is where you were, struggling with their shyness?

JK- I can only speak for myself, but finding something that you love and then overcoming the fear of sharing your excitement is everything to me. It’s so important to be in love and to stand up for something you truly believe in, no matter what it is. Your problems probably won’t disappear because of that, but it will make all this suffering seem like it has its purpose. In the end, you just need something that’s worth being made fun of.

Q&A Ends———

I was talking to a photographer friend, one of my old drinking buddies, the other day about Josh’s book. I said to him-“Hey, why don’t we have photos of our old days hanging out making history? Ours took place in some of the same places Patti Smith hung out in in  Just Kids. We don’t have the photos, we don’t have the book.”

But Josh Kern does.

In 10 or 20 years, his friends are going to be very glad he took these pictures.

In the meantime, I share Josh’s hope that his work will inspire someone else to break out and break through.


BookMarks-

Update- July, 2019- Fuck me is now sold out and out of print at the publisher. As far as I know, these are the only new copies available for sale anywhere. They’re being offered while they last, subject unsold. 

Because I know readers are going to ask, “Ok. Where can I get a copy?” The answer is that as I write this, Fuck me isn’t available anywhere in the USA (as far as I know). So, I went ahead and bought some extra copies and I am very excited to make them available to my readers- something I’ve never done in the 3 1/2 years of NHNYC.

Here are the particulars-

Fuck me by Josh Kern
-196 pages
-4.13 x 6 inches (10.5 x 15 cm)
-Offset printing, in full color throughout.
-First edition/first printing, Published by Dienacht, 2018
-Softcover with open stitch binding.
-And no- There is no sex or nudity in it.

A few others- As Josh said, Luc Delahaye’s Winterreise is a book I, also, recommend. It’s out of print, but copies in very good condition still trade reasonably in hard or softcover. While it’s somewhat overlooked among recent PhotoBooks by the general public, it’s not by other Photographers, including Josh, and this one.

Dan Eldon was a multi-talented Artist/Photographer/Journalist/Humanitarian who was tragically killed in Somalia at the age of 22 while doing his job as a PhotoJournalist for Reuters. When I first saw Josh’s book, I immediately wondered what Dan Eldon might have thought of it. I asked Josh in a follow-up what he thought of Dan Eldon’s work and he said “Dan is definitely on my list.” Dan Eldon created Journals that combined his writing, Photography, ephemera and just about anything into amazingly unique works that have been published since his death. Dan’s The Journey Is the Destination, Revised Edition: The Journals of Dan Eldonis another classic, in my view, that gets far too little attention. He was an extraordinary man, who lived an extraordinary life that everyone else’s would be enriched by knowing about. As Josh eloquently put it above- Dan Eldon was killed creating his work. Far, far too early.

Regarding Josh’s fave bands, for lovers of NYC’s own The Strokes, check out Julian Casablancas & The Voidz’ album, Tyranny, if you haven’t heard it, which I think is just terrific. One of Mr. Casablancas’s big influences happens to be the band I picked for the Soundtrack for this Post…

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Break On Through (To The Other Side),” by The Doors, the first single released from their first album in 1967, speaking of debuts…

My thanks to Calin Kruse and Josh Kern. 

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

Overlooked Masters- Ray K. Metzker

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

The camera often draws attention, but infrequently, fame. Ray K. Metzker, 68 G-3, Philadelphia, 1963. Click any Photo for full size.

Fame is a fickle thing. It finds some accidentally, it’s unwanted by others who receive it, heaped ad nauseam on a select few while the rest of the world asks “Huh?” And, it eludes still others that the quality of their work would say deserves greater attention.

Both titled 67 AM 26-27, Double Frame, 1967. All works are Gelatin silver prints, unless noted. Seen on January 23rd. Apparently, these amazing works were created by only partially advancing the film before taking the second Photo (in the bottom half).

I’m sure we all have mental lists of folks, and Artists, who fall into each of these categories. I’ve decided to start giving some attention to some of those who reside on my latter list by including them here. My list, of course, consists mostly of Artists & Musicians, people that qualify as the true “reality stars” in my book.

One of them (I’m not going in any particular order) is the late Photographer, Ray K. Metzker. Well, the timing of my listing him first is helped by the impetus of a very interesting show of his work up at Howard Greenberg, Ray K. Metzker: Black & Light. I’m relatively new to his work myself, so seeing this show came as a thunderbolt.

Thunder, and lightning. 67 AM 26-27, Double Frame, 1967, seen again on visit #3, on March 1st. The curators had flipped them from my first visit (see first Photo). I don’t know which way I like them better. Do you?

His craft, the strength & purity of his vision, right down to the beauty of his prints, combine to create a unique impression. That vision was extraordinarily flexible. He used it to turn seemingly mundane images into more- pairs, series, composites, the likes of which I’d never seen before. Ray Metzker had a gift of making the seemingly commonplace into a magically unique moment.

12 works from the series Pictus Interruptus, 1978-80, Gelatin silver prints.

Ray K. Metzker passed away four years ago on October 9, 2014, after a long and successful career, but  these days his work is something of a well-kept secret. That’s a shame because with his continual innovation, it seems to me that his work has something for everyone- except for those dead set against black & white Photography. Though particularly rich for his fellow Artists & Photographers, it strikes me as for anyone who loves the joy of looking.  After being represented by Laurence Miller for over 30 years during his lifetime, his estate is now represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery. As seen in their first show at Greenberg, Ray K. Metzker: Black & Light, a generous selection of 57 pieces made an air tight case that Ray K. Metzker was one of the masters of his time.

Arrestation 07 06, 2007, Collage of two silver gelatin prints.

Nicely installed in the main gallery, it was possible to look around the room and marvel at all the different techniques on display. Perhaps it was good they were all in the same room so as to reinforce that it was one creative vision behind this extraordinary range. Some of that can be laid at the feet of his teachers, Aaron Siskind and, particularly, Harry Callahan, but I also found a bit of the great Man Ray, who he didn’t study with, in his work. As you move through the show, it quickly becomes apparent that Ray K. Metzker is one of those Artists where you look at his work and immediately start wondering, “Ok. How did he do that?,” soon after give up, and just surrender to the beauty and magic before you.

Six works from the Arrestation Series, 1996-2007- all Collages of two to five gelatin silver prints.

After seeing recent shows of the work of other sadly deceased Photographers printed by others posthumously, it was a real joy to see the Artist’s gorgeous prints, where the mastery of his printing is an essential part of Mr. Metzker’s Art. Ummm…Isn’t it for EVERY Photographer? Hmmm…(Sidestepping rabbit hole…at least for now.)

58 CD-4, Chicago, 1958, left and 58 CH-6, Chicago, 1958, right.

As ever, it’s interesting for me to ponder what was going on in Painting at the time Ray K. was creating many of these works- 1964-2008. His teacher, Aaron Siskind, had gotten the reputation as being the “Abstract Expressionist Photographer,” but though Mr. Metzker uses abstract elements found in the “real world,” they’re miles apart from what Mr. Siskind did (some of which was on view in a smaller side gallery, so you could compare and contrast on the spot). Collage, and the feeling and effect of collage, appears in a good number of these works, which echoes what Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Ray Johnson and any number of his contemporary Painters were bringing new life to at the time, beginning in the late 1950s, often using Photographs as an element in their work. In the 12 Pictus Interruptus works seen above, however, it’s only the feeling of collage that’s present. Perhaps most of all, it’s hard to overlook the possible influence of Andy Warhol, particularly in Ray Metzker’s composites, perhaps his most well known works, which were not on view here.

While I’m drawn to everything Ray K. Metzker did, I found myself particularly taken with the gorgeous collection of abstract images on view here.

61 DZ-21, Frankfurt, 1961

One of the remarkable things about Ray Metzker’s work is the old mantra verbalized by Constantine Manos–  “show us something we have never seen before and will never see again.” He does this in work that, as seen here, comes in varying degrees, and types, of abstraction, including some that are only abstract in the unusual way he shows us a scene we recognize, as in 61 DZ-21, Frankfurt, 1961.

63 FO 5, Philadelphia, 1963

While in 63 FO 5, Philadelphia, 1963, we see a work created in the same year that Ed Ruscha, primarily a Painter to this point, published his seminal and revolutionary PhotoBook, Twentysix Gasoline Stations, that takes a somewhat similar but different, more abstract look at the roadside vernacular.

Aaron Siskind, Untitled, 1950, seen in the side gallery.

In them, I see works that hover on the edge between what’s come before, (particularly in Man Ray and Aaron Siskind), that looks ahead to the work of Sara VanDerBeek and Daniel Shea.

Sailor Mix, 1964, Collage of six gelatin silver prints.

Ray Metzker quickly moved beyond the influence of Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, W. Eugene Smith and the others, while taking threads they started in new directions, and it seems to me, to new levels. He created images in the days before digital file manipulation that are utterly remarkable- both in their craft, but primarily, in their vision.

Arrestation 96 07 VII, 1996, Collage of two silver gelatin silver prints.

Though Ray K. Metzker has an exceptional gift for black, darkness and shadow in his work, it’s interesting that very few of his Photographs are taken at night, as far as I can tell, generally preferring the extreme contrast of bright against pitch black.

Left to right Whimsy 7, Whimsy A-30,Whimsy 2, each from 1974, each a collage of four gelatin silver prints.

It’s interesting to me that while Ray K. Metzker seems to be in something of an eclipse at the moment, his influence is there to be seen in the work of Artists who are gaining notoriety. This makes me feel that time is beginning to catch up to Ray Metzker and that more people will be looking at his work as we move forward.

67 DH, Philadelphia, 1967, a rare Self-portrait.

That there’s still much to learn from it, enjoy and marvel at, is an obvious take away from Black & Light, but most of all, it serves as a wonderful appetizer that I hope made many people dig deeper into the work of this great, continually surprising, Photographer, as it did for yours truly.


BookMarks- I only list items in BookMarks that I strongly believe in and personally recommend. If you like what you see and read here, I hope you’ll consider donating so I can keep NHNYC.com going, and going ad-free. You can donate by clicking the box at the top of the screen and clicking the Donate link. Your support is VERY much appreciated. Thank you!

A copy of the rarely seen The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker by Keith F. Davis.

Ok, now? It gets sticky. There are two terrific retrospectives of the work of Ray K. Metzker. The problem is both are out of print and expensive on the after market. This is a shame because it restricts the greater Photography world who doesn’t know his work from discovering it, exploring it and appreciating it. They are-

-Ray K. Metzker: Light Lines by William Ewing, Nathalie Herschdorfer and Ray K. Metzker, Steidl, 2008- Light Lines includes the most Ray K. Metzker Photographs yet published in one volume- 180 tritone-printed images, and well over 200 images overall. It also includes an interview with the Artist and what Keith F. Davis in the other book calls, “the most definitive chronology/bibliography to date.” Personally, I find the breaking down of the plates section into categories distracting. If this was the Artist’s choice, I accept it. I don’t like to put any parameter around the work of someone as creative as Ray K. Metzker. Personally? It’s one reason I am very glad the second monograph exists.

-The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker by Keith F. Davis, Nelson-Atkins Museum, 2012. 116 plates, and somewhere over 150 images over 244 pages, issued in an edition of 2,500 copies. It includes the essay “The Photographic Journey of Ray K. Metzker,” by Keith F. Davis, one of the leading Photography curators in the country, (who has important monographs to his name including the classics Harry Callahan: New Color – Photographs, 1978-1987 and Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath, and the new The Photographs of Ralston Crawford), which breaks down his entire career. As a result, it may be the most important piece yet written on Ray K. Metzker’s Photography. It also includes transcriptions of published pieces written by the Artist and a thorough bibliography. Even though it has fewer plates than Light Lines, they are presented in one continuous section- beautifully rendered- and almost all the same size (unlike Light Lines, which includes some smaller Plates), and chronologically. I find this lets your thoughts run free as you turn the pages. It is the Ray K. book I find most often in my hand.

Ideally, you’d want to look through both and decide. You may be able to do this in a local library (my search showed the NY Public Library has neither). My feeling is they both have things to recommend them and you cannot go wrong. Either way you go, currently, the cheapest copy, in any condition, of Light Lines is $200 and up and Photographs of RKM, the rarer book, $300 and up. Nonetheless, both are highly recommended until a new book comes along. It seems unlikely either will be reprinted, though one never knows with Steidl.

There are a number of other books of Ray Metzker’s work that specialize in selected areas of it, though these are the only two that cover the full range of this incessantly creative Artist.

If Ray K. Metzker’s work is to become better known an in-print & available comprehensive monograph would be essential.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Shadows And Light,” by Joni Mitchell from her album of the same name.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

Inside Kris Graves Projects’ Monumental LOST II

Written by Kenn Sava. Photos by Kenn Sava & Kris Graves Projects

Slipcase Cover for the newly announced 20 volume set, LOST II. Click any Photo for full size.

Kris Graves, and his publishing company, Kris Graves Projects (+KGP), shocked many in the Photography and PhotoBook world when he released the ten-volume set, LOST, almost exactly a year ago. The shock at its size quickly turned to admiration once the quality of the individual books it included set in. I was as impressed by the overall vision that unified the project across those 10 books as I was the work of each of the 10 Photographers it included. Alphabetically by city, LOST consisted of-

The covers of the 10 volumes of LOST, 2018

Beijing by Lois Conner
Berlin by Andreas Gehrke
Boston by Michael Cardinali
Calcutta by Laura McPhee
Chicago by Owen Conway
Long Island City by Kris Graves
New York by Lynn Saville
Omaha by Zora J Murff
San Francisco by Luke Abiol
-and Seattle by Joseph P. Traina

Then, there was the daring of a company that’s not yet one of the “big names” in the PhotoBook world (let alone possessing their resources) the set represented. That +KGP marshalled the wherewithal to pull off such a set was equally stunning. LOST made my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of 2018 list, and probably some others, for all of these reasons. As memorable as it was and remains, even it didn’t prepare me for the news that Kris Graves Projects was about to release LOST II- consisting of TWENTY VOLUMES! Shaking my head in wonder, this time I was determined to find out- “HOW do they do it?”

I reached out to some of the Artists involved, and I visited Kris Graves at his Long Island City studio, where I found him hard at work putting the finishing touches on the set that he was about to send off to Spain to be printed, under the watchful eyes of +KGP team member, Pablo Lerma.

LOST II Slipcase cover verso.

As a result, this piece marks the first time I’m writing about books I haven’t physically seen. Even without having books in hand, from everything I have seen thus far, it’s apparent to me that LOST II is going to be nothing short of monumental, in ways beyond its 7 1/2 pound size (for the full set in its heavy duty slipcase). For one thing, it’s already apparent that, it’s different from LOST, and that’s as it should be. After all, LOST already stands on its own- why repeat it?  This time, it seems less about the place, per se, and more directly involved in what it’s like for the people who actually live in it. Tough no place is revisited, the basic premise remains- Each of the, now twenty, Photographers contributes a book of Photographs taken in one city around the world. LOST II will include-

The covers of LOST II. Top row, from left-Washington DC, Birmingham, The Bronx,  Colorado City. Row 2- Crow Country, Hong Kong, Illinois Central, Lagos. Row 3- Lentini, London, Los Angeles, New Zealand. Row 4- Ossining, Philadelphia, Spruce Pine, Syracuse. Row 5- Tijuana, Toronto, Uzhhorod, and Viterbo

A link to a preview of each book is included in the list, below-

Birmingham by Shawn Theodore
The Bronx by Kris Graves
Colorado City by Steven B. Smith
Crow Country by Wendy Red Star
Hong Kong by Nelson Chan
Illinois Central by Tim Carpenter
Lagos by Isaac Diggs
Lentini by Andrea Modica
London by Sergio A. Fernandez
Los Angeles by Aline Smithson
New Zealand by Young Sohn
Ossining by Giovanni Urgelles
Philadelphia by Saleem Ahmed
Spruce Pine by Mercedes Jelinek
Syracuse by Shane Lavalette
Tijuana by Griselda San Martin
Toronto by Zun Lee
Uzhhorod by Jules Slutsky
Viterbo by Cristina Velasquez
Washington DC by Jared Soares

Even though LOST II is BIG, I can feel the world getting smaller. I’ll explain. First a quick recap by way of providing some background for those wondering what it’s all about…

Kris Graves, 4 works from A Bleak Reality, 2018, +KGP

Kris Graves and his work were introduced to me when I came across four of his Photographs in the All Power: Legacies of the Black Panther Party Exhibitionmemorably curated by Michelle Dunn Marsh at The Photography Show (AIPAD) in April, 2018. The work, a series taken at the locations where young black men were murdered by police (since published in his book, A Bleak Reality,+KGP, 2018), stopped me cold. Enquiring at the show’s info desk I discovered that Mr. Graves was ALSO a publisher AND he had a table in the book section.

Kris Graves holds a set of LOST, with its individual component volumes displayed in front of him, at the Kris Graves Project table at AIPAD, April, 2018.

Walking over, indeed, there he was. After “Hellos,” I saw the newly announced 10 volumes of his then latest project, LOST, displayed in front of him. Perusing them, as accomplished as his Photography is, I was equally shocked to discover the quality of the books he published. I subsequently wrote about the experience here. One year into following both his own work and the books +KGP has produced my respect and admiration has continued to grow. I went to the LOST book release party shortly after AIPAD, where I met some of the Artists included in the series and bought my own set. LOST quickly sold out and is now something of an Urban PhotoBook Legend given how often I hear it referred to.

Kris Graves hard at work while talking (and selecting tasty vinyl from his impressive Lp collection), finishing up LOST II before sending it off to be printed in Spain on February 13, 2019.

Curious about how these bodies of work came about, I asked Kris if they were work that the Artists coincidentally happened to have on hand, or if any created them based on discussions with him for LOST II? He said, “I have interest in cities in general and I am always interested in seeing a new place through a strong artist’s point of view. Many of the chosen artists call a few places home, and they had the freedom to show me any work they felt made a good series. Some artists made new work for the project, which is flattering. Most artists have been working on these series’ for a long time, even decades. All of the artists have had the freedom to create these projects. I help with some sequencing suggestions and layout. These are editioned art pieces.” On LOST II’s roster, he added, “…this list of artists is stellar and I am humbled that they trusted me and the project. I’m still in the heart of it and can’t choose a project over another. I can say that Steven B. Smith’s project Colorado City is going to raise some eyebrows and Andrea Modica’s Lentini and the 8 x 10″ view camera work within makes me with these books could be larger in size. And to keep it ultra-real, I keep the project Purchase College strong with the monographs Ossining by Giovanni Urgelles, Uzhhorod by Jules Slutsky, and Spruce Pine by Mercedes Jelinek. I can’t wait for you to see these, I am excited to even talk about them.”

A lovely, early, +KGP promo image for LOST II, now lost, itself. I think it fell into that sink hole in front of the tree.

When I last spoke to Kris about it this past fall, LOST II consisted of nine books with an open call being held to choose an Artist for slot 10. I asked him how the project grew from 10 to 20 books. “I decided sleep wasn’t important. I wanted to cover more ground and also realized that I had more than ten artists in mind that I wanted to work with immediately. Twenty unique projects means we get to cover more of the world.” That made me wonder about the “secret sauce” he uses to determine exactly who and where is going to be in LOST II. So, I asked him- As the publisher, and creative lead on these projects- Do you start with a “hit list” of places you’d like to include, is it more based on available bodies of work by Artists you’d like to include, or a serendipitous mix of the two? He said, “It is a mix of the two but never evenly. I have some talented colleagues and I simply ask people if they wanted to take part. A few got at me to show me work in the last year, and we’ve worked together to make the projects.”

Cover of Viterbo, by Cristina Velasquez. Viterbo is in Columbia.

This has led to one of the things that made LOST memorable and special- its blend of well known and not as well known Artists seamlessly side by side. It’s a testament to LOST, and Kris, that LOST II is something Artists want to be a part of. I learned that no less than 150 submitted portfolios for that open call for that final slot in LOST II! Cristina Velasquez was chosen (by Hamidah Glasgow, Director of the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Mr. Graves pointed out to me), and her book, Viterbo, will leave no doubt why. I reached out to Cristina to congratulate her, and ask about its creation. She said, “Viterbo is a town in the mountains of Colombia where my family and I spent most of our childhood. It is also a generous, infinite studio, where I am able to compose freely and make pictures of the things that I care about, the real and the imagined. By referencing this location, my aim is not to indicate the origin of the pictures or to represent the place in any way. This book is a tribute to its people and to the everyday struggles of working-class families that resist and find joy in the midst of informality and precarious forms of labor. It is also a love letter to my childhood days and memories from Viterbo —the streets, the mountains, the stories—. Their imprint will forever infuse my artwork and the way I experience the world with a sense of dignity, absurdity, and joyous colour.”

“In Syracuse, New York, Interstate 81 separates those who live on the right side of town from those who do not,” per Arthur Flowers in TOPIC. Shane Lavelette’s, Syracuse, who’s cover is seen herelooks at the lives effected.

Among those joining Ms. Velasquez, is Shane Lavelette, the Director of the non-profit, Light Work, one of the country’s most respected Photo organizations, and an accomplished Photographer in his own right, who contributes the haunting Syracuse, his first book solely in black & white. I asked Mr. Lavelette how this body of work came to be, and came to be part of LOST II. He said Syracuse “began as an editorial piece for TOPIC (which can be read here). Since then, the spring of 2017, I’ve continued photographing for this body of work, as the issues/conversation around the highway develops. Essentially, the project explores the ways in which decisions of urban planning can connect or divide communities and the voices that are represented or lost in the process. Kris asked me to be a part of LOST II and I was originally exploring another idea for the publication but returned to this work because I think there’s an urgency to this story. I’m working with him to produce some extra copies of the book, which can be distributed for free to the local community. I don’t believe my own view/voice is very important in this work, but the project is one way to try to use an artistic project as an agent for dialogue in various contexts.”

He’s being modest. Syracuse, is stunningly beautiful and poetic, and is sure to impact all who see it. While this is an issue looming large in Syracuse right now, the bigger question it asks is- In how many other places is this same thing going on?

In that sense, it presents what seems to me to be one of the “themes” of LOST II as a set- revealing national, even, global issues in 2019 from a local perspective, consciously or subconsciously, as also witnessed in Crow Country by Wendy Red Star, Birmingham, by Shawn Theodore or Uzhhorod by Jules Slutsky. Perhaps, nowhere else in the set, is this more apparent than in Tijuana by Griselda San Martin.

The cover of Tijuana by Griselda San Martin.

Griselda San Martin is a Spanish Documentary Photographer who’s work in Tijuana seems to encapsulate a number of the series she has been working on, each of which a part of her mission statement- “My goal is to represent the immigration issue in all of its complexity, addressing the social, political and economic factors that motivate individuals to leave their homes. I hope to create images that stimulate dialogue and reflection1.” Her work is often up close and personal, yet, she’s equally adroit at stepping back to show the bigger picture. All of this is beautifully rendered in Tijuana, where her twin gifts with color and light are apparent in every image. The documentary elements, as seen on the cover, are powerful and poignant, but the book contains a variety of styles, some more commonly seen in Fine Art Photography, showing off the range of her talent, while keeping Tijuana fresh.

Griselda San Martin, from Tijuana.

About Tijuana, she said- “Contrary to what we are shown in mainstream media, Tijuana is a fascinating place,” she said. “All we hear right now about Tijuana has something to do with the several migrant caravans and Central American immigrants who have arrived in the city during the past few months. My book has nothing to do with that. All the images were taken before the first caravan arrived. The first time I was in Tijuana was during my graduate studies at the school of journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder. My graduation project led me to this border city, where I was captivated by its culture and dynamics, and the complexities (and contradictions) of the border region. For the past six years, I have been going back for different periods of time, working on several projects. Perhaps the most successful one has been The Wall, a photography and video project that documents families separated by their immigration status, who gather at Friendship Park, the only federally established  binational meeting place (currently closed). Through photographs and a short documentary film, the project examines the concept and relevance of a border wall, border security, and the effects of immigration policies on individuals and families affected by them, during a time of rising xenophobic political tensions. I also documented the small but growing Muslim community in the border region.” How did it become part of LOST II? “I met Kris Graves a couple of years ago. We were part of a group exhibition at CPW (Center for Photography at Woodstock). He contacted me directly to invite me to be part of Lost II.

Along with all of this, many of the books are also equally personal.

The cover of Hong Kong by Nelson Chan perfectly captures the mood of its contents.

Take Hong Kong, where Photographer, TIS Books co-founder/co-publisher, and Aperture Foundation staff member, Nelson Chan, has spent quite a bit of his life. “The book came to be quite naturally,” he said. “I grew up in Hong Kong and live there during various parts of the year while I’m overseas printing books for the Aperture Foundation. A lot of the images were made during these travels. Kris knew I photographed in Hong Kong quite a lot and simply asked me if I wanted to take part in his project. I was emphatic about it from the start. One of the things that I did with this book that was a bit unexpected for me was that I actually combine some black and white negatives from some of the very first photos I ever took. Not just in Hong Kong, but as a young budding photographer. You see, the city was what sparked that interest in putting a camera to my eye.” Joining Nelson is his TIS Books partner, Tim Carpenter, who contributes Illinois Central to LOST II. (By the way, TIS Books also made my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of 2018 list with El Libro Supremo De La Suerte, by Rose Marie Cromwell.)

Cover of Spruce Pine by Mercedes Jelinek

Then there is Spruce Pine by Mercedes Jelinek, which offers an almost meditative approach, sans people, which, I believe, may be  the only book in the set to do so. It’s her eagerly awaited second book after her sold out debut, the powerful, These Americans, (+KGP, 2018). Though its meditative quiet couldn’t be more different in tone from the raucous These Americans, revealing another side of her range, it retains the depth of feeling, even without human subjects. I asked Mercedes how Spruce Pine came to be, and came to be part of LOST II. “I was a resident artist at Penland School of Craft in Penland NC (right next to Spruce Pine),” she said. “Over the three years I lived there, I would go out and explore the area – going down back roads and side roads until I would reach a dead end. I realized I seemed to gravitate towards photographing quiet scenes – something I don’t usually have where I’m from in NYC. Not necessarily boring or mundane scenes but more of absence- and I was attracted to it in the photos… If that makes sense. Over time it grew into a project. Kris Graves Projects published my first book. When I returned to NY, I showed Kris my Spruce Pine images and he invited me to be part of Lost II.”

Kris Graves hosting the +KGP Book release for Isaac Diggs/Mikhail Mishin Book Release

On February 22nd, +KGP held a book release & signing for their three newest releases- Isaac Diggs’ Middle Distance,  Mikhail Mishin’s Endless Bridge, and Rana Young’s The Rug’s Typography, with the first two Artists in attendance.

Photographer & educator Isaac Diggs introduces his brand new PhotoBook, Middle Distance on February 22nd. He should be smiling- It’s very good. His Photographs of Los Angeles, “conjure the underlying tension I sense in much of the American urban landscape,” he says on the +KGP site.

I took the opportunity to meet Isaac Diggs, the well-known Photographer and educator at NYC’s School of Visual Arts the past 19 years, and speak to him about how his book, Lagos, in LOST II, came about. He told me that he’s made a dozen trips to Nigeria, his wife’s homeland, since the mid-1990s, with the book consisting of work created during the last half dozen trips. The focus throughout is on the daily lives of its subjects through unexpected glimpses into them. It’s a book that reveals a diversity of lives being lived in views at once close up, and again expansive, in a city that few in this country are familiar with.

Mr. Diggs personalizing a copy of Middle Distance.

I also perused Middle Distance, which is as exceedingly well done Photographically as it is well produced, again with images taken over time, this time in California. Thinking about it and Lagos, I see the same eye in both books-it’s an eye that works very quickly and very quietly. In photo after photo images are captured while the subject, who’s often close by, does not even appear to know there’s a camera pointed at them which captures them spontaneously, while the background and the entire composition has a carefully considered feel. Mr. Diggs also has a talent for interesting/unusal fleeting moment. Not the “waited for moment” we see wonderfully in the work of, say, Harry Gruyaert or Alex Webb, Mr. Diggs’ moments feel like they required a fast shutter speed to capture, though it was probably his quick mind.

Sharing the book release with Mr. Diggs was Mikhail Mishin, who told me his new book, Endless Bridge, began by culling through his scrapbooks. Looking through it, I then asked him if Kazimir Malevich was an influence. He smiled, and then responded with this photo-op, which could have been a page right out of his book!

Mikhail Mishin demonstrates the influence of Malevich on his work. The first word in red on the left hand facing page happens to be “Malevich” in Russian.

Though he’s not one of the LOST II Artists, I asked Mikhail what his experience was like having his book published by Kris Graves Projects. “Producing the book with Kris was pretty seamless and pleasant experience and he has an excellent knowledge of, and insight into, the art book industry and in the art world,” he said. “I had my book dummy designed and printed before I was introduced to Kris by our mutual friend. After our initial meeting and discussion Kris was interested in producing this book and we started the process.”

Mikhail Mishin with Endless Bridge, February 22, 2019.

“We had a few sessions after when we discussed edition, choosing the press, paper quality, the cover design and so on. All of that went very smooth as Kris already had pretty good idea where and what to do. Soon after we finalized the files and sent to press in New Hampshire which did a very nice job as you could see in the result.”

While the Isaac Diggs/Mikhail Mishin Book Release was going on, Kris Graves was also checking in on the printing of LOST II happening at that very moment(!) in Spain. February 22, 2019.

Meanwhile, back on the LOST II front, while the book release was going on, Mr. Graves was multi-tasking as ever, checking in on the progress of the printing of LOST II on his phone, which was going on in Spain at that very moment(!) …

As he posted on Instagram shortly thereafter. Seen here are images from Wendy Red Star’s highly anticipated Crow Country hot off the press. Her show, A Scratch on the Earth, is now open at the Newark Museum.

where Kris Graves Projects’ Pablo Lerma was onsite in Barcelona pulling a 16 hour day overseeing the printing of ALL 20 books!

Kris Grave & Eric Hairabedian’s A Queens Affiar, 2010, Kris Graves’ first book, which includes an outline map inside.

Speaking of the bookmaking side, in thinking about the evolution of LOST and LOST II, I was struck when I recently saw a copy of Kris Graves’ first PhotoBook- A Queens Affair, 2010, in which his exterior Photos are wonderfully paired with interiors by Eric Hairabedian. The book has something of the feel of a precursor of LOST, in its unique, capsule, exploration of the borough, right down to the inclusion of an outline map, a staple of LOST & LOST II.

Kris Graves with Eric Hairabedian, February 22, 2019- nine years after they made A Queens Story. His relationships and his network, also, play a part in the success of +KGP and the LOST series.

In the succeeding 9 years, Kris’ publishing has come a long way. I asked him how his bookmaking has changed just between LOST and LOST II. “I produced LOST with a digital offset printer in New Jersey,” he told me. “We loved the quality, and are using those materials for other books. This time, we are working with a press in Barcelona, and making the books in offset, not digital. In addition to the slightly larger size, the books will now be able to be opened further, so book spreads will look a bit better. Since we want to make a better project every time we make a book, we also wanted to splurge on a more expensive process for LOST II. Printing of the books is now complete, the down payment is in (smiles), and the books should set sail from Barca in a week or so, just in time for their AIPAD launch.”

It’s been apparent to me this past year that one of the most remarkable thing about +KGP’s books is their high quality and quite reasonable cost. While a set of the 20 volumes of LOST II is (currently) 350.00, the individual books have a price of 28.00 each. Though his books are affordable, the quality of the work they contain has been noticed at very high levels.  LOST was acquired by The Metropolitan Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, among other esteemed institutions. I asked Kris what he was most proud of about its success. “Good question. I am proud that this group of artists works as hard as they do. That’s it. Getting into collections is gravy, maybe it means that someone will peep the series 150 years from now. That would be cool. Usually, I’m too busy to feel pride.”

Luckily, we the living won’t have to wait long to see LOST II. It debuts at The Photography Show, 2019 (AIPAD) in early April, where it will be available to the general public, accompanied by a book signing.

However if you’re a Photographer interested in getting a slot in LOST III? I learned it’s going to require a very special distinction- You have to be female.


BookMarks-

Some facts about LOST II known to me as I write-

First- Less than SIXTY complete sets, in a custom LOST II Slip case, were available when it was announced. I bought one. And no, I didn’t ask for, or get a discount. Why not? Let’s do some math. The complete set of LOST II is being released at $350.00- a quite sizable sum by any standards. Considering there’s 20 books in the set? That makes it $17.50 a book, with a free slipcase. For a first rate PhotoBook? That’s on the low end (if not at the very bottom) of the prices I see charged by ANY publisher in the world. Besides that compelling reason, I believe in supporting Artists doing great and/or important work, so they can make more of it.

Second- Regarding individual book sales, Kris told me there will be just 125 first edition/first printing copies available of each title! When you take a look through the +KGP site, you’ll notice the high percentage of recent titles marked “SOLD OUT,” so part of the reason I’m doing this piece is as a community service for my readers who have read my prior Kris Graves Posts, and/or have bought LOST, so they can get LOST II, if they wish, as well as providing some insights into how a unique series like this comes into being.

Third- LOST II is available for pre-order from Kris Graves Projects online here. In the time it’s taken to prepare this Post, I now believe no more than 30 sets are still available. ALSO! I’m pleased to mention that if you mention “Kenn Sava” when you order a set from +KGP, your order will include a signed copy of Kris Graves’ The Bronx. 

Besides LOST II, also recommended are Isaac Diggs just released book, Middle Distance, and be sure to check out Mikhail Mishin’s fascinating new book, Endless Bridge, both of which were moving quickly at the book release.

Finally, a tip- I saw Mercedes Jelinek’s powerful first PhotoBook, These Americans, at AIPAD last year on the +KGP table I showed earlier. While I was busy looking at something else, the last copy was sold. After spending the last year looking for it, I’m happy to report that I just found out that a few copies are STILL AVAILABLE, here, at the Asheville Art Museum! Mine came signed. Highly recommended.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “The National Anthem” by Radiohead (a band Kris and I both admire) from Kid A, performed here (with horns!) on Later

My thanks to Shane Lavalette, Nelson Chan, Isaac Diggs, Mercedes Jelinek, Cristina Velasquez, Mikhail Mishin, Griselda San Martin, the Asheville Art Museum, and Kris Graves. 

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. She said, here

Robert Dunn’s Revolver

Written by Kenn Sava with Photographs by Kenn Sava & Robert Dunn

When I visited the Manhattan studio of the multi-dimensional Robert Dunn, I was struck by the large poster of The Beatles 1966 classic, Revolver, on his wall. Every Artist has influences. When I’m researching one, it’s always interesting to find out who their influences are, and what they reveal about that Artist’s work, their roots and development-if anything. I learned that Robert Dunn is an aficionado of Bob Dylan, classic Jazz, Blues, The Stones and The Beatles. Does it mean his work is influenced by them? That’s not for me to say. Still, Revolver is an album that shows off an extraordinarily wide range of The Beatles many sides. Hmmm….I asked him if I could snap a Photo of it.

Luckily, he didn’t ask me “Why?”

Robert’s Revolver poster (a copy of the rare original), hangs over a colorful selection of his business cards for Coral Press that feature his Photographs. Seen in his studio, February, 2019. Click any Photo for full size.

Like a six shooter, himself, Robert Dunn’s talent comes at you from all sides, in many media. In his life, thus far, he’s been or currently is-

-A Musician & Songwriter

-A published Author

-A  copy editor at Sports Illustrated for 3 decades, and a typist at The New Yorker, who published one of his Poems(!)

-A Photographer

-A Publisher of PhotoBooks AND Novels

-A Teacher, currently of 2 courses at The New School

BANG!, indeed. Looking at the homepage for his site, RobertDunn.net, I felt like I was in a Department Store!

*Homepage of RobertDunn.net. Enough creativity for any 6 people, and there’s still room left for whatever he turns his talent to next!

Shot dead by too much talent to pack into one Post, I realized I needed to switch my brain from auto to manual to adjust the focus of this piece. So, I opted to narrow the depth of field for closeups on two of those 6 barrels- Robert Dunn: Photographer & Robert Dunn: PhotoBook Publisher. Before you think I’m letting myself off the hook easy, consider this- over the past year I’ve seen a number of Robert Dunn’s PhotoBooks, all of which are published by his own publishing company, Coral Press. Each contained work in a different style! I had to turn back to the cover to make sure the Artist’s name was Robert Dunn, and I was more and more impressed each time I found it was. The man is so positively bursting with creativity you literally need to keep your mind on a swivel to keep up with it.

Robert Dunn’s Author’s page on Amazon where you can buy his novels, many of which are music-related in some way, echoes of his days in his band, Thin Wild Mercury.

Approaching his long, varied and accomplished career from the present, it wasn’t long after I discovered his Photography that I found out he’s also a published Novelist with no fewer than SEVEN Novels currently available on Amazon! AND, in whatever spare time he doesn’t possibly have, he teaches Writing AND Writing the Photobook at The New School1.

I asked Robert to select a group of Photos for this piece as examples of his work in each of his many styles, thinking that together, they would show his range. Unbeknownst to him until he sees this, I was, also, testing a secret hunch I had, born out of that opening Photo. Shhhh….Don’t tell him this, Ok? Before I asked him for the Photographs I had a feeling that whatever images he sent me would connect with The Beatles’ album Revolver.

(Off stage, background. Chime…chime…incoming email chime…”CANCEL MY EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION! I now KNOW you’re certifiable!”) I didn’t know exactly how. I just had a hunch they would. He sent me the batch of Photos you see below. There was no back and forth. No second guessing. And of course, no discussion about “matching” Photo with Song. The rhyme and reasons are purely my own- The blame lies here. I want to emphasize- At no time has Robert told me Revolver had anything to do with his work!

Why did I come up with this crazy concept?

As my long time readers know, every single one of the 200+ Posts I’ve done here on NHNYC.com over the 3 1/2 years of its existence has had its own soundtrack listed at the end- a piece of Music I’ve selected to accompany it, and that seems to fit that particular Post. Never have I selected more than one piece of Music to be the soundtrack of a Post. Until now. Robert’s multiple sides, and countless styles, call for it.

So, here are the Photos Mr. Dunn sent, with a caption listing which of the 34 PhotoBooks the Artist has released to date it appears in, along with a song from Revolver as its soundtrack. I’ve also included a link to the book the Photo appears in on the Coral Press site where you can see more of its contents. Each and every one of his books is well worth exploring. Every one of the 14 songs on The Beatles’ album is here and only appears once. The Beatles video for the track follows each Photo so you can listen to it as you look (all are audio only, except for “Yellow Submarine”). Robert may see this and say “What the heck?” and never speak to me again. I hope not, but here goes!

Please take the time to listen to each track while you look at Robert’s Photo it accompanies and see if you find a connection. (Lyrics for each song may be found here.)

From OWS, Robert Dunn’s very first PhotoBook on the Occupy Wall Street protest. Fittingly, it gets “Taxman,”  the first track on Revolver.

Also from OWS. Its soundtrack is “I’m Only Sleeping”

 

From New York Street. Its soundtrack is “Tomorrow Never Knows”

From Shibuya Time. Its soundtrack is “Love You To”

From Shibuya Time. Its soundtrack is “She Said She Said”

From Angel Parade 5. Its soundtrack is “For No One”

From New York Street. Its soundtrack is “Yellow Submarine”

From Carnival of Souls. Its soundtrack is”Good Day Sunshine”

From Star of Light. Its soundtrack is “Got to Get You into My Life.”

From Star of Light. Its soundtrack is”Eleanor Rigby”

From All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. (To be published) Its soundtrack is “Dr. Robert”

From New York Street. Its soundtrack is “And Your Bird Can Sing”

From Electrick Spirits. Its soundtrack is “I Want to Tell You”

From Electrick Spirits. Its soundtrack is “Here, There and Everywhere”

Ok…ok…So? Why did I REALLY do this- match up Revolver with these Robert Dunn Photographs? When I look at Robert Dunn’s work and the range of styles he has created in thus far, I see an Artist who’s constantly exploring and reinventing himself, like The Beatles did (as you can hear in a micocosm on Revolver)– even if it takes venturing into an entirely new medium or Artform for him to do so! I find that exciting and, personally, inspiring. And? There aren’t a heck of a lot of other popular Musicians who have as many styles as Bob does- except The Beatles.

Robert Dunn, ALSO, a serious vinyl collector, considers a classic Blues Lp at NYC’s legendary Academy Records, February 16, 2019.

When I lived in Miami, the old cliche was, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 20 minutes. It’ll change.” Robert Dunn’s work only seems to change that often. But, somehow, no matter how much it changes, the “Sunshine” of his creativity always shines through, making it a “Good Day…”

The Photography of Robert Dunn may be explored in full at ecstaticlightphoto.com.

I’ve had my say, so now, it’s only fair to give the Artist a chance. I’m pleased to say that Robert was kind enough to answer some questions for me. These appear in the piece, Tomorrow Never Knows: Q&A With Robert Dunn, below this one. 

My thanks to Robert Dunn, and to Jackson Charles for the introduction.


BookMarks-

A used box set of Robert’s Angel Parade series for sale at The Strand in 2018. Its prior owner looks to have perused it a fair amount. The next time I looked, it was gone, off to a new home. My experience is they don’t last long in stores, but you can still buy them online.

Robert Dunn’s PhotoBooks are available as follows-

-By mail order, or in store, at Dashwood Books.

-By mail order, or in store, at Printed Matter.

or

Directly by mail order from Coral Press.

If you have any questions about obtaining them, feel free to write to Coral Press directly, or contact me and I will forward them for you.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. During the course of working on this piece, Professor Robert asked me why I capitalize Art, Music, and Photographer. I’ve been expecting this question every day since July, 2015, but he is the first person to ask! The short answer is, as I’ve mentioned in passing previously, that Art is my Religion. Many people create “art.” A select few create “Art.” For me, the work of someone like Michelangelo, and the other Artists I’ve written about here, deserves the respect of capitalization. Frankly? I don’t understand why it is not the norm. He then asked why I write photobook as PhotoBook, etc. The answer is- They’re part of my eccentric style, (like NoteWorthy or BookMarks). For me, a “photobook” like Robert Frank’s The Americans, also, deserves to be referred to differently than a book of photos (i.e. a “photobook”) of snapshots. I’ll get into this more in a future Post. But since among his many talents and extensive accomplishments, Mr. Dunn has 30 years experience as a Copy Editor at Sports Illustrated, I thought I’d better give the short answer now! We both agreed that consistency is key. I’ve been doing it this way since Day 1 of NHNYC.

Tomorrow Never Knows: A Q&A With Robert Dunn

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*unless otherwise credited)

Poor Tomorrow. It has no idea what Robert Dunn will bring to it. Given his versatility and endless inventiveness, all bets are off.

That’s the feeling I get from looking at his Photography. My Post, Robert Dunn’s Revolver, is an overview of the multi-dimensional Robert Dunn’s Photography and PhotoBook Publishing. In preparing it, Robert was kind enough to, somehow, find some time in his busy life to answer some questions for me, thereby giving readers a chance to hear directly from this talented man, who generally “speaks” only through his work, unless you’re among the lucky few who take his classes at The New School on Writing, or “Writing the Photobook.” So, without further adieu, before tomorrow gets here, Robert Dunn-

Robert Dunn on Broadway on the Upper West Side, surveys the scene, camera at the ready, February, 2019.

Kenn Sava (KS)- Bob, You’ve had successful careers as a Musician, Writer and a Teacher. Why did you turn to Photography? Was there a moment, event or influence that triggered its beginning?

Robert Dunn (RD)- Kenn, first off, thanks for letting me talk about my work for your impressive site.

Here’s my artistic, well, arc, I guess. When I was 13, I first heard Bob Dylan, immediately wanted to be him, learned guitar, wrote pretty good songs, and quickly found out I couldn’t sing at all. Turned out my strengths then were with the lyrics, so I got into literature, immediately wanted to be James Joyce, and wrote fiction and some poetry. (Surprisingly, my first publication was a poem in The New Yorker.) For the last few decades all I’ve written are novels.

Back in the ’80s, though, I got really interested in photography—especially color photography, inspired by William Eggleston. I pursued it pretty seriously, up to the point at which to make a good-sized high-end print, I’d either do that or pay the rent in my East Village apartment. So photography fell by the wayside. (One good thing about writing, all you needed to buy then was paper; today, not even that.)

I did purchase a few photobooks back then, and when I got back into studying and collecting photobooks, I was pleased to see the books I’d bought and cherished were Frank’s “Americans,” Eggleston’s “Guide,” Susan Meiselas’s  “Nicaragua,” and Bill Burke’s “I Want to Take Picture.”

But for what I do now, my interest was specifically renewed by a review of the then-new Fuji X100 camera I read in the Times. I immediately said to myself, I used to love taking pictures, and this camera sounds perfect. So after a little this and that, I was able to get one. (They were like new iPhones at first, sold out everywhere.) I went out that weekend to try it out and startled myself with what I was shooting.

Basically, the camera seemed to have a kind of mind of its own, and was taking pictures that captured light and color in a way I could hardly believe—and that I loved.

Coincidentally, I use the Fuji X100F, too, so I was particularly interested in how Mr. Dunn uses his. I’m not sure I was expecting to see this, however.

 So, yes, that’s where it all really started, with that first Fuji camera.    

KS- What’s the connection between your Novels and your Photography, or are they both just outlets for different sides of your creativity?

RD- A very intriguing question. I like to think that if I’m good at photography, it’s because years of writing fiction has taught me a few basic things, perhaps most important how to see as much as possible. I remember a lunch many, many years ago with a Knopf editor, Alice Quinn, who was a mentor back then. (She later was The New Yorker poetry editor.) I told her that day, “I think I’m finally learning how to see not just a person’s front, but behind them, too. See all the way around them.” I think I also meant much deeper inside a character, but in essence my idea was that I was expanding my range and depth of simple sight.

 And that’s what my photography is. Walking around taking in as much of what’s going on as I can, and trying my best to capture what’s most interesting about what’s there. If in the shots I take of people, I can see—and capture—some essence of their personality, their soul, then I think I’ve made a pretty good picture.

Purloined Souls, by Robert Dunn.

Oh, and one unexpected connection between my fiction writing and my first photobook, OWS—pictures I shot at Occupy Wall Street, back in 2011. I initially went down there to donate a few copies of my hippie-chick novel, Look at Flower, to their free library. The thing is, I went to college at UC Berkeley back in the early ’70s, and the air, the ambience, in Zuccotti Park immediately hit me with whiffs of those riotous years at Cal—a vibe I truly hadn’t experienced since. I got jazzed, and started shooting photos, then going back every week. There were a lot of photographers down there, but I made sure I didn’t shoot in any of the directions they were all shooting; I found my own details, moments, etc. OWS came out in 2012, and went into a second printing quickly. And a photo from it was in an ICP show.

KS- Is there something you particularly love about being a Photographer?

RD- Yes, and it ties in with my answer to the last question. I love almost everything about my photographic work, but at bottom I think I’m most psyched about the place my head goes into when I’m out with my camera on the streets, trying to take in everything around me, every telling gesture, every detail, incongruence, hint of something more than just what appears to be there. It’s a little like my fiction writing, when I get so lost in writing that time has no presence, and the story is all I know.

My photo taking, though, is an especially Zen sort of thing, where I’m out walking around totally in the moment, perceiving the whole world moving around me, always looking for a good shot. All the time I’m telling myself, Hmmnn, is that interesting? Nope. How about that? Nope. Is that worth shooting? Nope. Nope. No … oh, wait, that might be worth a click of the shutter.

All this happens in nanoseconds. Being in the world, yet not of it—trying to capture what most interests me in my camera. Losing myself to that, but also being fully there at the same time.

Robert Dunn is ALWAYS aware of his surroundings and the potential for images in the moment. During the no more than 2 minutes we stood outside Academy Records, he was looking everywhere at once, camera in hand. February, 2019.

KS- You seem to be a model of a D.I.Y. Artist, from creating the work to releasing your Photobooks and overseeing their sales through Coral Press. What’s been the hardest part of that for you?

RD- I love making photobooks; indeed, I have books that almost nobody has seen, just because I have an idea, fulfill it, and turn it into a book. Far and away the hardest part of this for me is getting books out there. Into stores, into people’s hands. Every day, I’m happy—no, I need—to take pictures. Not every day do I feel like walking into some place and trying to get them to sell my work.

 That said, things have worked out pretty well. My self-made books are in numerous museum libraries, including MoMA, ICP, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Tokyo Photographic Museum. They’ve been for sale at PS1 MoMA, Dashwood, the Strand, and the ICP bookstore, among other places (Note- See BookMarks at the end for a list of some).

 Funny story about ICP, and selling your own books in general. I took one of my early Angel Parade series there, and the woman in charge said she’d love to take copies, then said that she thought they should be priced at $18. I said, “You take fifty percent of each sale, right?” She nodded. Then I said, “O.K., each book costs me $12 to print, so if you sell one, I’ll get nine dollars from you. That way, hmnnn, I’m only paying people three dollars to own my books.” She shrugged, and I immediately said, “Good deal—hope you sell a lot!” Hey, it was the International Center of Photography. I meant it.

KS- Along the way, did anyone teach you any of this (Photography, digital technology, printing & publishing), or are you entirely self-taught?

RD- Well, nobody taught me anything, as in my taking a class to learn the stuff you ask about. I have been taking over and over, and really enjoying, a Master Printing course at ICP with Ben Gest; but even for that, when the requirement was great facility with Photoshop, I basically didn’t have very much, so I faked it till I got it.

But I never took a How to Photograph–type course. I wanted to learn by doing it myself, studying photographers who move me, and trusting my own intuitive artistic understanding more than anything anyone could tell me.

Same with writing. I never studied writing, though I was a Lit major in college. But I also was fortunate enough to be around some impressive writers back when I was getting going. My first-ever real job was at The New Yorker magazine. While I worked there, I was one of the redoubtable film critic Pauline Kael’s assistants, and for the final three years of the great novelist Bernard Malamud’s life, I was his paid assistant. Indeed, after he passed I was given his desk, and to this day I do all my work at it.

It Talks, It Whispers by Robert Dunn, one of my personal favorites of the books I’ve seen of his yet so far, is in ANOTHER style than those I showed in Revolver.

KS-  How did being a published Novelist help you with your PhotoBooks?

RD- Gave me experience on how books are put together, printed, and distributed. Pretty much the whole thing.

 KS- Your Photobooks (at least the ones I’ve seen) are all in the same size, style and format, which makes them different from those of most others I’ve seen. Why did you choose to make them this way?

RD- I have made books in other sizes. My Angel Parade series (now up to volume 16; I’m planning to get at least to 20) is in a more vertical format, and distinguished in the way that there are two volumes in each book. I was inspired by paperbacks of the 1950s that would put two novels in the same book, with two covers, one upside down on one side. That’s what I do with Angel Parade: volume 1 and volume 2 in the same book, just have to flip it over to read the other one. I liked that because it accentuated the idea of each work being separate, yet together. Each volume tells its own little non-linear or non-literal story.

But the more recent books you mention are the same because I use an online printer to put them out. All I have to do is upload a pdf and the books are mailed quickly back to me. And they look pretty good. As an eminent photobook scholar friend of mine says, “Your books now are kind of like Daido’s Record series—books done quickly, almost like journal entries, to capture what you’re up to and get them out there.”

There’s truth to that, though I also think of each book I do as a standalone work, with its own theme, story, reason for being. I do like the size and format of the books of mine you reference, but I also aspire to do larger, more intricate ones—books that more substantial, less zine-like; perhaps even more an art object than just a “story” in photos. To that end, I’d love to collaborate with somebody with strong bookmaking experience and talent.

Electrick Spirits by Robert Dunn.

KS- I’ve heard from a number of Artists who are interested in learning how to make a Photobook of their work, and then how to distribute them. Do you have any advice for them? 

RD- Well, first off, you can simply do it. That’s key, not to wait around for anyone or anything to tell you how/what to do. Just make a book. Take the pictures, figure out how to lay it out, find somebody to print it, online or at a press … and there it is. You can even make something yourself with a laser printer or Xerox machine and staples. A young friend of mine, Jason Jaworski, is kind of the master of make your own book at home. He prints pages off a regular printer, folds them, makes a cover out of something lying around and cheap, and puts them out. Indeed, our books used to sit next to each other at the ICP Bookstore. I just looked at one. He was selling it for $10, which meant he was probably paying himself $2 an hour, if that.

But he made books, and they got noticed.

In essence, that’s what each of the students in my New School “Writing the Photobook” class do. They simply make their own book.

KS- You’ve used the Fuji X100F exclusively almost since it was released, right? 

RD- Actually, my first serious digital camera was the Fuji X100—no “F.” That was their first X100 model, the one I mentioned above. I used it for years, eschewing further iterations of the camera, until I read a piece on the X100F that said that model was finally the perfection of what the X100 started. So I decided to upgrade.

 But what I love about both X100s I own is foremost that the camera lets you see what the actual photo will look like through the viewfinder. There’s a little switch on the front that flips you from looking through glass in the viewfinder to actually seeing in it what the lens sees.

West 18th Street, NYC, February, 2019.

The latter is all-important in my photography. Easily seeing what the lens sees allows me to see the photo itself, with all its blur, contrast, magic intact. So I use that a lot.

I also like that the camera is pretty small and with a fixed focus. I believe in the maxim that if you want to zoom up on something, just get closer. As you can see from many of my photos, I often get very close.

Further, I like it that I can just throw the camera around, grab shots from my hip, or wherever, without having to look through the viewfinder at all. I do that a lot.

From Demons and Dogs, shortly after Robert got his X100 in 2012.

I’m all about seeing as much as I can on the street, then working to capture it quickly, with full mystery and expressiveness. I’m also about making photobooks in the spirit of: Take lots of photos, all kinds as long as they’re interesting, then sort them out into books later. That’s the novelist in me, I guess. As in the title of my New School class, I want to “write” my photobooks, though personally I never put words into books other than maybe a short preface. By “writing,” I mean giving each book a shape, a logic, a theme, a purpose. That’s what I find in the books I most admire.

KS- To this point, I know that you admire the work of Robert Frank and Daido Moriyama in particular, two Artists who are, it seems, equally celebrated for their Photography and their Photobooks. What is it about each that particularly speaks to you?

RD- My favorite Robert Frank story is told by Garry Winogrand in a Youtube video I watched of Winogrand being interviewed.

*Garry Winogrand, St.Francis Monument on Sunset Boulevard,1955

He talks about the shot in The Americans of the statue of St. Francis at the foot of Sunset Boulevard in L.A. Winogrand says, “There’s a picture in the Frank book of a statue…. (In 1955, before The Americans came out) I shot that goddamned statue. I made a reasonably good picture of it.

*Robert Frank, St. Francis, Gas Station and City Hall, Los Angeles, 1956

And I saw the Frank book, and it killed it. Put me away six ways, you know…. The picture I made was made. And the picture he made happened. It went whoosh right across the page…. It taught me a hell of a lot. Right off the bat, boom.”

Well, that’s one reason why I like Robert Frank so much: his photos still put me away six ways; they go whoosh across the page; and they teach me a hell of a lot. For some reason, Jimi Hendrix and his “Star-Spangled Banner” is popping into my head, as in, Wait, that’s not how we ever sang it before. That’s a great thing about any art form: one person can blow everything wide open, put us all away six ways … at least six ways.

As for Daido Moriyama, I can still remember the exact moment I found him. I was at the old ICP bookstore, and the clerk, Sarah, becoming a friend and guide, asked me if I knew Daido’s work. I said no, she showed me books of his on the shelves, and I immediately bought one—and kept buying them, till now I have first editions of much of his work.

Robert Dunn, From New York Street.

What do I like with Daido? Besides some very strong photos, it’s mostly the freedom to do anything with a photo: have it blurry, scratched, out of focus … everything you’re not supposed to do. Also, that he’s always out on the street prowling for photos, grabbing them everywhere. I have a few photos I’m proud of that are for me just: Look what a strong photo that would make, and, look, I just caught it. One in particular of mine is a photo of a guy in the middle of 125th Street I shot a few years back, in my New York Street book. For some reason he has a long yellow rain slicker over his head and flying back from it, so you can’t see his face. He also has his hands raised high into the air, and in one is a religious tract.

Again, the guy was in the middle of the street. Flash, I saw him, and somehow got my camera around to snap the photo. I like to think my picture, too, wasn’t made. It just happened.

That’s the thing with a lot of Daido’s work, particularly the famous shot of a girl in an alley at night, barefoot in a slip. You know, when you look at any photographer’s work, whoever took the picture was right there. That’s the only way it works. Somebody has a camera, they snap the shutter, they make a picture of what the camera sees. That’s really all it ever is. So it all depends so much on who’s doing the shooting.

*Daido Moriyama, Untitled (Woman in white dress running), 1971

So I imagine Daido seeing the girl, flipping up his camera, and probably (as I would) feeling some pride in having gotten the shot, even though the angle is crooked and the light screwy. Indeed, that’s the lesson of Moriyama: angles, light, focus … it all means nothing unless you’ve snatched a truly interesting photo from the endless stream.

I also like this particular Daido shot because it engenders a huge story: who’s the girl, how did she get there, why is she barefoot in an alley in a slip, where is she going? Same with my guy in the middle of 125th Street. What he hell is he up to? 

KS- Since NHNYC was originally a Painting site, I always ask this: Are there any Painters who’ve influenced you or your Photography, or that particularly speak to you? 

RD- I’m especially interested in the play of color in my photos. Also, flows of energy. And deep mystery and spiritual invocation. So off the top of my head, to those ends I’ve learned things from Vermeer, Rothko, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, El Greco—I’m sure there are many more.

KS- Top 5 favorite albums (if you have favorites)? Or, top 5 albums that have influenced you the most?

RD- Record albums, that is, not my grandmother’s mottled leather photo collections? (Smile.)

Robert checking out the CD’s at Academy Records, February, 2019

KS- Touche. Yes, Lps, since you have such a carefully curated collection of vinyl.

RD- I’ve been inspired at the deepest level by certain musicians; and in my own deepest understanding of what I’m up to photographically, certain records center me and guide me, though I wouldn’t want to try to articulate just how.

Outside of Academy Records, a PhotoBook of Bob Dylan caught his eye We’ll have to wait until “tomorrow” to see what he made of it.

Top Five of those? Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited. The Beatles’ Revolver. John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things. Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew. That’s five, right? Oh, and how about a couple classical LPs: Janos Starker’s Complete Bach Cello Suites, and Glenn Gould’s Bach Goldberg Variations, the 1955 recording.

Again, not necessarily my alltime favorites, but definitely the ones that made me take certain turns with my photography, and that center my work all over again every time I listen to them. It’s all about color, complexity, soul, poetry, and transcendence—in whatever form they take.

Robert waits to see what tonite brings, getting the jump on tomorrow.

—-End—

Postscript- A few days later, Bob wrote to tell me he’d seen my Stanley Kubrick A Photographer’s Odyssey Post. “Make sure I tell you how my old East Village apartment ended up as a set in one of his movies – for real!,” he said.

Hmmmm…Not able to resist that bait (or anything Kubrick), I immediately asked, “Was that your former apartment in Eyes Wide Shut? Actually, there were at least 2 in that one, but I thought he recreated NYC in London for that. Maybe it’s another Film…?”

He cleared up the mystery- “Good guess – it was Eyes Wide Shut – the East Village prostitute Cruise has the fling with. Long story, but short version is that I was getting thrown out after not actually living there for years. Guy who was there at the time had a photographer pal doing a series of shots of LES apartments, and she had the Kubrick connection. Kubrick flipped over shots of my place, and since I was being cut off the lease, and the landlord was going to gut the place after I was gone, we all met and cut a deal. The Kubrick woman paid a hundred bucks for all the built-in stuff – sink, stove, bathtub – and I got a hundred for my furniture. Then it was all shipped to Shepperton in London – and the film was (finally) finished. So when I see the movie, it’s my sink, my stove, my tub, everything… but the underwear hanging from the ceiling.”

Unfortunately, we’ll never know what Stanley Kubrick would think of Robert Dunn’s Photography. But, at least we know he could spot a fellow classic New Yorker from his furniture.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Spanish Key,” by Miles Davis from the legendary landmark album Bitches Brew, 1970. It’s one of my favorites, too, Bob. My recommended “Miles Davis Shortlist” is here.


BookMarks-

New York Street, a personal favorite, by Robert Dunn.

Robert Dunn’s PhotoBooks are available as follows-

-By mail order, or in store, at Dashwood Books.

-By mail order, or in store, at Printed Matter.

or

Directly by mail order from Coral Press.

If you have any questions about obtaining them, feel free to write to Coral Press directly, or contact me and I will forward them for you.

My thanks to Robert Dunn.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

Stanley Kubrick: A Photographer’s Odyssey

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*unless otherwise credited)

At first, I was surprised to hear that Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs  was at the Museum of the City of New York, a first rate institution, though one that doesn’t often show up on my schedule of Art or Photography shows. Yes, Stanley Kubrick was born and raised in the Bronx, so as one of  NYC’s great native sons, it makes historical sense. It turns out it made perfect sense artistically as well. The MCNY is home of part of the Look Magazine Archives. Stanley Kubrick sold Photographs to, and later became a staff Photographer for, the popular Look Magazine from April, 1945 until August, 1950.

“Open the Pod Bay Doors, Stanley.” Click any Photo for full size.

The majority of Look Magazine’s Photo Archives (5,000,000 Photographs) were donated to the Library of Congress. However, those relating to NYC were donated to the Museum of the City of New York. These include approximately 12,000 contact prints, and negatives Stanley Kubrick created for Look over 129 NYC assignments1, the vast majority of them have never been published.

The eyes of a genius. The show’s entrance features this haunting Photograph by Stanley Kubrick in which he shoots himself and the “Showgirl” Rosemary Williams reflected in her large tabletop mirror. The Photo, Stanley Kubrick taking a picture of Rosemary Williams applying lipstick, which is cropped on the sign, is from the unpublished story, “Rosemary Williams- Showgirl,” March, 1949.

Also from the same story, Rosemary Williams Applies Lipstick, March, 1949, a companion piece to the shot above. Stanley was 19 when he took these. I’ve seen the look he has on his face in these two shots in other pictures of Stanley Kubrick, and each time its caption includes the descriptive “intense concentration.” For a number of reasons, this may be the most remarkable Photograph I’ve seen thus far in this body of his work. I picture him having that look as he took every shot in this show.

Stanley Kubrick remains a magnificent mystery to me, akin to the monolith in his classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. His films (all 13 of them) are high on my list of favorites. I can think of no other Director I revere as highly as Stanley Kubrick, other than Charlie Chaplin2. Yet, it’s still not all that well known that before he became a Director, Stanley Kubrick was a professional Photographer. Remarkably, he was 17 years old when he sold his first Photograph to Look Magazine, then one of the most popular magazines in the country, in 1945. Hmmm…who was the last Photographer I wrote about who achieved recognition that mature Photographers yearn for their whole lives at 17? Stephen Shore was 17 when he sold his first Photo to MoMA.

New to this body of his work, I went to see the 130 of his Photographs (though there was no indication, these appeared to be exclusively recent digital prints, not silver gelatin prints) on view in the show to get a sense of SK- the Photographer, but primarily, I went specifically looking for evidence of the later, mature genius Film Director. I found it. It just wasn’t how I was expecting to find it. I’ve seen a number of comments online from people who find these shots “banal,” and terms connoting similar degrees of a tepid response. Perhaps, like some of them, I was hoping to see shots full of brilliant moments filled with that unique mystery and awe every moment of his Films hold, at least for me. Then again, I should have realized that very little about Stanley Kubrick lies where you’d expect to find it.

“Observation is a dying art.” Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick: Interviews.

Stanley Kubrick’s Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic camera as seen in the Stanley Kubrick show at LACMA in 2013 still looks to be in decent condition after seeing heavy use at least between the years 1941-50. *Photo by Seth Anderson

The story begins when Jack Kubrick, a physician and passionate amateur Photographer, gave his son a professional Graflex Pacemaker Speed Graphic camera for his 13th birthday on July 26th, 1941. Stanley’s friend, Marvin Traub, had a darkroom in his house, so after their sojourns around town taking Photos, the two would develop their film there. On or about April 13, 1945, the day after Franklin D. Roosevelt died, Stanley came across this scene at 170th Street & the Grand Concourse, in the Bronx3

17 year old Stanley Kubrick’s FDR Dead, 1945, was the first Photograph he sold to Look Magazine.

Well, sort of. At first he said this shot resulted from “lucky happenstance.” But, he later admitted he “coaxed4” the news seller, surrounded by newspapers declaring President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died, into this pose.

Wait. What?

He went home and developed the film in the darkroom that he had by then installed in his own house and took it into Manhattan to the offices of Look Magazine. There, Helen O’Brian, chief of the Photography Department, saw it and paid him 25 dollars for it.

It ran in the spread above in Look’s June 26, 1945 issue, the last of 36 Photos, and the only enlarged image in the group. Stanley Kubrick was still a High School student at William Howard Taft High School in the Bronx. Think about this- In June, 1945, Stanley Kubrick had not even had his Graflex for 4 years. But, there’s more to it. That he “urged the salesman to look more depressed than he was for dramatic effect5” is “directing”- he’s eliciting a performance for a scene.

Therefore, this is the first instance we have of Stanley Kubrick putting his “directing” skill into practice.

It, also, serves to put the viewer on notice that from here on out his Photographs may not be entirely as they seem. As my research continued (and continues), I found more and more Photographs that curators and researchers say were posed or staged. Not all of them, but a good number. For me, this first revelation turned out to be only one way in which Stanley Kubrick, the Director & Filmmaker, begins to manifest his presence in the work of his younger self. As for that younger self, while he was too old at 17 to be a “child prodigy,” when you take his ability, his eye, and his gift for whatever the composition needed into account, from his work at 17, I think he qualifies as a “prodigy.”

The mothership. The Look Magazine Building, 488 Madison Avenue, around the corner from MoMA, was built in 1948-50, during the last half of Stanley Kurbrick’s employment there. It’s now a landmark building. Seen on February 2, 2019.

“One thing that helped me get over being a school misfit was I became interested in photography at about 12 or 13.” Stanley Kubrick6.

From “How A Monkey Looks to People…How People Look to a Monkey,” Published in Look, August 20, 1946. SK was a $50. a week Apprentice Photographer when he took this classic Photo at 18 years of age.

He sold Photos to Look from time to time until he graduated in January, 1946. Thanks to his frequent truancy cutting class to go see movies at the Loew’s Paradise Theatre near his home (hmmmm….), his 67 grade average was too low to compete for a place in college against the returning G.I.’s7, when a 75 was the floor to even be considered. So, Helen O’Brian hired him for Look as an Apprentice Photographer for $50. a week. He became a full Staff Photographer in October, 1946. Stanley Kubrick grew up fast. Look became his college. “By the time I was 21, I had four years of seeing how things worked in the world. I think if I had gone to college I would never have become a Director8.” It was a unique “college” in that it offered posterity a chance to study the development of the “student” over the 5 years he was there.

“Writing, of course, is writing, acting comes from the theater, and cinematography comes from photography.” Stanley Kubrick9.

Unpublished contact strips depicting people conversing the street, probably shot with a telephoto lens. There’s an undeniable “cinematic” feel to these series, a number of other such sequences were included in the show.

On his way to becoming a great Director, Stanley Kubrick was an accomplished professional Photographer first, skills that never left him, and that he would use constantly in his Films. The component skills he developed being a Photographer (who was already technically proficient)- composition, lighting, setting a scene, working with subjects, would prove invaluable to him. As would observation – that “dying art.” In addition, a number of the assignments he was sent on became experiences that he also used to learn about what would be his later profession.

One of those “other” skills is storytelling. Even besides the strips just shown, there is a strong sense of it throughout the quite sympathetic body of work seen here. Where did it come from? Whatever its origin, it’a already on full display, here, at 19. His unique way of telling a story is certainly a hallmark of his Films. Here are some of the 250 Photos he shot for an unpublished assignment called “Shoeshine Boy,” handed in on October 6, 1947, one of the most fascinating stories I’ve seen, in which he followed the title boy, Mickey, to his job, to school, doing errands, hanging out with his friends and family, and tending his pigeon coop. Mickey was only 7 years younger than Stanley Kubrick at the time.

Stanley’s Photographs are technically accomplished from the first one to the last. Surprisingly so for the viewer new to this work, given his youth and the fact that he was self-taught. His Photographs turn out to be up to any technical challenge thrown his way- day, night, portraits, action, off the cuff, groups- what I’ve seen thus far of his 135 assignments run the full gamut. It doesn’t matter the situation, the environment, the lighting or time of day. Is he the “master” magazine Photographer? No. He’s not. There are times when any one of the innumerable technical elements inherent in Photography seems to let him down, but by and large I came away exceedingly impressed with his technical ability. Stephen Spielberg said that one thing that bonded Stanley Kubrick’s Films together was “the incredible virtuoso that he was with craft10.” I get that sense from looking at his Photography. Unlike Weegee (who ALWAYS seems to get his shot, and 95% of the time does so using flash), Stanley doesn’t shoot one way. He adapts to the situation and what he’s trying to express, which is gutsy for a young Photographer trying to secure his place on a staff of a magazine such as Look, which included some established names, like Arthur Rothstein and John Vachon. The deeper you look into this work, the more there is to say about it. Though only touched on in the books and articles I’ve seen, in my opinion, every single aspect of this work needs to be studied in depth-

From “Rosemary Williams-Showgirl,” unpublished from March, 1949, Rosemary Williams and a man at a candle-lit table, 1949. An early candle-lit Stanley Kubrick Photograph that just might seem to presage the extraordinary lighting & camerawork in his now classic Barry Lyndon, 1975, where, by then, he would master the exposure.

-His technique- Where was it in April, 1945, and how it changes and how it evolved over his Look career. This includes his compositional choices, positioning (love of low angles and overheads), lighting (natural light versus flash), and how all of these may have appeared in his Films.

Stanley Kubrick shot surreptitiously in the Subwary for a piece titled “Life and Love on the New York Subway,” March 4, 1947, using a cable release that ran down his sleeve. He had no way of knowing that Walker Evans had, also, shot secretly in the subway in 1941 because Walker did not publish his series until the book, Many Are Called, was published in 1966, out of fear of lawsuits from his subjects because he did not have releases from them.

-The assignments-  Both published and unpublished. Between the Library of Congress’ and the MCNY’s websites about half of his Photographs appear to be online, as far as I can tell. The complete body of SK’s Photographs needs to be made available. Only then can a proper assessment of his achievement and what it portends for his future work be made.

An unprecedented Photo. Rocky Graziano in an unpublished outtake from the story “Rocky Graziano: He’s a Good Boy Now,” which ran on Valentine’s Day, 1950. It says a lot that Rock Graziano, who was coming back from a scandal, would allow this shot to be taken. Boxing was a subject Stanley Kubrick shot on a number of occasions for Look, and the depth at which he studied this subject, like this and the shot of Willie Beltram, below, paid dividends in the heightened realism he achieved in a few of his later Films.

-The assignments that tie directly into his later Films. These include a number of boxing stories, the Aqueduct Race Track story, the stories involving TV Productions, actors and actresses (ranging from Montgomery Clift, Zero Mostel, and Frank Sinatra, to the unknown Rosemary Williams), and his Naked City shoot.

Stanley Kubrick posed this shot from the “Subway” series in 1947. How do we know this? That’s his future wife, Toba Metz (who he married in May, 1948) on the left, who appears in other shots in the series. More on this shot in BookMarks, at the end.

-Which shots did he pose? (As far as is known).

Why is all of this necessary? While there have been shows like this fine show and others in Europe, they, and the books just scratch the surface. They only reveal part of the story, only presenting a limited glimpse of the whole body of work, due to its size, which Professor Rainer Crone says is 12,000 Photographs. The books that have been published thus far (all but one of them out of print) each contain between 2 and about 400 hundred. Even if you have all of them in front of you (I have three), you still only get to see part of any one story he shot! Stanley, like most staff Photographers at Look, shot a lot of Photographs for their stories to allow the editors the widest leeway in making their selection (I wasn’t able to determine if he ever made the selections himself, or had any say in it. It would appear he did not.). With, say, 250 images for a given story, almost– none of his assignments have been published complete thus far (as far as I can tell). This is incredibly frustrating and, of course, it does not allow a full assessment of his work- even on one assignment.

Willie Beltram, October/November, 1947, from an unpublished story, the first time SK shot boxers, a subject he would return to a few times at Look, and in his early Films, Day of the Fight and Killer’s Kiss. In those films, too, he would get right into the ring and very close to the action. It seems to me it also looks ahead to the carnage he graphically depicted in Paths of Glory and Full Metal Jacket.

Is it practical to release tens of thousands of Photographs? One look at the ten volume(!) set Taschen published of the existing material for Stanley Kubrick’s unmade Film, Napoleon, which includes 15,000 location Photos AND 17,000 “slides of Napoleonic imagery” (though shown at a large thumbnail size) would seem to say- “Where there’s a will? There’s a way.” After being immersed in this work for the better part of the past 4 months, I believe it is important enough that it needs to be done, and I predict someone will do it- one day (and I say that knowing nothing about the politics/legalities involved with, and between, the Kubrick Estate, the Library of Congress, and the MCNY). After pouring over the show, the existing web resources, and the 3 books I have (which together include about 8 or 900 images, though some are duplicated), my desire to see more has only grown. Given the unlikeliness of Stanley Kubrick’s Films diminishing in interest or importance any time soon this need will only remain, if not grow. From my study, I’ll say this-

I’m absolutely convinced there is more to learn about Stanley Kubrick, the Director, in this body of work- his Look Photographs, than there is anywhere else besides his actual Films and his interviews.

Weegee? No. Stanley Kubrick during the prodcution of the Weegee inspired film, Naked City. Speaking of “Street Photography,” it’s interesting to note that both Stanley Kubrick and Garry Winogrand were born in the Bronx in 1928. For perspective, Diane Arbus, who knew Stanley during his Look days, was born in 1923.

Put them all online, perhaps in a joint website. Maybe that’s the most practical way. Arrange them by story assignment-unpublished or not, in chronological order. Reproduce each magazine story, when there is one, follow that with all the Photographs, published and unpublished (uncropped, full size, since they were cropped on occasion in the magazine), in the order they were taken, and also include the contact sheets, would be my suggestion. Whether this all comes out as a book, or series of books, perhaps by year? That’s up to a publisher. I think it would find buyers. Is this going to be a popular series? No. Then again, no “catalog rainsonne” is a best seller. It’s for specialists. It’s for those passionately interested in the Artist’s (Stanley Kubrick’s) work, and for those seeking to learn from his path. It’s probably not for the everyday lover of Photography, though a well produced summary volume might be reasonably popular. (See BookMarks at the end for more on the existing books and some recommendations.)

Four Photographs from the unpublished “Naked City,” assignment,  July 31, 1947. Stanley Kubrick went to shoot the production of the Film Noir movie, which took its name from Weegee’s famous book. Weegee was someone Stanley Kurbrick admired, and years later hired him as Still Photographer on Dr. Strangelove. Here, Stanley got to watch Director Jules Dassin (upper right) work and observe the production. None of this would be lost on him. His early Films, Killer’s Kiss, and the terrific The Killing are both Film Noir and both shot in the city.

Experts, including German Professor Rainer Crone (the first person to research this body of work, with Stanley Kubrick’s personal blessing, mount exhibitions of it and write the first books on it) mention a few stories, in particular, as being springboards to the future career of Stanley Kubrick. Many agree that his Look shoot of the filming of the Film Noir classic Naked City was a key moment, giving him an inside look at a rare movie production going on at the time in a big city. Boxing assignments were also influential. He shot Rocky Graziano and relatively unknown boxer Walter Cartier. In 1951 Stanley Kubrick made a 12 minute documentary short Film entitled Day of the Fight following the same Walter Cartier around from wake up until after the final K.O., veritably recreating his Look story, “Prizefighter,” on Film. In that sense, this marked the beginning of the end for Stanley Kubrick at Look. In addition, late in his career at Look, his assignments brought him more and more often into contact with TV Productions, actors and actresses. All of these experiences proved “educational” for him for where he would go next.

In the article “Prizefighter,” featuring the boxer Walter Cartier, the subtitle of this section is “The Day of a Fight.”

By this point, he had seen what he needed to see to begin making films, down to knowing what equipment he’d need, where to get it and how much it would cost to rent. Long desiring to make Documentaries, he turned the Walter Cartier “Prizefighter” story into one.

Screenshot of the title card of Day of the Fight, 1951, his first film, at age 25, which runs a bit over 12 minutes, and which he Photographed.

Stanley Kubrick’s early films carry this credit-

His credit line in Killer’s Kiss, 1955. He also wrote the story. See the Appendix for more screenshots that are reminiscent of SK’s Look Photos.

“Photographed by Stanley Kubrick.” Today, we would call it “Cinematography.” But, I think the term “Photographed” is telling. Eventually, by the The Killing, 1956, unionization forced him to hire a Cinematographer11. Yet, SK would continue to look through the viewfinder (and there are countless shots of his on his sets doing just that) and the camera, and continue to shoot Film on occasion.

Photographer/Director Shane Rocheleau at the NYABF, September 22, 2018.

Fascinated by the difference between shooting still Photographs and Film, I reached out to a man who has experience creating both- Shane Rocheleau. The subject of a Q&A I did in September, 2018,  I even mentioned Stanley Kubrick in describing his talents in my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2018, saying that his first PhotoBook, You are Masters of the Fish and Birds and All the Animals, or YAMOTFABAATA as it reads on the spine, was “edited like a Stanley Kubrick Film.” I’m not sure there’s a higher invocation I could give someone in Photography or Film. In addition to being an exceptionally talented Photographer, Shane Rocheleau is already proving to be one of the new masters of PhotoBook editing & sequencing. During my research into him, I also discovered that he is a Film Director. I reached out to him, and he confirmed this for me, and sent along this link where his Film, Tide, 2009, that he also wrote, can be seen. I asked him about the differences between shooting still Photographs and Film. He said-

“I can’t pretend to speak for a genius like Kubrick, but I’ll give you a bit of insight into the differences between creating photographs and creating films, for me. To clarify first, though:  I am not a documentary photographer, and I am not an experimental filmmaker. If I were both, my answers below would, maybe, flip-flop. What I know of Kubrick, he, like me, was not a documentary photographer nor an experimental filmmaker.

When I hear the word “conceptual” placed in proximity with “art”, it means something very specific to me. Namely, it means that the artist’s conclusion was rendered before the art was executed. Plans were made. The resulting art product serves to explain, announce, demonstrate, manifest, etc. knowledge or forms the artist has already resolved (The God of Genesis appears to have been a conceptual artist). While when making films I may be unsure of the knowledge I’m attempting to disseminate, but my narratives and forms are usually fairly well determined. Story, arc, shots, and sequences are imagined prior, and props, actors, location, etc. are fairly settled. My film will have some room to grow or morph at every step in the creative process; however, I view the overall arc of its making to be well aligned with my idea of conceptual art:  I imagine the film first, then execute its making.

For me, the photographic process operates in contrast with conceptual art. While I usually begin a photography project with an idea, never in my experience has that idea remained intact through to the end; on the contrary, I always learn I was wrong. The photographic process is inherently about discovery. Even when I presage a photograph, the final product reveals something very new, often even contradictory. Rather than marked by understanding, my ideas are rended by my photographs. Confusion necessarily ensues, and meaning emerges as I let go of certainty, make unexpected pictures, sequence and pair the absurd, and indulge discovery. The final project is a new growth, a new understanding. Contrary to a conceptual process, once I resolve my ideas, I’m done.”

After making 3 short Documentary Films (Day of the Fight, Flying Padre, both 1951, and The Seafarers, 1953), he realized that the only way to make enough money to sustain a career was in making feature Films. By then, he had quit is job at Look and would never look back. He would make his first feature Film, Fear and Desire, later in 1953, which he also “Photographed.”

In order to look a little closer at the similarities between Stanley Kubrick’s early Films and his Look Photographs, I’ve created an Appendix that appears below this piece (or, here) that includes screenshots from the first part of his second feature Film, Killer’s Kiss, 1955, “Photographed” by SK, that look similar to me to some of his Photographs I’ve shown here.

Beyond these similarities, the influence of his still Photography lived on in his later work, even after he was working with other Cinematographers. For one thing, he is often seen holding a still film camera on the set.

Stanley Kubrick on the set of Spartacus– with THREE still cameras around his neck! Mr. Rocheleau thought that he was shooting for pleasure, given the smile on his face. The reason would seem to not be an instant need to see the Photos since the film would need to be developed. *From the Stanley Kurbrick Archives. 

As his vision matured, and his resources (and budget) increased, it largely outstripped what we see in his Look Photographs. One significant remaining holdover was Stanley Kubrick continued to rely on a still camera, now a Polaroid instant camera, to take Photos to see how the scene looked in two dimensions and to check colors, continuity, and for other reasons,. on the sets of many of his films, including the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

For those looking for evidence of the lasting  effect of Stanley Kubrick’s still Photography career and experience on his Films, this may be the defining image. With his Polaroid Pathfinder 110A on the set of 2001. *From the Stanley Kurbrick Archives. 

I’ve seen estimates that SK shot 10,000 Polaroids during the production of 2001. In the book The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, 1970, Jeremy Bernstein’s 1966 Profile of Stanley Kubrick, originally published in The New Yorker, is reprinted. In it, Mr. Bernstein says, “I asked Kubrick what he needed the Polaroid for, and he explained that he used it for checking subtle lighting effects for color film. He and the director of photography, Geoffrey Unsworth, had worked out a correlation between how the lighting appeared on the instantly developed Polaroid film and the settings on the movie camera12.” He continued to use it, as he does here, on Full Metal Jacket, 1987-

Stanley hands a freshly shot Polaroid print to an associate as it develops on the set of Full Metal Jacket where he appears to still be using his Polaroid Pathfinder 110A, some 20 years after 2001. *From the Stanley Kurbrick Archives. 

Perhaps by his last Film, Eyes Wide Shut, 1999, he was using an early digital camera, or perhaps he still preferred to see the image instantly on a print. A lover of new technologies, who knows what he would have been doing or how he would have been working today. Whatever the means, the value of his early training as a still Photographer would, no doubt, have still been paying off for him.

Given the level of his talent and his vision it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that as we approach the 20th anniversary of his death on March 7, 1999, next month, there is still much to discover about, and in, the work of Stanley Kubrick.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “My Old School” by Walter Becker & Donald Fagan of Steely Dan, recorded on their second album, Countdown to Ecstasy, 1973. (Yes, it’s on Countdown to Ecstasy. I have no idea why the producers of this video show the cover of Can’t Buy A Thirll.)

The Appendix to this Post, Stanley Kubrick: A Photographer’s Odyssey-Appendix, is below, following BookMarks, or here.


BookMarks-

If you like what you find on NighthawkNYC, I hope you’ll consider supporting it so that I can continue to spend the countless hours and pay the expenses it takes to keep it going these past 3+ years-without ads. If so, you can also make a donation through PayPal by clicking on the box to the right of the banner at the top of the page that will take you to the Donation button. Your support is VERY much appreciated. Thank you!

As I said above, this body of work is vast and covers 5 years. The issue of how to approach it becomes Question One for anyone attempting to make a book about it. To date, all the books I’ve seen have been focused on exploring it. None have attempted to present the complete picture or look at this work in light of what came after (a book with tens of thousands of Photogaphs would be massive, even if it consisted of thumbnails, like Gerhard Richter’s Atlas). The 3 books I’ve seen thus far all take the same approach- an historical look at selected stories and images and only occasionally mention his later Film career13 For a variety of reasons, none of these books is “the” definitive book on Stanley Kubrick’s Look Photographs, in my opinion. The books are-

Stanley Kubrick Photographs: Through a Different Lens, published by Taschen in conjunction with the MCNY, and its curators, Sean Corcoran and Donald Albrecht, in 2018, is the catalog for this show. The only book currently in print on the subject of Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs, it contains about 300 of them, over 332 pages that are split between beautiful full-page and double page reproductions of single Photographs and reproductions of the Look Magazine stories they ran in. Unpublished assignments are also included. After the initial essays, the remainder of the book is arranged by year and assignment.

An outtake from “Life and Love on the New York Subway,” March 4, 1947, beautifully reproduced across 2 pages, which results in an image size of 26 1/2 by 22 inches! Compared with the shot posted earlier (from an online source), the man’s position has changed and the Photographer has moved closer. How do I know this hasn’t been cropped? This image appears on a strip from the contact sheet published in the Stanley Kubrick Archives.

The best thing about this book, in my opinion, is its size- It’s BIG. 10.8 x 13.2 x 1.5 inches and clocking in at 6.6 pounds. Unlike most recent very large PhotoBooks, this one takes continual advantage of its acreage, often going edge to edge14 This presents the opportunity to see selected landscape oriented Photos at the incredible size of 26 1/2 by 22 inches, as seen above!  The chance to see Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs in a large size does not exist, nor has it ever existed, outside of this book. EVEN in the show (save for a handful of wall size blowups, like the sign shown earlier)! Here you get to see many of its 300 images in full page, 10.8 x 13.2 inch, reproductions. Taschen’s history with XL size books is to make them smaller with each succeeding incarnation. So? If you want to see these images big, this may be your only chance to do so. As such, I expect this first edition will retain lasting interest with Kubrickians (did I just coin that term? I doubt it) indefinitely. As for its shortcomings, I am unhappy with some of the assignments included (Guy Lombardo shown at home. Why?) and those left out which have a direct import on his subsequent Film career. Therefore, it seems to me the editors may have intended this book to be a general interest book. Second, the images in this book are reproduced with a depth of blacks I haven’t seen before. The images in the show were also printed similarly as you can see in my piece. Nothing is said in the book (or in the show) about how these prints were made. In the Preface, Whitney Donhauser only states, “The Kubrick Archive has been photographed, scanned and retouched by…” Compare the one above to the other images below, the sources of which are not stated either. Also, the images on the MCNY website are darker than those on the Library of Congress site. I’m not sure what to make of this but it’s something to be aware of. In my opinion, the curators/editors should have addressed and clarified this somewhere. Overall, I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in seeing these Photographs large, and for those interested in this body of work not wanting to spend rare book prices for the out of print titles. Recommended with reservations.

Rainer Crone’s SK: Drama and Shadows, published by Phaidon in 2005

The other books on Stanley Kubrick’s Photographs are all either out of print, not in English, or both. Of these, Professor Rainer Crone is the man behind those I know of. He was the first one to show this work, with Mr. Kubrick’s blessing, and he has produced, I believe, 3 books about it so far. The most well known of these is the hardcover Stanley Kubrick: Drama & Shadows, published (in English) by Phaidon in 2005. Good, or better, copies can be found for 65.00 and up. It is very well done, does not give any evidence of cropping, though the reproductions do not have the depths of blacks the Taschen book has. The supporting texts are quite informative and reveal Mr. Crone’s ongoing interest in, and dedication to, this work. While its selection fills in some of the gaps in the Taschen book, again, I felt frustrated by some of what was left out (as I will be until a way is found to see all of this work).

A sample image, from SK’s “Aqueduct Racetrack: Hope, Despair and Habit” assignment, March, 1947, which I feel is important for its possible influence on his film The Killing, 1956, about a race track heist.

The front flap says it contains 400 Photographs over 240 pages of a good paper stock. Recommended, if you can find a copy in good condition at a reasonable price.

Rainer Crone’s SK Fotographie, the catalog accompanying a 2010 show in Milan.

I have one of Rainer Crone’s other books, Stanley Kubrick Fotographie, 1945-50, a large softcover book, though its text is only in Italian. This is frustrating because it’s the most recent of Rainer Crone’s books (I believe), being the catalog accompanying a show he curated in Milan in 2010. It includes interesting supplements, including a list of published Look articles and Photos of the covers of (all?) of those issues (Stanley Kubrick shot a few of the covers in color, but those are shown in black & white here). I don’t know the total image count over its 255 pages, but it includes more images in some of the series than the Taschen book. It is, however, extremely hard to find- much more so than Drama & Shadows. Recommended for specialists in SK’s Photographs.

A sample image shows another shot from the “How A Monkey Looks to People…How People Look to a Monkey,” assignment, from August, 1946. As you can see, the images here appear darker than in SK: Drama and Shadows. Perhaps it is using the digitized MCNY sources.

The body of literature on Stanley Kubrick and his Films is large and outside the scope of this piece, however one book must be mentioned and singled out from that body for its sheer uniqueness and extraordinary value- The Stanley Kubrick Archives began life as a 2005 Taschen XXL book that came with a filmstrip from Stanley Kubrick’s copy of 2001 that now sells for hundreds of dollars on the rare book market. More recently reissued in one of their small brick books it lists for 19.95. I mention it because it has a very interesting first chapter that discusses Stanley Kubrick’s Photography, along with countless Photographs of Mr. Kubrick at work, and a very large number of rare items from his own collection & archives. All of this makes it an essential book for anyone interested in Stanley Kubrick- Photographer or Filmmaker.

Finally, I have it on good account that some first edition copies of Shane Rocheleau’s first PhotoBook, YAMOTFABAATA, the only First PhotoBook to be listed among my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of 2018, are still available from Gnomic Book, here.

My thanks to Shane Rocheleau and Mary Flanagan of the Museum of the City of New York.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs, published by Taschen in conjunction with this show, henceforth Exhibition Catalog, Preface
  2. “Ive always said the two people who are worthy of film study are Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles as representing the two most diverse approaches to filmmaking.” Stanley Kubrick: Interviews, P. 79
  3. Jeremy Bernstein Audio Interview, 11/27/1966
  4. The Stanley Kubrick Archives, P.13
  5.  Exhibition Catalog, P.10
  6.  Jeremy Bernstein Audio Interview, 11/27/1966
  7. Jeremy Bernstein Audio Interview, 11/27/1966
  8. Exhibition Catalog, P.9, quoted from Michael Herr, Kubrick, P. 4
  9. //www.brainyquote.com/authors/stanley_kubrick
  10. //www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd97Og-20Yc&app=desktop
  11. Stanley Kubrick Archives P.110
  12. The Making of Kubrick’s 2001, Edited by Jerome Agel, P.68
  13. The third book is in Italian, so I have no idea what it’s essays discuss.
  14. Since many of these images have never been previously published, I have no way of comparing them, so I don’t know if there is any cropping going on here. I seriously hope not and I am writing this under the assumption there is not. If you can prove differently, please let me know.

Stanley Kubrick: A Photographer’s Odyssey- Appendix

Written by Kenn Sava

As a supplement to my look at the recent show,  Through a Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, here are a few screenshots from the first part of  Stanley Kubrick’s second feature Film, Killer’s Kiss, 1955, that remind me of some of his Look Magazine Photographs I showed in the piece. Killer’s Kiss is a film noir that revolves around a boxer, a taxi dancer and her boss, and runs 67 minutes.

Killer’s Kiss Title. Shot in the now lost Penn Station, who’s destruction eight years later in 1963, was one of the greatest cultural tragedies in NYC history.

Notice the word “Photographed.” He also wrote the story. As he said in interviews, he “did everything” in his Films at this time to save money, perhaps symbolized by the gent on the right sweeping up.

Boxer Davey Gordon (Jamie Smith) studies his face. It’s hard to look at this and not see the portraits of Show Girl Rosemary Williams applying lipstick at her mirror in 1947, posted in my piece. I think we can imagine from that shot just where SK is standing to shoot this.

Davey feeds his fish. This shot is an interesting “counterpoint” to the “What People Look Like to Monkeys” shots.

Stanley Kubrick extends the metaphor from the fishbowl to the “fishbowl-like” world New Yorkers live in, as Davey looks across the way at his neighbor Gloria. We cut to Gloria who spends 16 seconds looking back after Davey has turned away.

Heading off to the fight, Davey takes the subway, conveniently allowing SK to reprise his Look subway shots. Ahhh…subways with ceiling fans.

Gloria is a taxi dancer, at work she allows SK to use his experience shooting couples dancing in nightclubs, seen in a few Look assignments.

Meanwhile, Davey gets knocked out and loses, allowing SK to shot him as he did Willie Beltram earlier for Look.

All of this takes place in the first 16 minutes of the Film! I stopped here to give you a chance to see the Film for yourself and see what you find. And then? There’s this-

The original poster. Wait one second! Where else have I seen an AXE in a Stanley Kubrick Film? In front of the color “Red” no less…


BookMarks

Killer’s Kiss, 1956, starring Frank Silvera, Irene Kane and Jamie Smith, is highly recommended to Stanley Kubrick aficionados who don’t know it, and to those interested in his Look Photographs.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

Dana Schutz- Painting in an Earthquake

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Dana Schutz, right, at her opening on January 10th.

When I last saw work by Dana Schutz it was in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, where her Painting, Open Casket, was met with controversy, a boycott, and calls that the work a) be taken down, even b) destroyed.

Painting in an Earthquake, 2019, 94 x 88 inches, seen in the Atrium gallery visible from 18th Street. It sets the stage while standing apart from the rest of the show. Though it’s seen 10 days into the New Year, it’s dated 2019. Every other work is dated 2018. (I thought I could detect the smell of drying paint in the galleries.)

Neither happened, and after the show ended, the Artist found refuge from the controversy by returning to Painting.

Installation view of the Sculpture in the first gallery.

On January 10th, 2019, she opened Dana Schutz: Imagine Me and You, at Petzel Gallery, 456 West 18th Street, her first NYC solo show since the ’17 Biennial, and surprised me by including 5 Sculptures for the first time. While I immediately thought of the late, great Jack Whitten and his “second career” as a Sculptor that almost no one knew about during his lifetime, these are all dated 2018, and there was no indication if she had made any before. The Sculptures, which were molded in clay and then cast in bronze (per the press release), are shown in the first gallery, which means they are definitely not an “afterthought.”

Washing Monsters, 2018, All Paintings are Oil on canvas, 94 x 87 inches.

With the 2019 Whitney Biennial scheduled to open on May 17th, the show provides an opportunity  to see what an alumnus has been up to since 2017.

Mountain Group, 2018, Oil on canvas, 120 x 156 inches.

On the one hand, there’s much in her new Paintings that would seem to come right out of late Philip Guston, but overall, it seems to me, in the end, she moves past it to achieve a fresh daring of her own, particularly in Washing Monsters, shown above, Beat Out The Sun and Treadmill, shown further on.

Strangers, 2018, 88×84. Almost everything about this screams “late Philip Guston,” though the longer I looked at it, I moved past it.

Almost nothing feels still. Everything’s in motion.

Treadmill, 2018, 90 x 96 inches One thing I particularly like about these Paintings is her palette.

Even the Sculpture.

Head in the Wind, 2018, Bronze, 22x14x22 inches.

The paint is often applied thickly,

Here, the paint even casts its own shadows on the lower part. Touched, 2018, 30 x 26 inches.

which makes the inclusion of Sculpture in the show even more appropriate.

The Visible World, 2018, 108 x 140 inches.

The Sculpture both compliments and echoes the Paintings and the two combine for a show that is not overly large, in terms of the number of works, but feels unified.

Presenter, 2018, 88 x 88 inches

It’s hard not to look at this work for signs of the effect of the controversy on it, and there are a number of passages that would seem to lend themselves to such an interpretation. But, overall, these works reward extended, and repeat, looking. In the brand new day of 2019, Dana Schutz’ Art is alive and well.

Beat Out the Sun, 2018, 94 x 87 inches

While this show runs through February 23rd, I’ll be curious to hear who has been chosen to be in this year’s Biennial– particularly among Painters and Photographers. Stay tuned.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Brand New Day,” by Van Morrison from Moondance, 1970.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

Charles White’s Final Mural

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (*unless otherwise credited)

Charles White at work on the mural, Mary McLeod Bethune, in 1978, the year before his passing. *Photo by Frank J. Thomas. Click any photo for full size.

A pendant to the Charles White Retrospective recently at MoMA, David Zwirner mounted Charles White: Monumental Practice and Charles White: Selected Works, both on the 2nd floor of 537 West 20th Street. The former featured studies for Charles White’s Mary McLeod Bethune Mural, the last mural and major work the Artist would complete in his lifetime, honoring a great teacher who believed in “uplifting people through learning1.” The Presentation Study, and 4 monumental ink and chalk Drawings that range between 87 and 96 inches (8 feet!) tall, each, were accompanied by other preparatory Drawings and ephemera. Together, they reveal the course of Charles White’s final major work, and add more pieces to the picture of Charles White’s extraordinary accomplishment.

The Presentation Study, 1977-8, without the text, squared up for transfer, shows a child with an open book.

Taking a closer look at his final major work offers a rare look at his working method. Each of the Studies is lined with a grid and diagonals to help transfer the composition to the mural. The Presentation Study offers a  rare chance to see Charles White’s late style in full color. (Most of the late works in the MoMA Retrospective were monochrome.)

Study for Mary McLeod Bethune’s portrait

The mural shares the same grid pattern background overlaid with text seen in Charles White’s Wanted Poster series from 1969 through the early 1970s, and a strong woman as the central figure. The text, in this case, being Mary McLeod Bethune’s Last Will and Testament.

Studies for Mary McLeod Bethune Mural (Guitar Player, Seated Child with Book, and Seated Woman), 1977, Ink on charcoal on paper in 3 parts. The Seated Child is particularly interesting as the figure is off-center. Perhaps the rest of the sheet wss lost, but when seen close up, it still contains the grid and the diagonals to allow it to be properly placed in the larger composition.

In fact these huge Drawings need to be seen close up. Only then can you get a full appreciation of, and marvel at,  Charles White’s mastery of Drawing and Draftsmanship, and the amount of work each of these contains.

Detail of Study for Mary McLeod Behune showing Charles White’s mastery of the age old technique of cross-hatching. Particularly noteworthy for me in this are the hands. Notoriously difficult to render, I always pay attention to how an Artist renders hands. Charles White’s hands changed dramatically over his career, as I pointed out in my Post on the Retrospective, before he settled on this realistic style. Her hands are rendered here with particular strength and beauty. They are a focal point for the entire mural.

The second gallery contains additional studies and ephemera including Photos of the work in progress and documents regarding the project reveling the road Charles White had to traverse to do this project.

Installation view of the second gallery with ephemera in the vitrines.

It concludes with this picture of the finished Mural installed in the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Library, Exposition Park, Los Angeles. Charles White was paid just $3,000.00 for it2!

The mural which measures approximately 5 by 7 feet, installed in the Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Libray as it looks today.

In the third gallery, where Charles White: Selected Works was on view, showing a variety of works from the 1930s through the 1950s, two works stood out to me. First, is the fascinating Landscape, ca. 1957-9. It was hard for me to look at this and not be reminded of Cezanne’s planar style in the mountains, with a more flattened geometric landscape in the foreground, and a sky that has as many colors as some bodies of water. It’s a fascinating look at a rare landscape done while Charles White was exploring some of the many styles he had at his fingertips.

Landscape, c.1957-59, Oil on board, 36 x 24 inches.

Directly across from it is the powerfully haunting Homage to Attica, one of the few watercolors by Charles White I’ve seen. Unlike the mysterious figure in his masterpiece, Black Pope, who’s eyes are hidden by sunglaasses, here, we get to the shrouded subject’s eyes, and only his eyes.

Homage to Attica, 1972, Watercolor on paper, 11 x 54 inches.

While the Retrospective closed at MoMA on January 13th, and now moves to LACMA in Charles White’s last home town, L.A., where it will open on February 17th and run through June 9th, the David Zwirner shows are up until February 16th.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Ol’ Man River,” by Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein from Showboat as sung by Paul Robeson, one of Charles White’s frequent subjects, in 1937-

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

 

  1. Charles White: A Retrospective Exhibition Catalog, P.136
  2. http://www.publicartinla.com/LA_murals/USC/charles_white_mural.html