After having read the article about “gallerinas” (that I got so angry about here), I talked to a couple of female friends about how the article described the role of women: Smart is good, but looks are more important. Even though my friends live on different continents - one in the US, one in Europe, they both basically wrote the same thing, namely (paraphrased) “We’ll, we women are quite used to be being treated like that.” For me, that’s unacceptable; even though one could point out that it’s easy for me to say that since I’m a man, and I don’t have to deal with it. But then sexism - just like racism - can (in fact: should) be offensive also for people who are not subjected to it. In any case, on her blog, Cara Phillips (the American friend I had talked to) just published a long discussion of this general topic - a very recommended read! Update (6 April): Check out this follow-up post!
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Ed Winkleman (himself a gallerist) pointed me to this article about gallery staff and the amount of friendliness they usually have on display (exceptions, of course, merely confirm the rule). Needless to say, I do understand some of the issues raised there: If you come into an art gallery just to take a literal or “just” a verbal piss and then get ignored or treated “rudely”, should that surprise you?
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I know no other movie that uses music to such a devastating effect as Apocalypse Now, to unmask war as what it really is (if you haven’t seen the movie, watch the “Redux” version, which is longer and even better), and the helicopter attack on the Vietnamese village to Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”, perfectly edited, is a masterpiece of cinema. It’s quite interesting to see how the movie scene compares with the scene from the corresponding opera (it’s Die Walküre, at the beginning of the third act), here the Bayreuth 1976 version. The one thing that I always wondered about Apocalypse Now is why Coppola did not use the operatic version, where the singing adds an intense layer of outright creepiness over the music, which on its own is quite kitschy actually. Watch the whole thing with the singers just standing there (in a regular concert; actually it seems they really want to act it out, if you see how they move when they’re singing) - somehow, the whole piece works quite differently, doesn’t it?
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Since I am German (and thus European) American friends of mine often tell me how in Europe things are just so much better, which is, of course, the mirror sentiment of the smugness one often runs across in the European press when the latest American scandal is discussed. Take shopping, for example, and here the chain Walmart serves as a nice example. Walmart abandoned Germany after a few years of trying to break into the market, and my American friends tend to think that’s because Germans just hate that kind of business and everything Walmart stands for. Not so. Well, they did hate Walmart (in the just so slightly different cultural context of Germany, old people greeting you at the door are simply creepy, and those employee rituals to boost morale reminded Germans way too much of times past), but the main reason why Walmart had no chance was because German discount chains are even more ruthless. To wit: Germany’s Lidl chain was just caught spying on its workers.
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If you feel like almost going back to the days when you’d record your own set of music to create a “mix tape”, Muxtape is where you want to be. Check out Noah K.’s or Raul G.’s or mine.
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Another must-read: The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib. Noteworthy this description of why the most well-known Abu Ghraib photo is iconic: “The image […] achieves its power from the fact that it does not show the human form laid bare and reduced to raw matter but creates instead an original image of inhumanity that admits no immediately self-evident reading. Its fascination resides, in large part, in its mystery and inscrutability - in all that is concealed by all that it reveals. […] The picture transfixes us because it looks like the truth, but, looking at it, we can only imagine what that truth is: torture, execution, a scene staged for the camera? So we seize on the figure […] as a symbol that stands for all that we know was wrong at Abu Ghraib and all that we cannot - or do not want to - understand about how it came to this.”
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“The release of the Paris Hilton vehicle The Hottie and the Nottie has revived the debate as to which is the worst motion picture ever made. […] Anyone can make a bad movie; Kate Hudson and Adam Sandler make them by the fistful. […] Anyone can make an unwatchable movie; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. And anyone can make a comedy that is not funny; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. But to make a movie that destroys a studio, wrecks careers, bankrupts investors, and turns everyone connected with it into a laughing stock requires a level of moxie, self-involvement, lack of taste, obliviousness to reality and general contempt for mankind that the average director, producer and movie star can only dream of attaining. […] To qualify as one of the worst films of all time, several strict requirements must be met. For starters, a truly awful movie must have started out with some expectation of not being awful. That is why making a horrific, cheapo motion picture that stars [Paris] Hilton or Jessica Simpson is not really much of an accomplishment. Did anyone seriously expect a film called The Hottie and The Nottie not to suck? […] There is one other requirement for a movie to be considered one of the worst ever: it must keep getting worse. By this, I mean that it not only must keep getting worse while you are watching it, but it must, upon subsequent viewings, seem even worse than the last time you saw it. […] Madonna’s Swept Away […] seems more amateurish on each viewing, like a morass that starts out as a quagmire, then morphs into a cesspool and finally turns into a slime pit on the road to its ultimate destination in the bowels of Hell.” - full meditation on what makes a truly terrible movie
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A little while ago, Alex Ross recommended Carl Wilson’s Let’s Talk About Love, and based on what he wrote in that post I thought I might as well read it. I don’t know much about Céline Dion’s music (I don’t listen to the radio, and I don’t watch much TV), but from what I know her music is the musical equivalent of Annie Liebovitz’s photography: It fits perfectly into the kind of stuff churned out by major corporations - blockbuster movies or ads for amusement parks - but beyond that… Which is the same kind of attitude that Carl Wilson had towards Céline Dion’s music before he decided to dig into it and to learn about what is behind all it and, especially, to see whether he was maybe wrong and missing something entirely. So I thought that maybe by reading Let’s Talk About Love I could learn a little bit more about how to approach tacky kitsch, to move beyond simple reflexes and to maybe discover something. Having made it through about a third of the book, my original intent might prove to be more complicated than anticipated (now there’s a surprise), but Let’s Talk About Love has already proven to be well worth the money. A truly recommended read, very well written and full of surprises.
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“In 2002 Werner Bab, a Holocaust survivor, and Christian Ender met in the Jewish Museum in Berlin. This spontaneous meeting soon led to the general question what a citizen could do against right-wing radicalism, against the oblivion concerning the Holocaust, for the promotion of human rights and international understanding on a social level. Furthermore Werner Bab wanted to come into contact with school classes to give them a firsthand warning as a witness of the Holocaust against the consequences of totalitarian regimes. The idea to make a documentary as an introduction to the discussions with a contemporary witness of the Holocaust resulted in the DVD Production ‘Time Intervals’ (Zeitabschnitte), which by now is available with subtitles in 19 languages.” (source) The full movie can be viewed online.
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I found this clip (along with another one) on Harper’s blog, and I’m somewhat torn about it, for a large variety of reasons. The use of the historical photograph at the end, I’m sure, will make some people quite uncomfortable; but I do think there’s a very valid point there.
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When I tell people that I now live in “Western Massachusetts”, they often have no idea what or where that is (in all fairness, I didn’t know, either - but then I also was not born in this country, so at least I have an excuse). Calling Northampton, where I now live, the ‘new weird America’ is probably nothing more than the kind of embellishment you’d expect to hear from an aging alternative rock star who decided to move here (to rationalize not living in New York City), but this article is quite a bit more accurate: “The Pioneer Valley is arguably the most author-saturated, book-cherishing, literature-celebrating place in the nation.” For someone who loves browsing for books (and who hates the corporate book supermarkets) this area is just ideal, and it sure helps that it’s also intensely beautiful, in a very quiet way (make sure to check out the slide show of book stores in this area).
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Something light for the weekend: Are you familiar with the weirdest town names in Germany and Europe?
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I mentioned Britain’s love with extreme surveillance before (see this story), which turns every citizen into a would-be criminal. If you decide to spend your vacation in London, say, you’ll find it next to impossible to miss the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, installed, as the story goes, to prevent crime (an almost unprovable and thus politically very useful assertion). And indeed the cameras are extremely useful to identify suspects in those very crimes they didn’t deter in the first place.
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Here’s a little BBC programme called “The Man Who Eats Badgers” (and whose wife is a vegetarian). What fascinates me about this is how in that man’s personal Universe, things just make perfect sense. I think it’s those extreme cases when we can learn something about ourselves.
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Germany’s conservatives - the people who’d later claim they never saw anything coming - allowed Hitler to form a coalition government with them, with Hitler as Chancellor. Lest we forget how this started. Update: A truly wonderful commentary with a bit of the bigger picture why/how this anniversary concerns us today by Scott Horton.
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This via bldgblog: “Unsold copies of ROBBIE WILLIAMS’ latest album will soon be used to resurface Chinese roads. The solo star’s record label EMI has confirmed that over one million copies of RUDEBOX will be crushed and sent to the country to be recycled. The products will be used in street lighting and road surfacing projects.” (story)
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“Helmut Schmidt, former German chancellor, former minister of defense and co-publisher of the influential weekly newspaper Die Zeit, is being accused of breaking the law — for violating Germany’s new ban on smoking in public places. Committed smokers Helmut Schmidt and his wife Loki - aged a lung-cancer-defying 89 and 88, respectively - are being investigated by Hamburg public prosecutors under suspicion of breaking the smoking ban and endangering public health” - story
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“George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a ‘born again Christian.’ It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled ‘A Charge to Keep.’ […] in Bush’s view […] the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century. […] Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob.” - full story
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Today’s Man is a documentary that I just watched twice (on the two different PBS channels “basic” cable has to offer in Western Mass). I can only recommend it - it’s about a young man who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (“People with Asperger’s, which is a form of autism, tend to be highly intelligent - often geniuses in certain subjects - but are unable to pick up on social cues.” If you’re wondering why I’m so interested in this subject matter, have a look at this page).
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… come photos of the Public Schools Book Depository (ignore the somewhat kitschy HDR look of some of the photos if you can, and find a text about this here). I haven’t been to this country long enough not to be appalled when I see stuff like this.
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“Banksy attracts the press attention, but around him is an increasingly influential movement of political artists operating outside the mainstream” - story
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“Top photo agency X17 says a good Brit[ney Spears] shot can fetch over $100,000 (£50,000). They say her pictures account for 30 per cent of their total revenue. Last year they sold a total of $2.5 million (£1.25m), including those bald pictures of the her head-shaving session for $500,000 (£250K) alone. The agency’s competitors Splash say the singer makes up to 15 per cent of their total business. In total, the singer’s pictures account for an astonishing 20 per cent of the paparzzi business. And why is Britney on the cover of every damn magazine? Because she sells on average 1.28 million copies per issue, 33 per cent more on average than covers featuring other stars.” (story)
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Over the most recent holiday break, I did a lot of thinking about this blog and about where I can/might take things. I wish I could say that when I started out blogging I had a master plan, which included reaching thousands of people interested in photography all over the world, but that’s simply not the case. But not having such a plan, in fact not having any plan, meant that this blog has grown organically (a weird word to use for something that only exists as bits and bytes) and that I had to figure out on the fly what I would like to do.
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Conscientious’ correspondent in Dubai had this to say about getting a visit from Mr Bush: “The government closed down literally every bloody road, so that he could travel around safely without getting blown up. Then they realized that it would be chaos, so they declared a day off for everyone, which was great, apart from the fact that you couldn’t leave your house!”
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I often hear from Germans that one of the reasons why there is so little German participation in the international photo blog scene is because it’s in English, implying (or often actually uttering) that if everybody started to speak English that would basically be the end of German culture (this really wants to get me play that good old Götterdämmerung again). This argument is quite seriously flawed in many different ways; and even though my fingers have been itching to finally write down why, I have never found to the time to do so (especially since those Germans would never bother to read, let alone deal with it anyway since I would write it in English!). But now I came across this dumb article, written by a biophysicist, who argues that the German “academic language is on the verge of atrophy”, published - of course - in Germany’s major conservative newspaper. There’s really no point in taking this piece apart - an anecdote from my own academic career might suffice: Back in Munich, I once attended a seminar series, which, as far as I remember, was held at least partly in German. In my field - theoretical astrophysics/cosmology - there are no good German equivalents for many, if not most of the scientific terms, but one of my colleagues tried nevertheless. He had a hard time getting his point across, and the audience finally erupted in laughter when he suggested that when (translated back) two galaxies made love new stars would be born.
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… I was gonna post the Shmenge Brothers’ Christmas special, but it seems it doesn’t exist on YouTube. So instead, I’ll give you SCTV’s Dusty Towne Holiday Special.
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I sometimes think that as we get to see everything our imagination shrivels away: Is there any need to imagine something when you can literally see it somewhere? But then I also realize that imagination is tied to more than just the visual. Take the most recent Beowulf movie, which shows lots of “exciting” images (a digital Angelina Jolie, emerging golden and “naked” from some lake), but which does away with everything that makes the story exciting in the first place - to replace them with visual gimmicks (a digital Angelina Jolie, emerging golden and “naked” from some lake). So there is a bit more to imagination than just images (which, I think, makes photography so interesting - is the photography that truly moves us really just a set of images?). Maybe this is why I find this movie (taken by the Messenger satellite, which is bound for Mercury, the tiny planet closest to the Sun) so exciting: It’s a real movie, it shows our planet, rotating why the camera moves away - nothing left to the imagination… except, of course, that seeing what we might have imagined opens up a whole new way to look at - and thus to imagine - things.
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When trying to deposit fake money, make sure that the bill(s) at least exist(ed) at some stage: Man Tries to Deposit Fake $1M Bill.
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Found at things magazine: Karl-Hans Janke spent the final 40 years of his life in a psychiatric hospital, suffering from paranoia, schizophrenia, and possibly autism. His doctor noted the main symptom of his illness was “manic inventing”. You have to see the catalogue of a show about his work to believe it - note that most of the German texts appear in English translation a few pages later (unfortunately, the quotes by Wernher von Braun - which make you question his sanity - aren’t translated).
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It’s one of those ironies that the person who represented the Marlboro Man - the tough, rugged cowboy and face of the cigarette brand - died of lung cancer. In fact, there were two actors and both suffered from the same fate (see, for example, this page or this page). And it’s an added irony to read that James Blake Miller has had lots of problems, too. Mr Miller has been known as the “Marlboro Marine” from a photo Luis Sinco took - a terrible cliché war photograph if there ever was one.
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My new job entails a commute of about an hour, a little more than half of which is spent on a bus. Well, my choice of residence - Northampton instead of Amherst (where I work) - is responsible for this; and I don’t mind the commute at all, since I like to read. I am currently reading Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, which I couldn’t recommend more - provided you have an interest in either the (cultural) history of the 20th Century and/or “classical” music. If you want to get an idea of the style and contents of the book, check out Alex Ross’ article about Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, which also appears in the book.
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“Journalists often call publicists ‘flacks’ and publicists call journalists ‘hacks,’ though rarely in earshot of one another. But the gloves came off last week after Chris Anderson, the executive editor of Wired magazine, chided ‘lazy flacks’ who deluge him with news releases ‘because they can’t be bothered to find out who on my staff, if anyone, might actually be interested in what they’re pitching.’ (story) You can find an interview with Chris Anderson about the story here. Highlight: “I was particularly amused when PR people attempted to organize a class-action lawsuit against me - in my own comments! That’s in addition to publishing my home address and hacking my Wikipedia entry. Turns out that PR people can be very effective when they want to be - I only wish they’d targeted me so efficiently on behalf of their clients, rather than just for themselves.” And then there’s a discussion about the situation in commercial photography here.
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If you turn over your couch cushions and happen to find US$436.95 and if you don’t know what to do with your spare time (if you have time to turn over your couch cushions you do have spare time obviously), you might as well spend the money on the 3,540 Lego pieces needed to build an Executor model. For those not in the know (I had to look it up, too), that’s one of the space ships from one of the Star Wars movies. BTW, the dedication to detail on this latter page, the willingness to discuss in excruciating detail something that only exists in a movie, is nothing but amazing (and quite scary at the same time!).
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Can you guess which of the following is real and which is a parody before clicking on the links? An Extra Hour of Halloween Daylight? Thank the Candy Lobby Child On White House Tour Momentarily Seizes Control Of Nation
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“The Interior Ministry of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia is taking a new tack in the fight against homegrown terrorism. It’s using a comic book - complete with colorful images and ‘youthful’ language - to battle nasty jihadism.” (story)
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Over the past decade, German photographers have been extraordinarily successful. Some of the most prestigious museums had large shows entirely devoted to photographers whose names non-Germans struggle to pronounce. But with just a few notable exceptions (and I have to add much to my own personal frustration), Germans have nicely conformed to the stereotype of being detached, overly organized, and unbelievably hierarchical. There is just one German blog that covers contemporary photography in a way accessible to non-Germans (by offering English text), Peter Feldhaus’ excellent The Sonic Blog. And more established German photographers simply don’t use blogs.
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“In the United States chain stores have largely run neighborhood bookshops out of business. Here in Germany, there are big and small bookstores seemingly on every block. The German Book Association counts 4,208 bookstores among its members. It estimates that there are 14,000 German publishers. Last year 94,716 new titles were published in German. In the United States, with a population nearly four times bigger, there were 172,000 titles published in 2005. Germany’s book culture is sustained by an age-old practice requiring all bookstores, including German online booksellers, to sell books at fixed prices. Save for old, used or damaged books, discounting in Germany is illegal. All books must cost the same whether they’re sold over the Internet or at Steinmetz, a shop in Offenbach that opened its doors in Goethe’s day, or at a Hugendubel or a Thalia, the two big chains.” (story)
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“A lot of what I learned in [art]school had to be unlearned once I got out into the real world. Most importantly I don’t think I learned enough about myself and my needs as an artist.” - Ofer Wolberger on Art Education
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“Walter Kempowski, who died on October 5th 2007, was a unique figure among German writers. An East German native, he was interned at Bautzen penitentiary in the early years of the GDR before leaving to the West. He is known primarily for his large-scale literary projects “Deutsche Chronik” (German chronicle) - an autobiographical novel in nine volumes - and “Das Echolot” (echo sounding), a ten-volume collective diary of World War Two in collage form.” (interview)
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I know this is quite silly, but fun nevertheless: Putting fake subtitles under a movie can be a lot of fun. Case in point: Hitler Banned From iSketch! I can only imagine how much fun watching this must be for someone who doesn’t understand German.
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“Can it really be true that men and women understand language in different ways? Nonsense, says Deborah Cameron in this second extract from her new book - the supposed miscommunication is a myth.”
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“A photograph of a naked anorexic woman appeared on Monday in Italian newspapers and on billboards to highlight the effects of the illness during Milan fashion week while promoting a fashion brand.” (story) You can see the images (plus some commentary) here on Andrew’s blog. The problem I have with this is that I just cannot believe that fashion company really cares about anorexia (of course, they claim they do).
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“This retouching business has gotten to the point where normal beautiful women look hideous next to these frankenbarbies.” observes A Photo Editor
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I just watched the documentary Absolut Warhola, which I couldn’t recommend more. It’s a bit like taking away the comedian (and scripting) from Borat and adding Andy Warhol to what’s left.
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“I’m looking for a democratic perfect image of myself. So it is up to you to give me directions how I should change my face and body.” - Go and tell Monique Bergen Henegouwen what to fix next on her blog.
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Another fine article about Gerhard Richter’s window for the Cologne cathedral. I wasn’t all that surprised to learn that the Archbishop of Cologne, Cardinal Meisner, disapproved of it - after all, this is the same man who just had to apologize for using Nazi language (well, he claims it was taken out of contect, so he didn’t really apologize for what he said).
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In an interview, Thurston Moore describes Northampton, where I now live, as “the centre of a scene that people are calling ‘new weird America’”. As much as any such statement (which includes claims by people only referred to as “people”) needs to be taken with a grain (or two) of salt, I kind of like that description (because it gives living in Northampton this kind of aura - which is probably why TM said that in the first place, but never mind).
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“They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building’s fatal wound. […] For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself. […] They were all, obviously, very much alive on their way down, and their way down lasted an approximate count of ten seconds. They were all, obviously, not just killed when they landed but destroyed, in body though not, one prays, in soul. […] From the beginning, the spectacle of doomed people jumping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center resisted redemption. […] The trial that hundreds endured in the building and then in the air became its own kind of trial for the thousands watching them from the ground. No one ever got used to it; no one who saw it wished to see it again, although, of course, many saw it again. Each jumper, no matter how many there were, brought fresh horror, elicited shock, tested the spirit, struck a lasting blow. Those tumbling through the air remained, by all accounts, eerily silent; those on the ground screamed. […] it was, at last, the sight of the jumpers that provided the corrective to those who insisted on saying that what they were witnessing was ‘like a movie,’ for this was an ending as unimaginable as it was unbearable: Americans responding to the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world with acts of heroism, with acts of sacrifice, with acts of generosity, with acts of martyrdom, and, by terrible necessity, with one prolonged act of - if these words can be applied to mass murder - mass suicide.” (story)
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Talking about Nicole Kidman’s and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s most recent magazine/ad appearances, Kira Cochrane writes: “I think what I find so incredibly discomfiting about these pictures is their suggestion that, no matter how talented a woman is, how many plaudits she has received, how intelligent her reputation, how garlanded she has been for depicting one of the most talented writers of the last century while sporting a huge prosthetic conk on her noggin, at the end of the day, if she wants to stay in the public eye, if she wants the magazine covers and the leading roles, she has to be willing to reduce herself to tits and arse.” If you haven’t seen the photography Kira Cochrane is talking about, see Nicole Kidman’s cover here and one of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s photos here.
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It’s probably just a coincidence that today I came across two discussions of whether/how to teach art. Alec asks Can/should art be taught?, and Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland discuss Art for our sake. Note that they are talking about two different aspects of art education - dedicated art schools and art as part of the general curriculum - but they both make for interesting reads (and food for thought).
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