30 June 2011

29 June 2011

my god (miroslav tichy first)


These two are © Aaron McElroy. I would say they are inspired by Tichy, no? My segue is ungraceful. If you are unaware of your predecessors what does it mean? Are you still accountable? Does this guy owe anything to Tichy? Does it matter? (I am taking this personally - - ?) Is there too much awareness (overwhelming) in this meta-meta-photo-world to not pay dues? Are there too many dues to pay? On one hand starting now, fresh, seems like a good idea. We call it contemporary, and we celebrate it. I'm there - with bells on. Photographers are many, and a child gets a new camera every day. Signifiers the signified, "homage" (my ass), etc...everything PoMo - yes. Anyway, here is some Miroslav, the fascinated: Tichy, a 20th Century scholar of The Female. Tichy meet Kray: "My whole agenda revolves around tryna make sense of the female gender - i can't tell you why, but boy i can tell you it is fun to try, and i make no excuses or apologize nor pull any wool over any pretty eyes, or criticize, what i shoulda put aside, my whole game is no game see i don't even try, and when i wanna kiss 'em i kiss 'em i love kissing and glistening lips kissing and licking tits - the way my hand slide off the side of her hips, the way their minds work is different than ours, i'm a student of these women i'm takin' their seminar...ready to learn, show up early to class, with a big long list of questions to ask, i take copious notes, see i'm hopelessly devoted to the mystery encoded in the beauty of the feminine..."
Kray has a metronome inside of him and a beautiful, deep voice. I would call him brave, bonafide. searching for a heart of gold, without a shield; g'head and shake that intelligence.

28 June 2011

concha

il papa


il papa il ipad

At 24

self portrait by Rembrandt, painted on copper - aged 24.

27 June 2011

"Pretend You're Actually Alive"

© leigh ledare
well said. Leigh Ledare show. "sex, but not that sex." play time/everyone's a player. had the chance to see his book this winter, without having done much research beforehand. so it goes.

camilo borja by marina borja

it's not possible, is it? i need a new hobby. or they do. i'm playing (sort of). no, i am. summer in england - i wouldn't know about that. i'm 23 years older than their summers and photos are the most painful thing about this whole diagram of dis/connected borjas. i'm sure that it is painful is part of the reason we partake (some traits die hard). the colombiano in camilo begins to shine through...regardless of time and space, he possesses those glorious genetic signifiers of the past and the future at once - the past he knows nothing about, that only his father can see in him, and the future he will create; blindly, knowingly, alone, with his sister, with our without his father's stories, etc. etc. etc. he has two uncles and an aunt in that country, not to mention el negro luis and the matriarch marina, the woman after whom his sister was named.

25 June 2011

Monday


beasts

grand street was a mess. "where the fuck street are we" suzy asked...

LP / SMB FTW

LP and I walked the Highline on Monday; it now extends to 30th Street. She came out for a surprise visit because she has landed an amazing job and is moving to San Francisco this Sunday, less than a week (but several months of anguish) after being 'let go' from the college she's worked at in Modesto for the past 15+ years. It is a cosmic move, all of it, no? Her new employers flew her out; I stayed at her hotel enjoying bright white sheets and AC, embarrassed to say the TV was ENJOYABLE, too. This winter I shut down. It was not a good time to not be able to listen, but I couldn't do it anymore. Whatever I go through, however people see us, whatever people envy or despise in our relationship, does not undermine the thing we have, which is natural like breathing and just as accepted, needed, IS, etc... What LP does is love. What I do is take. It seems simple, and easy to combat: each should do both. It isn't. For whatever reasons, sister-sister and mother-daughter relationships are usually complicated, from close to mean to cold back to hot and loving, etc., and we fall there, too, between comfort and rage. On Tuesday night we sat on Elizabeth street and she spoke with my friends who are now 29 and 30 - what? She asked about every fucking building (!?!) from 14th to 30th Street and I say !?! because a) that is my reaction to my mother on some days and b) I have no answers, other than the Gehry building next to Chelsea Piers. On Wednesday I met her close friend Judy from 7th grade. We ate Afgan food while the downpour began outside on 8th Avenue, the same one that caught Chloe for twenty minutes further south in Brooklyn. Good one, we say (and it is). They call her Laurie in New York; another piece of past that stays in that foreign country. We're Californians, now. Some of our family deserts, Mom's a dessert, I'm both. I walked her to the hotel on 28th Street through the mist and said 'goodbye for now' like we've done countless times and I presume she walked upstairs and got settled in her nightie, and rubbed peach-scented cream into her tan elbows, and then probably called Adrian to say sweet things before drifting off to sleep. I made it home not soaked, for once, but took a shower to fix that. The following day I met a lanky creature who gave me a slow dance; the one I always speak about. He emerged as if from 1646 with a face from somewhere else and with beautiful, indio hair that fell to the small of his back like a heavy black waterfall. Pause. I mentioned I'd like to braid it because I don't know the things that should come out of my mouth...I just know what had come out of me throughout college was the inverse of what should have been coming in, you know? In every form, and I mean like from food to love letters - don't be lewd. He was smoother than the past had been and warm like sun-baked marble. He was young like womb and soft like: "excuse me, whom?" When Sarita and I went to Mamaroneck last Friday we saw three evidences of magic: a beautiful solitary deer twitching its tail in a garden (perfectly calm, perfectly alert, perfect in hue and shape), a huge turtle making its way along the side of the highway against traffic in broad daylight (alone, determined, protected), and a clinically insane mouse chasing her own tail in circles-around-and-around-and-around-and-around while we sat there and stuck both our heads out of the passenger side window watching it spin on the rough asphalt below. The day after that Suzy and I took color photos in a booth on Bedford wherein my face emerged blue, like some side of the moon, and hers orange, like the sun. All of it means something: from Laurie hasta La Luna, from Turtle to Trenza, from Womb to Whom - but make of it what you will, I read into far too much already.

beauty and the show

i told suzy to bring cupid back from her 20 days in greece with la mamma. she said she wouldn't, but she did anyway; she can't help it.
here is the tiny one at her first new york solo show, 11 stone street, isle of manhattan. it was the best clusterfuck we ever attended post graduation in 2009. i held a baby who didn't squirm, didn't drink too much white wine, admired suzy's beauty (and the photos), talked some shit, tried to impress diego with my spanish (in english he pointed out a projection of mine), embraced la novia several times, watched my worlds colliding some more, walked in on the owner of the gallery pissing, etc. etc. etc. one mystical creature moved about in the distance, in and out of doors, out and about deck spaces; i thought it too beautiful to be straight, etc. etc. etc.
suzy's photos are a manifestation, no? from her creation we create within ourselves, like she said. we can go there, si señora...

skyscrapes, wrong way sight seeing, dugg



the plant on elizabeth street (xicala)

evil eyes, situation thighs, that which lies



22 June 2011

the one and only (s. corniani)






opening tomorrow, i will wear blue, it will be grand.
Tiny Introduction, by her Agency/Gallery. She says such beautiful things.