WEPA! chin chin: Shaq Panda, LLC

in real life this is a tumblr that exists: Shaq Panda, LLC. if you're not a diva we'll come to your wedding, and shoot it, well, otherwise we have lots of friends to whom we'd love to refer you.

broadway, 35 (ask about cyan)

broadway, 34 (post-gougerie)

broadway, 33 (jigsaw)

last suns, van buren street, bushwick

disco, sprawling

occupy wall street dancer, fake ms. palin, and red head boy

i recognized this kid from vimeo/youtube/twitter/tumblr before i actually saw him in real life down in zucotti park.

movies used to be good

de bodas y beacon, with the bird

broadway, 31 (shay)

of the other photo i took of him he said, "cool, i might make this my profile picture on facebook." that's the goal, shay, true enough. he followed up with "how old are you?" to which he said "whaaat?! you look 17." THANK YOU SHAY NOW RUN QUICKLY ON HOME. made my day though, NGL...

broadway, 30 (camo-pipe)

broadway, 29 (flores immaculadas)

on this block i shot and ran. you familiar?

broadway, 28 (RIP)

cross/broadway (back on that)

bullet, beacon ny

aggro / ways to get in or out

some ways to get in include but are not limited to honesty, sincerity, tenacity, drive, decency, humor, humility, pride, but having a man-bun trumps all of these (goes without saying). or, in other news, some kid just really needed to get the fuck out of jr. high, which is what i think every time i ride past this school in the morning.

para la novia

dos lámparas para la novia, sarita. these reminded me of her and the tremendous work she does.

raging arty, wild dog, girner scrabble win, call me on my bushwick line, chloe master chef

psychic 1 - gabriela

gabriela smoked while she read my fortune. she had been smoking all of her life; so had her hands. her family was in the back eating take-out, and from the outside to the back room a round, cross-eyed toddler walked back and forth, grabbing her grandmother's chair and legs whining for her attention. she was possessive and not too smart, yet. gabriela said make 2 wishes, 1 you keep for yourself and 1 you tell me. she said "be careful." she said a lot of people who i think are close to me are not that close to me, be careful she says. she says "you're not that satisfied in your 'love life,' am i right?" she said "tonight at night...what are you doing?" "a little work." "at home? or...." "at home, yes, bushwick." "leave your house at 9...go get an ice cream, a coffee...you will meet a man, the man will come into your life around 9 pm tonight."
HOLY SHIT?! i think. i think holy shit at the presumption, how preposterous it all sounds, how magical, how false, how possible, how vapid...holy shit...
i ask her if i'll marry, she says yes, and he'll worship you, perhaps believing that "to be worshipped" had anything to do with what i imagine when i imagine it. my ego seeks the opposite, but fine, gabi...i ask her "you've lived a long life what is the key? the thing? the secret?" she says, faith in god...i say i don't believe in god she says why not? i say i wasn't raised that way, that i have a different type of faith...she tells me to believe in god and that someday i'll find out that everything she's saying is "completely" true.

a) complete
b) completely
c) true
d) truth

what i mean is: don't use these words with me, i take them seriously...

she says: "let me light a candle for you...for your future, for your future love, for the man...let me put a name to the man..."

i say i already have that name and that face though just as frequently it's a strange face with a stranger name and they're all the goddamn same until someone fills it out like a fucking balloon with breath from his lungs. then we twist it, and we're twisted...la cross-eyed stares at me as i leave her grandmother's table. i get 50 feet and turn back around for a photo. i am dishonest in my photo request and she smells it, because Manipulation is the new CK scent and i'm wearing it. she takes another puff and says "sweetie i have arthritis and these are not beautiful, but whatever makes you happy...you want to take a picture? whatever makes you happy." i say: rest them on your knees please, and this make me happy."

shaky focus and shaky palms kept me in well past 9, although i think i stayed in precisely so that i could give la gabi the benefit of the doubt and think to myself, what if? what of that man, who i meet at nine o clock...it was, is, and will be my absolute pleasure, absolute being another word that i take very seriously.

world wide web

from harpers...

like i said before, about how black plants are believed to grow on planets that have no suns.

damn © lele saveri

libya © tim hetherington, post-script

220 mm rolls delivered post-script

all black eheything

i feel the need to © this, thanks talya. © me.
from harper's magazine: "plants may be black on planets with more than one sun."
film to come, i thx serge for letting me use his yashica, and hope that my internal light meter is still on point.

the livest one (happy bday aliza eliazarov)

ilana panich took this and others one weekend in october, 2009, when we drove to CT to visit aliza for an autumnal fall jaunt. we were in a haze of post-icp everything. i remember coming back to williamsburg in these same clothes and sitting at pete's candy shop for leeor's bday. i remember shrugging off hugs and watching charlie and dieguito match each other in magic states...sarah and i slipped out the back door and sat on a bench on the corner of metropolitan and lorimer, calmly recapping the months behind, calm but angry, but calm...i remember aliza's stepfather's huge bed - have you ever seen a california king? - and i remember sleeping in quiet rooms, and i remember the massive furniture and the massive tv and the hershey's kisses in the huge living room. i remember the hike we took, the apples we bought, and the ponies we sided. relax, it's just a side pony, i said. i remember mostly though aliza's gaze and how you want to make her laugh. live from israel, her father's outline, slim hands / warm touch, the livest one. and the youngest in any room, that i've ever been in, truly.
HB, Amiga.

otra semillla

they say that we create a universe in our heads and we live in it, there. i do this to such an extent that when i am presented with the actual face, the one i'm conjuring, out of the blue, the bubble that i'm writing in my head pops! and i almost don't believe it. my instinct is always to run, as some many years ago, when i hid between two dumpsters from a boy i am now very good friends with. (??!??!) at the time, i couldn't picture having a conversation given my meta conversation/conversations, and situations...why run? what is better than an actual conversation?! certainly not finding out that there is perhaps no conversation to be had, that perhaps there is nothing beyond the bounce, perhaps you'd see that my hands still shake, or perhaps i'd find that they all end but never begin. that's where i live. then later, when i ask "was that you, on 23rd street, staring at awnings in a buttoned-up grey?" the answer is maybe a no, no i don't think i was there...what was i doing? did you see me? my answer is predictable , always of course, always yes, always yes i always see you, always.

ohhhh laff

P.H.E., who once thought i had the nicest sounding voice

© peter helles


peter and i met in april of 2009, at vanessa's dumplings before leah and i went to beauty bar. at their table sat a group of beautiful ones with beautiful lines and attributes, all healthy, all sturdy, all bilingual, all bikers, all photographers, all excellent conversationalists with impeccable presences and eye contact. or rather eye kontakt, i should say, for in the end: whatever, everything is everything, etc. etc. etc. that night i was interrupted mid-conversation in front of everyone by a huge paw that reached across the circle to caress my cheek to maybe derail my emphatic story telling, or to trip me up, my thoughts, i don't know. regardless, it fucking tripped me up because i do not read stories i feel them as they write themselves. that weekend we found ourselves at another party. he arrived with the same group of friends, and i, having weaseled my way out of another birthday gathering, found myself talking with him in that famous doorway of mc kibbin for quite some time. amidst the noise and lollypop sucking (that shit was tacky - but did actually work on 2 countrymen) he asked me to sing him a song. he liked my voice; it was smooth, so sing. was it sing or tell him a story? sing, i think. because i failed...nevertheless, it was an honest, foreign-esque request and what i remember always was my gut feeling that it was him who was the sweet one, who deserved attention, and when i talked to him further i knew his photographs were going to have been made with a decent heart and a leveling gaze. i remember now how he talks and how he walks and how his throat moves below the surface when he is formulating words that come out of that reserved mouth, and that is more than i can say for many parties i've been to where dudes mostly chatter on about themselves and i am already millions of miles away in my head, in the future, with the future, or tomorrow morning on my bike in a class in my datebook - anywhere but here, no? anyway, this year we have been in touch a bit because of his beautiful website. i knew he would not be offended when i told him that i wanted to lend a hand in editing some of the project statements. i edited some of his words not because i wanted to 'correct' anything but because with photos of this magnitude/beauty there is no need to get tripped up where no tripping is necessary - and we all know that now, right? i also may have a small folder on my desktop where i cattily collect screenshots of typos on photographers' websites, and i didn't want peter to be a part of that collection, etc. etc. etc...

cadi, chalkboard, headshots, matty making a point, how my blanket died, sastrería

rosa plant - santa cruz, califas

today i ruled out tattoos, thought that i would never side with the rich even if i married a rich man (ha ha!!!), had a lovely man tell me "remember! your winter coat is sleeveless AND a mid-driff" while my shoulders strained with 8-lb weights, and organized the fuck out of my negatives. of the 9 wrong rolls of film i brought to the icp last night here is 1 right one, with thorns, red, and blue, and sun, and everything. beyond that, the space around this photo stretches from 1994-2011, but you don't get to see all of that. of the 35 mm rolls, i cannot even begin to see what i have. my workflow is unparalleled. i throw out negatives, i do. out with the old, out muthafucka.

crespita by aliza

june by the water with A&E

sheesh - - - > © leonie hampton

leonie hampton