[dovate.com] » 2007 » January
I just touched up an old bird photo. The bird is an Peregrine Falcon American Kestrel.
The shot was a distant one with the lens fully extended. The bird was small and blurry… until I tried a new (for me) sharpening technique in Photoshop. Here’s the new photo. Cheating?
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As evidenced by yesterday’s rhetorical screed against any and all who dare attack the value of Philadelphia’s murals, I’m a big fan of Philly’s public art.
But what I didn’t say yesterday is that some of my favorite public art in Philly is the “illegal” art. First and foremost and sitting high above all else in this category is the Toynbee tiles. Not the (probable) copycats glued to streets now, but the old originals.
The best example left in Philly is at 4th and South. (pictured) Unfortunately this tile, which has endured for more than a decade is in grave danger. The streets from front to 8th are set to be repaved in the next few weeks. Write your local congressman, call City Council, chain yourself to a bulldozer, or sneak out there at 4AM with a jackhammer and carve the fucker out. Or just head down to South street and take a look at it before it’s gone. It’s Philly’s last real tile and it’s a true work of art.
Aside from the tiles, Philly is full of sticker art. The community here has really exploded over the last few years. It’s great to walk around and see something new and interesting every on every block. I’m a big fan of this illegal expression and believe it should be actively encouraged. What back of a sign, newspaper box, sheet of plywood or alleyway dumpster looks better without a dozen beautiful wheatpaste signs or stickers? Pictured below is a tiny sample of what’s around.
As I took the photo of the second piece down, a homeless man took a break from panhandling and told me how much he liked it. He looks at all the public art and said that this was his favorite. He told me that it appeared just before Christmas and that he’s been stopping to admire it ever since. How its vandalism to put a beautiful, thought provoking and inspirational piece of art on the side of a dumpster is beyond my understanding.
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Toynbee Tile
4th and South — |
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wheatpaste on Sansom
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sticker art
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You might not have heard about it, but over the weekend the British Royal Family visited Philadelphia. While they were here, they met with representatives from my place of employment, the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program. I didn’t volunteer my time to witness Their Royal Highnesses, because I didn’t really care, but all the positive media the visit generated for MAP was truly and honestly inspiring. For any non-profit, media exposure translates into funding, which translates into the ability for that non-profit to continue to exist.
The exposure MAP has been given over the last few weeks has been great… with one glaring exception… last Friday’s Inquirer commentary by guest columnist Joseph P. Blake. To read that commentary, click here. (or if the link is dead, here)
Because it’s way too long for the Inquirer to print in its entirety and because I can just publish it here anyway, below is my response to Blake’s column. If you feel so inspired, please take a moment to write the Inquirer yourself. (inquirer.letters@phillynews.com)
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I don’t take issue with Joseph P. Blake’s aversion to the mural “In Living Memory.” Out of more than 2700 murals in the city he can’t possibly like them all.
For the purposes of honesty and disclosure, I should say that I work for the Mural Arts Program and even I don’t like all of the murals created by the program. Mr. Blake’s likes and dislikes belong exclusively to him and I have no issues with his personal aesthetic sensibilities.
It’s funny though, when I told a friend where I worked, he singled out “In Living Memory” as his favorite in the city. His reasons were a direct reflection of what Blake didn’t see. My friend was moved by the image of a family choking in the smoke of their father. Blake in turn “thought the colors were nice, but it had no impact.” Such a disparate interpretation between 2 sets of eyes looking at the same wall goes a long way into explaining the value of public art and of the Mural Arts Program. But none of this is why I’m writing today.
What I do take issue with is Blake’s ascertain that the murals fail to reflect the communities in which they are created. The Mural Arts Program goes to extremes to involve the community in nearly every aspect of the process, from meetings, to artist selection to design. The very first question on any mural application - the very first step in the creation of a new mural – reads: “Have I talked to my neighbors and/or community groups about a mural?” Put simply, these projects simply don’t happen without community support.
I’ve photographed a few dozen murals in all corners of the city. In North Philly, West Philly, Mantua and Strawberry Mansion neighbors have stopped to talk to me about what the murals mean to them and to their community. Every one of these conversations has been glowingly positive. There’s an understanding that once painted, murals don’t belong to the city or to any organization, but to the community itself. That understanding is absolutely true.
There’s another conversation I have with people about the Mural Arts Program. This one never happens on the street in front of a mural. It’s a conversation about content. The example of the dying family in “In Living Memory” notwithstanding, Blake is upset that Philadelphia repeatedly and nearly exclusively creates “feel-good murals.”
In defense of his argument he references cities around the world, judging the content their public art superior to that of Philadelphia. Mexico City, with its deep and rich history of muralism sits at the top of this list. But when citing places like Mexico City it’s essential to realize that the Mexican masters were financed and guided by an idealistic but undemocratic state. While artistically beautiful, the messages present promoted a very narrow and specific nationalist vision. While Mexico City’s murals were created by some of the 20th centuries best known and most talented muralists, they were commissioned by a fractured central state in an attempt to unite through the illusion of nationalist propaganda. That Philadelphia has rejected this model is not a bad thing.
With mural content largely community driven, Blake desires for politically charged and topically motivated mural content falls into a democratically indefensible position. Standing in opposition to the majority of Philadelphia’s communities, his characterization of Philadelphia’s murals as meaningless and insipid is not only an insult to the Mural Arts Program, but a slap in the face to the people and the communities of Philadelphia.
Outlined herein is a terrible character flaw that I’m trying to work on. It’s completely unfair, unfounded and represents a personal prejudice. It causes me to judge by appearance, weighing my opinions of an individual based solely on a set of physical characteristics. I’m trying to work through this problem and hope that someday I can overcome it.
But until then, I have to admit that I have a distaste for straight but waify white boys in their 20’s who wear clean jeans and well kempt peacoats. Now for those that know me, you might be saying what the fuck are you talking about? You’re a 20 something white male and while you’re not waify and you don’t wear particularly clean clothes, but you do wear a peacoat. To you I say that there’s a difference. It’s a subtle difference, but it’s there. It’s something to do with class, literary appreciation and the amount of dirt on your clothing. If you have to condense the difference into a single descriptive word, that word would be comfort.
Maybe it’s that I see these types in used bookstores, produce shops and the box office line for “Children of Men” and I think to myself that had I grown up in a circumstance of greater comfort, in a place without sarcasm, or crackheads climbing through my window and stealing my Nintendo, then maybe I too would be one of them. My prejudice then is just a defense mechanism… some relic that triggers a primal response against my own being.
I once saw a crow battling its own reflection in a tinted glass window. It struck at the glass with increasing ferocity and confusion, seeing the fear in its opponent, but unable to hurt it. In turn the crow grew angrier and more frightened. Its opponent matched it at every turn, coordinating every strike with identical force and intent. I don’t know what ever happened with that crow, but I often think of it, imagining that to an alien race humanity appears to act in a similar capacity.
But then I think to myself, these are the assholes who hear the lead singer of the Decemberists and don’t feel like an icepick has suddenly been jabbed through their eardrums. Then I wonder if we really are that similar.
I really could go on and write another 50,000 words on this, but that would just be insane and nobody in their right mind would read it, so that’s as good as a conclusion as there’s going to be… for now.
So I done and did up all my tally’s and discovered that based on my 2006 earnings, I only need to increase my photo-profits by 1500% to match my current “day job” income. As daunting as it may seem, it’s better than 2005 when I made nothing and spent thousands on photo gear and equipment. Pulling a profit within 24 months of ramping something up from hobby to vague career goal isn’t so bad… even if it is only pocket change.
In light of the recent news that a young Barack Obama “trained” at a radical Muslim school in Indonesia, here are some other illuminating scandals to watch out for.
- Anonymous sources citing 5,000 year old papyrus manuscripts, allege that many of our leaders (including - Republican hopeful John McCain) actually belong to a race of human-reptilian hybrids of an alien origin.
- Where her clitoris should be, Hilary Clinton has a single male testicle.
- Sam Brownback wet his bed well into his 30’s.
- Russ Feingold was implicated in a 1994 plot to blow up Canada’s CN Tower.
- Republican George Allen was linked to a brutal string of ritualistic murders in the early 1980’s. During the reign of terror, Allen and accomplice were alleged to have beheaded at least a dozen prostitutes at truck stops across the Midwest.
- Evan Bayh’s first marriage ended because of his all consuming interests in model railroading and ham radio.
- Bill Richardson is a drunk.
- Denis Kucinich is short and funny looking.
That’s all for now.
Non-photographers need not read a word of this.
But if you are a (digital) photographer, let’s just run through a scenario that you might find yourself in. You’re shooting a performance, the night of that performance. Its low light and you have to be absolutely discreet. That means no flash. You’ve got a tripod, but understand that using one is frustratingly crippling. You say fuck it, put on your fastest lens, take the camera off the tripod set the ISO at 1600 and try to maximize the performance of your aperture/shutter speed.
Your results are fine but noisy as hell. You sort of cringe at the quality and clarity of the files, knowing that there’s only so much your post work can achieve. This happened to me on Saturday.
BUT
A few weeks back I remember reading about the Photoshop plugin NeatImage. Faced with a set of extremely noisy shots, I decided it was time to try it.
The results are great. The example below shows what NeatImage did with my very first attempt. (With this shot, I actually had the camera on a tripod and hadn’t yet abandoned any hopes at using that tripod in combination with a wider/slower lens.)
With a few more hours of practice, I was able to cut the noise down about as well, while preserving some of the details which that the process distorts. All in all, good tool. That’s about it, so that’s the end of this endorsement.
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Personally I’m upset that Rep. David Wu’s public comparison of Bush and neo-conservative ideologues to Star Trek’s Klingons is raising such ridicule among the masses. I think that had his analogy been more accurate, his statements had great communicative potential. But Klingons? Come on.
Wu’s remarks would have been much clearer (and better received) had he drawn a parallel between the neo-conservatives and the Dominion Founders, while linking Bush and like-minded Republicans to Gul Dukat and the Cardassian government. (After mid-2373 of course) In this comparison, Pakistan would (obviously) take on the role of the Klingon Empire with Iraq playing the part of Bajor. U.S. citizens are Jem’Hadar, with oil the equivalent of ketracel-white.
Unfortunately I can’t think of this world’s equivalent to the Vulcans.
From the archives:
I was directed to your [site] site after I posted my
discoveries about the movie “2001″ having a running time
that encodes the number 666, via a correlation with the
moon.
You are probably bullshit, but here is the link just in case
you aren’t.
[link dead] :(
My apartment is a damn mess, I’m out of socks and the cat is hungry, so this will be short. Top news items:
In a freak accident Saddam Hussein’s uncle, Barack bin Hussein somehow combusted and set 1000 Korans on fire during his hanging this morning.
Philadelphia’s next mayor Chaka Fattah? Next U.S. President, Barack Obama? Maybe and… I want to believe.
Bad investment tip of the day. With Real Estate becoming ever more precarious this is the property not to buy.
This, not so bad.
Alright, time to feed the cat.
Since I’m probably developing a case of carpal tunnel syndrome, here are some more videos that don’t require typing to post.
Scientology:
Mormonism:
Christianity:
Judaism:
Islam:
Buddhism:
Hinduism:
UFO:
Toynbee:
A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”
- Syemour Hersh for the New Yorker, April 2006
There was a glaring subtext to last night’s speech and to the last 4 years of Bush foreign policy that too few people are acknowledging or talking about. In George W. Bush’s mind right now, the entire war in Iraq, troop increases, decreases, debate, whatever, all of it is a red herring. This president wants a confrontation with Iran. As committed as this president once was to invading Iraq, he is now moving with the same determination towards an attack on Iran.
You can read about this conviction in Seymour Hersh’s articles in the New Yorker. You can hear it from the man himself with his announcement of a naval buildup in the Persian Gulf, or his refusal to bring Iran anywhere close to the dialogue concerning Iraq. You can read about last weekend’s leaked military reports out of Israel detailing planned “tactical nuclear” airstrikes on Iranian nuclear research facilities. After last night’s speech, Keith Olbermann pressed the escalation issue to little avail, repeatedly bringing up the point that Bush is trying with all his remaining power to expand this war to include Syria and Iran.
How to do it ?
The president’s power has become limited. Direct provocation or the fabrication of an event is key to the “success” of this expansion. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Spain never blew up the Maine and the Gulf of Tonkin incident never actually happened. The first event ignited a war against Spain, while the second non-event opened the door for the massive escalation of the Vietnam War.
Digging deeper through American history, the Mexican American War began when the United States up and claimed a sliver of land near the Rio Grande previously under the control and occupation of Mexico. The army then walked onto that land and was attacked. Headlines read, “Mexican Army kills Americans on American soil.”
Foreknowledge or not, even Pearl Harbor was prodded and instigated.
The president’s push for a war with Iran is following this same, well tested path. Over the next year, the United States of America will work very hard to provoke or even invent an incident that justifies an escalation of the war onto Iranian soil. This escalation may be limited to airstrikes, or it may include another full invasion and regime change. This is obviously completely, outrageously and incomprehensibly insane.
So I’m in a mood tonight and my mind is attached wholly to ideas that I believe are clear and wide encompassing. This evening I discuss art or more specifically, the merits of photographing one’s own (if one is male) stream of ejaculate.
Why am I writing about this? I was reading Zoe Straus’s blog when I saw this post. Her photo of Mummer spewed silly string may have been unconsciously derived from photographer Andres Serrano’s ejaculation series.
Geoff Dyer wrote an entire book about street photographers influence on one another over the past 100 years. I strongly recommend buying and reading it. But that’s not my point.
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My point and my opinion is that Serrano’s work has reached a position of total and almost embarrassing obsolescence. The internet killed it. Photographs of blood and semen? Photographs of a semen stream?
Let me add here that at one time, the series wasn’t pointless. It roused all sorts of pretentious and important questions to do with freedom of expression and the limits of art. That time has long past.
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There was an argument in the Mexican muralist movement that muralism smashed the idea of easel painting. Painting in Mexico City (as it is in 2700 different ways in Philadelphia) was a public. It was not contained within a frame and exhibited in a prohibitive environment. It was vibrant, colorful and most importantly free and open to be witnessed and experienced by anyone at any time.
In contrast, museum art, or easel painting is restrictive. It’s selected and promoted by an elite class for an elite class. Even in the rare cases and selective times that they’re not cost prohibitive, museums are not inviting to proles. They’re constructed by upper and upper-uppers, mainly for the middles and above. (or to a lesser extent for the creative class itself)
That’s not to say there isn’t a place for museums. There absolutely is. But when a form or genre of artwork becomes so utterly separated between the world of the museum and the world of the world… that form or genre becomes wholly obsolete.
To come back to Serrano. Never again should a photo series of human semen find its way onto a museum wall. To illustrate this, turn your google safe search off and look for images of “cum.” Not extreme enough? Try “dog fucking” “dead bodies” “war dead” or “cock splitting.” Keep in mind that google image search is nowhere near comprehensive. The photo results you get barely skim the top layer off of a very deep and disturbing cesspool.
While muralists brought artwork outside the museum, technology and the ability to share and distribute any and all information, has given any individual with the access the means and the aptitude, the capacity to create and share a tremendous quantity of material with an unlimited audience.
This is the crux of the argument, so pay special attention here. I’m not saying that every citizen is now an artist or that every cumshot caught on camera makes every person who photographs semen an artist. I’m saying that any artist who takes a well balanced and aesthetically pleasing portrait of their own semen, isn’t really accomplishing anything.
So many photoblogs are filled with beautiful photos of apples, flower petals and housecats. There’s nothing wrong with them except that they’re boring. There’s nothing wrong with the photographers except that I see nothing truly significant in a perfectly composed still life.
New technology and the ability to share raw information freely and instantly has destroyed the significance of Serrano’s ejaculation series and the vast bulk of his other projects. There are millions of photos of semen. Nuns mastrubating, men drinking piss, blood, gore? It’s been done and published thousands of times.
Making a fine art portrait of one’s own semen is at this point about as edgy or artistically relevant as taking a really fine art portrait of the head of broccoli I’m about to eat. As muralists brought art out of the frame and into the public, the internet is storming the museums and tearing the frames apart.
As a person with a concern for the viability of freedom of expression, I can’t think of better news than the obsolescence or Andres Serrano’s art. Remember Jesse Helms damning Serrano’s Piss Christ on the Senate floor? The debate is over. People rightfully worry about so many of our rights being ceded and destroyed, but freedom of expression has never, in the history of the world been stronger. Serrano’s cumshot is now just a lonesome drop in a vast ocean of semen.
Ted Kennedy brought this up earlier today:
“It became clear that if we were prepared to stay the course, we could help to lay the cornerstone for a diverse and independent [region]. If we faltered, the forces of chaos would smell victory and decades of strife and aggression would stretch endlessly before us. The choice was clear. We would stay the course. And we shall stay the course.”
- Lyndon Johnson
Stop me if you’ve heard this one. An economist walks into a room where his wife is wrapping Christmas presents and bludgeons her to death. Wait… that’s not very funny. OK, how about this one. A Wharton Professor is caught masturbating to videos of himself having sex with underage boys in his Ivy League office… No… no… no, that’s terrible, awful. Library office? No! Umh… ok. A Penn Neurosurgeon sexually assaults one of his stude… Jesus Fucking Christ.
So The University of Penn has been having some trouble with its professors, what with the student rape, child porn and wife killing. And they say once you get tenure you can get away with anything.
But seriously, where does it end? An Engineering professor doing a drive-by in the quad? A meth crazed Penn Vet having his way with a physically compromised Barbaro?
I actually worked at and went to that esteemed University over a grueling span of 6 years. I used to hear the students warning one another not to “go past 42nd street.” While this never bothered me (mainly because it meant I didn’t have to deal with them that much past the 42nd street “danger zone”) I’m thinking that maybe they should start watching their backs in those creepy old buildings in the ever expanding Penn Empire.
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Time for some random Loon facts.
The Common Loon is one of my favorite birds. Why should you care? No reason really. BUT, to form your own opinion of the Loon listen to it. No other bird has such an ethereal call:
Here’s a Loon call video from YouTube:
A Loon information site [click]
Habitat map:
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And finally a photo of a Loon taken by myself up in Maine way back in the summer of 2005. (The photo at the top of the page is from [this site] but there’s no photo credit given.)
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