[dovate.com] » essay
Don’t ask me why, but last night my TV was tuned into the Fox 29 10:00 news. It was mostly background noise until a story came on about a rape in “South Philadelphia.” From the visual, I saw that they were talking about last week’s fucked up story about the girl who jumped out of her window at 3rd and South. She did it to avoid an attacker.
Horrible story aside, South Street has been in Center City for at least 30 years. South Philadelphia it isn’t.
Local news is notorious for misrepresenting neighborhoods, especially when something good or bad happens. Rash of muggings on Penn Campus? Call it West Philadelphia. New brewpub at 50th and Baltimore? Call it University City. Rape on South Street? Suddenly it’s South Philadelphia.
This is common. It’s flawed, damaging, dangerous and acts like a cancer in the minds of an already deeply divided and distrustful Philadelphia population, but we’re all pretty much used to it. Everyone knows and expects the news to carve up neighborhoods by race and class rather than anything crazy like physical geography. It annoys us when it happens in our own neighborhood, but mostly we ignore it…
…Unless that misrepresentation is so glaring that you’re inspired to write about it and point it out to people over the internet. Like this:
On February 25th, some students at a highly esteemed public school are attacked in front of that school at 17th and Spring Garden. The Daily News’ Mensah Dean writes an article including the quote:
Green, who teaches at another city school, Kensington Culinary Arts High School, said he wanted a greater show of city police around the Center City school, starting today.
“What I want the city to do is protect these kids, coming and going to and from school,” Green said while standing in front of the school, which in November was ranked the nation’s 53rd best public high school by U.S. News and World Report magazine.
One week later, the Daily News’ Mensah Dean writes a follow-up, this time profiling one of the kids arrested in the attack. He attended Benjamin Franklin High at Broad and Spring Garden. Just as in the first article, she interviewed and quoted an employee at a neighboring school.
“It’s typical of what occurs in Philadelphia schools,” said Veronica Joyner, chief administrative officer of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School, at Broad and Hamilton Streets, in North Philadelphia. “Administrators don’t report incidents because they don’t want to look bad.”
“They continue to groom criminals. When they stop grooming them, that’s when we’ll stop having them,” she said.
Let’s review then. Two articles written by the same journalist and reporting on the same incident. The articles are separated by one week. In article one, Masterman is in Center City. In article two, the MCSC Charter School (and by inference nearby Ben Franklin High) are in North Philadelphia.
Just in case you’re unfamiliar with the geography, Masterman is exactly as far north as Ben Franklin High. The schools are on the same east/west street, less than 3 blocks apart. The MCSC Charter school is about a block and a half south of both of them. Worst of all, MCSC is directly adjacent to the Daily News offices at Broad and Callowhill.
Mensah Dean could have gotten her North Philly quote by leaning out her Center City office window… or vice versa. No matter if she wrote in the neighborhood name herself, or an editor changed it to better reflect the stereotypes and fears of the DN readership, it’s still flat out wrong to describe Masterman as Center City and Ben Franklin as North Philly.
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Just to end, I understand that neighborhood names are a matter of perspective. Any random citizen on the street might call the area, Fairmount, Art Museum Area, North Philly, Spring Garden, Center City, The Loft District or Chinatown North. A Masterman student might say they go to school in Center City and a Ben Franklin kid might say they go to school in North Philly.
Neighborhood boundaries – especially in Philadelphia – aren’t set in stone. With that said, although this story played out in a neighborhood with many potential names, it did play out in one of those neighborhoods. The names reported carry very different connotations. In this case, word choice can only be described as bias. Theoretically, bias is something newspapers attempt to avoid.
Somewhere in the course of internet history, Michael Reichmann got famous. He and his site, luminous-landscape.com have become a preeminent authority on digital photography and all the technical issues involved with it.
Reichmann has earned his reputation by providing accurate and helpful information in easy to follow prose. He’s not the end all or even the standard, but he’s definitely a well-respected voice.
For the entire digital era, Reichmann has shot almost exclusively with Canon, feeling that their top rival Nikon just couldn’t compete in a few critical areas.
But that’s changed.
The release of the D300 and the D3, Nikon regained Reichmann’s attention. And it’s not just him. Nikon has gotten a lot of people’s attention. With these 2 cameras, they’ve successfully met an even exceeded Canon’s ‘historic’ advantages.
So Reichmann switched. He bought the D3 and the D300 and many thousands of dollars worth of glass. (jealous of his flexibility here) He got to know how the ‘other side’ has been shooting all these years and he wrote up his thoughts in this very interesting review.
review of the review
What the review isn’t, is a comparison. With these 2 cameras, Nikon has proven that it competes with Canon technically. Reichmann didn’t match the D3 up against the 1Ds Mark III or the D300 against the 40D/5D, he compared the Nikon system against the Canon system. He looked at ergonomics and features. The review isn’t about statistics and charts, it’s about what it’s like to use that ‘other’ brand. Imagine a P.C. user switching to Mac and comparing function. That’s what this review is.
“…Canons are the best cameras available designed by engineers, and that Nikons are the best cameras one can buy designed by photographers.” is a fair quote to sum up his conclusion. Nikon kicks Canon’s ass in function, while Canon’s latest models still may, barely if even at all hold onto technical supremacy. Yes at twice the price, the 20+ megapixel 1Ds Mark III is overall a ‘better’ camera than the D3, but the D3 does has serious advantages at half the price.
And here are some other form and function perks offered by Nikon:
Dual CF cards (Not the nonsensical CF/SD combo offered by Canon’s top-of –the-line models) Auto ISO, (not to mention the D3’s 25600 ISO setting) An internal level with display in both the LCD screen and the Viewfinder; and these are just a few of the functions that jumped out at me. Most of Nikon’s other advantages were features I’d use less often… but I’d still use them. Things like the internal intervalometer, multi-exposure shooting, voice note recording, simple mirror-lock-up, functional live view. (Autofocus doesn’t work with Canon live view)
Designed by photographers indeed. Frankly, now that Nikon offers all these perks AND image quality, speed and performance that rivals most things that Canon does, I’d say it’s way past time that Canon step up their game. The “5D Mark II” (which may be formally announced as soon as January 24th) won’t make or break the brand, but it better offer something to knock the D300… and maybe even the D3 off it’s high horse.
When I switched to digital 3 years ago, I chose Canon because of its low light performance. If I were buying today, I’d have a much tougher decision.
With all that said, my 5D is old, slow and has a ‘print button’ but the image quality is about as good as it gets… Canon, Nikon or whatever. The original 5D is an instant classic and the 5D with the 24-70 f/2.8 L is a fucking awesome combination. No complaints. That’s all for now.
Sometimes it’s helpful to imagine humans as you’d imagine any large, biologically driven teeming mass of life. Strike out the idea of the individual and see humans as ants, bees, or bacteria. Look at the macro patterns, the things that drive our populations, the behavior that we can’t break down into actions of singular personalities.
Even from 100 feet, we appear as strange little tumors with spindly protrusions for arms, legs and fingers. From farther out, we multiply like bacteria in an open wound. Cities grow and swell. Every day they hemorrhage trillions of tons of sludge and waste. In the past hundred years, earth lit up like a magnesium fire. A time-lapse view from space would see the planet flaring up as we consume the planet’s buried energy. As our civilizations rise and fall, that light will peak, flicker and diminish.
Or maybe I’m being pessimistic.
For now, look at earth at night. Those lights are made possible by petroleum. The power plants that make them, the people fed by the crops grown by it and the trade networks dependent on it. Looking at this map, ask yourself which countries have the most to lose? Which have the most to gain? Who is the most powerful and who doesn’t have a leg to stand on? A basic familiarity of world politics and a thoughtful study of this map are worth as much as a year of political science classes.
What will happen in the next 100 years? The petroleum fires will go out, but will anything replace them?
The only deserts that are full of light are in the Middle East and the American Southwest. Which one will stay lit or will they both go out? Really think about it. Can the United States really afford to light its deserts? What sacrifices have we made to ensure that we can? What foreign policy decisions? How far overextended are we? Is the war in Iraq motivated by a growing desperation? Are we really that weak? Aside from oil entirely, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, don’t have enough water for the next 100 years. We’re living off of others’ credit. Outside of military power and the hegemony of the dollar, we produce almost nothing. The dollar is falling out of style and our military can be defeated.
I know I’m being pessimistic, but what will this map look like in 100 years?
Just to kick things off on a pretentious note, a passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s sprawling observation of our infant republic, Democracy in America has stood out in my mind since I read it many (5) years ago. In the passage Toqueville traveled by boat down the Mississippi River.
To one side was the Northern territory and to the other, the slave South. On the Northern side he saw the Jeffersonian ideal. The well-cultivated land was filled with neat and tidy small farms. Industrious workers carved out a very decent living, working independently, but in a larger sense working together to build a stable and progressive economy. There was no aristocracy or extreme poverty. The vision was almost utopian.
On the southern bank, he saw enormous farms being worked by slave labor. Land (and human) owners were wealthier, but far more rare. Owners were less capable and generally less resourceful. Landowners hadn’t developed the skills to make for themselves. Instead they learned the talents they needed to manage a workforce of slaves or indentured servants who made for them. In the south, Tocqueville saw the birth of an aristocracy ruling over a poor or enslaved majority through violence, fear and oppression.
It’s a powerful agent for thought and possibly for a call for change when economic disparity grows so extreme that it creates a clear visual contrast. Take a look at Lancaster Avenue as you leave the city. If you blink, you might think you just passed through a hole in the space-time continuum and ended up miles from where you just were.
But back to the North/South thing and on to the photography of Walker Evans.
The other day I was enjoying a very old pastime of mine, sitting in Borders browsing through the photography section. I took a new Walker Evans book down and settled into the corner by the window. In the same aisle, 2 very normal looking teenage girls searched through Magik texts in preparation for casting some spell later on that night. Eventually a third girl returned from Harry’s Occult and Spiritual Supply Shop with the final element and they were off. In the next aisle over an older man preached his bizarre brand of Christianity to a young man/old boy. I made myself comfortable and looked through the book. This is the new thing that I saw in the presentation of the images this author/editor selected.
There’s not really much sense in explaining what I want to present visually, except to keep in mind that North/South divide. Walker Evans made both these photos. Both factories are steel mills. The top is a tremendously famous shot taken in 1935 in Bethlehem, PA. The second is a less famous shot. In it, Evans pays homage to his own work. It was taken in Alabama in 1936.
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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’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.
