Foto Motel

Joan Didion & Eugene Richards

Photographer Eugene Richards has created a beautiful cover for the NYT magazine of Joan Didion. See it HERE. The inside images are a striking mix of what looks  -to me to be a very New York apartment and the passing of time. There are two HERE. Having read much of Didion's work and experiencing a sudden loss in my own life, I look forward to reading, The Year of Magical Thinking when it is released next month.

I am only slightly reminded of when New York Magazine featured a pictorial spread by Andrew Moore, on the late Richard Avedon's NY apartment. See it HERE. I believe it was done just before Sotheby's auctioned off the interior contents.

If any more photo essays of the interior spaces of the recently deceased come to mind I'll let you know.

cheerleader-Nazi-homo pie!

Joachim Ladefoged's portfolio in The New York Times Magazine opens up the door to look at the cheerleader in photography. See his work HERE. Not much is coming to mind as far as an extended look at cheerleaders in the form of a book. But you can take a look at the Professional Cheerleader Bog for starters. So I open the door a little wider to include gymnasts. Watch out here comes the flood. Anderson/Low's work with the Danish National Gymnastic Team comes to mind which is also seen in their book Athletes & Gymnasts. Its hard to ignore the similarities to the work of Gerhard Riebicke and Kurt Reichert. Who both worked with the nude in nature in Germany between the wars. You can see some of their work in the great book from Taschen, 1000 Nudes. This aesthetic was soon adopted by the Third Reich's propaganda photographers. Even the photography blog, Conscientious would agree. But not to worry to much, no downers here, the style is seen again and again in homoerotic imagery. Start with a little Herbert List and George Hoyningen-Huene, throw in Bob Mizer and our friends at Athletic Model Guild (Tom of Finland) and it not long before you get Mapplethorpe, Ritts, and Weber.

NYT Magazine Cover

Jason Fulford's image (with the help of the digi-manipulators at Statik Digital), rests on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, 7.3.05. This is a great opportunity to look at the mixing of a photographer/non-profit publisher, "digi-manips", a major magazine (known for its power listed photo editors and their choices in photographers), and the core of the story it goes with, "A Church-State Solution," by Noah Feldman.

A list of two-sided issues is generated: 1. analogue/digital or unmanipulated/manipulated 2. Indie publisher/high-circulation media or working photographer/unemployed photographer 3. A State Church / state church separation, or as Feldman describes them, values evangelicals / legal secularists, respectfully. The point in both image and text is that to continue ( as one country, as an employed photographer and working practices) one side can not nor needs to exclude the other. I'll spare you my reading of the story by Feldman, (but its a great 4th of July read), and move on to the images. The four published images: Toll Booth (cover), traffic signal (opener), state park sign (inside) and a public pool (inside) are all examples of the tax payers money at work. With the addition of the slight but profound alteration you get a church-state that has infiltrated and trickled down to the everyday to remind its imagined citizens (us) of their assigned "Judeo-Christian" beliefs. The cover image comes closest to what the article proposes, but on second look it to is more of a fear/blessing of what could/will happen.

Please Google Jason Fulford and the NYT to learn more.