"When, a Scandinavian Sex God...."

gen-s

After re-viewing that "I was a sex god in Soviet Estonia", I was reminded of David Hamilton's work. David Hamilton has been doing his part to piss off the religious right for the better part of the last century; and when I was a kid in France, in the seventies, his work was all the rage; and like strikes, George Marchais and the CGT, he was everywhere he wanted.

Of course his work has come under fire in the United States as "child pornography". Since I won't even think of touching that one with any pole, of any length, I'll let you do your own special judging. I also could not really find any Hamilton images by searching, so instead I found and am posting (not at work...oops, too late) a generic nude from the seventies, to titillate your puns intended.

What I find enviable about the seventies nude aesthetics is how unique and specific it churned out to be. I suspect that the work of David Hamilton was a huge influence on the genre but also within photography's subsequent struggles with Thatcher-Reaganite era censorship. For better or for worst, David Hamilton's work was hugely influential to generations of photographers, from Jock Sturges to Sally Mann, and to all those fashion appropriated, one might see in Vogue or W these days; tame emulations of his kitschy erotic masquerades. At the end of the day David Hamilton's work fell victim to the religiously rabid masses, the moral policing of a world bent on censoring the relative validity of The Hamiltons and Sturges.

Invariably those self righteous religious fascists bitches turned out to be pornography's biggest consuming masses; they themselves the true agents and perpetrators of pedophilial sexual abuses; all the while diverting attention from themselves and onto those few who may not necessarily deserve it, or be tied to the whipping post of the fearful and "coincer".

PS: Hamilton openly acknowledges that his photos depict their subjects as idealized sexual fantasy objects for men attracted to young girls."There's only three of us in this business. Nabokov penned it, Balthus painted it, and I photographed it." This comparison is more than a little self-serving; David Hamilton is more like the Maxfield Parrish of softcore porn.

Whatever is to be said about him, we live in a world were work like his, becomes almost impossible to judge, exhibit or discuss publicly. The cacophony of a fearful public along with the resurgence, exploitation and trade of millions of innocent sex slaves makes for artistic suicide these days. We live in a fugly world, no matter how and with whom you look at it !

Damn Wright...!

Robert Wright has recently been writing eloquently about editorial photography on his blog. I wrote and thought so much about this shit, way back in the nineties, that doing it again would render me haplessly apathetic. I'll leave it to him to articulate it in these here teens. A fine job of it, if you ask me. Start with this post and move on to today's for the full experience.

Revenge of the Cretins.

My friend Richard emailed me this Newsweek article this morning and it set my blood a boiling. You'll need to read Peter Plagens cretinous musings and come back to me but if you should feel unwilling to budge from this august blogging, I shall furnish you with an excerpt, which more or less sums it: "Yet wandering the galleries of these two shows, you can't help but wonder if the entire medium hasn't fractured itself beyond all recognition. Sculpture did the same thing a while back, so that now "sculpture" can indicate a hole in the ground as readily as a bronze statue. Digitalization has made much of art photography's vast variety possible. But it's also a major reason that, 25 years after the technology exploded what photography could do and be, the medium seems to have lost its soul. Film photography's artistic cachet was always that no matter how much darkroom fiddling someone added to a photograph, the picture was, at its core, a record of something real that occurred in front of the camera. A digital photograph, on the other hand, can be a Photoshop fairy tale, containing only a tiny trace of a small fragment of reality. By now, we've witnessed all the magical morphing and seen all the clever tricks that have turned so many photographers—formerly bearers of truth—into conjurers of fiction. It's hard to say "gee whiz" anymore. Art and truth used to be fast friends. Until the beginning of modernism, the most admired quality in Western art was mimesis—objects in painting and sculpture closely resembling things in real life."

WTF, what's wrong with this Newsweek? Hasn't he finally understood that any form of visual art will inexorably migrate from the descriptive to the imaginary, and sometimes all at once. As a new visual medium is created, most creative artists will explore its ability to record reality. It stands to reason, obviously, but shortly thereafter the artist will explore his or her inner thing thingies. That's just the way it goes.

What happened with photography is that very quickly, in the 19th and early 20th century, photographers both documented, copied other visual arts like painting but also started to explore the medium's possibilities as just another tool for self-expression. It's the critiques and some photographers who are guilty of narrowing the medium by straight jacketing what photography should and should not do, or be.

It also happened that the 20th century was so incredibly violent and momentous that documenting these epics started to overtake the more imaginative aspects of photography. I mean really, would a self respecting talent continue exploring the joys of one's imaginations when genocide and bombs are ripping the very fabric of the society he or she lived in. Probably not. Conflicts put documentarists on top of the "Photographic food chain", and from which they comfortably dictated what it was to be a photographer, what photography ought to achieve and to what aims it should point its machines.

What is happening right now is that photographers and artists from around the world are rediscovering the medium thru technology, just like the camera, itself a breakthrough technology at the time allowed artists the freedom to go nuts with possibilities. Nevertheless, art tends to migrate from the pictorial to the conceptual or the imaginary, as a matter of maturity, and by that I do not mean that it get better or worst by aging. It is just a natural peregrination from the real to the dream, much as we ourselves live as we pass from day into night, the conscious to the subconscious. None of this is new, artists generally do not make the kind's of discoveries which truly shape our societies, they generally respond to them and express them visually or conceptually, wether they know it or are unconsciously doing it. Darwin devalued the divine and Freud elaborated on the ego and the Id, Einstein equated the space time but Duchamps and Warhol only followed their lead, by sensing those earth shaking ideas and expressing them in cave paintings.

So when you try to figure out what is art or what photography is, don't bother with the minutia, just remember that there's good art and bad art only. It's hard enough to divine those two out, as it already is. Never mind if photography ought to be representative, manipulative or imaginary. Is it good or is it bad, and good luck and good night..... bitch....!

Our friend "Crystal"....

vive What’s in pork larb that gets me every time? After an early lunch I walked over to Park Life on Clement and bought a cuckoo clock for thirteen bucks. What a deal, 24 hours for only thirteen. While I was at it I picked up the recently released “The Vice Photo Book”, as in Vice magazine, not “La Biblia”. Wouldn’t be caught dead with that thing, starts me sneezing and coughing something awful nasty.

The work within could simply be re-categorized as “punk photography”, or the “jack ass school of photo shoots” or “indie pics”,or whatever you wish it to be, but at the end of the day it does the world a fairly good service. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it has a certain sad sweetness, if not wetness, to it. The innocence of a youth stripped of what once might have been called inhibitions. Sorta like what Japan might have looked like if Panasonic had discovered and marketed crack, meth or ice.

The only thing I wonder about is what that stuff might look like if it had been shot by more talented photographers? Yet still, that’s part of the philosophy, appeal and aesthetics, so who am to think?

And another thing is! Is that Vice Magazine is already hopelessly outdated and cliche. What next? “Snuff Magazine”, the international magazine for those who like to kill ; oh but wait, that’s call “History”. Better yet "What does Philip Jones Griffith think, about all this?"

In the Ghaytto...

butt I am a resident of a San Francisco neighborhood called "The Castro". You might have heard of it...! It all began as a refuge for WWII service men after they were discharged from the army for being homosexual. Come to think of it, this might be the reason why homosexuals are so fond of dressing up like the service men they once were. After all, it's what started it all; but then again, may be, just may be...!

As I was saying, I live in the Castro and spend much time patronizing the commercial establishments catering to Eureka valley, as the Castro is also commonly known. On weekend mornings I have made it a habit to go to a local bookstore to peruse the books and magazine stand of one such mentioned establishment. One "zine" which has recently caught my eye is "Butt" magazine, "The Magazine for and about the homosexuelles". Because I live in San Francisco and the Castro more specifically, as previously mentioned; I am constantly bombarded by images of male sexuality and have of course become quite enamored with its own sets of peculiarities. Something I always tend to do when I spend any length of time in places with personalities, which, as it turns out, is just about anywhere.

The nice thing about men appreciating men is that it takes on some of the same bewildering visual and cliched diversity that men, photographing women, have had the pleasure and freedom to indulge in, without fearing a heavy handed truncheoning at the hand of our best and most fearful moralists(not that they've stopped trying). On the other hand, it seems rather unfortunate that women, for the most part, do not seem to share the same exploitative and hormonal need to visually portray us men, with the same obsessive vigor, as straight and gay men seem to display towards the objects of their sexual desires. Do testes fancy imagery over and above that of their reproductive gonadotropin-releasing counterparts, the ovaries?

But enough of that, and as I was saying "Butt" magazine, for whatever reason has caught my attention, and this here last edition might yet become an instant classic, and if not with the rest of the world, at least with me and the boys. As with anything, the best part of it, is connecting random dots to weave one's story.

So, here is one more proof that what you are is what you see: I woke up around 830 and off we went for coffee at Peets, on Market street. No more than a few paces from Peets stands "Books inc.", a place for books and magazines. I picked up a copy of "Butt" as the image on the cover begged me, of course the boys are easily amused but this story does not so easily end here. We return home, eat breakfast and decide to head on over to the climbing gym to burn off some calories. Down Noe to 18th, but whom should we see struggling up the hill on a ten speed, it's cover boy from Butt Magazine...! Same hair, same ethnicity, same high heels, same ten speed. Is this even a remote possibility, could it be or are we imagining?

So, down the hill we speed, with Raph and Gab exclaiming: "Papa, that's the guy from Butt Magazine"....! Indeed....... but the best part of the story is that it wasn't him, just a doppelgängerish coincidence, on Noe and 18th. Fate, had once again, seemed fit to discharge him, his high heels and ten speed, to roamed Eureka valley's hills and gullies. The lad on Butt's cover apparently lives and loves on his ten speed, in a city called London, and the chances of his traveling with his trusty steed to struggle up our hills, seem rather slim, don't you think?

So, what's the moral of this story?: "If you are what you see, keep looking; you never know what you might turn out to be".

So Ronery...

As you may or may not know, Kim Jong Il, the North Korean dictator in residence, is a big film buff and has personally directed many North Korean block busters. He has even gone as far as kidnapping South Korean stars so that they might perfect their craft in North Korea. This one wasn't directed by the man himself........ A workers' Paradise but soon to be repurposed as a Geico insurance commercial....

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but this one was directed by "Dear Leader" himself.......

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Southern fried Koreo-Greco-Chino-Roman-Franco-Estonian.......

One of my all time favorite source of entertainment, when I travel to foreign lands, is watching their version of TV. Not only does it give me a opportunity to get a foot hold into, said alien minds, and therefore allow me to better do my job but it also satisfies a very important and integral part of my personality, a kind of intense sardonic curiosity. To my credit I do not judge others beyond my first reactions and internal or public commentaries. Invariably these kinds of cultural diversions, leave me awe struck by humanity's extraordinary diversity and creativity. I love human culture in all its bewildering forms and one of my life's most important and dogged pursuit has been to experience as much of it as could be crammed in. I have gather a large collection of YouTube nuggets by key wording in some of my own personal collections or notes from the field. I will post these findings from time to time and if I ever get to it I will grace this site with MP4s harvested from my own video collection. I probably won't get to it since editing, copying and downloading video is incredibly labor intensive, but you never know. In the meantime, you still can check out the video I made in Afghanistan 4 years ago. It's long and strangely uneventful but it has its own beauty. Just copy it to your ipod and watch it on your favorite from of public transport.

Begin festivies here:

This one is from Estonia. I'll be posting more from Estonia so yall come back. On a personal note, the most disturbing part of this one is that it sounds like polyphonic Corsican folk music. Fucking bumpkins, they always sounds eerily familiar and similar.

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I have been a great fan of Bollywood since my first of many trips to the continent in 1987. I have a large personal collection of both Bollywood flicks and their musical scores as well as the other more "serious" Calcuttan school of film making. This one plays like a bizzare tourist advertorial, loose limbed Mumbai extravaganza. Watch for the peculiar disrobing and the transparent bus among others. I have to admit that I have been know to frequent such buses in the great state of Bihar. And oh yes, it's also a good way to sneak into Afghanistan.

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A classic and it features a commercial photographer to boot. I have watched endless hours of this kind of stuff while living and working in Asia. This one is Korean. Those Korean girls are so damn fine it's sometimes hard to concentrate on the story line and wonder what a Korean South Park might look like. Of course as everything Korean, it never ends well. The syrupy fatalism is to die for....

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Much more to come, I have a feeling that this will become a permanent feature on this site.

"Proud and Prejudiced".

Since I only came to this country when I was fourteen, it stands to reason that I spent the better part of my formative years in the country of my nativity; France namely. The country which gave you the "freedom frie"*, a healthy love of ridicule and what some might contemptuously taunt as, a shallow infatuation with the sumptuous. The later, but a reverence for craftsmanship, and a refined sense of a life well achieved, and by that I do not mean, the incessant pursuit of the feckless riches which we seem to so abundantly revere in this country, but an almost obsessive love of perfection. Because a living, is better appreciated when your hands produce an object of beauty, rather than the blood they once shed over the forced labor, king and country so cruelly expropriated in salt, and tears.

It made for a land greened and rooted in craftsmanship, only to reflect the brilliance of a nation and the humanity contained within; a trait, deeply ingrained into the french psyche. In France, the artisan and the thinker are esteemed and worshiped like no other, save for Japan, may be!

As I was saying, having spent half of these first fourteen years in a Parisian suburb(the rest in a Corsican village), I never, as much as batted an eye when the French Communist party would take to the streets and chant up and down Parisian streets, or strike the country into a stand still. I saw the communists as just another stitch in the fabric of my own birth country, another voice within our politically french cacophony. Consequently, when I first came to New York’s Duchess county, the visceral McCarthyism of these here Yankees, save for a few contrarians, neither here nor there nor yonder, made for some pleasantly stupefying head scratching to this teenage creed.

What was the meaning of these North American dogmatists, these ante-bellish certainties? Communism? How could this mirrored Narcissus, to their own puritanical absolutes, could possibly have been confused for anything else but another one of man’s own self absorbed tyrannies? What was it about the American psyche which demanded a murderous end to the constraints of someone else’s philosophy?

Was it the fear of those nuclear tipped flying machines, or the intellectual fear to compete with another, less fortunate citizenry, trying to brake loose from the tyrants, real and imagined, they had been made to worship; in duchesses and counties, where land wasn’t a plenty and the natives ever so pliably sickened by a battery of ship born diseases? A continent twice the size of the known universe, ripe for the Christian taking, and so it goes, no one to argue with, except the remorse and the guilt, but nothing the confessional couldn’t fix, but not until those well meaning, god fearing Christianialists, came to realize that tilling and claiming such fertility, took more than a plow and crucifixes; it also took a people whose skin came better and more readily accustomed to working, in these sub-tropics.

Did we really, need afore mentioned intestinal rhapsody to introduce the poetic politics of Communism’s favorite opiated lyrics. Probably not, but nevertheless, this chant’s call to equality seems but a sad recall to the principles of our two mutually wounded and competing philosophies. I guess it never hurts to look back at the twentieth century, or the 16th, and remember that human dissonance makes for the inexorable furtherance and pursuit, of life, death, and the murderously brutal persuasions, of the living. Nevertheless, The International “is” a beautiful song, especially when harmonized acoustically.

Here is a link to the lyrics, so that you may sing along, in English or in French, given that, afterall, the tune itself was originally written in the French I first spoke, not the English I seconded, in Duchess county.

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* It is claimed that a belgium born man, by the name of Parmentier, is to be blamed for that culinary epiphany, but who's counting?

"El Papa Peludo...."

raph I have not yet posted an image of Raphaël so here he is. Since this is Thanksgiving, and eventhough, I have never been a big fan of this manufactured holiday, I have to say that I am thankful for the endless amusement and merriment my boys bring to my life. Quite the little “Terrance and Philip”, those two are. This image of Raphaël was taken last spring during a rare moment of introspection. I must have threatened him with grave consequences for him to sit still and not goof off for less than a micro-second.

I am eternally thankful that my boys are healthy, handsome, funny and intelligent. If you are reading this blog and have children of your own, I wish you all the same and many happy returns; but as Calamity Jane used to say: The adults can “go fuck their'selves”.

For the "FUCKING" record...!

whoyoucallinangry Yesterday afternoon, a friend of mine, casually mentioned, “olivier, I have been reading your blog, and you sound kinda angry, eventhough you are not “. OKAY, I’ve heard that one before, but usually without the “eventhough you’re not “; so for the FUCKING record, “I am NOT fucking ANGRY”, JESUS fucking CRIKEY !!! , do I really have to reach across the multimedia and bitch slap senses into the modern english, plural nominative equivalent of “YE”? For the FUCKING life of ME, do I really have to fUCKing SPELL it…????

Tags: Sardonic, scornful derision, mocking, sneering, biting, mordant, contemptous, acerbic, caustic, derisive, disrespectful, smart-alecky, taunting, offensive.

"Deadwood", in more ways than one.

Long lines, unavoidably try, yours and mine. As a result, I have always tried to anticipate such times to reduce the strain on this psyche of mine and have always made sure that there is a book, a New Yorker or an iphone somewhere in my gunnysack. As soon as it starts to form behind some imaginary line, I pull it out and wile away the time (sounds dirty too, how fine!). Thereupon, I came to realize that the unavoidable conclusion was that I relied too much on the iphone for such interneted diversions. On that account, I’ve decided to both read and absorb Deadwood and the New Yorker at the same time. I was skeptical at first that this here multi-task might better be left to womens, but to my great surprise, I was able to focus on both tasks, at, and for once. One draw back, to these exercises, is that I seem more prone to ignoring some of the finer lines gracing the King of Thai’s lovely, larb dispensing gals.

By Deadwood, I mean the HBO series of the same mind, not the lack of erectile. I had begun watching Deadwood a year or two ago but never made it passed the first couple times; despite the fact that I relished the screen writing, acting and cinematography, but more on that.

Anyway, as I was watching season one’s eight episode while reading the New Yorker review of “Michael Clayton’; I was struck by David Denby’s first pronouncements: ” It’s forever being drummed into us that movies are a visual medium. Screenwriters are chastised with this half-truth all the time”. And as I read this, here I was, relishing Deadwood’s language and wondering wether it was cut because it seems to rely so heavily on the characters’ great lines. May be it was the screenwriter’s aptitude at language which doomed it this time. Deadwood seems to rely almost entirely on the power of the written lines. No doubt the acting and the sets are finely tuned pieces of professional knack but it seems obvious that the whole series revolves around a writer’s finely tuned craft. Rising tides lift all crafts, taking the rest of the crew on this ride.

I think I became aware of this once I realized that most of the action takes place behind closed doors, whereas the landscape, universal staple of the American Western is relegated to the background, as if the entire series was shot with just one short focal eye. Hardly ever, does the camera wonder outside, giving us an acutely un-western sense of drama. The anguish and trauma of the camp, the single mindedness of these prospecting hands does not stop to take in the panorama. The whole series, at least what I’ve seen of it now, concentrates on its human characters’ enforced drama. Removing the sublime from their daily lives it reinforces the sub-prime and enforces claustrophobia. Not a bad way to eat pork larb, multi-task or wait in line.

In other news: You can now buy mangosteens in America. For some reason the Agriculture department had prevented their importation for a very long time. Fortunately, they are now gracing Chinatown’s fruit salad.