Avedon at ICP

Fridays are pay what you want at the International Center of Photography Museum so I dropped by after work today to see a collection by one of my favorite photographers, Richard Avedon.


It’s hard for me to describe pictures that I truly like, because what I’m really saying when I say I like a picture is that I like the feeling it gives me as well as the way it looks. So while I can describe the aesthetic attributes of an image it’s more difficult to try and convey that it maybe makes my chest tight or my heart beat faster or that it corresponds to a memory deep in my subconscious of something that maybe never even existed, maybe something sentimental, quiet, melancholy, joyful, or even perverse.

So there exists a true intimacy between the viewer and the photograph, no different than all the other intimacies experienced in the relationship between people and each other and art and nature. It’s one of the many things I love about photographs.
I remember seeing a program on Avedon years ago, which sparked something in me unconsciously, a new appreciation for photography I had never had before. There was some documentation of a controversial shoot he did of his dying father. As he deteriorated day by day, Avedon took a series of pictures of him.

There is something at the heart of the artist, which does not observe boundaries set down by society. It steps over the lines because it knows the truth, however frightening is there. I watched this program with some reservation but never did I feel that Avedon was immoral or even crazy. He said something at the end of the program, which has always stuck with me. He said that a photograph is "the death of the moment." It captures something, which is at once frozen and yet instantly gone. To capture does not mean to maintain. It only means to remember. Which is what photographs are essentially: commemoration, documentation, remembrance…dying. It’s beautiful.

i am no one

"It seems so impossibly difficult to be simple, to be what you are and not pretend. To be what you are is in itself very arduous without trying to become something, which is not too difficult. You can always pretend, put on a mask but to be what you are is an extremely complex affair; because you are always changing; you are never the same and each moment reveals a new facet, a new depth, a new surface. You can’t be all this at one moment for each moment brings its own change. So if you are at all intelligent, you give up being anything. You think you are very sensitive and an incident, a fleeting thought, shows that you are not; you think you are clever, well-read, artistic, moral but turn round the corner, you find you are none of these things but that you are deeply ambitious, envious, insufficient, brutal and anxious. You are all these things turn by turn and you want something to be continuous, permanent, of course only that which is profitable, pleasurable. So you run after that and all the many other yous are clamoring to have their way, to have their fulfillment…

So to be what you are is an extremely arduous affair; if you are at all awake, you know all these things and the sorrow of it all. So you drown yourself in your work, in your belief, in your fantastic ideals and meditations. By then you have become old and ready for the grave, it you are not already dead inwardly. To put away all these things, with their contradictions and increasing sorrow, and be nothing is the most natural and intelligent thing to do. But before you can be nothing, you must have unearthed all these hidden things, exposing them and so understanding them. To understand these hidden urges and compulsions, you will have to be aware of them, without choice, as with death; then in the pure act of seeing, they will wither away and you will be without sorrow and so be as nothing. To be as nothing is not a negative state; the very denial of everything you have been is the most positive action, not the positive of reactions, which is inaction; it is this inaction which causes sorrow. This denial is freedom. This positive action gives energy, and mere ideas dissipate energy. Idea is time and living in time is disintegration, sorrow."

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Secret Life of Toys

When my brother and I were little we used to play with his action figures everywhere we went which meant that a lot of their adventures took place among large rocks, twigs, dirt, lakes, trees, grass, flowers and leafy plant in New York and in Trinidad. This picture by JD Hancock on Flickr reminds me of that incredible time during childhood when the situations I created in my imagination were larger than life.

Why?

The Petty Tyrant

How long will I let this one
fry in my mind,
before I decide
to be fearless
or blind?

Ajamu told me that we are all still being born, that this level of existence is a womb stage. Which makes me wonder what is going on psychologically with an infant who is literally in the womb for nine months. And if we are all still being born, what is life really? What are we preparing for? We don’t really know anything about infants. Oh we know what we can observe from the outside but we don’t really have any concrete, empirical data on their inner world. We don’t really know where they came from, where we came from. We don’t really know where we’re going. Birth and death are concepts we have to believe we understand to some extent only as a means to provide us with what happens in the middle; life. And of life we have an endless string of theories, of the meaning and the purpose of it. Is it fated? Is it random? Is someone watching? Is it all a game? All these questions and answers seem to indicate a great deal of doubt over whether, like birth and death, we know anything about life either. We are deep wells of contradiction, infinite potential and utter devastation. We are mysteries, often pretending to be solved. We are birds that can swim. But we cling only to what we think we know. And in doing do, what wonders pass us by? What tiny sparks are doused with sobering “reality” which could have soared into a roaring fire of inspiration for all? And why? That’s one of the biggest and earliest questions of all. From birth to death, we never stop asking why. And why do we never stop asking why?

I am not a nigger

For years, since I was a teenager, this man has touched my life on so many levels. He was so fearless, so ahead of his time, so slept on, so fierce!!! Against all the horrible, brutal, merciless and perverse odds of his time he sought to know truly he was and to guide others to do the same. He knew who he was and who the white man was not and he made no apologies for it.

He predicted the future! And for better or worse he still is...

Watch this.

Damn Proud of playing with dolls

When my Blythe love starts to make me feel a little freakish, I read stuff like this.

...all better.
: )

More New Clothes for Emily Blythe

And a new hair-do...

So far I've bought all my Blythe Clothes from Etsy artists. I'm pretty sure the doll clothes they sell at Toy R Us are not very compatible. But sometimes I do wonder if there's a little store somewhere that sells Blythe clothes. If they did though, I'm sure they wouldn't be as unique and imaginative as these. These are by Hilary Wagstaff in London

So far, they all fit her to a T. Most have snap buttons in the back and they're so tiny! I like to imagine someone sewing tiny teeny Blythe clothes all day! The next item I want to get her this killer crochet top made by someone whose work I saw on flickr this week on my hunt for a Black Blythe for sale. I get distracted so easily. It's fukin adorable!

I also think I have Emily Blythe's sister pretty much picked out. She's made by Ashton Drake as well and fortunately is comfortably within my budget. Three Blythe Dolls is my limit. Her sis is a redhead I found on ebay but she has bangs so she looks slightly more commercial. I don't think it's too soon.