Ms. Levitt captured instances of a cinematic and delightfully guileless form of street choreography that held at its heart, as William Butler Yeats put it, “the ceremony of innocence.” A man handles garbage-can lids like an exuberant child imitating a master juggler. Even an inanimate object — a broken record — appears to skip and dance on an empty street as a child might, observed by a group of women’s dresses in a shop window.
The critic Adam Gopnik, writing in The New Yorker in 2001, described Ms. Levitt as ”the supreme poet-photographer of the streets and people of New York.”
I said a while ago that I was a bit tired of typologies, but for every rule there is an exception.
essay by Adam Marcus
If you drive northeast of the tiny town of Eldorado, Texas (pop. 2,000) on Schleicher County Road 300, there isn’t much to see, save the occasional oil well and the limitless, low-lying brush of the dry landscape. But four miles or so out of town, as the calm monotony of west Texas ranch country begins to set in, you’ll come upon an unmarked, padlocked gate, initially indistinguishable from those found at countless other dusty turnoffs along the road.
In 2006, after 14 years photographing and teaching in Cuba, Ernesto Bazan was forced to leave the country. Since then the award-winning Italian photographer has been collecting his huge cache of images from Cuba into a book, BazanCuba, which he published himself in 2008, through the publishing company he founded, BazanPhotos Publishing. He funded the book with donations from his students from his frequent workshops, who also helped with the editing. He’s now distributing it himself and making a documentary about the whole process. I talked with Ernesto when he was in San Francisco recently about the power of collaboration and the lessons he learned by producing a book from start to finish.
There’s a rumor afoot suggesting that Canon will be ditching CCD and adopting CMOS chips for a new pro-level camcorder. Digital cameras and camcorders never been so indistinguishable.
The paint is barely dry on the new Siem Reap Barnes & Noble, a gleaming, $6 million, 60,000-square-foot book store/coffeehouse that the American bookselling giant boasts is the finest in this rural village of 2,100. But already a serious question is being raised: Can the new bookstore—with its enormous selection, discount prices and chic espresso bar—peacefully co-exist with smaller, independently owned bookstores in the area?
I came across this photograph here in The Guardian. I am deeply ambivalent about it. On the one hand I can nearly feel the burden of pain and sadness reflected in Neeson’s posture. I recognized the feelings immediately. On the other hand, what the hell was the photographer Mike Groll doing there? When my son Jeff died, his older brother (then 17) nearly punched news reporters who’d camped out at his mother’s house. Yes it is the photographer’s job. But there are jobs one might turn down, right?
With a doomsday clock ticking for newspapers as we know them, no one has more at stake than fourth-generation New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who is scrambling to keep his family’s prized asset alive. Some see him as a lightweight cheerleader, others as the last, best defender of quality journalism. Talking to company insiders, the author examines the nexus of dynasty and character that has brought the 57-year-old Sulzberger to the precipice.
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I had the pleasure of spending some time with the good people during unfortunate times in Gibson, Georgia
“We’re always a little bit sick…” say’s A.J. as he clear his throat. It’s midnight, below freezing and we are huddled inside an empty truck container in downtown Salt Lake. He leans forward and lights a cigarette and a ball of orange light explodes and softens around his face for two short seconds.
It was a most gruesome end, and the sight will shock even the coldest of hearts. There she was on the hard floor, her badly battered body lying in a pool of her blood. Her entire face was coated with clotted blood, with a few bones irreverently sticking out of her broken remains
Now flash-forward to the late 1990s, New York City. I had become friends with the then 91 year old Theodore Gottlieb, better-known as the infamous dark comedian Brother Theodore, a big influence on Eric Bogosian, Lydia Lunch and Spaulding Gray, who had been performing his totally insane one-man show at the tiny 13th Street Theater for ages and was a frequent guest on David Letterman’s show during the 1980s. No exaggeration to say that Theodore had been around forever. He was delivering lines like “The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young” long before I was born. What was a great gag when he was, say, 50 years old, and then to STILL be delivering a line like that at the age of 93, as he did on my UK television series, well that existential tension is what made his nonagenarian performances so incredibly spell-binding.
In exclusive interview with the Guardian, writer David Simon expresses fears for newspapers’ future and accuses media owners of contempt
Theatergoers will have barely settled into their seats at “Reasons to Be Pretty,” which makes its Broadway debut this week at the Lyceum, before they will be jolted by the profanity-laced rant of a young woman directed at her passive boyfriend all because he told a friend she had a “regular” face. The entire play hinges on this seemingly innocuous comment, which is why the billboard outside the Lyceum describes it as “a love story about the impossibility of love” written by “Neil LaBute, playwright and provocateur.” LaBute’s plays are, in fact, so provocative that some past audience members have walked out midplay or screamed out “kill the playwright” or slapped an actor’s face after a performance. And that makes a side of LaBute happy. “It’s part of my makeup,” he says, “to ruin a perfectly good day for people.”
Right about this same time last year (it’s 70th anniversary) I found an incredible paragon of throw-down urban journalism resting on the counter of my local 7/11 store. To say The St. Louis Metro Evening Whirl is unlike any newspaper printed and distributed in the United States would be giving it so little credit it’s not even funny.
The work included in this exhibition demonstrates not only the hand of a talented artist, but also that of an obsessive collector. Each piece is an assemblage of street advertisements meticulously hand-collected by the artist over the course of many years. Layered deep in each work is a visual topography of the vibrant ethnic neighborhoods of New York City that collectively drive its pulse and frenetic energy.
“I do this as a regular pastime,” says Susana Raab of her practice of seeking funding for her personal projects. Her “Consumed” series, which documents America’s fast food culture and was featured in “Exposures” in March, has been supported by grants from The Puffin Foundation and the White House News Photographers’ Association.
