Marcia Resnick's been looking at Bad Boys

Marcia Resnick and Danny Fields

Let me start by saying that Marcia Resnick - who has a really sweet heart and a great eye - is one of my favorite New York City photographers.  She's been looking at and shooting Bad Boys in New York City for decades. And as Johnny Thunders said - "All the smart boys know why". That was in "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory". But actually, if you buy one of Marcia's prints on view at Deborah Bell Gallery, you can.

The first thing I thought about after leaving the exhibition, "Bad Boys" last Thursday night was -"Damn, I should have taken more pictures tonight." I was having such a good time looking at the photographs and talking to everybody - and what a startling group of everybody's it was - that I forgot to remember that I wanted to try out this new app on my phone, uh camera - the one that makes all the photos look like they were taken inside a 1950's photo booth.  

Marcia Resnick

Well, that's how we photographers are. First we stare in wonder at that great picture on the wall, then we get jealous, then we get inspired, then we shoot. And there was a lot at Marcia's exhibition to get inspired by. A lot!  People slipped in and out like they do at these events - some to see if they made the final cut onto the wall.  And others stayed all night to take it all in - like me. Flashes were going off all around, so why didn't it occur to me sooner to pull out my phone and shoot? I've got to admit, it's still a little difficult for someone who calls himself a photographer to get those words out of his mouth. Unless I'm using a weird app - like Hipstamatic, and in this case Pocketbooth - something that alters the phone picture taking experience significantly.   Well I got started shooting too late - born to lose - but here's a few of my shots from Marcia's fabulous opening. You should have been there!

Oh wait - one more thing. Did you know that Marcia Resnick and Senator Chuck Schumer went to the same High School? Not only that - they were  #1 and #2 in their class! Think about that one. 

Anton Perich

Maria Del Greco

Walter Stedding

Sid Kaplan

Eric Mitchell

Joey Zero

Tim "Stupefaction" Broun

Barry Brothers

All photos by GODLIS

through a glass darkly

I took this photograph one morning in the early 1980's, looking through the window of the Veselka off 2nd Avenue in the East Village. The Veselka was much smaller than it is now, still very much a Ukranian greasy spoon of a joint back then. For years I always imagined this to be a picture of a young couple settled into their morning after breakfast bliss.

Then in the summer of 1986, I exhibited this photograph with a number of others in a restaurant / gallery space lower down on 2nd Avenue. And at the end of the summer, I received this letter from England written by the girl in the photograph! Beautifully pre-email-ish, with her minimally descriptive drawing - a brilliant companion piece detailing the situation from the other side of the glass - revealing that they were indeed "having a massive row." Like a great turn in a novel, that almost made the picture even better.

I say so much for invasion of privacy issues. Every picture doesn't really tell a story. Garry Winogrand once said: "Photography is not about the thing photographed. It's about how that thing looks photographed." 

Yes, of course, I sent her a copy. 

Where I was at: 11.14.09 Clic Gallery NYC

Billy Name, NYC November 2009

Did you read the incredible story in this weekend's NY Times about the amazing Warhol Factory photographer Billy Name? How his valuable negatives have gone missing for years now in a maze of photography agents, art dealers, and unnamed sources? I'm not even going to try to explain this ongoing tale of shady art business shenanigans. You've got to read it yourself here. Sadly there are echoes of the tale of lost Diane Arbus prints dramatized last year so well in Hubert's Freaks by Gregory Gibson. Pray for the quick return of this holy grail.

I shot this photo of Billy Name at the November opening for the not to be missed exhibition - Bande A Part: New York Underground 60's 70's 80's on right now at the Clic Gallery 424 Broome Street in Soho NYC. It's only up one more week - extended until January 17th - so hurry up and get down there. There's so many good photographs by Roberta Bayley, Leee Black Childers, Marcia Resnick, Danny Fields, Bobby Grossman, Anton Perich, Stephanie Cherinikowski, Billy Name.  And yeah I know, I'm in the show too, so this is a bit of self-promotion.

And what if you're not in NYC this week? Well then get online and order the exhibition catalog of the same name published this past fall by GINGKO Press. You won't regret it. Cover photograph by the great Billy Name.

So Un-American: End of the Innocence

OK - more Robert Frank. Now this is interesting. Many years ago in 1989, ex-voice of the Eagles, Don Henley had a big hit on MTV with his song 'End of the Innocence'. While watching the video late one night, thinking something looked all too familiar, I taped it and re-watched it closely. It didn't take too long to separate the video from the noxious music, and realize that the whole thing was totally based on images from The Americans. I can imagine someone handing a copy of the book to the director, saying remake these photographs as a video - and by the way, do it in black and white. Of course there was no credit to Robert Frank. Not even a nod to the original source material, by way of perhaps someone carrying around a copy of the book itself. Leading me to wonder about who cleared what with whom. I couldn't really imagine that Robert Frank would allow Don Henley to remake his masterpiece into a rock video to sell records on MTV. Especially given what had happened between him and the Rolling Stones over Cocksucker Blues. Something didn't seem right. I eventually had the opportunity to ask Robert Frank about whether he ok'd the usage, and the answer was no. That it was in the hands of the lawyers. This was back in 1989 or 1990.

So I present here the Don Henley video. And a clip I compiled with Robert Frank's photographs from The Americans, and they're re-appearance in the video. I'm sure there are even more than I've pointed out. Check 'em out yourself. The audio I've laid underneath it is of Robert Frank speaking at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. last year with the exhibition's curator Sarah Greenough. It's a fabulous interview and you can listen to the whole piece here:

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/frankinfo.shtm

Oh, one more thing. I've recently found out that this video was made by David Fincher, director of Fight Club and Zodiac. I've got to think about that one...

Robert Frank pix vs. Henley video:

all photographs © Robert Frank - video © someone

the darkroom of his mind

There's a line on Bob Dylan's 2001 CD 'Love & Theft' - it kind of sneaks right up on you - "Big Joe Turner looking east and west from the darkroom of his mind." It's a photography reference sure enough - right there at the opening of the song 'Highwater (for Charlie Patton)'.

What's up with Bob Dylan and photography? Just recently he's put out 2 CD's with photography illustrated covers. Not pictures of himself. Just cool photographs picked out by himself? When the CD 'Modern Times', came out in 2006 - I immediately recognized the cover photo. A beautiful black and white shot by Ted Croner - 'Taxi, New York at Night, 1947' - which I had seen, and ogled over, many times at the Museum of Modern Art. And on this year's CD 'Together Through Life' there is a cover photograph from Bruce Davidson's 1959 teenage gang essay, and a back cover photograph from Josef Koudelka's book on Gypsies. Both great black & white photographers themselves. Now I also happen to know that there was almost a photograph by Andre Kertesz on the cover of his recent book 'Chronicles'. So there's obviously something happening here.

Bob Dylan's always been involved with the photographers that shoot his covers. There are the great middle sixties shots done by Daniel Kramer (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited), Jerry Schatzberg (Blonde on Blonde), and Barry Feinstein (Times They Are a Changin' + the No Direction Home DVD). All are collaborations with the photographer. The dangling camera on the cover of Highway 61 - truly a visual non-sequitor - is in itself a nod to the presence of the photographer, prominently placed within the portrait of the artist as a young motorcycle rider. And recently it's been revealed by Schatzberg that it was Dylan's decision to use the slightly out of focus shot for the cover of Blonde on Blonde.

What I find truly interesting, is that Bob Dylan goes not just to great musicians to record his music, but he goes to great photographers to capture his image. Most recently, the cover portrait of 'Tell Tale Signs' last year, was shot by William Claxton - noted for his fashion and jazz photography. While the inner sleeve of 'Love and Theft' has a portrait by David Gahr - he had shot Dylan as far back as the village and Newport Folk Festival days. And these many years later in 2007, known to be in ill health, Dylan seeks him out to shoot his portrait. Both David Gahr and William Claxton died in 2008.

One last storyline here, about photographer/musician/filmmaker John Cohen, who is name-checked in the liner notes for Highway 61 Revisited:

"You are right john cohen, quazimodo was right...there is no eye...i cannot say the word eye anymore...your rooftop - if you don't already know - has been demolished."

It was John Cohen who shot the first film footage of a pre-signed Bob Dylan on his 3rd Avenue rooftop - you can see it in the Scorsese doc 'No Direction Home'. John Cohen, by the way, shot stills on the set of the Robert Frank/Jack Kerouac film 'Pull My Daisy'. Cohen and Frank were neighbors on lower Third Avenue, when Dylan dropped by there in 1961. And many years later, in 1970, the very reclusive Bob Dylan would call in John Cohen again to shoot pictures on his very own MacDougal street rooftop for the LP 'Self-Portrait'. Dylan doesn't live there anymore, and John Cohen's 3rd Avenue loft was indeed demolished to make way for a building that Joey Ramone would eventually live in.

The last lines of the Highway 61 Revisited liner notes are to John Cohen: "you are lucky - you don't have to think about such things as eye & rooftops & quazimodo".