Blog About Photography

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View from my roof, April 2008

My loft apartment in scenic Bushwick, Brooklyn is available for the summer. The dates are flexible so long as you’re in by June 1. Stay a month, two months, or until the lease expires on August 30. You can use our furniture if you don’t want to bring your own or we can throw all our crap in the basement and leave you with a big empty space. Wireless DSL, utilities included all for a mere $2000/mo.  

The place is located on the Dekalb Ave stop on the L or the Central Ave stop on the M. It’s a rad building full of painters and drummers and the like.  The block is full of kids who play wiffle ball in the street and crack open the fire hydrants when its warm out. There is a massive basement only accessible thru this unit and roof access, perfect for cookouts. Just a quick walk to Life Café, the organic market and the other shops and galleries at Morgan Ave, grocery store and Kickerbocker Ave shops just around the corner. Maria Hernandez Park two blocks away.

It’s a great spot. Bring your partner, bring your pet. Here are some snaps:

The wonderful Liz Kuball interviewed me and you can read it if you want to know what I think about things.

© Greg Wasserstrom

Shortly after moving to New York, I came to the realization that I know a lot less about what I’m doing than I thought. I have, for essentially four years been trying to figure out how to express, in pictures, a particular view of America. And I don’t mean the kind of “view” you get from a roadtrip across the Southwest or a trek though small Southern towns or maybe some valley in Yellowstone somewhere. By “a particular view of America,” I mean my view, America literally as I see it, right now, from where I’m standing, at this very moment. I didn’t realize that’s what I’ve been trying to do until fairly recently. I inititally viewed photography as a way to break away from the politics that I’ve been immersed and fixed by since essentially the time I developed the ability to think my own thoughts. As it turns out, there’s really no doing that. If I’m going to make interesting work it needs to be about something I can speak on with some authority. The snag here though is that even though I offer up wat I view as essentially same commentary at least 10 times every day in words, and that those words have even attained a certain market value, I haven’t yet been successful in doing this cohesively in pictures. It devolved to the point where I was basically just posting things to the internet, and now even that has slowed to a trickle. So it’s time to start fresh and approach this thing in a whole new way. I’s so quiet over here because I’m trying to figure out just what that’s going to be all about.

© Greg Wasserstrom

I’m sorry I’ve been neglecting you. It’s not because I don’t care; in fact, I think about you more than once every single day. You’re much busier now than last year, and with so much going on I’m worried that you’re going to forget about me. So here’s a tidbit: it’s the Library of Congress Flickr stream, though I can’t take credit for discovering it. Bryan Schutmaat left it for me in a comment this morning. Sometimes he sends me things to put up on account of he doesn’t have a blog.  Anyway, the stream it’s full of fantastic photographs including mind-blowing color images from the home front during World War II. So take a look at that. Bryan said looking at them was the best part of his day. That rang true for me too. And I had a pretty good day.

In other news,  I’ll be posting to Gawker this coming Saturday and Sunday. Come by and take a look if you have a minute.

© Greg Wasserstrom

Merry Christmas, everybody. I hope you’re enjoying quality time with your family, thinking about the birth of Christ, etc. And if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you know, like me, then I hope you enjoy the day, few days, off from work or school or whatever it is that occupies your time. Here’s what’s been occupying mine:

• Last week, after about 9 months of “interning,” I began work as a contributing editor over at Wonkette, Gawker’s political site. I finally have a regular gig that also happens to be sort of a dream job! So, you know, go and check out my handiwork and stuff, even if you hate politics! So we do! Mine are the posts that say “Greg Wasserstrom” next to them and for the moment, I write 5 per day. To celebrate, I’m writing this entry in the style of one of my ubiquitous headline roundups. [Wonkette]
• Tiny Vices included me in a recent update, took me like more than a month to find out about it. Also, I friended Tim Barber on Facebook and OMG we’re totes friends now. [Tiny Vices]
• Finally stopped holding up the entire Fjord project. Opps! Sorry guys! [Fjord]
• Website tweak and a couple of new photographs. [Home]

I think that’s everything. So, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year,

© Greg Wasserstrom

I tinkered with the new look of my site a bit more as well as the photographs included in The Doldrums and I’m happy with the results. You can check that out at gregwasserstrom.com. Subtle changes, and I carried the pink through to the blog. Looks ok, I think though I want to redo this entire thing. At the moment I dont really have the technical expertise or the time - plus I should focusing on more posts!

Also, I’m going to start posting more of my writing which hopefully won’t bore you too much (I’ll illustrate whenever possible). I’m realizing, contrary to what I have said in the past, that my passions for photography, writing and politics are all coming from the same place. It’s all the same pursuit - it’s all observational, descriptive, revelatory.

And this just occurred to me. The photograph I’ve included in this post is a newish one, from The Doldrums, and I’m quite happy with it. But a photograph as satisfying as this one isn’t without complication. When photographers take images like this one, are we not literally taking it? What I mean is, since I didn’t this scene up myself, since I came across it in someone else’s apartment, was it not their creative sensibility that makes this shot interesting? Certainly, I composed the photograph, chose what to include and exclude, but doesn’t that make it a collaboration? Can I really take credit for it?

And finally, if i may say so: I’m very happy you’re here. Writing this blog has been tremendously rewarding for me in more ways that I can recount. The reason for this isn’t anything I’m doing at all - it’s you. Interacting with you is wondeful and I’m thrilled to get to know so many people I’ve communicated with through this forum in the real world. This whole thing means a lot to me, so please don’t go away!

© Greg Wasserstrom

I just updated the long-neglected portfolio part of this site, added a new series called The Doldrums, the set my Fjord and Must Warn Others selections came from. I guess I’m sort of still working on it but at least now it’s up where it can be seen.

I’m still working on my sex book, The Honorable Parts. I promised it mid-August which was incredibly presumptuous of me because I don’t have nearly enough pictures for it yet. So give me a call next time you’re about to knock boots, and I’ll come hang out. Sound good?

The green arrow is me

Soo, I know you’re all just dying to know what it is I’m doing here in the Big Bad City. So far, aside from seeing the big Stephen Shore exhibit at ICP and spending an afternoon at Dashwood Books with Christian, I’ve done absolutely nothing photography-related. Shen Wei and Amy Elkins both have had an opening and closing respectively, and I was unable to go to either and I still haven’t seen the Nina Berman show at jb, let along the thousands of other things there are to do and see in this place every single week. I’ve also flaked on Elizabeth Weinberg twice.

So what have I been doing? Well. After staying at Emily Grenader’s aparment for a little over a week (the cat and I are best friends), I finally moved into this ridiculous building called “The Tea Factory,” (because it used to be one, the landlord told me) on Stockholm in Bushwick. I wouldn’t have named it that and also I’m sort of like the very posterboy of gentrification, but these are the things I’m going to try not to think too much about. But anyway, the place is awesome and my roommate (I brought him with me from DC) is awesome and I’m pretty happy with it. Pictures will come as soon as it’s not such a ridiculous fucking mess.

I’m still working for Wonkette, I may have a monthly feature there pretty soon, which would be pretty exciting and hopefully hilarious. I also picked up a second and more lucrative but perhaps lessed prized blogging gig for the political news site Raw Story. What’s cool about that one is I get bylines from time to time and can do some freelance reporting for extra money. Most significantly though, I was just hired as an assistant for Katie Brown, public television’s home and gardening empress. This is a semi-creative position that going to involve a lot of writing and production work, some photography and probably a whole lot getting coffee and stuff. Most importantly: salary and benefits.

I’m not any less committed to photography. I’m still taking pictures constantly, my new series is almost finished.

© Greg Wasserstrom

Hello New Yorkers, tomorrow I’ll finally be one you. I’ve been yearning to live in New York since I was about 14 years now It’s finally time, though it’s true that I don’t have a job or an apartment lined up, I’m going more or less blind. I do have a place to stay for a little while thanks to my friend Emily who is so graciously allowing me to stay at her apartment to feed her cat. It’s funny; thanks to this little publication right here there’s a long list of people I’m looking forward to hanging out with that I’ve never met or met only briefly - people I’m as excited to see as I would be family members I’ve been away from for a long time. I’m resisting the temptation to list everyone because that’s tactless and sort of bizarre, but I think a lot of you reading this can expect a phone call in the next week or two. I just have to overcome one minor setback, which is that I dropped my cell phone in a puddle a couple hours ago and it’s most certainly not working any more.

I’ll also say that in light of having spent the last two weeks doing all kinds of end-of-college bullshit, I haven’t been able to get as far along on my current project, The Honorable Parts, as I’d hoped. My negatives, along with everything else I own, besides the few things I have with me while I’m here in Houston, are in a storage unit on New York Ave. in Washington and will remain there until I have a place to live, which is as of now an indeterminable length of time. I have been quite happy with what I’ve looked at and have a few images that might end up as part of the book in my flickr stream. I’m looking forward to pulling more from the pages and pages of negatives I got back last week, but too late to avoid having to pack them away.

Also, I used some of my graduation money to finally replace the light meter that was stolen a year ago, though I’ll say I have greatly improved my exposure guessing abilities - it’s like I am a fucking light meter. But the spot meter I picked up is a great one. It’s about 30 years old and shaped sort of like a laser gun. I was looking through it in the parking lot of the hospital where my mother works on Friday, and a security a guard came over to the car to ask me what I was doing, probably thinking I’m some kind of terrorist. Nonetheless, I feel ready for anything.

Not really noteworthy but I’ll tell you anyway: I was at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston the other day and came across a copy of Niagara in their bookstore. What’s the deal, Alec? Is this thing out of print or not? I spent like two months (here, here and here) trying to track down a copy, and then I come across one in my own backyard. Anyway, I bought it sort of on principle so, fine, now I have two. I’m pretty much like one of those crazy people who compulsively buy Catcher in the Rye whenever they’re in a bookstore. I own several copies of the entire Hitchhikers Guide series for the same reason that reason being that I guess I’m a little unhinged. I shared my story with the cashier at the museum store and she did not care.

You may also have noticed by now that I can’t spell to save my life. I like to think that it’s part of my charm. And I promise my next post will be something substantive, maybe even something about photography.

So here we go, the biggest adventure of my life.