Blog About Photography

© Brad Troemel

I don’t know much about him, but Brad Troemel is a 20 and I guess prob­a­bly in school some­where. I’ve fol­lowed his work on Flickr for a while now; it cap­tured my inter­est right away because of its social themes and snap­shot aes­thetic. His magazine-​​like web­site is so packed with projects and images it sug­gests he’s con­stantly work­ing and think­ing about photography.

All of a sud­den he’s all over the pho­to­s­phere. On his blog Very Young Mil­lion­aire, Brad has started ask­ing other pho­tog­ra­phers to write 100 words about a pho­to­graph of theirs he posts in an effort to encour­age some dis­cus­sion from what he sees as a pro­lific but largely silent gen­er­a­tion of pho­tog­ra­phers. He is included in the sprawl­ing Fjord project spear­headed by Grant Will­ing and Alana Celii, and he just posted an exten­sive inter­view with them on VYM about Fjord and a host of other topics.

Any­way, I guess my point is he’s advanc­ing the cause, and I think that’s pretty rad.

Since I moved to New York, most of what I’ve been doing has noth­ing to do with pho­tog­ra­phy, which has been sort of lame. That’s not really a com­plaint though, so much as an obser­va­tion. I’m work­ing enough to live pretty com­fort­ably and there’s noth­ing wrong with that.  I also spent a lot of time hang­ing out with a girl I won’t be see­ing any more of and I sup­pose there’s noth­ing wrong with that, either.

The past cou­ple of days at work have been relax­ing and a nice change. My boss asked me to pho­to­graph her entire house, room by room. It’s a beau­ti­ful place, a four story brown­stone in Car­roll Gar­dens, with loads of light spilling in, all freshly ren­no­vated. Since she has this home and gar­den­ing show, all the fur­ni­ture, appli­ances, paint, bath­tubs, pots, pans, every­thing, were all donated by her spon­sors – it’s pretty unreal. So I’ve just spent 3 days with my head­phones in, behind my cam­era work­ing my way from the top floor down.

My love of pod­casts has been rekin­dled. I lis­ten to hours of pub­lic radio. But look­ing through arts related pod­casts to enrich the brain as I work I dis­cov­ered a photo his­tory pod­cast by a com­mu­nity col­lege pro­fes­sor in Illi­nois (I think). His entire spring semes­ter is there, and I’m pretty into it. It’s really fun to take in a class on a famil­iar sub­ject while I’m work­ing. The best part of it: since it’s the record­ing of the actual class ses­sions, you get to be as frus­trated with the, er, denser stu­dents as you were when you were actu­ally in school! What more could a work­ing per­son want?

© Greg Wasserstrom

In today’s New York Times Sun­dayStyles sec­tion, there is a pretty inter­est­ing arti­cle about two teenage boys (14 and 15) who work as paparazzi in Los Ange­les. When I was 15, I started work­ing part time at a record store, and that was viewed by my mother and her friends as being highly ambi­tious. These kids are are amazing.

His fel­low pho­tog­ra­phers had barely taken notice of Lady Vic­to­ria Her­vey, a British socialite and sta­ple of the Eng­lish press, when Blaine dashed out in front, get­ting the shot. And unlike the other paparazzi, he didn’t have to shout her name to get her attention.

“You are so young!” Lady Vic­to­ria exclaimed amid the bar­rage of flash­ing strobes. “You should be in bed. Where are your parents?”

It’s peo­ple like these that cause me to won­der if, at 22, I’m com­pletely passed my prime? Has my ship sailed? Has my train left it’s metaphor­i­cal station?

I’m face­book­ing these guys, and next time I’m out in LA, I’m gonna roll out with them. And not because I have any desire to do what they do — or at least, the way that they do it. If you’ve ever read one of my artist state­ments (Why would you have? I never post them on the site because I sort of hate artist state­ments), you know that I’m obsessed with pop cul­ture. Not in a Cult of Celebrity kind of way, but like a Cult of Cult of Celeb­trity kind of way: I’m fas­ci­nated by the peo­ple and insti­tu­ions that exist to wor­ship celebrity (or pol­i­tics, or high soci­ety, or whatever).

The fact that some entrepreneurial-​​minded kid­dos saw an oppor­tu­nity as paprazzi instead of, say, dog­walk­ers or land­scap­ers or some­thing says loads about Amuhrica. What a country!

© Greg Wasserstrom

© Greg Wasserstrom

I’ve finally got­ten my selec­tion for Fjord straight­ened out, I think. Go check out the project if you haven’t looked in a while — it gets bet­ter with every update. I was really giv­ing it all an in depth look the other night and was reminded of what a won­der­ful project it is. It’s really, really rad to have all these peo­ple grouped together in one place; Fjord really pro­vides a snap­shot of this moment in the devel­op­ment of fine art pho­tog­ra­phy. Priceless!

Jason Schwartz­man in Wes Anderson’s Hotel Chava­lier

Wes Anderson’s 13-​​minute film Hotel Chava­lier was made avail­able exs­clu­sively though iTunes over the week­end, which I only know about because Shane linked to it. Appar­ently, it serves as pro­logue to Wes Anderson’s upcom­ing film, The Dar­jeel­ing Lim­ited. It’s a free down­load, and, obvi­ously, is worth a watch.

Pro­logue is Anderson’s word for what this is and I don’t think that’s very accu­rate. Inso­far as the piece relates to the upcom­ing film, it func­tions more as a teaser. (More ques­tions are raised than answered, unless you’re ques­tion is “What does Natalie Portman’s ass look like with a huge bruise on it?”). The promi­nent place­ment of famil­iar Apple prod­ucts — sort of star­tling in the con­text of Anderson’s uni­verse — reveals the inten­tion of the piece: Hotel Chava­lier is a clever ad for for Apple. I’m sure Apple wanted to tie them­selves to Anderson’s “brand;” they’re fans prob­a­bly over­lap a whole lot.

This doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily make this any less valu­able. I loved Anderson’s Amer­i­can Express com­mer­cial from a cou­ple of years ago, and I think there can be sig­nif­i­cant crossover between artis­tic and com­mer­cial endeav­ors. My point: just say­ing this is a piece of mar­ket­ing. I think that’s pretty clear.