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While I’m trying to sort myself out, check out this new(ish) blog from Britt Boyd, a talented and versatile artist and a good friend of mine. She writes about art and design of all kinds and her blog is a great source of new and interesting 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
The other night I was on the subway with a bunch of my friends, we were on our way to the Angelika to see Persepolis (Incredible, by the way. See it!). The train was packed so we were crammed in and I was standing above a couple, probably in their late fifties, the man was wearing a heavy wool poncho. The woman had a digital camera and took a picture of the man, then they huddled together to look at the little screen. They laughed. The man said, “You can airbrush that out.” I thought to myself that that was pretty quaint that he still says airbrush, but then he corrected himself. “Photoshop it. You can Photoshop it.”
He said the words like he was handling a some novel new gadget. And then he repeated the them, only this time with a melody. He sang the them, like this:
“PHO-TO SHOP IT,” four syllables, four notes: F, F, E, D flat.
Photoshop didn’t have a jingle - until now.
