Blog About Photography

© 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.

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.

Hav­ing spent 4 years in the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, I feel almost imme­di­ate kin­ship with other artists hail­ing from the Mid-​​Atlantic region (par­tic­u­larly if they’re doing inter­est­ing work, though the shitty work can be pretty engag­ing also). Work of the for­mer cat­e­gory that has recently caught my atten­tion, the SAME TIME Project is a col­lab­o­ra­tion between Brad Walker (Bal­ti­more, Md.), a graphic designer, and Michael Lease (Rich­mond, Va.). For a year, the two take a pho­to­graph every night at 7:15 pm. They are paired side by side, and the rather exten­sive gallery, divided month by month, yields some gems. I might sug­gest los­ing the cap­tions or turn­ing them into roll-​​over image descrip­tions instead, but on the whole the project works well, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the size of the undertaking.