Left click on any image for a slide show of all images on this page.
May 04, 2019
May 04, 2019 027 Beacon_NY
May 04, 2019 023 Beacon_NY
May 04, 2019 011 Beacon_NY
5:37 AM - My Studio
... In this age of communication… who can be free from influence, — preconception? But — it all depends upon what one does with this cross-fertilization: — is it digested, or does it bring indigestion.*...
*Edward Weston
8:33 AM - Ella’s Bellas
... late getting out this morning, gray, foggy, just the kind of flat, diffused lighting i like... J has the SCREAMING music going again, not too loud, can sort of ignore it, she wears a t-shirt that mirrors the music she likes, crazy, sinister, now rap, not my favorite form of music... an article on a measles outbreak in MA, and what it took to make sure it was contained, parents throughout the western world declining to vaccinate their children because they believe the vaccine may cause autism and other complications, which has been debunked, parents still declining to vaccinate their children they don’t believe the science, they suspect the government, they place their faith in conspiratorial theories floating across the internet, facts don't matter, what people believe matters^, i know why this is, we are primal, reactive creatures and belief is at the core of who we are, the job of the rational mind to defend the beliefs of the irrational or pre-rational mind, the only remedy a collective effort at objectivity, separating fact from fiction is the job of the many discussing, debating, offering proofs, the individual not capable of objectivity... collective is the best we have, unless the machines we are working on will be free of primal instinct and will therefore have the objective capabilities we lack and will therefore frighten us to death because we will be helpless to resist the best we can hope for to be subsumed by them such that we still enjoy our lives in all the ways we used to but we are contained within a meta organism, the many subsumed into the one...
^Kelly Anne Conway
May 03, 2019
May 03, 2019 036 Beacon, NY
May 03, 2019 028 Beacon, NY
May 03, 2019 024 Beacon, NY
8:04 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
... cloudy, cool, foggy... Frida Kahlo today, train, subway, Brooklyn Museum, K, Frida, subway, train, let Chas out of the crate... researching clothing to wear for C&A’s wedding, long sleeve tunic looks interesting, black tunic, tartan plaid scarf, plaid sporran, trying to figure it out, maybe just plaid shoes, not sure, something plaid, i will do it some way... i got upset last night, upset by the politics, upset by the perversion of the system that is happening, hatred of DT, i drank, i was a bit ornery, not happy about that, i don’t know why it got to me, but it did, perhaps because it feels so hopeless that anything can be done about HIM, hoping Mueller testifies under his own steam and volition, hoping that starts to turn the tide, the cover up sounds awful, the idea that the attorney general is not a neutral party, they should be... commenting on my FB feed, something i posted yesterday, a relation suggests the bible will help, i tell her Buddhist thinking is probably more my speed, compassion practice, i admit it is hard, i admit i am more angry and depressed with/by this administration than i have ever been with any administration, liberal or conservative, this because i remember her comment about how angry Bill Clinton made her... a news flash about jobs growth exceeding expectations, shit, that is not good, we need a downturn to help toss DT out of office...
May 02, 2019
May 02, 2019 033 Beacon, NY
May 02, 2019 007 Beacon, NY
May 02, 2019 001 Beacon, NY
7:47 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
... cloudy, cool, a little humid... i walk thinking about Robert Barr’s testimony yesterday, the absurdity of the situation as it looks to me, my struggle to comprehend what is going on and why so many politicians and voters, mostly conservative, are willing to look the other way even though behavior is way outside the bounds of what might have been considered normal a few years ago, i try hard to have a 50K feet view, but the landscape still seems difficult to comprehend, how are we changing, why are we changing, when i think i have an answer i am again unstuck from my orientation by what i see, the whole thing shape shifting in ways that don't seem clear and obvious to me... my father and mother tried to teach me to be honest and behave with integrity, values i am glad to have, but i look at what is going on in Washington, there is, or appears to be, very little honesty and integrity there, the question then arises, is honesty and integrity everything it is cracked up to be... i was thinking on my walk that i have retreated into myself, stopped communicating with friends, acquaintances, the world of photography, just stopped... and this would seem to be at the heart of my combination of images and words, the images rarely displaying the human connexions which the words enter into and supply...
*Walter Benjamin via PATD
May 01, 2019
May 01, 2019 014 Beacon, NY
May 01, 2019 001 Beacon, NY
8:33 AM - Trax
... chilly, wet, gray... i stop in to see how A is doing and how open studios is going and possibly to ask her about getting my listing changed with the new images i sent her, it’s going, she says, which sounds to me like she is in the acceptance phase of grieving over it not being everything she hoped, i decided not to ask her about updating my listing... reading about Rodchenko and the Russian Constructivists, the author is telling me that the individualist, independent, introspective artist of the West was reviled, that art should be, as everything else should be, a collective enterprise. And yet, we know a Rodchenko when we see one, is this the Western presentation of it or, is work created by an individual always individual... from which i remember an exhibition, decades ago, in the IBM gallery when the IBM building in NYC still belonged to IBM, an exhibition of space photography, the images only possible through collective societal action, teams of scientists, collective public and private funding, that when the enterprise becomes larger than individuals it, by necessity becomes collective, cities are collective enterprises, etc… the question then, can a collective enterprise be critiqued by the collective or is it the individual who holds a mirror up and says look what we are…
April 30, 2019
April 30, 2019 032 Beacon, NY
April 30, 2019 016 Beacon, NY
April 30, 2019 009 Beacon, NY
8:39 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
... rainy, cool, spring, dogwood blossoms... a woman with cloth grocery bag sets it down and it tumbles off the bench onto the floor, bottle with liquid breaking, frizzy wild hair, almost Phyllis Diller like... emails about something purchased that don’t seem meant for me, i review our accounts and no evidence the purchase is on one of our cards, hate those kinds of emails... Quinn’s last night, G and D were there, others i know less well, JT and EM, Monday night, jazz, poetry, one set, home to bed, nice talking to G&D, got to know them a bit better, a little awkward at first, but then we found some common ground, like G very much, D too... deaf girl sitting on the side when i walked in, we are now awkward a bit, no waves hello or goodbye... earlier, a man walking around with iPhone on gimbal, we nod good morning to one another, wasn’t sure if the camera was on him or looking out, not sure if i made it into his video... no alcohol last night, even though we were out, in a bar, where that is the thing to do, where i normally would have done, the change in habits continues... thinking about getting back with social media, but trying to do it in an effective way, a way that actually drives traffic to my website, wondering if i have the understanding to do that… PATD discussing the Chicago School, discussing the photographers, discussing the nature of the work that sallied forth, Moholy-Nagy, emanating not about Bahaus formalism, not about Russian Revolution principles, now elevated to art and more useful as art despite its intention to be anti-art, the capitalist art system not about revolution, more about co-opting revolution and folding it into the survival profit paradigm... the tendency of capitalism to co-opt every form of resistance, the thought, last night, that we are the biome for some future intelligence that is a summation of us, is bigger than us, what could that be, how might that be, what will it be, soc, i feel thrown off this morning, i feel done for, i feel hopeless, i feel good, i think i must only be what it is specifically in me to be as an artist...
April 29, 2019
April 29, 2016 065 Beacon, NY
April 29, 2016 045 Beacon, NY
April 29, 2016 013 Beacon, NY
8:21 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
... feeling bad emotionally, at least two moments last night when i think i was unkind to people i was with, i said things that were well intentioned but caused pain or embarrassment, i feel a need to tell them i am sorry... i made my first completely successful tahdig last night, it seemed perfect... David Bowie on the sound system, i think of H, i find it, not thoughts of H, a little annoying, high pitched squeaky and insistent... GOT last night, not entirely clear who survived and who did not, we will see next week, and if i were the Winterfeld crew, i would brace myself for an immediate siege by the evil queen of the south, she will not let them regroup... looking up my options for wearing plaid to C’s wedding, seems like there might be plaid pants i could wear under my tunic, or a plaid vest, more research... thinking i need to re-read sex, ecology and spirituality, thinking i need to find my copy, because i felt it was “bang on,” as they say, when i first read it... this Friday the Frida Kahlo show... i talked about my idea that intelligence, through AI, may be jumping ship or arriving and settling in a place where we are its biome and it is the next more complex being, where it might reach out and cross the spaces between planets and stars, that is the way forward i think, an idea that makes me somewhat uncomfortable as that does not leave us at the top of the food chain...
April 28, 2019
April 28, 2019 080 Beacon, NY
April 28, 2019 078 Beacon, NY
April 28, 2019 018 Beacon, NY
8:47 AM - Bigmouth Coffee Roasters
... i feel a little hungover, but not bad, could have been worse… i was glad to see my weight didn’t go up much, I thought there was serious potential that it would... a slow, pleasant walk, lots of pictures, still trying to get used to the new camera and the possible settings, which are many… lots of talk about a constitutional crisis, i don’t think we are there until issues get to supreme court and there is defiance of those decisions, still, the feeling that white men are firmly in control... feeling frustrated about lack of progress on house projects, the weather sucks... lojong for this week, begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself, encouragement to take in your own pains and send out a wish that all beings be free of similar pains, and the joy you feel, send it out to others, through your own pain, understand the pain of all beings…