for new yorkers who like cheap photo books

What are you doing today (Bay Area residents)?

(GO SEE THIS MOVIE!) 'Untold Story of Emmett Till,' a movie everyone should see

Inside Bay Area

ROSALIND Patton was living in rural Louisiana when 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in Mississippi. She was 10 years old. "We heard a little Negro boy had been killed for whistling at a white woman. We were warned, 'See what happens if you say something to white folks. Don't do it. They'll kill you.' I remember feeling afraid, thinking we had to be so careful. I didn't know much more than that," she said. Some weeks ago, the special education teacher and Oakland resident was listening to the radio and heard about a screening of the documentary, "The Untold Story of Emmett Till." (The 2005 documentary, directed by Keith Beauchamp, led to a new investigation of the case by the U.S. Justice Department.) "I flashed back to when I was a girl, and I thought, yes, I'd like to know what really happened. I don't really know," Patton said. She corralled her teenage son and two younger African-American males to go with her. The young men were joking, complaining that they would have to watch a boring, dry documentary. Until the film started. "They were totally captivated, stunned. There was no more joking. They were practically sitting there with their mouths open," she said. "And afterwards, normally you can't get my son to discuss anything, afterwards they were all open to discuss what they saw." Unfortunately she and her party were among fewer than 20 people in the movie theater. She talked to the manager, who said the filmmakers couldn't afford to advertise, so only a few people had come to see it. He even asked her how she'd heard about it. She returned a few days later and the theater was almost empty again. "I thought, people have to see this. Black History month is coming up. The murder of Emmett Till was a catalyst to the civil rights movement. More people need to see this." And she couldn't get the documentary out of her head. She described it as weighing heavily on her heart. "His mother (Mamie Till-Mobely) was so brave. She demanded the funeral director have the casket open: 'I want the world to see what they did to my son.' You can't imagine how anyone could be that evil. They mutilated him so bad," Patton said, sighing. Hundreds of people went to the funeral in Chicago. The picture of Till in his casket that ran in "Jet Magazine" haunted anyone who saw it — it didn't even look like a human being. That picture motivated Beauchamp to look into the case. If his murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury — they later admitted to the crime in Look Magazine — they were ultimately thwarted. Till's gruesome murder sparked the civil rights movement that would outlaw segregation and undermine white supremacy. "I discovered Rosa Parks was motivated by the death of Till. I didn't know that," Patton said. "She was so angry about it, along with everyone in the south, it was one of the things that encouraged her to take her stand on the bus." Patton had her own experience with segregation and buses. At 7, she got on a bus with her grandmother and sat behind the bus driver. When her grandmother turned to see she was sitting in the front, she screamed at her to come to the back of the bus. "You don't do that," her grandmother told the crying girl. Patton remembers looking at the bus driver to see if he was angry. "There was a pleasant look on his face," she recalled. "Everyone else on the bus was black. They were kind of looking sheepish." In another memory, when the bus for Negro children passed the white school on the way to the Negro school, the white children would shout, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." "Every morning the bus driver warned us, don't look in that direction. Don't say anything. Look straight ahead. Everyday," Patton said. "If we didn't think he was looking we might cut our eyes over there. I didn't like the idea I couldn't respond. I wanted to yell something back." The Till documentary stuck with her, as well as the sparse attendance. She decided to call the owner of the Grand Lake Theater. He said he couldn't take on the financial liability, but she could rent the theater. He warned her if the audience didn't come she could lose her money. "I thought about it. It's a lot of money to me. But I decided I was going to do it. I have to do it. I have no other choice," she said. She rented the Grand Lake for Tuesday, Feb. 28, the last day of Black History Month. There will be five screenings of the film, at 1 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m., 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. The admission fee is $5 for adults, $3 for students. She said she sent letters to every school in Oakland and the surrounding area. Every public school, every private school. She made up fliers and tried to get radio announcements. She said she's gotten little response from the Oakland schools. "I don't know if it's going to be a good turnout. But I'm doing what I have to do. I'm possessed by this.," she said. "It (Till's murder) was a catalyst to the civil rights movement. It wasn't just about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It's part of American history." Brenda Payton writes for ANG newspapers.

Rare Photos Of African Slaves On A Slave Ship, HEADED TOWARDS THE STATES

Indian Ocean: East African slaves taken aboard the Dutch HMS Daphne from a Arab dhow, 1 November 1868. These photographs dated 1868 reveals a very little of the terrible suffering caused to millions of people by the slave trade.

This group of severely emaciated boys and young men on the lower deck of a Royal Naval ship apparently have been taken from what was a slave vessel trading illegally off the African coast headed to the Americas. The captain of the Royal Naval ship had instructions not to return the rescued slaves to the place on the coast where they had been put on the slave ship (presumably because they were in danger of being recaptured by traders) but it is not clear from the available documentation what happened to them afterwards.

The Indian Ocean Slave trade evolved around the Indian Ocean basin. Slaves were taken from mainland East Africa and sold in markets in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. In contrast to the trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Indian Ocean Slave Trade was much older dating back from at least the second century C.E. until the early twentieth century. For example, the oldest written document from the East Africa Coast, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, describes a small trade in slaves around the second century C.E. Notice the physical features of the Arabs.

(I'm not sure of the source; these were forwarded to me.)

"The World's First Passenger Atomic Bomb"

www.fugo2.com

"Your spirit seems to be clipped..."

Carolyn S., from the series Other People's Clothes, 2005

I got another rejection letter today, this time from the Alpert Awards (and man, I was hoping), so I did my usual—read the word "sorry," tore it up and recycled it, cried, acted stoic, took to bed, then vowed once again to give up this whole art thing. This is the cycle. But then Deirdre starts seriously talking about giving up art and "working for the man," too; I start deliriously musing about how I can go about selling drugs; and she points out that my feelings toward the art world must be really bad that I would rather sell drugs than sell art (for the record, I've never sold drugs).

But since I was already out of bed I dragged myself to the computer, where I received a really moving E-mail from a struggling young artist, r s, asking me what happened? A year ago I was complaining about this samo, samo, on my blog, and why a year later haven't I yet gotten my groove back? Why, instead, am I blogging about celebrities (I really intended the Angelina Jolie post to be about politics in Haiti)? Where is the hope?

How to answer? I started blogging when I was in Taos last spring as a way to keep myself from feeling crazy about being so rejected by the art world structure (jobs, grants—you name it) and yet trying to maintain this veneer of connection to a so-called career in art. How many times had I run into people I hadn't seen in a while and made it sound like I was just doing the damn thing here and there when I couldn't even pay my rent? I had to admit to myself that I didn't have one, and in doing so I had to say it out loud. So today, fresh off another disappointment, how do I hit reply and tell this young sister or brother that art is worth it, it's valuable even when folks around you don't think it is because your work doesn't = paycheck. How do I say that I still fight to hold onto my hopes and dreams regarding making art even as I'm systematically, almost comically at this point, rejected by it? How do I say, from the heart, don't give up? Do I point to the image above, or the ones in previous posts like this or this, to say hey, I'm working on new bodies of work, my ideas are still important to me no matter what, but I don't have the time or money to scan them to even put them on my site and beyond that, what do I do with them without further peddling myself for rejection? Do I point to Zoe, who's done her own thing making and selling her work at $5 per print and is having a terrific year of recognition without changing her thing? (She remains my inspiration right now.) I want to shake myself and r s and the various other young artists out there who E-mail me or respond on this blog and say, you know, the only way is to create our own structures and to support one another. You want to make a book and can't afford a print run? Use print-on-demand. You want visibility? Create a website. Let's not talk ourselves out of our ideas. Let's not be silenced. It's too important.

Deirdre says it's almost uncanny that every time I'm about to throw in the towel I get a message like the one I received today basically saying I need you, I need your voice out there, don't tell me that you've given up, too. The thing is, I can't really tell anyone that. I give up on an almost daily basis. I'm bitterly disillusioned. But I'm still trying.

Indian Mary Park, Oregon, from the series Race and the Landscape (with Deirdre Visser), 2004 - present

just 'cause it's funny

This is for us visual people.

I had some rants all geared up, but now I don't feel like 'em.

is "free of makeup" the new euphemism for "lesbian?"

(nonetheless this Philadelphia Inquirer article with Kate's quote had me bouncing in my seat and clapping! Also check Zoe out in the March 2006 Elle magazine [click image]. I had to wade through a lot of sexualized 12-year old girls to find it, but it was worth it! I feel like all those celebrity bloggers with the scanned magazine pages.)

Self-educated photographer wins acclaim
Suddenly, her images clicked.
By Karen Heller
Inquirer Staff Writer

Zoe Strauss did not come up from the academy. She did not come up from art classes, having never taken one, and is without a college degree. She came up from diapers and Endust.
For much of her life, Strauss was a baby-sitter and a domestic. "I was a great baby-sitter but a very bad domestic," she clarifies. Her income rarely exceeded $5,000 a year.

Then, on her 30th birthday, she received a Canon EOS Rebel, a basic point-and-shoot camera.
"By the second roll, I knew I was a photographer. I knew with certainty without seeing the prints," says Strauss, sitting in her South Philadelphia home decorated in a style best described as Devout Kitsch.

Five years later, Strauss has been selected to be in the Whitney Biennial, the nation's premier exhibition of contemporary work. One of 101 artists invited to participate this year, she is the only one living in the Philadelphia region.

"Zoe has an excellent eye, which all great artists have," Whitney curator Chrissy Iles says.
Strauss will have her own room to present a slide show, about 200 "searing, humanist portraits" as the Whitney news release states, mostly shot in Philadelphia and from a trip to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

"It's ridiculously wonderful," Strauss says of the biennial, which runs March 2 through May 28.
In a New York show, which this year features established lions such as Richard Serra and Mark di Suvero, Strauss arrives without an agent or gallery representation. Her most important project to date is an annual installation of more than 200 images affixed to the concrete pilasters under the I-95 overpass at Front and Mifflin, held the first Saturday of every May for precisely two hours. Her photocopied images are $5 a piece, available at the show and also on her Web site, http://www.zoestrauss.com/. Prints sell for $300, a song.

"One local collector urged me to get Zoe to raise her prices," says Paula Marincola, director of the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, who selected Strauss for a $2,500 Leeway grant in 2002.
But accessibility is a big part of her work and her politics, Strauss says, the affordability a statement as much as her subject matter, finding beauty in the forgotten and overlooked. Her photographs frequently include images of iconic signs and billboards, the industrial landscape, people she befriends on the street.

"I was very struck by her humanity," says Iles, who also selected Strauss for a $50,000 Pew grant in 2005. "There's something completely unsentimental about her work, and yet it has an emotional tug."

"She's extremely sophisticated in terms of her eye," Marincola says. "I would call her an extremely elegant photographer with formal structure that is very carefully considered and very beautiful."

Strauss' outlook is unblemished by cynicism or despair, constants in the often cruel art world where few of the deserving flourish.

"Zoe's a rare bird. I'm absolutely thrilled for her," says Philadelphia Museum of Art curator of photographs Katherine Ware. "She's busy going about her world, and not worried about the rest of us. And she works like crazy."

Ware acquired eight prints for the museum's permanent collection. "Zoe's this oncoming train, with this real sense of mission," Ware says. "She's really interested in exploring most human drives, often in some difficult situations. Her work is about our search for ecstasy and belonging."

Strauss is an exuberant, infectious woman who seems 10 years younger than her 35 years. Short, clear-eyed, free of makeup or affectation, she is a lover of kitsch, politics, good books, music, Philadelphia teams and South Philadelphia cuisine. She is disarmingly warm and self-effacing, given to hugging strangers, putting her subjects at ease, gaining access to their intimate moments - a crack addict in the kitchen, a crone with a cat - which she captures with her Nikon D70.

In addition to the biennial, Strauss has been chosen for the Institute of Contemporary Art's ramp installation project, April 22 through July 30.

Currently between studios, she is a deliberate artist, devoting full work days in her living room editing photos for her Web site.

The first member of her working-class Philadelphia family to graduate from high school, Strauss is deeply connected to her roots and her surroundings. She frequently shoots near her grandparents' former home at 16th and Susquehanna, and her mother lives a few blocks from Strauss' rowhouse (her father died when she was 6). Three younger siblings - there are three surnames between them - are artistic, "super smart and engaging." Brother Cosmo Baker is a noted DJ in Philadelphia and New York.

Though Strauss' artistic career started late and is still in its infancy, there is no mistaking the drive and scope of her work. "I am ridiculously ambitious," she says, seated before her laptop.
"My ambition, though, is somewhat different from that of the country and people in general," she adds. "I'm ambitious about doing great work, but the work doesn't define me. I want my art to be seen by everyone, but I don't think the work should have anything to do with income or economic status."

Every artist likes a patron, and here Strauss also has been "ridiculously lucky": Lynn Bloom, her partner of 17 years, has financially and emotionally supported Strauss through every endeavor, from baby-sitting to photography.

"Zoe has always done things in her own way and on her own terms. She never approaches her work in a traditional manner," says Bloom, who does marketing for Mitchell & Ness, the sporting gear manufacturer.

"She's never sought critical acclaim or altered her vision for anyone but herself. It's given me great faith in people that so many have embraced her work."

Which is useful for an artist with such a populist vision.

Strauss' fifth annual show under I-95, to be held May 6 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. (rain or shine) is part of a 10-year project, free and open to everyone, attracting artists as well as locals from the neighborhood. "It's like a cathedral down there. It's a ruined cathedral," Marincola says. "She totally activates this space."

Before picking up the camera, Strauss made installation art. In 1997, she created the 5-feet-by-15-feet Public Chalkboard #2 painted on the side of an abandoned building at the corner of Wharton and Lawrence, leaving chalk and erasers around for three months so passersby could create art and commentary. A year later, she gave the neighborhood Collision at Sea, two 20-foot-long motorboats crashed on an empty lot at Fifth and Wharton.

Trolling through her laptop, revisiting the images she edits hour after hour, Strauss says: "I happen to think they're all really beautiful.

"You know, I really am very good," the Whitney Biennial artist says, and erupts into a raucous aria of joy.

For Information
Zoe Strauss' photography can be seen at http://www.zoestrauss.com/. The Whitney Biennial runs from March 2 through May 28 in New York. For more information go to http://whitney.org/.
Contact staff writer Karen Heller at 215-854-2586 or kheller@phillynews.com.

blogs and thangs

Virginia W., from Other People's Clothes, 2005

You know just when I'm on the verge of giving up and committing to being a career secretary I get a bunch of E-mails from these amazing young women artists/writers/thinkers who inspire me and make me proud and of course I gotta get a grip and represent:

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, http://blackandtanfantasy.blogspot.com/ I'm not sure how I got on your mailing list, Laylah, but since early January I've been getting E-mails—thank you! Laylah's out there promoting herself, other artists' work, sharing fellowship info—do ya thing, ma! (and I'll try to keep up posting the info you send)

Kesha Bruce, http://www.keshabruce.com/ and http://keshabruce.blogspot.com/ , who is funny and smart and a really terrific artist who makes me want to get going on this publishing idea of mine because she's proof that there are wonderful artists out there whose work should be more widely shared but for the moment I can't even figure out how to become a team member of her blog—the crackpots make it so hard for the rest of us.

Kesha Bruce, SAY SAY MY PLAYMATE, 2006. Mixed-Media Collage on paper. 21 x 26 inches

Danielle Jackson, http://cultureculture.wordpress.com, who's a really smart and critical writer and with blog titles like "Strange White Women Are Always Touching Me" how can you not read her? Although I'm so slow to catch up on E-mails she had to send me 2 before I added her link (but I did check out her blog after the first).

There's hope yet.

this kid is our future

(Hell, who's not bitter? )

Child investigated for homework threat to Bush

By Richard C. Lewis

PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (Reuters) - The Secret Service on Thursday said it was investigating a Rhode Island student who wrote a rambling essay advocating violence against President Bush and major U.S. corporations. A homework assignment asked 7th-grade students at John F. Deering Middle School in West Warwick, Rhode Island, to describe their perfect day. The boy under investigation wrote it would involve unspecified violence against Bush, Coca-Cola Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executives, and TV talkshow host
Oprah Winfrey, school officials said.

The boy turned in the single-page assignment on Tuesday, and his teacher alerted school officials. The essay has not been released, and the student has not been identified. Seventh-grade students are typically aged 11 to 13.

Daniel Burns, Jr., chairman of the West Warwick School Committee, called the student's essay a "stupid act"
and said he had never seen a situation like this in the more than 20 years that he's been involved in the
school system. While it did not include any specific plan for an attack, "anyone that writes what's on his mind, where he wants to do away with or kill people, it's something you've got to pay attention to," Burns told
Reuters.

Threatening the president is a felony, said Thomas M. Powers, Secret Service resident agent in charge in
Providence, the state capital. He said the agency's investigation is ongoing but declined further comment.
The student faces no charges from local police, Detective Sgt. Richard Ascoli, spokesman for West Warwick police, said. The department has handed over the case to the Secret Service and is no longer involved, he added.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Rhode Island criticized law enforcement's involvement in the case.
"The student was engaged in a rhetorical, if angry, exercise of speech," the organization said in a statement.
"Although it may have been appropriate for the teacher to share the essay with the school social work staff,
the decisions to also involve the police and the Secret Service marked a significant and inappropriate
intrusion on the young student's First Amendment rights." Burns, who was briefed by the West Warwick school superintendent on the essay but had not read it, described it as bitter. "Obviously, this individual needs some kind of help," he said.

He questioned whether the boy had help composing it. "Someone in the 7th grade just doesn't gather this
information by themselves," he said. "I was concerned where that came from."

The student is undergoing counseling, Burns said.

(Additional reporting by Jason Szep in Boston)

art *can* hurt you

In the past week and a half or so I've been to 3 art thangs—quite rare for me—and part of me was thinking, hmmm, maybe I should turn this into an art blog and critique the stuff I go see and hear. It would go something like this:

01.24.06 Martin Parr--SFAI, sponsored by Photo Alliance. Great lecture. Parr was a funny and engaging speaker and makes very interesting, witty work. I loved though questioned that he calls himself a documentary photographer (he is a member of Magnum) though I suspect we wouldn't define it the same way. Deirdre left inspired. I left happy I'd dragged us there. This self-portrait series is one of my favorites (and I'm partial to self-portraits).

Martin Parr, from his Autoportrait series

01.30.06 Renée Green--one of the most boring lecturers I've heard in a very long while. Well, since Eikoh Hosoe, who didn't know how to edit. We left after an hour and he'd only gotten about 2 years into a chronological presentation of a 30+-year career. Seriously. And I had been excited about both of them. Green's a black woman, and you know I always wanna support black women artists. Plus, she'd made one of the earliest, most interesting works about Sarah Baartman (see below).

Green was way too theoretical for me. Five minutes in, she lost me. I would say, "always open with the slides," but it didn't help Hosoe, and wouldn't have helped her, I'm afraid. I should always be wary of anyone who has lived in Europe. When they start citing German theorists, it's over. No wonder Okwui Enwezor hired her (she's the new Dean of Graduate Studies at San Francisco Art Institute). The two of them seem worlds away from the photo faculty there (right now I'm adjunct faculty there, though I'm not teaching anything). We'll see what happens.

Renée Green, Sa Main Charmante,1989

02.02.06 Yerba Buena Center Community Conversations: "Diasporic Visions: A Discussion about Post-multiculturalism, Art, and the Artist Today." I was nervous about going to this one. I figured it would get me all depressed and plunge me into despair, but I was very interested in the topic, and folks I knew were going to be on the panel. The room was packed, and it was a lively discussion. There were lots of important points made, such as:

- Why are mainstream art museums, who continue to lack real diversity, still held up as a standard, i.e., why is SFMOMA some kind of measure by which to judge success? Is it, as artist Amanda Williams eloquently made clear, the money trail?

- Why do artists continue to create objects to market to 5 or 6 people who can afford it?

- Artists are as responsible to engage their communities as cultural institutions are and should support their own cultural institutions

I felt alternately encouraged to continue to pursue my own thing with the publishing and thus creating an alternative to a mainstream I don't want to participate in, anyway; and left out because I'm not interested to sell my work, exhibit my work, or engage with the structures that do exist. Luckily, we'd been wise enough to bolster ourselves with sugar before we arrived, and I'm sure that's what kept me balanced. I can say that I find these things much more bearable now that I'm not scrambling to earn my living from it.