from the archives.
Stomach flu really does a number on one’s ability to think straight. While I’m stuck with this, and also waiting for some film to come back from the lab (pushing 800 speed film to 1600! On a sunny day, no less! Insane!), I thought I’d post some of my favorites from the archives. Each photograph — here, and always — tells a story, but together here in this post, I’m not only reminded of the discrete moments, but am also awed by how much I’ve seen, how lucky I’ve been to have experienced so many places, relationships, foods — so many moments of happiness, all rolled into a lifetime-so-far. (Like I said: stomach flu, non-straight-thinking.)
[From the top: Matt, Philly, December 2009; Cafe Pedlar, May 2009; Boerum Hill, fall 2008; outside Flemington, NJ, late summer 2009; Boerum Hill, Election Day, 2008 (my polling place!); Berlin, February 2009]
the purple wig.
I am not sure when the purple wig first made its appearance in my life. I’d seen it at other parties, on other people, and I think I even took a twirl with it. But it was always that wig with no owner, the wig that was at once nowhere and everywhere. And one night, after a party I’d thrown in my first apartment in Ithaca, probably some time around late 1999 or early 2000, the synthetic, neon-magenta bob, complete with messy bangs, was now in my house. The wig had migrated down the hill from Collegetown and into my life.
And one winter night, a bit bored with my aesthetic theory reading (ah, those were the days!), I put on the wig and snapped a few photographs. (It’s easy to do with my Nikon — my arm length is almost the exact length between my Nikkor 50mm camera lens and the closest thing it’s able to focus on, so I just stretch out my arm, point the camera in my general direction, and click away.) I wasn’t trying to be particularly clever or noir or anything specific — it just seemed sort of fun to have a mini photoshoot with the purple wig. And while the black and white film I had loaded in the camera some time earlier obscured the purpleness of the wig, what resulted was hilarious all the same.: film stills from a freshman’s homage to Godard, maybe, or perhaps early Tarkovsky meets Southeast Asia meets bored critical theorist.
The wig remained at my house for a few years, and atop a few more partying heads, and then it disappeared all over again. This past October, I was chatting with my friend Nancy, who lives out in San Francisco — and who, other than a couple of weekend visits, has never spent time in Ithaca. She informed me that she would be utilizing the wig for part of her Halloween costume. The wig had made it all the way out to the west coast! I wonder what new photographic awesomeness it will elicit out there.
quiet sundays.
Sometimes the best Sundays are the ones where you do next to nothing, stay curled up in bed for most of the day with a laptop full of TV shows to catch up on. And then you lazily roll out of bed to make yourself a fried egg sandwich, and later prepare a large pot of gnocchetti sardi with all’amatriciana sauce — lunch for the upcoming workweek. But mostly it’s rainy out, and while you stare at the pile next to your bed of recent issues of the New York Review of Books to get through, all you really end up doing involves eating and watching waaaay too many episodes of terrible TV crime procedurals. And it’s just sort of perfect.
[Photo: My living room, September 2008, Polaroid Land Camera 340]
the high line, late late autumn.
The flora on the High Line is slowly fading into dull, wintery beiges, but that doesn’t mean that it’s still not a lovely way to spend part of a Saturday afternoon, especially after the white walled confines of Chelsea galleries. I usually end my jaunts at the west 16th street stairwell, so that I can duck into Chelsea Market and get my monthly supply of guanciale and pasta from Buon Italia. On my most recent trip, however, a quick peek in Dickson’s Farmstand Meats yielded this discovery:
Hiding behind the Lardo sign: unpackaged, freshly cured guanciale! At prices comparable to Buon Italia! This is a definite game-changer in my ongoing attempts to make a proper all’amatriciana sauce. Will keep you posted. In the meanwhile, have a great weekend. Me, I’m going to indulge in a massive suckling pig feast at Back Forty tonight for Mike D’s birthday. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been so excited for impending food coma.
i’m very popular with the kids, apparently.
No, seriously. There’s a whole universe of teenagers with Tumblr accounts, and they really dig these particular photographs.
Look, I’m not so old or out of touch that I don’t know how Tumblr works, or that I don’t find the platform totally compelling; this blog initially started on tumblr, in fact. (And by the way, you all should check out my dear friend Mike’s tumblr blog too.) Tumblr makes it easy to reblog things you find on the web, be it photographs, links, and so on. And with its emphasis on curating with minimal commentary, Tumblr sites have the appearance of an ongoing, everchanging snapshot of oneself — like a Moleskine notebook into which you jot down a few ideas, paste in a hastily torn-out photo from a magazine, and then show to the rest of the world. It’s a self reflected in (or perhaps refracted by) the links one calls attention to.
Including, to return to my original point, my photographs. I mean, god knows I love that photo of Shannon putting ketchup onto her cheesy homefries; I had no idea that such an image would resonate so strongly with something like 500+ teenaged Tumblr’ers. (And yes, based on their quick ‘about me’ descriptions, the bulk of these folks reblogging my photos are a good two decades my junior.) And it’s amusing to discover that photograph wedged inbetween a dimly lit photo of 16 year olds who look like they just stepped out of the fall edition of the Anthropologie catalogue, and a gif of Emma Watson giggling during her appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman.
I don’t mean to discount or speak ill of the kids, though. They’re actually keeping alive, in their own way, the dwindling universe of film photography. Via certain Flickr pools, like Film-Grain and other film-oriented groups, the Tumblr kids are finding a whole world of photos with which to curate their tumblr pages. The aesthetic is often quite similar: neutral, muted tones, usually overcast days. If it’s not overcast, it’s at least late in the day, with the sun hanging low in the sky, casting long shadows. If there’s someone in the pic, they’re most likely facing away from the camera, or in profile, with their hair blowing across their face. If aforementioned sun is out, it’s behind the figure in question, backlighting her (usually a lass, with long, flowing dark chestnut tresses). And there’s tall grass. There’s always tall grass. Lately I’ve been seeing more shots of fully clothed people (sans heads; usually from the neck or thighs down) lounging on top of an unmade bed; this appears to be a new favorite aesthetic trope (sub-trope?).
As a whole, some of these tumblr pages are like stills from a newbie’s homage to Tarkovsky, Bertolucci, mid-career Sokurov, a little bit of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, a lot of Tsai Ming-liang and Godard’s 1960s color films, some Malick (remember the tall grass), and a touch of Wong Kar-Wai for good measure (the kids really like wallpapered rooms, a la In the Mood for Love or 2046). And then, hilariously, in this fray you’ve got a picture of a hamburger, courtesy of yours truly. Hey, even the angst-ridden have to eat, right?
But in all honesty, I’m sometimes mesmerized by these pages, by the idea that there’s a whole universe of kids honing their aesthetic sensibility through this kind of curating and sharing. And, that if these pages are any indication, not every teenager is into that Twilight business. (Ok, romanticizing Alain Delon or Jean-Pierre Leaud has its own downsides, but still, I’d choose them over Robert Pattinson any day.) Here are a few that you ought to check out:
a touch of blue.
Paris in dreams
Wir sind die Nacht
i scribbled out the truth
recent fancy eats.
When my parents were in town a few weeks ago, we hit a couple of the fancier restaurants in town. Though my father kept insisting that I didn’t have enough light to shoot properly, methinks I may have proved him wrong. Halfway through our lunch at Jean Georges, my parents — who live in Los Angeles, mind you, and see celebrities all the time, and really should be much more unfazed by these sorts of things by now — became downright star struck when they realized that Fareed Zakaria was sitting at the table next to us. It was amusing, to say the least.
Above: Amuses bouches and sweetbreads with grilled pear, Jean Georges, with the Leica.
Below: Fusili with red wine braised octopus and bone marrow ragu, Marea, with the Nikon.
gallery saturday outtakes.
A few more photographs from our gallery outing this past Saturday, including our visit to Abelardo Moreli’s camera obscura photo exhibit at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery and Daniel’s before-noon steak tartare order at Trestle on Tenth. On a different note, I need to get a haircut.
One more photo: the night before, JT and I went to Mile End for a Hanukkah feast of cholent, chopped liver, borscht, latkes, and smoked meat sandwiches. I was so overwhelmed by the meal that all of my photographs came out incredibly blurry, except for one: the poutine + smoked meat dish that the couple next to us were diving into. (I’ve had the poutine before, sans meat, and it’s tremendous.) Happy food coma Hanukkah!
gallery saturday.
After a lovely Saturday brunch at Trestle on Tenth, Daniel and I headed into galleryland, where we caught a handful of pretty amazing shows. At the Michael Wolf exhibit at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery, we stumbled onto a most wonderful surprise: in the back room was a wee exhibit, curated by Wolf, of Andre Kertesz’s photographs of New York City. I love Kertesz! Daniel snapped a pic of me staring deeply into one of the photos. Our ultimate destination was the Anselm Kiefer show, Next Year in Jerusalem, over at the Gagosian. Sweet lord, you all must see this show. It was extraordinary on so many levels: the unusual, and sometimes monumental, combination of media; the use of photography to interrogate the past; the interplay between scripture and materiality; the sheer perfomative nature of the exhibit itself. And don’t get me started on the ruins.
co.
I eat a lot of pizza. (No, really? No shit, Sherlock.) While my pal Andrew and I have been trying to hit all of the major (mostly sit-down) pizzerias in the metro New York area, most of the pizza I eat comes from random slice joints, usually on nights when I’m too tired to be bothered with making dinner. On the nights when I’m itching for pizza and feeling relatively flush, though, I’ll hit Co. (aka Company), over in Chelsea, where more often than not I’ll order a glass of the Roter Veltliner and a simple margherita pie and sit at the bar for a nice, solitary dinner. If my favorite barkeep, Walter B.*, is working, that lone glass of Veltliner will usually turn into two, sometimes three. And of course I’ll leave much later and tipsier than anticipated, my belly full of awesomeness.
Since I know one of the folks who runs the kitchen, I’ll occasionally get an extra something or other to try out, like one of their new salads or desserts. I’ve had most of their menu at this point, and it’s all pretty solid (though I have to admit, I’m more a fan of their tomato-based pies — but that might be a general preference sort of thing). When my parents came to town a few weeks ago, we ended up eating there a couple of times, once for dinner and again for lunch before they headed off to the airport. We feasted rather handsomely, gobbling down two different salads, the veal meatball and spinach pies, and ending our meal with an ice cream sundae topped with both peanuts and pomegranate seeds (delicious!) and their great banoffee pie. And though I like eating at the bar, it’s such a fun, rare treat to sit at one of the tables and spread out a bit. I don’t think it has the best pizza in the city — that honor goes to Patsy’s or Totonno’s, and don’t make me choose — but Co. is my favorite place to actually sit back and enjoy the pizza at hand.
* His name is Walter B. ! I know, right?!
nikon or leica?
This was taken last week, when my parents were in town for Thanksgiving. Central Park South. I had both the Leica and the Nikon with me for much of the week, and was alternating between the two, occasionally taking pictures of the same thing with both cameras. I uploaded most of scanned negatives from last week’s rolls onto my computer, and now that I’m at work, without the actual negatives in front of me, I seriously can’t remember which camera I took this with. So: Nikon or Leica?
Also – it’s already December. Man alive! This year has gone by incredibly weirdly.
Update: I finally got a chance to check the negatives, and …. totally taken with the Nikon. I was leaning towards Leica, so go figure.
hong-an tran 