~ Grandmother Power ~

Photograph by Eric Johnson

It was two summers ago: 2011, to be exact, when I first saw the photograph. It was an image of an older woman laying in bed, her hand reaching forward and clasping the hand of the photographer.

With one hand he managed to take the photograph while being in part of the image itself. The intensity of the image, the skill it took, to the power that transcends the moment, it drew me close. I could feel her hand clasping my own and somehow I was drawn into the photograph like Alice through the looking glass.

And so it began. But I did not know. Where it would go, for the circle has no beginning or no end once we set forth. The photograph remained in my memory. It’s effect could not be forgotten, undone. Months later that I re-approached photographer Eric Johnson about writing a story about his grandmother, Mrs. Idell Marshall, for Le Journal de la Photographie.

I didn’t know what or why; I just needed to know more. My curiosity can be insatiable and journalism is nothing if not a license to ask questions that polite society might otherwise ignore. To ask questions is to express interest. To listen and to learn and to consider from where the fascination stems and what truths can be discerned.

And so it was that we began to talk, and as we spoke, stories began to surface. From the depths, they came alive. Little by little, from memories that had receded into the distance, things untold. Justice to be served. Truth to be spoke. It began in death, as so many things do, only this was not death as I had thought death was, but a revolution too.

The completion of a circle as it spins round, the snake eating its tail, no beginning and no ending but it is here that I entered and I—

—saw it. Heard it. And I knew.

“Pull up a chair and sit down,” the voice told me as I looked through the doorway at the kitchen table. I was inside the photograph, here, in this space. I was returning to from whence I came: Books. That’s all it has ever been.

It had been years, long enough to forget. Long enough to remember that I never thought of making a book again. Never thought of it until it called to me: “Pull up a chair and sit down.”

“Eric! This is a book!” I gasped through a hazy glow of rose.

Eric is cool. He smiled and said, “Okay.”

And so it began.

Just like that. In his grandmother’s last days, Eric stood before her with a camera. She, who never liked being photographed, became so powerful she transcended the planes of reality. Three dimensions into two and then back into three. Through time and space, she called to me. Maybe not to me, specifically, but I cannot help but listen when I hear things.

I believe.

It began a year ago. Photographs and stories and stories and photographs were like puzzle pieces without a cover image. It began because it never ended and there was work to be done. And there was no intention, except love and respect, patience and trust. Patience as I have never known. Trust in being able to not know, being able to listen.. to the space in between the words.. so that I could begin to write them down. And, now, one year later, the circle turns once more.

We come to this. By way of faith. By way of belief. By way of an understanding for which there are no words but in the photograph, the spirit remains. Forever eternal. Forevermore. Grandmother Power. Power as the dictionary defines it first and foremost: the ability to act or to produce an effect.

Transcendence is beyond the rational, as well it should be. Transcendence is not a thing of the mind but the connection to a higher plane. It speaks through the soul, and it is heard in the heart, and finally, ohh finally, it reverberates in words that give it physical form. But it is not physical, nor rational; it is beyond our ability to comprehend through logic. It is meaning without reason and it calls to me and to it I answer and dedicate my life to it.

To this. To something I cannot full express. But it begins with gratitude for each and every breath. For the darkness that has brought me into the light. For Eric Johnson, Mrs. Idell Marshall, and the entire clan.

And for Paola Gianturco whose commitment to the magnificence of the female spirit I honor with these words. Grandmother Power. I thank you.

Read Eric Johnson’s Story at
Le Journal de la Photographie

More about Grandmother Power,
the inspiration for this post

~ we known they won’t win ~

There is freedom within, there is freedom without
Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup
There’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost
But you’ll never see the end of the road
While you’re traveling with me

Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over
Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in
They come, they come to build a wall between us
We know they won’t win

Now I’m towing my car, there’s a hole in the roof
My possessions are causing me suspicion but there’s no proof
In the paper today tales of war and of waste
But you turn right over to the T.V. page

Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over
Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in
They come, they come to build a wall between us
We know they won’t win

Now I’m walking again to the beat of a drum
And I’m counting the steps to the door of your heart
Only the shadows ahead barely clearing the roof
Get to know the feeling of liberation and relief

Hey now, hey now, don’t dream it’s over
Hey now, hey now, when the world comes in
They come, they come to build a wall between us
We know they won’t win

Don’t let them win
Hey now, hey now
Hey now
Hey now, hey now
Don’t let them win
Hey now, hey now
Don’t let them win
Hey now, hey now

Photographs by Ricky Flores
Lyrics from Don’t Dream It’s Over by Crowded House

.. sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself ..

Brownsville, BK 1980

The timeless in you is aware of life’s timelessness.
And knows that yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.

Red Hook, BK 1980

No human relation gives one possession in another—
every two souls are absolutely different. In friendship or in love,
the two side by side raise hands together to find what one cannot reach alone.

Keisha

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

Brooklyn 1980

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
And think not you can direct the course of love,
if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

Flatbush, BK

Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

Photographs by Jamel Shabazz
Quotes by Khalil Gibran

Trolley is the Antidote

Daniele Tamagni, ‘Gentlemen of Bacongo’ poster

A month ago I was asked to write a small piece, a tribute to the great Gigi Giannuzzi on the occasion of the forthcoming publication of TROLLEYOLOGY, a ten year retrospective of one of the greatest illustrated book publishing houses to ever exist. I won’t look back, I won’t re-read what I wrote. I shall begin again, speaking from my heart.

Gigi is dead. Long live Gigi. His spirit is eternal. I knew this, as I know so many things that are without words and yet I am charged to find a way to express the ineffable. Gigi is (not was) a force of Nature, a triumph of the will, a prince among men. He walks the earth with the express purpose of bringing light into the dark.

He does this, as only he can. He produces books, book unlike anything the world has seen before. Books that take on some of the most difficult stories to tell, the beautiful dreams and horrific nightmares that cannot be erased when we close our eyes. We cannot and will not look away. Gigi understands the photograph, the heart of the photographer, the witness who bears evidence, proof, and testimony of the ephemeral made eternal. Gigi makes us look. He makes us understand. We are all complicit in the damnation of the world, and we are all charged with its salvation.

Though Gigi has passed from the mortal plane into the spirit world, he is still here and his legacy carries forth, not only in what he has achieved but in how we carry on. And it is here the opportunity arrives to show heart. TROLLEYOLOGY is on Kickstarter. It doesn’t ask for much, just for each one of us to do our part. And what that is, you may discover when you step into a world, a world that lies right outside your door, when you open your eyes and see it anew.

Please Support

Philip Jones Griffiths, Gigi in Venice whilst making the book Agent Orange, 2003

Brandt Nudes

Nude, London, 1951, February ©The Bill Brandt Archive

The body as landscape, object, sculpture, and form, as costume, architecture, or anything else you could imagine it to become in all of its glory. It is both positive and negative, being and nothingness. It is present and absent, past and future, paradoxes intertwined and connected as one. In a state of simultaneity that is impossible to recognize fully but at the same time it is the thing in which we are forever traveling, consciously and unconsciously.

The body is both object and symbol of the object itself, and the female form most of all assumes the passive role of being that which we act upon, as we exalt its beingness into an abstract meditation on life itself. It is a thing of beauty to behold and perhaps no one does it quite like Bill Brandt whose female nudes have been collected in two volumes twice in his lifetime. The first in Perspective of Nudes (1961) and again in Bill Brandt: Nudes 1945–1980. Now, the oeuvre is brought together in a single volume, Brandt Nudes (Thames & Hudson), which includes a preface by Lawrence Durrell and commentaries by Mark Haworth-Booth. It is here, in Brandt Nudes, that we can consider Brandt’s relationship to the female form throughout the course of his esteemed career.

As Brandt recalls in quoted text from a piece first published in 1933, “It was after the war, when I was busy photographing London celebrities for English and American magazines, that I began to feel irritated by the limitations imposed by such jobs. I was taking portraits of politicians, artists writers, actors, in their own surrounding, but there was never enough time for me to do what I wanted. My sitters were always in a hurry. Their rooms were rarely inspiring backgrounds, and I felt the need for exciting backgrounds to make pictures of the portraits. I wanted more say in the pictures; I wanted rooms of my own choice. And so I came to the nudes. Nudes, at that time, were photographed in studios. I thought of photographing them in real rooms…”

Read the Full Story at
Le Journal de la Photographie

Nude, Baie des Anges, France, 1959, October ©The Bill Brandt Archive

life is predetermined in retrospect

Everything happens according to Law.
Nothing ever “merely happens.”
There is no such thing as Chance.
While there are various planes of Cause and Effect,
the higher dominating the lower planes,
still nothing ever entirely escapes the Law.
—Three Initiates, Kyballion

~ i have wings to fly ~

A Dream Deferred, Bronx, 2011

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to,
and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

Little Girl in Wynwood, Miami Art Basel, 2012

Nothing is worth more than laughter.
It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light.

Reflection, Queens, 2011

I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim,
and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.

Guerilla Gardening, Paris, 2011

I paint flowers so they will not die.

Aura, Canada, 2010

I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.

Paintings by Alice Mizrachi
Quotes by Frida Kahlo

Happy Birthday April Flores ~*~

 Because we have so much eye candy and mind candy,
spending so much time trying to pay the rent,
all of this conspires to keep us from thinking too hard or taking action from that.
Our time is stolen. So much of our daily life is stolen.

Just because my bank account hasn’t swelled astronomically
I don’t consider myself any less of a success.

I’m a total pleasure seeker. I pursue anything that satisfies me. I usually get it.
I have specific needs and I know what they are so I can achieve satisfaction.

If people could understand how much pleasure they could have by themselves,
I think everyone would be a lot saner.
I think that people really need a dose of quality time with one’s self.

The female format is a beautiful one in which to function. Foolhardy as it may be.
I change my image all the time, it’s whatever suits me at the moment.

Think your own thoughts.

Photographs of April Flores by Carlos Batts
Quotes by Lydia Lunch

Get Ready! FAT GIRL is Coming!

can’t help it ~*~

White on White like Malevich, Kazimir like Kashmir like Led Zeppelin said. Run it. The beat might be me listeninn to breaks Rokafella gave me aaages ago and it’s like time never begins or ends, like memories of yesterday are  close as can be, and what is forgotten shall be told. That’s Mary Magdalene or so I heard as the wind whispers a secret in the breeze and me with Rumi behind my ear like a perfume of the finest blend, a spicy noiresque scent enticing as fresh baked brownies melting on the tip of the tongue. And me ohh my I lose the thread as I pretend there was one from the beginning.

The wind whispers to others as I rock some Fela and do nothing with my nothingness like Malevich like absence on absence in two dimensions to reveal three only it’s not even one, just a figment of my imagination as the beat switches up and though these are mojito songs, tar beach season ain’t just yet. Til then, without the sun and me under the skylights with the rays refracting across my back and over my hooded eyes and I tilt my head turn my cheek til my cheek kisses the sky and the sun beats down upon me and the breaks be like fiyahh like drums back when we danced round tha campfire like damn the word escapes me but the drums insist I give in and move on to the next thing which is the first thing, where we begin, snake tail combo, sautéed or fried. Steamed with a ginger sauce on the side. Lawd where is this thing takinn me.

See, it ain’t even. Sometimes it just be the need to spill seed, umm is that it. creepy being female and all. Creepy creepy but hey thas sublimation I guess it goes against the Natural and well .. yes. The beat switches up and now they got this diggum smacks kinda ribbit singing and swinging while things get kicking like this beat that’s all it takes maybe that’s it, words, rhythms, vibes, life. Like Tribe said lyrics without tracks is poetry on the page and itdon’t gotta make sense so long as it entertains.

juanita rosita esposita, they called her mexicana rose

To work is to feel alive.
—Tony Bennett

I love living on that stage. Without that, I’d die.
—Celia Cruz

I sing to the realists; people who accept it like it is.
—Aretha Franklin

I don’t plan to stop.
—Celia Cruz

Sometimes you ask God for something and you don’t know what you’re asking.
—Mahalia Jackson

~*~
Photographs by Arlene Gottfried

art crush ~*~

j’adore Libri Drago
ciao Paolo ~*~

Daddy—don’t be vulgar!

The luxuriance of your emotions
under the strict discipline which you habitually impose upon them,
makes that tensity in you that is the secret of all charm.

You can stroke people with words.

Zelda’s idea:
the bad things are the same in everyone; only the good are different.

Artistic temperament is like a king with vigor and unlimited opportunity.
You shake the structure to pieces by playing with it.

The combination of a desire for glory
and an inability to endure the monotony it entails
puts many people in the asylum.

To record one must be unwary.

If you us logic and imagination
you can destroy everything in the world between them.

~*~

Photographs by Phil Toledano
Quotes by Scott Fitzgerald

…it comes only from inside…

a new talent discovered
thank you Jayne

XOXO

there is only one of you in all time

Doña Josepha Benavides, Marquise of Villena, detail, 1725, Alonso Miguel de Tovar.

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly. To keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.  You have to keep open and aware directly of the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction;  A blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

—Martha Graham

how to maintain

The samurai must maintain his faith in his beliefs, even as the social or political climate shifts and alters.

He must be patient, must act in a manner that may at times seem irrational or illogical, must resist the temptations of instant gratification, and must work towards fulfilling what may seem to be an impossible idea.

As a result, the samurai is often something of an outsider, a rebellious figure because he refuses to conform to the habits of the day.

—Takahiro Kitamura