Miss Rosen

NYC, c. 1985

Miss Rosen — Fri, 24 May 2013 13:36:16 +0000

85 was like, totally. Girl gave me a Betty Boop sweatshirt for my birthday, I wore that with some stretch jeans, bubblegums was poppinn back then, as was blondes with fly DAs. Tails were out. Mullets on tha rise. But thas not around my way cause we was in the Bronx and—

I had to get out. Go on down downtown. I started going back in 83, girl’s mama took us down to Canal Jeans and it was, yes it was and I was and it had been, and for years I had buttons in all colors, and I wore them checkers like they was God, and I also thought I was Denise Huxtable, so yea, there’s that uhh huhh.

By 85, I was reading Interview and tearing up Vogues. I was on the hunt fo Charivari ads; little did I know I was always editing photography. Curating. Installations. Up and down we go. It was always photography, just like it was always books.

Just like it was always NYC. Things done changed, like Biggie said. God bless the photographers, who shot off rolls on film. Images, indelible moments of the ephemeral, times keeps on slippinnn, like Steve Miller said, into tha future. And so it arrives, NYC, c. 1985, at ClampArt, NY, through July 3.

Janette Beckman invited me. That shot of Run DMC in Hollis do travel. Through time and space, across the ever changing landscape that is New York ,of how nothing stays still, it is always change, and the more things change the stranger it gets, only in a strange way, it all makes sense.

We have come to this, by way of reflection, in the pictures we see ourselves, a facet anew, through the landscape, the human face, the moment the shutter snapped that breath, the wisp of light floating across the film, yes well yes and then yes some more. Things are as we knew, or never knew or just did not remember… until now ~*~

Check Out :: NYC, c.1985

the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography

Miss Rosen — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:32:49 +0000

What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality
and a metaphysical one. It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province,
this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one.
That is the realm of the artist.

Fate is written in the face.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet…
maybe we could understand something.

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

~*~
Quotes by Federico Fellini
Photographs by Rafael Fuchs

bedtime stories

Miss Rosen — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:13:01 +0000

The sun was high overhead, the sun beating its waves against my shoulders, down my back, through my hair, all gold er’ythann, black catsuit with a baby pink knit fluttering delicately at my hips, and a bag that bore the words Little Tokyo. I put one foot before the other, step after step, and it had been five miles, three hours, one lunch, since I made my way across the Brooklyn landscape, curving past Barclays, walking across the promenade, underneath the awning that opened up to the sky, and the air still fresh, not yet heavy from the swelter that is yet to come, so the Gowanus barely got that summer stank, and I’m floating along, thinking of the Promenade, of Adam Yauch Park, but I forgo the scenic views of the skyline and I stroll across Fulton Mall, no one notices a thing, except that one guy selling candy bars standing by the bus station.

He’s got a baseball cap and a grey tank and these shoulders that look like Almond Joy, cause I can’t say Mounds but you know chocolate covered coconut is. And he’s offering candy to every stranger who crosses his path, every stranger except me. Me I’m walking by like I sent him or did I, I can’t been seen, act like I’m invisible. And my skirt swishes in the breeze and my hair is up UP and a big pink fabric flower flutters in a mess, a nest, yarn twists and twirls, ribbons coiled and curled and I am wearing sunglasses through which I do not look and the Candy Man says, “God bless you beautiful,” and a smile appears on my lips.

The sun is burning my shoulders now. I can feel the sizzle of crisp flesh and I have to pee like whaat so I’m thinking, Target. But then, I run that I’m almost home, looking at the last half mile, and by now I’ve already put in five. I slink down the street, alternately striding with purpose as my abdomen holds tight, or in that slightly delirious pain that pressure brings, the pressure of accessibility, so very close but not quite. So very here and now, I mean sooner than you think, I mean stop thinking, it rots your brain, I mean change the subject but there is no other subject to be had and I try not to count the blocks. Soon. But not Now.

I make my way along the block where I used to live, back when I first moved out here and I was in that red brick building with the huge windows in the tree canopy, and right about now the gardens are covered by scaffolding, and everything is to’ up. It’s a little grim but I pay it no mind cause I see this guy, ohh me ohh my I—

cannot breathe. Cannot. Breathe. My heart pounds kaboom kaboom and as the oxygen stops making it to my brain I feel a lil lightheaded, then warm, flush, lovely, my fingertips tinkle and my hair twinkles and I can feel every twist and I hear my skirt as it ruffles around my lightly swishing hips and I think this, I think breathe, but I can’t hear a word I’ve said and I think, don’t fall, and I think I won’t I think I won’t like the little red engine that won’t and I float along, unfocused thinking I am invisible and the moment I pass he throws his hands in the air, all paws off, didn’t touch nothinn, and and his arms are like boa constrictors, like pythons and my eyes alight on his fright, like he gotta surrender to me and I don’t like this at all, like why he backinn away from me but you see, he explains, with his hands still in the air, “No disrespect but you got the best walk come through here yet,” and I think, ohh yes.

Only I’m not doing the walk. I’m just walking and he can’t tell why I feel so uptight, no it’s all lost on everyone cause his friend, his boy cute, and now it’s two construction workers and I swear to God I already done did melt. And honey tells it like it is.

“Take .. your .. time.”

And I like the way he says .. your .. And I like the way he already knows and it don’t scare him neither. And I like the way the first guy repeats his words, trying them out on his tongue, his lips around them as they leave his mouth.

“Take .. your .. time.”

And I look back over my bronze shoulder and I smile and say, “Thank you,” but I don’t look him in the eye because I am in too deep. Everything is vibrating and I’m not sure my feet are on the ground and I realize that I am passing them and they gonna watch me go by for awhile now.

“Have a good day,” he calls after me and I say it back but I can’t stop because I don’t know how. Yo—

~ tiger style ~

Miss Rosen — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:18:57 +0000

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness;
but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution.
Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise and thou art happy.
—Akhenaten

World Renown :: How Nice I Am

Miss Rosen — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:21:11 +0000

press PLAY

Birthday Boys :: Biggie Smalls X Fats Waller

Miss Rosen — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:41:49 +0000

~ ain’t misbehavin’ ~

Somaly Mam by Douglas Kirkland

Miss Rosen — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:56:01 +0000

Somaly Mam is radiant, a light, a fire, a flame. She blazes a path, one woman set to change the course of the world so long as she walks the earth. Orphaned at a young age then sold into a brothel in Cambodia around age 12, Somaly Mam knows the truth about the slave trade. She not only escaped, but has liberated thousands of women and children from sexual slavery and aided tens of thousands more in having a voice and a choice in their life. She risks her life for the lives of others. To listen to her story, and to hear the stories of the women and girls she has assisted, is a lesson in honor, humility, and humanity.

Few speak on the sale of human beings, the outcomes of these transactions too illicit for polite company. But Somaly speaks, and when she does, people listen. Eyes are opened. Policies begin to change. But most of all, lives are saved. The slave trade runs rampant, crossing borders everywhere from New York City to Phnom Penh. It’s an international issue, but it does not receive the attention that it deserves. Yet when people meet Somaly, they feel charged to take action.

Price Arana, CEO of Press Cabinet, a Los Angeles-based branding and advertising agency, first met Somaly Mam in the fall of 2012, at a private gathering of friends organized by Angella Nazarian. As Nazarian recounts, “For the past few years I have been doing in depth research on women who have been the trailblazers—women who have dared to have a bold vision for change and have impacted their field in the most meaningful way. Somaly Mam has single-handedly brought sex trafficking on a global platform and has saved thousands of girls from sexual slavery. I was so touched by Somaly’s own life and work that I dedicated a chapter on Somaly’s life and work in my book, Pioneers of the Possible: Celebrating Visionary Women of the World [which was previously featured in Le Journal’s Book Review No. 39.]

Read the full story at LE JOURNAL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE

Douglas Kirkland and Somaly Mam, photographed by Price Arana

Team Somaly ~*~

all good things are wild and free

Miss Rosen — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:15:37 +0000

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave,
find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities
and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

All good things are wild and free.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters
compared to what lives within us.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

~*~
Photographs by Danny Lyon
Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

Gerhard Steidl :: The Interview

Miss Rosen — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:18:37 +0000

Gerhard Steidl, photograph by Karl Lagerfeld

Gerhard Steidl is one of the world’s premier book publishers. He founded Steidl in 1968 in order to produce art books to the standards that he held in his mind and manifested with his hands. Unlike most publishers, who parcel out each aspect of the business to specialists in their respective fields, Steidl does everything under one roof. From acquisition, editorial, and design to production, printing, and binding to sales and marketing, every Steidl book access is given his personal touch. It is this touch we see and feel when we pick up a Steidl book. It is a sensory experience for the eyes, the hands, and yes, even the nose.

A book is more than a story. It is a complete world unto itself. It is a journey, an adventure, a trip into the mind of the author him or herself. This trip begins with the object of the book, for a book is more than words and images on paper; it is the very paper itself, the ink, the process of production that is at once hidden and revealed with each turn of the page. It is the collected experience of the tiniest details that make the book a thing to behold unto itself. It is this attention that Steidl brings to the art of book publishing that puts him on the same level as the artists he publishes. Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, William Eggleston, David Bailey, Bruce Davidson, Joel Sternfeld, Weegee, Raymond Depardon, Andreas Gursky, Arthur Elgort, Juergen Teller, Guy Bourdin, Ed Ruscha, Jim Dine, Berenice Abbott—and that’s just a few of the authors appearing on the new list for Spring 2013.

Steidl, like the artists he publishes, is driven by love, by passion, and by purpose. Book making is more than a profession; it is a way of life. It is a way of seeing and understanding life in order to share it with the expert and the amateur alike. Books are mystical objects, the mind forever captured on the paper we hold in our hands. Books are more than mere objects; they are repositories of soul. They are a wealth of knowledge, of expressions, of creativity to be revisited throughout our lives. Each time we visit, a deeper understanding occurs: of ideas, of style, of ourselves, and the word in which we live. The art of the book resides in the space where author and publisher meet, in the story they decide to tell and the way in which the story is presented to the world. The books of Steidl are stories put on paper, memories not yet our own until we behold them ourselves.

The beauty of the book is that it has not changed its form. It remains as Gutenberg designed it, leaves bound between covers, handy enough to be held in our arms. A book comes alive when it is opened, and it is here that the magic and mystery begin, as we turn the page and discover a new world held together by concept, content, and the quality of production itself. We are fortunate to have this opportunity to speak with Gerhard Steidl about his life’s work, as a single force who continues to honor the art of book making through his exquisite publishing programme.

Read the Interview at
aRUDE

Gerhard Steidl, photograph by Karl Lagerfeld

deep inside the hollow of bone

Miss Rosen — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:17:54 +0000

Jean-Michel Basquiat – Untitled (Black Skull), 1982

The trees stand without leaves, gathered close and deep. Their branches bare, shake, forsaken and angered. The wind whips through their spidery limbs like a lash coming down hard against the penitent’s back. The winds warn of the coming storm, howling in the night as they rush along. Hovering impossibly low, the clouds begin to mourn and a wail of torment sounds as the trees nod and groan. Small branches snap under pressure and are suddenly sailing free through the gales with no destination at hand, no thought or concern to where they may land.

Nino looks to the sky and sees nothing there as an eerie silence stills the air. His fists clench at his side, fingernails biting into his palms, as his jaw grinds forth, jutting out in determination. Taking one step forth, his boot casts upon a fallen limb and as his weight shifts, the twig splits angrily. He feels the earth give way under his foot as a bellow sounds. Slow. Low. Uncomfortable. His hands are damp and his throat begins to close.

It is cold, the kind of cold that is felt far below, deep inside the hollow of bone. It is the kind of cold that rattles and roars and sobs and moans. Nino begins to shiver until the shiver becomes a shake and then it is like the tremors of withdrawal. THe ait carries a woman’s laugh as the wind rumbles into a thunderous rage. Frozen in place, he is unable to escape as he feels something prickly brush against his face.

His hands tremble, agitated and afraid as he feels something within him start to break. It is deep in his chest, buried below the ribs, inside the center of his being that pumps life into his body. It is here in the seat of his heart that his body and soul finally split apart. He can feel the tearing of organ, the breaking of bone, the ripping of flesh as his spirit leaves his body, flees even.

A flash of white light strikes, illuminating a silhouette. Ling black hair sails through the air, spreading wide like a net. The net expands into a web, stick and sweet, and at the center of this trap is a woman he knows, the woman he hates. She is young and slim, almost starved, and her scarlet eyes feast upon Nino’s tremulous form. Ven aqui. Come to me, she calls softly, her voice as seductive as the sirens of The Odyssey.

A wave of desire sweeps through Nino’s spirit, suffusing him with warmth and where the sky was dark and foreboding, it becomes something succulent and soft, and he can taste this craving on his tongue and it tastes like a life that was never his. She calls to him again, this time silently, speaking the words he has longed to hear. He feels his spirit relax and release as she summons him forth, and he moves faster and faster now, flying to her side at once.

He lands in the web with deeply beating heart and he looks at her and she looks at him and he sees her eyes are voracious and dark. The sweet scent of innocence fills her with an excitement she can barely contain. Her mouth is wet, so wet that she can taste his flesh and as her pink lips spread slowly they reveal teeth of jagged edge.

She smiles in delight as Nino’s eyes widen in horror and she moves closer to him, closer and closer. She reaches for a little hand, a pale and delicate paw with sharp red talons on the end of each fingertip, talons sharp as claws as saws all the better to cut you in half and she carefully draws her nail across the side of his face.

A trickle of blood rises to the surface as a torrent of fear washes over him and in an instant it is over just as quickly as it began. His spirit is driven back into the body it had left behind, returning to the womb of his heart and crawling all the way inside. There is a pain, a kind of pain he knows too well and though he normally pushes it back down, this time, it is too much and he has lost control.

His mouth opens wide and a strangled gasp breaks from his lips and it is in this moment that a shadow rushes out of his chest. It is a small shadow, dark but not opaque, and it knows not except it must return to the universe from whence it first came. And as the shadow disappears in the darkness of light, Nino is empty and exhausted, wavering in the wind.

Stand! he commands, knees locking in place as his feet sink deeper into the earth. He feels himself sinking and looks down to discover his boots are submerged in a thick and viscous substance. The more he pulls against it, the tighter it hold until he realizes what is happening. He is standing in quicksand and it’s only a matter of time. If he could release himself from the boots that hold his feet… If he could just grab that branch over there and pull himself to safety… If there were someone, anyone, nearby who would hear his scream… But there is nothing, no one, not even She.

A panic rises in Nino’s chest as he realizes that not even he can help himself. He is now knee deep in the cold and clammy muck and he realizes that time, time is all he has left and time is running out. He looks to the sky and sees nothing there. The storm as passed and silence fills the air.

Nino feels himself sinking as the world rises up. Resolute, he knows the truth. He is trapped, held captive, abandoned and alone. Failure burns his flesh, his aching bones. His cheeks are aflame, ashamed, debased once more. Rage boils and bubbles and foams on his tongue. With the venom of the Furies, he cries out—

~*~

(this passage, since deleted, once began my novel)
The Kingdom of Eternal Night

Saturdays in Candyland

Miss Rosen — Sat, 18 May 2013 22:25:12 +0000

today is your day ~

Miss Rosen — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:19:08 +0000

Ilse Bing. Double Auto Portrait in the Window. France, 1947.

Rosario Leotta

I remember when the Salvation Army had that warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen, way over by the water, and honey over here had the fake Visa cards. He was generous and rather stylish so good times were had by all for two months during the Fall of 19 Ninety Four. That was the season of Salsoul classics on cd, dance your ass off in the apartment before heading on out to Factory. And while once upon a time I had been wearing Timberlands, Levis, and crop tops, after I had seen Nadja Auermann on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar getting her dragon, her drag on, honey child I had never seen such glamour for all my life and I was—

enraptured, enamored, enthralled, entranced—I was en too deep and it was just me diving into a pool of turquoise shimmering aqua du jour only no, it was not, it was stumbling drunk into Barneys back when it was on Eighteenth, a shelter from the darkening skies that came earlier and earlier each day. And I had to, I needed color like nothing ever before I was, yes, I was and I had to have it like give it to me and it was electric pink and neon orange glosses from the Prescriptives counter like my candy store like the best place on earth, and I slid those precious liquids across my lips and slipping and sliding wild, wet and wild colors like my 80s dreams and I was blonde, was I blonde? Mmaybe not. But I was up in stilettos and baubles from Coco Canal and that was back when dudes had there wares spread out on sheets along the streets like Twenty-Third and Sixth, and we’d be walking along when a marvelous belt called me out my name: Girl take me home and I’ll dance along your hips all night and day and night. Whatchu say, baby girl?

I took it home and my closet was most grateful for the times I’d take it out and make it twirl. I think—but I am not sure—I was wearing it that day back in Two Thou, summer was it, and I was in Chicago, yes, I was and there I had been, staying on the campus of that school not knowing a single person or where to get food so I took it to the streets. And it was all big hair, big curls, and a fingerwave around my hairline, and it was me floating along like a butterfly in a grey jersey Margiela skirt that dusted the pavement as I swept along. And a black tank top, really more a muscle shirt, and it had long sleeves that I snapped off and It sat like black canvas, a simple sheath, a satiny shield along my chest and yes there it was my faux Chanel belt belly dancing as I strolled down the street.

Mighta been distinct, obvious, oblivious, I could be. It’s rather yes so I pay it no nevermind and when honey rolled up all on me, I had the strangest feeling things were playing out from a script I had not yet read like the days pages from Another World back when it was on NBC. He was stringy, stringbean, white boy with a British accent, and he had been up, up like Dracula haunting the night, and the eightball was gone and now he, could he bum a smoke, and I said, “Take me to get something to eat.”

And so we proceeded, well he proceeded to lead me and I was pleased, see how helpful men will be, and me he took me to this little boulangerie that had seats in the piazza outside a red brick church with white accents that gave it a birthday cake kinda vibe. And we sat there, him telling me how he had some weed and we should get up after I get done with me day and I’m smiling saying, Suuuure maybe, sounding like I don’t know just yet, but you know I never had any intention of checking honey ever again.

But why ruin his day? It had just begun, and he sat there smoking my cigarettes, eating nothing, smoking away, and the day would just begin and it would become nothing so much as a vague haze of beige in my memory, lots of white folk, lots of books that were handmade, making the book something of a craft, reminding me of where it all began, right, like I was ten and I—

had decided it was time. I would write this book, a collection of short stories about Mr. Crocodile, who had this B&B, and all the characters that came and went, went and came, and I decided to illustrate it with colored pencils. It was done on looseleaf paper. And the covers were made of cardboard, which I then wrapped in sea blue tissue paper, and I drew the title real big: THE HOTEL IN SOUTHHAMPTON on it, and I bound it with gold pushpins that ate away at the tissue paper.

I had it for awhile, and then like everything else ~ bon voyage. And I sent it to wherever these things go, maybe a portal through another dimension. But it’s always happening, whether I know it or not, and it occurs to me that means there are countless opportunities to jump frequencies, vibe from one dimension and the next, go across time and space and be this vibe, this vibration, this feeling, this energy, this source, this voice whispering in my ear and I smile like oo you know, and you do and thas what makes it worth alla every thing in the end.

The End, it’s true.

Art Crush :: Danny Lyon

Miss Rosen — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:51:15 +0000

DANNY LYON | Self-portrait, Lower Manhattan, 1967 | Gelatin silver print

I just spent an hour at the candy store loving my life, playing with pictures by Danny Lyon, who is interviewed by Susan Meiselas in the summer issue of BOMB. As I look at his work, I can hear the words reverberate inside my mind: “Somebody’s gotta be first.”

What was it Charlie Ahearn said last night?
Start At The Top. words to live by…

From Russia With Love

Miss Rosen — Fri, 17 May 2013 17:12:39 +0000

Rostov Veliki (‘Great Rostov’), one of the oldest cities in Russia, along with Suzdal, Uglich, Yaroslavl and Vladimir, part of the ‘Gold Ring’ around Moscow. The Resurrection Church in the Kremlin, 1911. Three-color photograph by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, from the album Views along the Upper Volga between Yaroslavl, Vladimir and Kostroma. © Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, Prokundin-Gorkii Collection

Grand Duchess Maria in the garden of the summer residence at Livadia, Crimea, c. 1910. Photograph. © Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Photography records what we forget, offering a map back into the past into lives we would never otherwise know, if not for the camera to record their existence. We are all anonymous, until we are not. We keep records to prevent the inevitable erasure as time slips through our grasp. We are fortunate not only that the photographer was there to record what was, but that historians exist today to dig through the rubble of time and unearth the forgotten.

Nostalgia: The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II, Captured in Color Photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (Die Gestalten Verlag) takes us back to the turn of the twentieth century, during the final years before the final days of an empire that spanned several centuries. Prokudin-Gorskii was a pioneer of photography in Russia, and a pioneer in color photography itself. As Dr. Stelle Blasche writes in the book’s introduction, “Very little has been written about his life history. Like so many of the artists and architects of pre-revolutionary Russia, he has been forgotten, leaving a blank space in photography that remains to this day.”

With the publication of Nostalgia, we are treated to a long-overdue retrospective of the artist’s work, a story of so many lives that would be changed forever in a matter of a decade’s time. Prokudin-Gorskii studied chemistry in Russia before traveling to Berlin and Paris to learn about chemistry, photomechanics, and spectral analysis. He returned to Russia in 1901 to study color photography in a country where the medium of photography itself was little known. Driven to compete with the developments in Western Europe and the USA, Prokudin-Gorskii presented his work to the Imperial Technical Society with the aim of garnering financial support for his project. By 1908, he had reached Czar Nicholas II, presenting color projections of photographs that included a portrait of celebrated author Lev Tolstoi.

Read the Full Story at
Le Journal de la Photographie

Library of Congress St. Petersburg. The Castle Bridge across the Neva, and Admiralty Quay, c. 1895. Photochrome. © Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington DC, Photochrom Prints

What is the soul? What color is it?

Miss Rosen — Thu, 16 May 2013 15:26:50 +0000

For life is the best thing we have in this existence.
And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within.
This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions
and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.

Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet.
Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech.

The French poet, Rimbaud, predicted that the next great crop of writers would be women.
He was the first guy who ever made a big women’s liberation statement,
saying that when women release themselves from the long servitude of men
they’re really gonna gush. New rhythms, new poetries, new horrors, new beauties.
And I believe in that completely.

In art and dream may you proceed with abandon.
In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.
For nothing is more precious than the life force
and may the love of that force guide you as you go.

Where does it all lead? What will become of us?
These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed.
It leads to each other. We become ourselves.

~*~
Quotes by Patti Smith
Artwork by Lady Aiko