Mississippi: A Self-Portrait
Via NBC Dateline
"He came to me one day and said, 'I got a wonderful black man. His name is Booker Wright. And he's a waiter at Lusco's Restaurant. And what he does, is a minstrel scene. He does a singsong of the menu. And that's the only menu they have. People wanna know the menu, they get, 'Booker, go tell 'em.' And he'll sing them the song of the menu. And it's absolutely delightful.'"
Once Frank saw Booker Wright perform the menu recitation, he arranged to film the routine the next day. So Booker Wright recited the menu for Frank's camera. Then, without warning, he shifted gears and launched into a monologue that had been 40 years in the making:
"Now that's what my customers, I say my customers are expecting from me," he began. "Some people nice. Some is not. Some call me Booker. Some call me John. Some call me Jim. Some call me @!$%#! All of that hurts but you have to smile. The meaner the man be the more you have to smile, even though your're crying on the inside.
"You're wondering what else can I do. Sometimes he'll tip you, sometimes he'll say, ‘I'm not gonna tip that @!$%#, he don't look for no tip.’ I say, 'Yes sir, thank you.' I'm trying to make a living."
For nearly two minutes, Booker Wright, spoke straight to the camera, and straight from the heart.
"Night after night I lay down and I dream about what I had to go through with. I don't want my children to have to go through with that. I want them to get the job they feel qualified. That's what I'm struggling for," Booker concluded.
"I went there to photograph a minstrel show," Frank says, "And I stayed there to hear a man talking about his life and what his dreams are. And it was so moving."
Related video: Former NBC News producer Frank De Felitta recalls a time he and his film crew faced some real danger in 1960s Mississippi
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Vivian Maier: 1954, New York ©Maloof Collection
Summer, 2012
Reviews, Santa Fe
Vivian Maier
Monroe Gallery of Photography
Among eccentric photographers of the 20th century, Vivian Maier stands out for her self-effacing reclusiveness. For much her life she worked as a nanny, and the tens of thousands of images she made remained unknown until a Chicago real-estate agent and amateur historian discovered them in 2007, less than two years before her death. Maier’s black and-white photos mostly depict street life in Chicago and New York, and bear comparison with the works of Helen Levitt, though Maier’s eye was more wide-ranging and her approach occasionally experimental, as when she ventured into pure abstraction in a manner reminiscent of Aaron Siskind. This show of images from the 1950s through the early ’70s offered a generous introduction to her remarkable output.
Like Levitt, Maier had an affection for children, capturing a small boy with one leg thrust forward, holding tight to a man, presumably his father, who adjusts the boy’s shoe. And like Weegee, she sometimes shot the seamier side of urban life, as in a photo of two men dragging another man down the street (Christmas Eve, 1953). But she was equally alert to the glamour of the city, paying homage to beautiful women in elegant hats and opulent furs.
Some of the works here offered startlingly dramatic viewpoints: a man and woman, shot from above, hold hands across a restaurant table; a quartet of older women, pinned in a trapezoid of light, wait against a wall like characters in a Beckett play (1954, New York). Maier’s humorous side surfaced in an untitled image of a ragtag couple, the man standing on his head, in front of a poster for a strip joint. In another, Arbus-like shot, two men—one of them a stooping giant—inspect the goods in a shop window as a pair of curious women gape in amazement.
The show ended with a self-portrait of Maier, smiling wistfully, captured in the reflection of a mirror being unloaded in front of a drab apartment complex—as unassuming in art as she was in life.
By Ann Landi
©ARTnews
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
"A raised arm, black power and Olympic trauma"
John Dominis: 1968 Olympics Black Power salute ©Time Inc
Via The Independant
Tommie Smith's salute is recalled in a new film
The veteran sprinter is reminiscing about just what it feels like to go to the blocks in an Olympic final. He makes it sound like a dead man's walk.
It is certainly traumatic, it is certainly traumatic," the sprinter repeats the phrase. "You know, looking around, walking in a stadium is an experience that only those in the field can feel. You work all these years competing against some of the best people in the world and then you get to the final race. It goes beyond human imagination to the point where you forget where you are and you go back to your childhood, thinking 'how did I get here?' You look around at these world-class athletes and if you're not very careful, you can lose your race before you start by thinking everybody else is better than you are and what are you doing here?"
Whatever the state of his nerves, the sprinter in question ran an immaculate race. He whipped past the finishing line of the 200 metres final at the Mexico Olympics in 1968 in an astonishing time of 19.83 seconds.
Tommie Smith was 24 at the time, younger than Jamaican champion sprinter Usain Bolt is now. "Aged 24, my speed and Usain Bolt's speed were about the same," Smith says today. The assumption was that he would get even faster. However, when he and third-placed fellow African-American athlete John Carlos went to the podium, they raised their fists in a Black Power salute. The gesture caused outrage at the International Olympic Committee, which dubbed it a "violent breach" of the Olympic spirit. Smith and Carlos were vilified, as was the white Australian silver medallist Peter Norman (who supported their gesture.) The story of the friendship between the three men is told in the documentary Salute, shortly to be released in the UK.
"He [Norman] was a man of his word and a man of honesty." Smith pays tribute to the Australian sprinter. "He believed in rights for all men. He was a true friend and he went through some of the same things that Carlos and I did," Smith remembers of how all three men suffered because of their gesture in support of human rights. Norman didn't raise an arm but he wore an "Olympic Project For Human Rights Badge" –itself a defiant act – and he suggested that Carlos should wear Smith's left glove. As a result, he was ostracised by the Australian media and the country's Olympic selectors, who never picked him again.
After Mexico 1968, Smith's own Olympic career was over. If he is bitter about the way he was treated by the Olympic movement, he is not showing it. He relishes the friendships that the Olympics can help foster between athletes all over the world. However, he has no illusions about the machinations that go behind the scenes whenever the Games are staged.
"The politics of it is a different story. Those who contend that there are no politics in the Olympic Games are speaking with false tongues."
Ask him today if he has mixed feelings about that moment in 1968 when his salute effectively ended his athletics career and he replies: "I regret the fact that I had to do that to bring out the truth about a country that didn't honour the rights of its constitution."
No, he says today, he didn't know that making the Black Power salute was going to curtail his athletics career. "But had I known, it wouldn't have made any difference," he insists.
Would he have won more Olympic medals? He ponders the question. "I certainly would have run. I don't know if I would have been the fastest – but whoever was ahead of me would have been in trouble!"
'Salute' is released in cinemas on 13 July and DVD on 30 July
John Dominis's iconic photograph is featured in the current exhibition "People Get Raedy: The Struggle for Human Rights" through September 23, 2012
Remarkable account of cops and prosecutors who set aside their own prejudice to crack extortion ring that preyed on Gay men
This photo first appeared in Life’s 1964 issue about homosexuality. Barney Anthony put up a sign warning homosexuals to stay out of his Hollywood bar. “I don’t like him,” he said. “There’s no excuse. They’ll approach any nice-looking guy. Anybody does any recruiting, I say shoot him. Who cares?” Photo by Bill Eppridge
Via Slate
The rise and incredible fall of a vicious extortion ring that preyed on prominent gay men in the 1960s.
"In the year following the Western Union arrest, the NYPD and the FBI, working in parallel (and sometimes at odds), would uncover and break a massive gay extortion ring whose viciousness and criminal flair was without precedent. Impersonating corrupt vice-squad detectives, members of this ring, known in police parlance as bulls, had used young, often underage men known as chickens to successfully blackmail closeted pillars of the establishment, among them a navy admiral, two generals, a U.S. congressman, a prominent surgeon, an Ivy League professor, a prep school headmaster, and several well-known actors, singers, and television personalities. The ring had operated for almost a decade, had victimized thousands, and had taken in at least $2 million. When he announced in 1966 that the ring had been broken up, Manhattan DA Frank Hogan said the victims had all been shaken down “on the threat that their homosexual proclivities would be exposed unless they paid for silence.”
Though now almost forgotten, the case of “the Chickens and the Bulls” as the NYPD called it (or “Operation Homex,” to the FBI), still stands as the most far-flung, most organized, and most brazen example of homosexual extortion in the nation’s history. And while the Stonewall riot in June 1969 is considered by many to be the pivotal moment in gay civil rights, this case represents an important crux too, marking the first time that the law enforcement establishment actually worked on behalf of victimized gay men, instead of locking them up or shrugging."
Full article here.
Related: People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Is Linking A Crime?
A very compelling read:
Via Gigaom
"With the case, the U.S. government appears to be asserting that linking to copyright infringing files under any circumstances should not only be an offence but an extraditable offence, and that the U.S. government is fully prepared to reach into other countries and extradite their citizens when there is virtually no connection whatsoever between that person’s acts and U.S. law or jurisdiction."
Monday, July 9, 2012
Monroe Gallery of Photography at VIP Photo
You’re Invited to VIP PHOTO!
Start Collecting on July 12. Opens at 8:00am EST.
Start Collecting on July 12. Opens at 8:00am EST.
Monroe Gallery of Photography invites you to discover hundreds of photographs from over thirty international galleries. Be the first to view this innovative event where you can browse, share and collect fine photography, exclusively online.
Click here to register for free: http://photo.vipartfair.com/gallery/invite/815
Registering ensures you receive exclusive offers from VIP, newly available work, and news about upcoming events!
-
VIP PHOTO | www.vipartfair.com
Journey anywhere. Collect online.
July 12 – August 12, 2012
Preview Day July 11
Journey anywhere. Collect online.
July 12 – August 12, 2012
Preview Day July 11
Remembering Miss O’Keeffe: Stories from Abiquiu
Former Caretaker Recalls O’Keeffe
Via the Albuquerque Journal North
In 1977, a 24-year-old woman took a job as caretaker for an elderly artist in one of New Mexico’s remote villages.
The woman was Margaret Wood; the artist was Georgia O’Keeffe, and their pairing would launch an adventure into food and friendship that would last a lifetime.
Wood was living in Lincoln, Neb., when she received a call from an acquaintance about a job opening in Abiquiu. Wood had graduated from Nebraska’s Hastings College with a degree in art education.
O’Keeffe was 90 at the time, and her eyesight was failing. She needed someone to stay with her throughout the night and to prepare simple meals. Wood’s duties included brushing O’Keeffe’s long white hair, using just the right pressure, reading to her and accompanying her on her walks beneath the red cliffs of Ghost Ranch or down her sweeping Abiquiu driveway.
She always called her “Miss O’Keeffe.”
Wood recalls her five years with the great artist in “Remembering Miss O’Keeffe: Stories from Abiquiu” ($19.95, Museum of New Mexico Press). Wood will talk about her time with O’Keeffe and sign books at Collected Works, 202 Galisteo St., No. A, at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
“I knew someone who had been a companion for Georgia O’Keeffe, and she was looking for someone to take her place,” said Wood, now living in Santa Fe and working as a speech therapist. “Her (O’Keeffe’s) eyesight was failing due to macular degeneration.
“I was very excited,” she continued. “I thought perhaps I could do this. I had studied art, and I knew of her paintings. I was a fan. I especially liked the paintings of New Mexico.”
Her friend warned her of O’Keeffe’s exactitude; everything had to be to her specifications. She cautioned Wood to be patient. Wood rented a former schoolhouse in the small village of Barranco. She thought she knew how to cook, but she quickly learned otherwise.
O’Keeffe took great pride in her healthy lifestyle. Whole wheat flour was always ground fresh with the artist’s personal mill. Yogurt was homemade, often from the milk of local goats. Fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables came from the artist’s garden.
“I tried to fit in what she needed,” Wood said. “It took me several months to make friends with her. She was such a private person and an independent person that it was an invasion to have someone assist her in this way.
“It was hard because I had to learn everything from how to make the lunch soup just right to how to brush her hair with just the right pressure. If the plates were not heated, she would say, ‘Oh, my dear, these plates are stone cold.’
“I didn’t expect the level of simplicity yet perfection that she liked in her food and her surroundings.”
Freshly made beds had to be perfectly tucked in. Food had to be attractively arranged on the plate.
Wood worked from 5 p.m. to 8:30 a.m., while the rest of the staff went home.
“She enjoyed listening to music,” Wood said. “She had two beautiful stereo systems — one in her studio and one in her house.”
O’Keeffe was a fan of Bach, Schubert and Monteverdi. She liked Wood to read to her — mostly Prevention, Time and Newsweek magazines, the bold print version of the New York Times and art books.
But no rock and roll.
Despite her carefully cultivated image as a recluse, O’Keeffe regularly welcomed visitors. Wood was thrilled when singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell came calling, resplendent in gold eyeshadow.
“That was a great visit for me,” Wood said. “Georgia O’Keeffe didn’t know much about her. (Mitchell) was a painter. She gave her an album. We listened to it, and Miss O’Keeffe thought the music made her drowsy.”
Allen Ginsberg arrived with his partner Peter Orlovsky. They admired the late afternoon light as they compared the nature of words to action. O’Keeffe declared that talk was easy but it was action that got things going. Ginsberg countered that words often inspired people to action. He and Orlovsky climbed the ladder to the roof to watch the sunset.
O’Keeffe often talked about her late husband, the photographer and impresario Alfred Stieglitz.
“She talked about how people thought he liked the arts page, but he (really) liked the sports page because of the horse races.
“She thought Alfred could look down on her and smile.”
Sometimes, O’Keeffe’s traditional ways clashed with the changing times — especially the women’s movement. Wood felt like she was in a time warp.
“I was being trained in these old ways,” Wood said. “I felt like I was in an old-fashioned place.”
She left to pursue graduate school.
“I knew I needed to get more education in a field I could use for the rest of my life,” Wood explained. “All the positions in the O’Keeffe house were filled.”
She visited O’Keeffe after Juan Hamilton, her companion, had moved her to Santa Fe for 24-hour care. But on her second visit, Hamilton warned her that the artist’s memory was fading.
O’Keeffe did not recognize her. Wood was stunned, then felt waves of grief. She stopped going but still dreamed about the artist.
Today, Wood finds a direct link between her profession and her years spent with the great artist.
“I work for elderly people, and I think it’s because of my work with Miss O’Keeffe,” she said. “I like their stories and their experience of being in this world. Most of them are very comfortable with themselves.”
But mostly, she remembers the food.
“I have an appreciation and a style of cooking simple, nutritious food,” she said.”I still cook the lemon chicken. I still make the herb salad. I make the lemon pecan fruitcake every Christmas.”
If you go WHAT: “Remembering Miss O’Keeffe: Stories from Abiquiu” by Margaret Wood. A conversation and book signing with the author and Miriam Sagan.
WHEN: 6 p.m. Tuesday
WHERE: Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo St., No. A
CONTACT: 988-4226
John Loengard: Georgia O'Keeffe, Abiqui, 1967
Via the Albuquerque Journal North
In 1977, a 24-year-old woman took a job as caretaker for an elderly artist in one of New Mexico’s remote villages.
The woman was Margaret Wood; the artist was Georgia O’Keeffe, and their pairing would launch an adventure into food and friendship that would last a lifetime.
Wood was living in Lincoln, Neb., when she received a call from an acquaintance about a job opening in Abiquiu. Wood had graduated from Nebraska’s Hastings College with a degree in art education.
O’Keeffe was 90 at the time, and her eyesight was failing. She needed someone to stay with her throughout the night and to prepare simple meals. Wood’s duties included brushing O’Keeffe’s long white hair, using just the right pressure, reading to her and accompanying her on her walks beneath the red cliffs of Ghost Ranch or down her sweeping Abiquiu driveway.
She always called her “Miss O’Keeffe.”
Wood recalls her five years with the great artist in “Remembering Miss O’Keeffe: Stories from Abiquiu” ($19.95, Museum of New Mexico Press). Wood will talk about her time with O’Keeffe and sign books at Collected Works, 202 Galisteo St., No. A, at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
“I knew someone who had been a companion for Georgia O’Keeffe, and she was looking for someone to take her place,” said Wood, now living in Santa Fe and working as a speech therapist. “Her (O’Keeffe’s) eyesight was failing due to macular degeneration.
“I was very excited,” she continued. “I thought perhaps I could do this. I had studied art, and I knew of her paintings. I was a fan. I especially liked the paintings of New Mexico.”
Her friend warned her of O’Keeffe’s exactitude; everything had to be to her specifications. She cautioned Wood to be patient. Wood rented a former schoolhouse in the small village of Barranco. She thought she knew how to cook, but she quickly learned otherwise.
O’Keeffe took great pride in her healthy lifestyle. Whole wheat flour was always ground fresh with the artist’s personal mill. Yogurt was homemade, often from the milk of local goats. Fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables came from the artist’s garden.
“I tried to fit in what she needed,” Wood said. “It took me several months to make friends with her. She was such a private person and an independent person that it was an invasion to have someone assist her in this way.
“It was hard because I had to learn everything from how to make the lunch soup just right to how to brush her hair with just the right pressure. If the plates were not heated, she would say, ‘Oh, my dear, these plates are stone cold.’
“I didn’t expect the level of simplicity yet perfection that she liked in her food and her surroundings.”
Freshly made beds had to be perfectly tucked in. Food had to be attractively arranged on the plate.
Wood worked from 5 p.m. to 8:30 a.m., while the rest of the staff went home.
“She enjoyed listening to music,” Wood said. “She had two beautiful stereo systems — one in her studio and one in her house.”
O’Keeffe was a fan of Bach, Schubert and Monteverdi. She liked Wood to read to her — mostly Prevention, Time and Newsweek magazines, the bold print version of the New York Times and art books.
But no rock and roll.
Despite her carefully cultivated image as a recluse, O’Keeffe regularly welcomed visitors. Wood was thrilled when singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell came calling, resplendent in gold eyeshadow.
“That was a great visit for me,” Wood said. “Georgia O’Keeffe didn’t know much about her. (Mitchell) was a painter. She gave her an album. We listened to it, and Miss O’Keeffe thought the music made her drowsy.”
Allen Ginsberg arrived with his partner Peter Orlovsky. They admired the late afternoon light as they compared the nature of words to action. O’Keeffe declared that talk was easy but it was action that got things going. Ginsberg countered that words often inspired people to action. He and Orlovsky climbed the ladder to the roof to watch the sunset.
O’Keeffe often talked about her late husband, the photographer and impresario Alfred Stieglitz.
“She talked about how people thought he liked the arts page, but he (really) liked the sports page because of the horse races.
“She thought Alfred could look down on her and smile.”
Sometimes, O’Keeffe’s traditional ways clashed with the changing times — especially the women’s movement. Wood felt like she was in a time warp.
“I was being trained in these old ways,” Wood said. “I felt like I was in an old-fashioned place.”
She left to pursue graduate school.
“I knew I needed to get more education in a field I could use for the rest of my life,” Wood explained. “All the positions in the O’Keeffe house were filled.”
She visited O’Keeffe after Juan Hamilton, her companion, had moved her to Santa Fe for 24-hour care. But on her second visit, Hamilton warned her that the artist’s memory was fading.
O’Keeffe did not recognize her. Wood was stunned, then felt waves of grief. She stopped going but still dreamed about the artist.
Today, Wood finds a direct link between her profession and her years spent with the great artist.
“I work for elderly people, and I think it’s because of my work with Miss O’Keeffe,” she said. “I like their stories and their experience of being in this world. Most of them are very comfortable with themselves.”
But mostly, she remembers the food.
“I have an appreciation and a style of cooking simple, nutritious food,” she said.”I still cook the lemon chicken. I still make the herb salad. I make the lemon pecan fruitcake every Christmas.”
If you go WHAT: “Remembering Miss O’Keeffe: Stories from Abiquiu” by Margaret Wood. A conversation and book signing with the author and Miriam Sagan.
WHEN: 6 p.m. Tuesday
WHERE: Collected Works Bookstore, 202 Galisteo St., No. A
CONTACT: 988-4226
Saturday, July 7, 2012
AN EVENING WITH GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON
The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market presents:
AN EVENING WITH GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, journalist and New York Times Best-Selling Author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
7 pm Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 West San Francisco Street (admission fee)
Tickets: Lensic Box Office or call the Lensic Box Office at 505-988-1234
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s riveting book, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, follows the true story of Kamila Sidiqui, an extraordinarily determined young female entrepreneur living under the restrictive and punishing rule of the Taliban in Kabul after the civil war. By picking up a needle and thread and establishing a clandestine sewing business, Kamila, other female members of her family and neighbors managed to earn income to feed themselves and survive under impossible conditions for women. From reporting Kamila’s inspirational story, Ms. Lemmon has become a major voice to encourage financial institutions and governments to support female entrepreneurship in order to rebuild society in conflict and post-conflict regions around the world. She is Contributing Editor At Large for Newsweek Magazine and the Daily Beast, and the deputy director of the Council on Foreign Relation’s Women and Foreign Policy program. She will be joined by Market participant and entrepreneur Rangina Hamidi and Gene Grant, host of PBS New Mexico in Focus.
A limited number of $125 tickets provides prime seating for the event at the Lensic, and includes a pre-event party reception with the author at the Coyote Cantina (5:30 – 6:30 pm). Party goers will enjoy cocktails, appetizers, and will also receive a signed copy of the hardcover edition of Lemmon’s inspiring bestseller, The Dressmaker of Khair Khana. (This is a fundraiser to support the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market.)
Other tickets are priced at $35 for preferred seating, $25 general seating, and $15 balcony seating.
Full schedule of 2012 Santa Fe International Fold Art Market here.
Related: The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market is a treasure for its global reach and domestic drawing power, a model for artists and artisans around the world:
Kandahar Treasures, is giving financial freedom to women who do the traditional geometric embroidery unique to the area. Started by Rangina Hamidi, an Afghan whose family fled war to the United States when she was a child, the project now has more than 400 women selling products. Some of the women earn up to $100 a month, which is almost double the average government salary. Homes with mothers and daughters participating have dramatically improved their family’s economic standing, and given women more control over their lives.
The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market is a results-oriented entrepreneurial 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that provides a venue for master traditional artists to display, demonstrate and sell their work. By providing opportunities for folk artists to succeed in the global marketplace, the Market creates economic empowerment and improves the quality of life in communities where folk artists live.
It is now the largest international folk art market in the world, and its success led to Santa Fe’s designation as a UNESCO City of Folk Art, the first U.S. city named to UNESCO’s prestigious Creative Cities Network.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
People Get Ready
A lone man stops a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square, 1989 Beijing, China
People Get Ready
Exercise your freedom and come witness 55 powerful photographs from significant human rights struggles in history. Reception 5-7 pm Friday, July 6.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
JULY 4, 2012
The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is a federal holiday that celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of the Independence on July 4th, 1776.
On July 8, 1776, the first public readings of the Declaration were held in Philadelphia's Independence Square to the ringing of bells and band music. One year later, on July 4, 1777, Philadelphia marked Independence Day by adjourning Congress and celebrating with bonfires, bells and fireworks.
The custom eventually spread to other towns, both large and small, where the day was marked with processions, oratory, picnics, contests, games, military displays and fireworks. Observations throughout the nation became even more common at the end of the War of 1812 with Great Britain.
On June 24, 1826, Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to Roger C. Weightman, declining an invitation to come to Washington, D.C., to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It was the last letter that Jefferson, who was gravely ill, ever wrote. In it, Jefferson says of the document:
"May it be to the world, what I believe it will be ... the signal of arousing men to burst the chains ... and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form, which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. ... For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them."Congress established Independence Day as a holiday in 1870, and in 1938 Congress reaffirmed it as a holiday, but with full pay for federal employees.
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