Weekend Video

I was listening to an interview on NPR with Greg Mottola, the director of "Superbad", when they played the scene where Fogell gets his fake i.d. - one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite summer movies. Listening to it on the radio with just the sound, I was knocked out by how good the dialog was and how one sharp line follows another. So try listening to it first without watching.



I generally have pretty highbrow/artsy taste in movies, but if you haven't seen the film I can't recommend it highly enough. It may be a teen "gross-out" comedy, but it's a near perfect movie with a great narrative, a great script, and wonderful performances from a cast who if not famous at the time have nearly all gone on stardom.

What You See is Not Always What You Get...

Over the last few years, New York Magazine has established itself as one of the leading exponents of great photography. Mixing photo-journalism, pick-up, and the creative commissioning of fine art photographers, the magazine can regularly be counted on to deliver eye-catching images. Under Director of Photography Jody Quon (a longtime deputy to the New York Times Magazine's Kathy Ryan) and Editor Adam Moss the art of matching subject and photographer is both astute and surprising.



A great example is last week's memorable picture of gender-bending model Andrej Pejic by the renowned French photographer Valerie Belin. Belin does not usually do editorial work so the choice was as inspired as the result. On the surface, it's a photographic Gainsborough portrait. A beautiful person beautifully rendered in a distinctive style, but when you understand that the subject is in fact a man, you can't help but be drawn back to study the picture in greater detail to see what clues, if any, you missed. It's "The Crying Game" in a single frame. A picture worth at least the thousand words that you can read here.

Weekend Video - Senna

By now, those of you who are sick of the monkey picture will realize I'm on something of a summer hiatus. Officially I'm back after Labor Day.



But one last post and recommendation for the summer.



"Senna" is a documentary about about the Brazilian motor-racing champion, Ayrton Senna that is being released in the States tomorrow. It explores his arrival in Formula One in the mid 1980s, and follows his struggles both on track against his rival, French World Champion Alain Prost, and off it, against the internal politics of the sport. Directed by Asif Kapadia, it was a huge success in England and won the World Cinema Audience Award for documentaries at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.



The film is a gripping story on many levels. There is the charisma of its subject, matters of spirituality, and glimpses into Brazilian culture. Beacause I knew so little about Senna and motor racing, the story kept me on the edge of my seat while the insight in to Formula One racing was a fascinating glimpse into another world.



Just see it.



Ciao for now.

Monkey Business

If MoMA was really looking to break ground in their upcoming "New Photography" series, they couldn't do much better than this amazing self-portrait taken by an un-named Indonesian macaque. I'm pretty sure he hasn't exhibited before.

David J. Slater, a British wildlife photographer, was shooting in one of Indonesia's national parks when the black-crested macaque snatched his camera equipment and became enthralled with the reflection in the camera lens. Slater shoots wildlife with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II so his DSLR lens was large enough for a clear reflection.

The macaque shot a couple hundred pictures before Slater was able to recover the equipment. And while many of the shots were out of focus, the majority of the pictures showed the monkeys showing off their teeth as it’s likely the first time they had seen their reflections. Slater said that the group of monkeys was initially frightened by the clicking sounds of the camera, but they all eventually returned to check out the gear.

The image above is actually a cropped version of the full frame below, but I like the directness of this version, the tension between the caricature of a smile and the sadness of the eyes, and the blunt geometry of the composition. Inadvertent or not, I'd still rank it as one of the most powerful and moving photographic self-portraits I've seen.

Totally Gratuitous Weekend Video

While we're in the Hamptons doing the Art Hamptons art fair (this Thursday through Sunday), a little video showing that our Kate has lost neither her good looks or her sense of humor!

And if any one would like to visit the art fair (it's in Bridgehampton) here's a link to get you a free pass for two: click here.

July 4th.

We all take firework pictures but not many as successful as those by Pierre LeHors, a young American (in spite of the name) photographer I was introduced to by David Strettel of Dashwood Books.

I was looking for some unusual pictures for a client's summer house and Strettel pointed out LeHors' book "Firework Studies".

As LeHors says in his artist's statement, "By constraining nearly all tonal values to stark blacks and pure whites, the trails, explosions and clouds of debris are reduced to a series of simple repeated formal elements: arced lines, spherical bursts, and randomly dispersed particles. i made no effort to limit digital artifacts resulting from pushing the image files past their conventional range; the resulting noise becomes hard to distinguish from the texture of the fireworks themselves."

We ended up selecting a group of 8 to hang in a grid, but rather than print them photographically LeHors chose to make silkscreens of each image thereby pushing the tonal values and painterly qualities even further. Anyway, it worked out really well and if you're interested, the book can be purchased at Dashwood. Just click here.

And happy 4th!

Dog Days

Growing up, one of the sweetest dogs I knew was a Pit Bull named Oliver. So I was pleased to find via Yahoo a photographic reminder that the Pit Bull was not always the feared dog it is these days. Apparently in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the Pit Bull was even known as "The Nanny Dog" because of its steadfastness and reliability.

This is a case where photographic evidence presents the most convincing proof. And the further you dig, the more supporting data you find. So here just a few images in defense of the breed.