YOU'RE THE STAR OF MY MOVIE

“To be different without being confusing, to be radical without promoting a scorched-earth policy, to be intellectual while remaining emotional and to be emotional without succumbing to sentimentality, to find a new form that is immediately negotiable—these would be the aims I’d shoot for, in our drear day.” – Jeffrey Eugenides to Jim Lewis, in [...]

I can imagine Wassily Kandinsky really appreciating the water splotches in this view of Lower Manhattan. The shapes seems too random for a computer to put them together. Is there a Google Map technician making artistic decisions about the way Google Maps look? I hope so, it seems like an excellent job. I would love [...]

“Try for a record of emotion rather than a piece of topography. Wait till the building makes you feel intensely, in some special part of it or other; then try and analyze what gives you that feeling, see if it is due to the isolation of some particular aspect or effect, and then see what [...]

SUPER MOON!: The moon at the closest point in its orbit of earth. This, from NASA’s site: “The best time to look is when the Moon is near the horizon.  For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, low-hanging Moons look unnaturally large when they beam through trees, buildings and other foreground objects.” No [...]

I wonder what the family photo that astronaut Charlie Duke left on the surface of the moon during Apollo 16 in April 1972 looks like now? It was left in low gravity, no wind, left in plastic… Is it sun bleached white paper? Or is it perfectly preserved? This is a before and after series [...]

These Photo Editors are on the list of medal finalists for the Society of Publication Designer’s 47th Annual Awards. I was going to write “start sending your promo cards now.” … but I’ll make this a note to self: “make a promo card AND send it to these fine folks.” (The number following the name [...]

The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by building an “objective correlative”; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, such that when the external facts, which must terminate in a sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. –T.S. Elliot in “Hamlet and [...]

I recently paged through Rizzoli’s “Man Ray / Bazaar Years”. I love photographers that manage to split editorial and fine art careers (Edward Steichen is a current obsession). Dear Career Gods, Sign me up for that split. Love, John I missed MOMA’s “The Original Copy Show” but an Art Blart post contains a large selection [...]

Here is the amazing part: “You’re a very good photographer.” That, Dear Reader, is very nice to hear. Especially when it comes from Dionne Thornton, Jed Root’s Director of Exhibitions and Publications and she says it to me (yes, I just high fived myself). Like everyone else at the third floor bar of The Norwood [...]

Need career advice? I do. (I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs doesn’t read this blog which means everyone else should answer accordingly.) I took advantage of my proximity to the Brooklyn Public Library, checked out some books, and dove right into Charles Churchward’s “Herb Ritts: The Golden Hour” to see what I could learn from Herb. [...]