Electric Revival

Hello my darlings. It's been so long. How are you? How are things? How's your mother doing with the... unpleasantness? Oh! How grand! I've been doing so much since my last half-assed post in June that I've barely had time to sit and write pithy commentary about my own work, thank you very much, and I regret that I've left you in the dark regarding wherefores and whatnots and the particulars of the general thing.

I intend to get back into the swing of things by forcing myself to make a comment on a picture -- taken since June -- from my vast, incredible archives and I would be ever so pleased if the readership, whomever or whatever you are, would submit your personal favorites. An end-of-half-a-year review of sorts. I shall begin with the following,


Japanther, Whitney Museum, 7/11/09

I remember when Japanther didn't exist anywhere except on the page -- this is a well crafted legend at this point so there is no need to go into it here. There are old, shamefully bad pictures of them from my archives when they were playing to no one and still giving their all -- isn't that how it always is? Riley's hair was shorter then and he looked less jacked, Ian had fewer tattoos and wasn't married to his kit (in fact, I don't think there was a drum kit at all). The Marshall behind Ian had no graf on the face, though the name "Marshall" still read "Ma-." There was no telephone microphone.

This is from the Whitney Museum (obviously). I was down at Solar-1 at another series of shows and I was getting bored because a white man was rapping and I was actively looking for something else to do. Earlier in the week, Anita had suggested we all go uptown for the Japanther show. Y'know... for old times' sake. Besides, I mean, come on, how many times do you get to see Mega BMX-guy Darryl Nau doing quarter pipe tricks at the Whitney*? I hopped in a cab and went.

Going to this show was seriously a no-brainer -- regrettably I've passed on a surprising amount of no-brainers this year -- I have no idea why. Dissatisfaction with my work? More amusing things? Granted, a lot of those "more amusing things" have been amusing but it hammers home the fact that I can only do so much at a time. I'm not Satan.

*More on this: Japanther has played the Whitney before so if you are asked how often you get to see them play the Whitney, the answer is "occasionally," whereas the answer to the question, "How often do you get to see Mega BMX-guy Darryl Nau do quarter pipe tricks at the Whitney," is probably a shrug, or some kind of emoticon, depending on your questioners' format.

I Ask for so Little. Just Let Me Rule You.

So Tod Seelie (All-Universe show photographer, citizen-of-the-world, man-about-town) and I happened to be at the same show, which I'm pretty sure is a first. It's always fun for me to see how other people judge/synthesize a shared experience. His results start here. Mine are here. Leia Jospe was also there, if we want to turn this into a discussion of how to fit three photographers into a three foot space, but as of today all her pictures are buried on Facebook.

An Observation

When considering Jason Giambi's Nice Guy 'Stache, the Yankees sucking, Madonna getting involved with ballplayers, a black man running for President of the realm and the NKOTB reunion, one must arrive at the conclusion that the 80's are back! With a vengeance!

Own A Piece Of History

In the continuing spirit of plugging my friends' shit in this blog in the name of goodwill and glomming on to people and personalities who are far more socially advanced than mine, I offer the following news you can use.



This is Ted. This picture of Ted is as old as the ones of Bill and Nick and Dana, so please see the comments on those pictures for timeline information. Also, I don't think this particular picture is very good, though it gets both of us in the time we were in.


THE BIG NEWS:

Ted has been featured in Print Magazine this month, the one with this cover,



As one of their 20 Under 30 profile. I personally think 30 Under 30 has a better ring to it, but that's not the point. Can't be diluting the talent pool, can we? The point is that you, while celebrating the careers of a gaggle of young upstarts, can own an image made by me, Richard Gin. Please see the screen capture, below.



That image is, of course, THIS image,



Only cropped to hell, desaturated and therefore inferior to all the other profile pictures which capture artistic rapscallions at their most gloomy/moody/contrasty/artistic. As you can see, Ted was having two (2) milkshakes before they were popular. Ted chose my picture of him because his mom liked it. I think she said it was one where he didn't look too weird. I am paraphrasing.

Also in this issue and also in this article on dashing young men and demure young ladies are profiles of Phil Lubliner, stand up dude and commissioner of my fantasy baseball team, and Gary Fogelson, man about town and stand up dude. I will not post pictures of them because I have none, nor was I involved in their profiles. Gary and Phil are active dudes, and have various and sundry satellite projects and sub-domains that are worth checking out and are awesome.

The magazine itself is available now at your local magazine deployment concern and you should make it the bestest selling issue of Print Magazine, like, ever.

Throwback Image Sunday

Bill has been my #1 photographic fallback since college -- good for tips and tricks and moral support -- and we still keep in touch even after he moved to New Mexico and got married. Early on, I stole most of his lighting setups through casual observation and passive aggressive interviewing of the "Oh... hey, I didn't know you were working. Gee, I like your key. Why is it there?" variety. His sense of humor might be dryer than mine, though it's subject to debate amongst no one in particular. He is consistently employed and making a well-deserved living either because of, or in spite of, his choice to move to a shifty market.

He lives on the internets here: billstengel.com

And on Flickr here: xthebillx

Throwback Image Saturday

This portrait of Nick is from waaaaaaaay back in 2002 when I was still in school and had a grand old time stealing the keys to the photo kids' studios and busting out the strobes. That said, this was all tungsten lighting with an 80A corrective filter held over my old Yashica TLR (RIP). I was doing my own yearbook of portraits which I digitally printed (on a state-of-the-art epson somethingorother...) and bound for presentation.

Nick was a stand-up guy, a fair critic and genuinely enthusiastic. He was one of the first people I showed my thesis film to -- about 20 minutes after completion, in fact -- so whatever criticism he was to give would have done no good (when I say I had 'completed' it I mean that I got the edit done and didn't want to work on it anymore). He said he enjoyed it very much and saw the (obvious) undertones right away and gave a knowing wink. Nick vanished shortly after my graduation -- I suppose he dropped out. I did have some connections and friends still going for a few years after I left, but I haven't seen him since.