Dan McPharlin

Just look at this shit. It's amazing.

© Dan McPharlin

And now, check this out:
The Damned - Life Goes On (1982)
The Killing Joke - Eighties (1984)
Nirvana - Come As You Are (1992)

For a friend

A friend wanted more dubstep in her life. I give her this:

Erin Mulvehill

© Erin Mulvehill

He visto antes; en mis sueños.

Mi compañera Erin es un buen fotografo.

I am in Spanish class. I have been drinking.

Sometimes

Work drags on and seconds pass like hours, songs come at random, and for a few minutes, the world collapses like raindrops dripping from an oiled windowpane. I like these moments.

Jason Eskenazi

Whilst browsing what I consider to be the best blog for photojournalism, Lens @ the New York Times, I came across Jason Eskenazi. And, as can be expected, he blew me away.

The above shot is from his project Vanishing Points, a series of reaction shots from New Yorkers around New York City on September 11, 2001. This amazing series of images can be viewed here. Armed with what appears to be a single wide-angle lens, a Leica, and rolls of film, Eskenazi went out and made a series of images that showed veteran calmness and virgin emotion. All of the images express a sense of disbelief, wonder, and confusion. The faces of the people on the streets capture unbridled responses, reactions to the most horrific scene New Yorkers of this generation had been privy to. In each of the frame, I see a piece of New York's infinite and underlying spirit; it floods the memories of the days shortly thereafter of the similar feelings we all had. I, no more than a boy, remember moments of utter confusion and amazement coupled with too much information and not enough answers. Too young perhaps to fully comprehend the event at the time (I was 13, after all), these images allow me to re-investigate a situation that through flashes and winces, I remember vividly as a ball of confusion and a blur of disaster and fear.

Furthermore, he put together a pretty interesting mulitmedia piece with some interesting interviews for Time Magazine, which can be viewed here.

Lastly, this is the image that brought me unto his work. There is so much to say about this image, that I'll opt to say nothing. Just look at it. It's pretty damn good.

What make me happiest to come across Eskenazi's work is that this is all he's done. He's 49, and though I'm not positive, seems to have happened into photojournalism as he grew older. Last night, I was talking with my mom about how I don't want to finish college, though I will. I explained that there isn't a major for what I want to do, which is to be basically a vagabond for a few years and put together books. I plan to move to South America, bum around and just live my life, writing and shooting photographs as I see fit. Working from job to job shouldn't bother anyone, especially if they're not in the fields one plans to pursue actual recognition in. For me, it's so much that the journey is the destination, and I don't have any problem with being 50 before anyone starts to give a shit about my work, if ever. I feel you should be out there doing work for yourself, and no one else. Working here at Magnum, I see so much work of people that just kept shooting, shooting, shooting and then one day reviewed all of their work and was like, "Oh yeah, hey, I could probably make a book out of this stuff." Sebastiao Selgado, Danny Lyon, Chris Steele Perkins, Bob Adelman, Erich Hartmann; they all seem to have done this, and I admire them each equally. The point is to be out there shooting, and maybe one day, after years of doing something else, you'll turn out a book that people kind of like.

And, the Kings of Convenience - Mrs Cold, for you.

Dash Snow

Today, or probably last night, the world of modern art loses another to the Forever 27 Club, Mr. Dash Snow. A well-connected, well-to-do delinquent, probably with daddy issues and a fear of popularity, Snow was a bit of a downtown NYC legend of art. That is to say that people admired his tragedy, like Kurt Cobain.

© Dash Snow

All the things that always aggravated me about Terry Richardson, apply to Snow. Lack of talent or expertise was passed off as intent and the world of art suffered as another bullshit artist peddled their bullshit wares. I maintain that without a wealthy art-collector aunt, Snow would have remained out of the art circuit and thus off of this page. Akin to how Richardson really worked his father's connections and kept doing his own thing until it was attributed to be his "style" or how Andy Warhol was really a talentless hack thrust into limelight out of sheer adoration of his awkwardness; Snow was your atypical hipster hero, and the injustice of it all continued to inspire his rebellion.

However, while I don't necessarily maintain he was "an artist," he was however a creative, and equally tragic, individual. His work has shown in Vice magazine (which isn't really saying anything other than that the guy could party, given his published work), and he had a budding following, including reviews from Juxtapoz to the New York Times, and his death has garnered support for his work. A collection of his polaroids create a portrait of the man's life, and he appears to have stoked his fire and burned his fuel out long before we could really be presented his true body of work. And, like Arizona State to Obama, I am going to withhold any praise due to his current body of work.

I must admit, though, that he captured interesting moments in an interesting life at an interesting threshold of events. His journalistic intentions of capturing his life appear both pretentious and self-glorifying, and of the type that I generally despise due to the sheer onslaught and overabundance of said type of art, but I admire the situations he put himself in though I would prefer to have stumbled upon a shoebox full of these images ten years from now in someone's forgotten closet than on the Art Beat on the New York Times' website. When I first became aware of his artwork, it was via Vice Magazine's Photo Book. Amongst that context, his work fits in, but does not stand out, except perhaps for the humor. The above image is one of my favorites, for reasons I do not believe were intended (such as the cutoffs because the Polaroid camera he was probably using was most definitely not equipped with a viewfinder, so the composition was definitely just a happy accident). This worship of false idols angers, excites, and forces me to create and to justify not only my opinion, but my own body of work and set of skills. In this, I consider Dash Snow to be a powerful inspiration.

Pretty girls, Light leak, whiteouts, and Autotune

Don't impress me much.

© Hector Pozuelo

Para tí, el mundo.

A mix of lates and greats. Enjoy.

Dina Goldstein

This shit is awesome. Check out her portfolio.

Her series of images titled Fallen Princesses is so good. It is the exact type of humor and thinking I enjoy. I find all of the images to be pleasing, but this one of Jasmine is my favorite because it is really fucking funny.

And, to boot, she has one of the easiest-to-navigate and visually pleasing websites of any photographer out there. Do yourself a favor and spend a little bit of time on her site.

Magnum

It's 9:45 am. I got up at roughly 7:15, didn't eat breakfast, got on a train and paid twice the fare because it was "peak-hours" and then the damn thing broke down, delaying me thirtyfive or so minutes. Now, I'm at Magnum, starting my internship.

I have a final exam in my Spanish class later today.

Today may suck.

In other news, last night I re-stumbled upon The Family of Man, and I must say, it's a pretty sweet book.

As my brother prepares for his trek out to Burning Man, I find it almost necessary, given recent events, to display a Cristina Garcia Rodero photo from said event. David Sutherland would really approve of this image- the frame is filled, the moment was waited for, and my god did she control the background. Oh and there's some sick nasty layering, booyakasha.