Conductors of the Moving World

In the autumn of 1972, a delegation of Japanese police officials visited the United States to study traffic control in several large cities, including New York, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. The unofficial photographer for the delegation was Eizo Ota, an inspector with the law enforcement department of the Yamanashi Prefecture, and he produced a record of the group’s travels that might best be described as forensic tourism.

Using Inspector Ota’s snapshots as launching points, Brad Zellar plundered traffic manuals, haiku anthologies, the Watergate transcripts, and The Godfather for textual inspiration. The mysterious result is a Zen travelogue through 1972 America.

From a collection of 60 C-Prints, a mix-and-match assortment of 17 will be hand-tipped into individual volumes, making each book a singular work of art.

The Last Days of W

“During these last days of the administration, what is the point of protest, satire or any other sort of rabble-rousing? In assembling this collection of pictures I’ve made over the last eight years, I’m not really trying to accomplish much at all. But as president Bush once said, “One of the great things about books is, sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.” – Alec Soth

Man with Buoy And Other Tales

If Lydia Davis and Stephen Shore had a baby, it might grow up to look like our 2nd’ LBM storybook: Man with Bouy. In twelve stories mixing text, photographs and color patches, Seth Lower carves a path between cryptography and banality. “How does the storyteller say he’s tired,” his last story ends. “Yarn.”

Bedknobs & Broomsticks

In the spirit of the classic Little Golden Books for children, Alec Soth’s publishing venture, Little Brown Mushroom, is releasing a series of photographic storybooks for grown-ups. The first book, ‘Bedknobs & Broomsticks,’ is by the Australian photographer Trent Parke. With his fierce and inimitable photographic style, Parke takes the reader along on a magic bed of free association from Down Under. Treguna, Makoidees, Trecorum, Sadis Dee!

Ahh, beauty.

Hey Les. Long time, no etc.

I surfaced in Rome at the end of September (don’t ask). I needed to reconnect with la vita bella. I owed myself an immersion after a long, long period of self-denial (again, don’t ask). Not to say I was after any swooning, Stendhal Syndrome effects; I just felt sorely deprived of beauty. And where better to rejuvenate—beauty inhabits the language, the food, the people, the everyday life of Italy. We know, we’ve been there.

My place was near the Galvani/Zabaglia bus stop, and I was ambling one evening around piazza Orazio Giustiniani. There was all kinds of hubbub, more than the standard Roman white noise. Something about a festival. Another art-photo-extravanganza. Wandering into the midst of it, there in front of me was our friend Alec. His work, I mean. Some darn fascinating pictures in that exhibition; seems he got a commission to photograph the city of Rome. But had his own Stendhal moment and bailed. “Too beautiful,” he said. Can’t say I blame the poor blighter, landlocked Minnesotan that he is. Regardless, he found some things to suggest the beauty he couldn’t address head on, and it’s all gorgeously fascinating and attractive in a Ten Commandments, “thou shalt not” kind of way.

I wasn’t swooning, but I was mesmerized. There’s some sexy stuff in Alec’s show, some almost startlingly so (a nod to the late great Larry Sultan, who we know Alec admired). Some more subtle, though your average 10-year-old ragazzo would probably get the figs and kumquats picture. Some pretty sloppy beauties, though still gorgeous, like the “pale” men, one who seems on a 3-day-bender and the other zonked out in a smoke-filled car. Or that awesome Gabriella, hair like snakes on Medusa’s fearsome head. Snakes (including one impossibly knotted one that ends up looking like a heart), smoke (issuing from a woman’s mouth like a tongue), temptation—ahh, the lustful beauty of it all.

I left full of questions. Is la bellezza truly in the eye of the beholder? Or is there universal beauty? Maybe it’s all in the translation from life to photograph. Good makeup artists and stylists can do wonders, can’t they Les? Bail out a photographer who’s lost his bearings? Worth thinking about.

And for the life of me, I can’t figure out all the pineapples.

 

 

 

 

Ciao bello.

Totally unrelated.

Les, I would love to know what algorithm Google Image Ripper uses to connect my presence on the LBM Team with theater production stills. Will associative wonders never cease?

Yrs,

 

 

p.s. Happy Bonfire Night!

 

Macho pulp.

Hey, Les.

Picked up a rich piece of LBM fiction. Here’s a gem from it:

“Bob,” she said, “I love you so and want you with me, but you are lying to me, and you are lying to yourself. I can hear it in your voice, and if you don’t get it settled in a way that satisfies you, it will suck the pleasure out of the peace you’ve earned. I know you. You are samurai, dog soldier, marine fool, crazy bastard, marshal of Dodge, commando, the country-western Hector. You are all of those things. They are your nature. The girls and I are just where you park when you’re not warring. You love us, yes you do, but war is your life, it’s your destiny, it’s your identity. My advice, old man, is win your war. Then come home. Or maybe you’ll get killed. That would be a shame and a tragedy, and the girls and I will weep for years. But that is the way of the warrior and we have the curse upon us of loving the last of them.”

A guy could Google it. If you need to find the source of this pot-boiling he-man fantasy self-justification. Check out the author photo.

Yrs,

Winner takes all.

Hey, Les.

Glad you liked my package. Damn that rain; it was clear when I dropped it off at 3 a.m.

Liked Alec’s entry on America, the get-rich/skinny/smart/laid-quick-with-no-effort nation. Left a comment for the masses there on the NYT. Hooray for democracy!

Yrs,