I’m not sure what the current art world/political feelings are about Banksy, and I don’t really care. I always like his work. It’s funny, creative, and clever—and it usually makes a point. I was in L.A. earlier this week when I saw that some new pieces had popped up in advance of his film premiere. I had the afternoon free, so I grabbed my camera, did a bit of location research, and hit the road.
I was excited to coincidentally be in town to see this. I happened to be in New York in the fall of ’08 when the Village Pet Store, and other large pieces, were on display as well, so I’ve been lucky in the timing department.
So much of Banksy’s stuff gets defaced, stolen, or damaged, that I wanted to snap some shots as soon as I could. There’s something fun about going on a little hunt for street art like this. You have an address and a general description (La Brea and 4th, behind a fence), but that’s all. It’s a bit of a thrill to be walking down a block, looking around every corner, and suddenly spot what you’re looking for. My ever-patient wife—who has become a fan in her own right after seeing the NY stuff a few years ago—came along with me, snapping her own action shots along the way.
The Guard piece on La Brea was on a wall in a nondescript, under construction building surrounded by used car dealerships. It was behind a fence, and there was a security guard walking around the empty space, and sitting in his car. (You know, it would be pretty funny if that was actually Banksy in there in disguise—I always wonder about stuff like that.) Other than that carload of Japanese hipsters that pulled up and snapped some photos with their phones, no one else seemed to pay any attention.
The “Park” piece was on a brick wall behind a parking lot in downtown L.A. (near the theater where the premiere was held, I believe). Again, I knew the general area, but still had a jolt of excitement at spotting it. It’s odd/fun feeling to stand and get excited about something on a wall that thousands of people an hour walk by, most not noticing, almost all not caring.
Forty-eight hours later I’m back on the other side of the country and I see that the La Brea Guard piece is gone (look at the before and after) and surrounded in controversy. I’m glad I was in the right place at the right time, because it was a fun way to spend an afternoon.
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Everyone’s making lists. It’s the end of the year; it’s the end of the decade; it’s time for a good list. I used to love making year-end album lists. I’d spend time pouring through my iTunes library, finding all the albums that I loved from that year. The obvious, the less obvious. I’d keep a running list of candidates during the year. And ten? How could I narrow it down to just ten albums. There would need to be a bunch of runners up. Ones that just barely missed the cut.
No more.
Somewhere along the way I stopped wanting to force everything into this form. Sure, a list of my Top 10 albums of 2006 may be a good historical checkpoint for what I was listening to at the time, but not for much else. Do I even listen to half of them anymore? Lately I’ve been more drawn to fewer works that I really love. Ones that five or ten years from now I’ll still be excited to hear. I’d rather look back at 2009 and remember a handful of music that stuck with me, than see a list of albums that I haven’t listened to in ages.¹
This all became crystalized for me when I starting thinking about it in the same way that I’ve been thinking about photography lately. I take a lot of photos over the course of a year. Not nearly as many as some, but more than the average. Whenever I’m taking photos—whether it’s a concert, or a trip, or a walk through the woods—I may take hundreds at a time. I spend a lot of time reviewing them, and editing them, and thinking about them. And you know what? If I take a few hundred photos wandering around the streets of New York and I’m left with one that I’m really happy with, I’m good with that. Shit, if I really like the photo I’m thrilled.
I store all of my photos sorted by month, with individual project folders for each event during that month. When I’m in the middle of July and running around and filling up project after project with images it’s hard to have perspective on anything outside of what’s in front of me. But when I go back in December and flip though those same photos, I don’t care about the fifty photos of the bird on the beach. Hopefully there’s one or two that stand out. I’ll walk away with those.
I always hope that (almost) any photo I post online evokes some sort of response. Not necessarily words or feelings, but something. I want it to grab me first in some way, and if it does for someone else, great. If not, it probably means something to me anyways. If I can look back at the end of the year and see a few things that say something, that carries me. That lasts.
That’s where I’m at with music these days. I listen to a lot of music. It’s all around me all the time, and a lot of it’s very good. But at the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of the decade, if I’m left with a handful of music that really means something to me—that really grabs me—that’s what I’m going to take away.
It’s easy to take a lot of photos and it’s easy to listen to a lot of good music, but it’s hard to find something that really grabs you. But I keep listening, and I keep shooting.
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¹ All of this is no knock on anyone else. I read, and get a lot of enjoyment out of, a lot of other people’s wrap-ups. It’s more a reflection on a shift that I’m personally going through than anything else.
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Last summer Lance Armstrong and Nike presented the STAGES art exhibition in Paris. The exhibition brought together over twenty world-renowned artists who donated pieces inspired by Lance, and his LIVESTRONG fight against cancer.
Last week the STAGES show opened a three-week stay at the Deitch Projects gallery in New York. I had a chance to attend the opening and take a closer look at some of the pieces. In addition to the works of KAWS, Ed Ruscha, Shepard Fairey and more, New York street-art legend Futura also had a piece that joined the exhibition in New York.
The scene was an interesting mix of art and sport, with everyone from local New York art scenesters to kids on skateboards to Nike executives in attendance. Many of the artists were on hand to discuss their work as well. It was hard to miss when Lance himself showed up about halfway through the event. While soft-spoken and understated, he was still the man everyone wanted to say hello to, or catch a glimpse of. There was a buzz in the room as he made his way through chatting with friends, having photos taken, and generally seeming to enjoy himself.
I spent a lot of time walking around looking at all the various pieces. There was a nice mix of paintings, photos, and sculptures. One piece that I kept coming back to was Tom Sachs’ object-art piece “Lance’s Tequila Bike For Girls.” It was a mixture of creativity, humor, and ingenuity that I loved. The bike was prominently displayed in the middle of the floor, so that you could walk around it on all sides and enjoy every little detail. Every time I walked by I seemed to notice something else.
At one point later in the evening a crowd gathering around the tequila bike. Tom Sachs and Lance had decided to put it through its paces. Everything that was needed for a good old-fashioned round of shooters—from the limes, to the knife, to the salt shaker and shot glasses—was contained within the bike. Suddenly Sachs was slicing limes and Lance was filling shot glasses with the motorized tequila pump. Everyone cheered as they threw down the shots. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more practical piece of modern art for the tequila connoisseur.
As much fun as it was taking in the scene and getting to see some amazing works of art, the cause that brought everyone there was never far from my mind. Throughout the night, the whole room seemed to be bathed in various shades of yellow, which has become so synonymous with the LIVESTRONG cause. It’s a testament to Lance, Nike, and the work of his foundation that the art world and the sport world can combine for something as unique as STAGES.
STAGES will be open to the public in New York: October 31 through November 21, 2009. The show will move to Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach in early December.
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I was taking a train from New York to back to Boston recently, and—as I usually do when I am coming home from a trip—I started flicking through the photos that I had taken on my iPhone. I’ve never stopped to give it a lot of thought, but this had become common procedure for me. Suddenly I realized that with all of the SLRs and Point & Shoots and Flips that I tend to carry around, the images on my iPhone actually tell the truest story of what I’ve been doing. Thumbing through my iPhone cameraroll is an accurate re-telling of what’s been happening in my life on a day-to-day basis.
I’ve always liked the camera in the iPhone, and have been relatively happy with the results that you can get from it, but I hadn’t stopped to think much about the role it was playing. I enjoy taking photos, and I have a lot of fun doing so. Still, with an SLR, and even a Point & Shoot, I spend more time thinking about the shot—how it’s framed, are the settings correct, etc. With the iPhone camera you take the shot. Maybe it comes out, maybe it doesn’t. There’s a charm to that.
It also leads to a lot of shots that you may not stop to take with another camera: a sign at the airport, the cup of coffee you just ordered, a funny bumper sticker. I used to keep boxes of old ticket stubs from concerts and movies, but now I take a photo of the movie poster as I’m walking into the theater, or the marquee outside of a show. It makes a nice timeline. I also takes tons of photos of food. I probably have a photo of every meal I’ve eaten in a decent restaurant in the past year (much to my wife’s delight).
And it’s not just photos, it’s screenshots too. A funny text or Twitter. Something cool I see online. A map of a trip. It all gets dumped into the photoroll without much thought, but afterwards they become pieces of a puzzle that are easy to put back together.
You don’t have to read a lot about photography to see the oft-repeated phrase “The best camera is the one that’s with you.” While this has always been true, when I stop to think about it with regards to the iPhone, it’s incredible. In the roughly two years that I’ve had this phone, I don’t think it’s ever been more than 30 seconds away from me. Seriously. It’s usually in my pocket. Sometimes it may be upstairs when I’m downstairs, but that’s about it. I don’t go out of the house without it. I don’t leave it home when I go somewhere. It’s literally with me everywhere, and as result, I have photos of things that I may have never captured with a regular camera.
I’ve never kept a journal. I have a website/blog/Tumblr dealy. I have a Flickr photostream. I have this column. These are all outlets for sharing specific information that I choose. I put at least a small amount of thought into everything I post on these sites. I take a certain amount of pride in it all.
And yet I can sit, as I often do, and look at all the photos on my phone and feel like I’m watching the story of my own life. As mundane as it sometimes is, I never get tired of it.
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