v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

James Hamilton Documentary!

A documentary on Village Voice's photographer James Hamilton-a real influence.

A Sense of Rebellion

 

A highly recommended podcast of a think tank that existed in the 1060's and 70's and the characters that populated it. A must hear.

Interview with Albarrán Cabrera

 

From Global Voices, an interview with this duo photographers who fashion unique images via photography:

Omid Memarian: Notions of memory and identity figure prominently in your photography. What's your personal connection with these themes and how are they reflected in your work?

Anna: Everything we are is memory. When dealing with anything related to science, you draw on what scientists have already discovered to understand the world. Regarding identity, you are who you are because of your memories. You are your first anniversary, you are your mother’s memories, you are the memories of your school days. You are all this. Even the way we conceptualize time to understand reality is based on memory. This is more evident in people who suffer from memory loss. For them, time does not exist.

We hope that our photographs trigger subconscious associations in viewers based on their memories. We even prefer that the viewer interpret the photograph in a way totally different from what we had originally imagined. Thus, they will create a new set of ideas for themselves.

Memory is the thread that weaves all of our series. “The Mouth of Krishna” is the core series. It is the result of all our learnings so far. It is related to how our memories keep our reality consistent, how we categorize what we perceive and how we interlink it.

From time to time, we realize that some concepts gain more importance and then this generates a new portfolio. Thus, “This is you here” studies the concept of identity and how it is created based on our memories.

“Kairos” revolves around the idea of how humans perceive time. Time is not something tangible, it’s just a property of the universe. We create the concept of time with the help of our memories, and we divide it into past, present and future.

OM: You have spent a lot of time in Japan. How does this particular geography connect to your worldview of art and culture?

Angel: Japanese culture is very important for us and our work. This culture, as many others, is subject to many stereotypes and enormous misconceptions. At the beginning, you can fall into the trap of its aesthetics and philosophy. But once you study the language, its people and history, you discover the reality about this country: the good, bad and horrible things that any country has. And yet, there is still something fascinating: Japan offers us a completely different interpretation of reality compared to our Western conception. We all live in the same world, but it is interpreted from many, and totally diverse, points of view.

The Western world is obsessed with symmetry and perfection. We understand beauty shaped by universal laws, granting great importance to the perfect and the eternal. Japanese aesthetics are, however, very different. They see beauty in the impermanent, the imperfect, the rustic and the melancholy. They long for what is not eternal, slightly broken, modest and fragile.

OM: The aesthetic aspect of your work is very bold. In a world in which classical depictions of beauty have been pushed aside, how is your work being received in the art world?

Anna: Beauty is a very complex topic. It is not only difficult to define what beauty is, but also to deal with it. Prettiness worries serious people a lot. They are afraid that beauty will make you forget what life is really like. But as the philosopher Alain de Botton stated: “We need pretty things close to us not because we are in danger of forgetting the bad stuff, but because terrible problems weigh so heavily on us, that we’re in danger of slipping into despair and depression…The art a country or a person calls ‘beautiful’ gives you vital clues as to what is missing.”

We do not consciously look for beauty in our work. We search through the mystery of the unknown to experiment with the beauty of discovering.

OM: You have done nature photography in both Europe and Japan. What differences do you see in these two series of works?

Angel: As Westerners, we are surprised and amazed by the aesthetic and philosophical interpretation that the East has developed about the world. It seems very different from ours and yet, both Western and Eastern schools of thought have a simultaneous origin. Reviewing the pre-Socratic Greek thinkers of the Miletus school, we can find in their line of thought a common motivation with the Oriental culture: nature.

Oriental thought, and even more specifically, Japanese thought has not lost this ancestral contact with nature, maintaining it throughout the evolution of its culture. The ideals and concepts of Japanese aesthetics are mainly influenced by religion. In both Shintoism and Buddhism, the Gods are not the creators of nature, but nature is an individual entity. In our Western tradition, the Judeo-Christian concept of a creator or God broke this link and made us separate ourselves from the traditional aesthetic ideals of ancient Greece. The meaning of terms such as Wabi-sabi, Miyabi, Shibui or Yuugen originally existed in our Western culture but they did not evolve as in the Japanese case. We are gladdened by the fact that this common root is present in our work: usually viewers cannot differentiate between the images taken in Japan from those taken in other places.

Juan Manuel Castro Prieto-Photographer Whose Book I found in Mexico

Interview with Myself ...

Here is an interview and review of some of my jazz photography by the Jazz Journalist Association. If you enjoy photographers walking you through the context and why they were originally taken and included in the photo walk through this and the other interviews in this series are great informative views, I promise.

Interview with Novelist Isabella Hammad

Lili Anolik, biographer of Eve Babitz

Smithsonian Interview with Eve Babitz 2000

Interview with Eve Babitz for the Smithsonian, here is a sample:

MR. KARLSTROM: And you were being-just to put this into a bit of context-you were being interviewed for a video for a documentary over at Castle Green-

MS. BABITZ: Yes.

MR. KARLSTROM: -Green Hotel in Pasadena

MS. BABITZ: About the Duchamp photograph.

MR. KARLSTROM: Mm-hmm. And the-

MS. BABITZ: You know, I'd never thought of myself as a model in that thing, but I guess I was volunteering for that job.

MR. KARLSTROM: Why don't you -

MS. BABITZ: I thought of myself as, I was like an art groupie/art model and I wanted to-I never modeled for anything like that and never again did, and really most artists, you know, when they have models they really are drawing them basically, like in sculptures, not taking photographs, so I don't know who-and it wasn't Duchamp's idea so I figured I was the artist and the model in that one.

MR. KARLSTROM: Well, Julian Wasser was the photographer.

MS. BABITZ: Right.

MR. KARLSTROM: And I gather that this was something, aside from the official events around the-it wasn't at the opening.

MS. BABITZ: No.

MR. KARLSTROM: Some people think it was at the opening.

MS. BABITZ: That's good.

MR. KARLSTROM: And then that's not right. It really was kind of-what should we say-it was kind of a guerilla act it seems to me.

MS. BABITZ: That's right, it's a guerilla act. It happened in the morning, 7:00 in the morning.

MR. KARLSTROM: Why don't you tell me just, you know, what led up to it, how it came about?

MS. BABITZ: Well, Julian came and there was the-they had the big party at the Green Hotel, even though Julian doesn't remember it; he has photographs that he took there at that time. And so I didn't get invited to it because Walter Hopps [curator of Duchamp retrospective at Pasadena Art Museum, 1963] was mad at me.

MR. KARLSTROM: Why was that?

MS. BABITZ: Because his wife was in town, basically.

MR. KARLSTROM: Is that Shirley? [Art historian later married to dealer Irving Blum.]

MS. BABITZ: Yes. I mean she came back, she suddenly did come back in a flash the minute that Duchamp thing happened and I was like not allowed in. So, but then I found out Jim Elliott wasn't invited either, so maybe nobody under 20, maybe 21, under 21 you weren't allowed in. So, so, he didn't invite me, so, and he wouldn't call me back, and he wouldn't call my mother back. And so I decided that if I could ever, like, you know, create any vengeance or havoc in his life I would, even though I was pretty powerless because I was only 20 and there was no way I could get to him. But, this Julian came up to me at the opening, the public opening, which I went to with my parents and-

MR. KARLSTROM: That was at the museum?

MS. BABITZ: Yeah. At the Pasadena Art Museum, and he said he had this great idea that I should play chess naked with Marcel Duchamp and it seem to be such a great idea that it was just like the best idea I'd ever heard in my life. It was like a great idea. I mean, it was, not only was it vengeance, it was art, and it was like a great idea. And even if it didn't get any vengeance, it would still turn out okay with me because, you know, it would be sort of immortalized. I would be this, you know, here's this Nude Descending the Staircase guy and now he's going to be The Nude in the Pasadena Art Museum. But, of course, I said, you know, I didn't think that the Pasadena Art Museum old ladies would go along with this. So-

MR. KARLSTROM: Was that part of what attracted you to the idea?

MS. BABITZ: Yes. Yeah, because it was like the Little Old Ladies from Pasadena, you know that Beach Boys' song.

MR. KARLSTROM: Right.

MS. BABITZ: So, I thought well, you know, this will be, you know, and it is kind of like, you know, it'll just kill them to find out that this happened there. So, but, I thought that he should tell Walter so Walter would know what we were doing, that we were going to do this. Because, it didn't seem like-I mean, it was okay to do it, but they ought to know basically. But, I know that Julian did not tell anybody because he probably forgot it the minute he agreed to do it. But he did call me the next day and say "Now, you're not going to chicken out are you?" Because we were supposed to do this two or three days later when they came back from Las Vegas, maybe the next day. They went to Las Vegas; they came back, Duchamp shows up at like, I don't know, it was a Thursday morning or something. It was like seven o'clock. Julian comes to get me at, like, seven in the morning. We drive out to Pasadena to create this, you know, rape. And Gretchen meets us there. She doesn't know what's going on. No one has told her.

MR. KARLSTROM: This is Gretchen Glicksman?

MS. BABITZ: Right. They just-Julian just, likes to, you know, play it by ear, basically. So, you know.

MR. KARLSTROM: Did he just tell them that he wanted to come in to do some photographs?

MS. BABITZ: Of Duchamp. Yeah.

MR. KARLSTROM: And Duchamp didn't know what he had in mind either?

MS. BABITZ: And he brought, and he said "Put that chess table there". You know, we're going to do the chess table. So, Duchamp, he had no idea. I mean that maybe he would of chosen someone else basically. He'd never met me before.

MR. KARLSTROM: Oh, I don't know, you look pretty good.

MS. BABITZ: He'd never met me before. I'd never met him before.

MR. KARLSTROM: Did you know who he was though?

MS. BABITZ: No, I didn't know who-I mean, I had an idea when I went to the art opening that he was probably great. He was one of those great people like-

MR. KARLSTROM: But you hadn't heard of him before?

MS. BABITZ: No. I mean I'd never heard of anybody except Ed Kienholz. That was as far as my-I knew who Ed Kienholz was and I thought he was great. So, I didn't even know who Joseph Cornell was at that time. So, and I knew that everybody was like in love with him because they had this huge party and they had two ballrooms and two bands. That I didn't get invited to.

MR. KARLSTROM: And that really pissed you off.

MS. BABITZ: Yes. So I knew, I figured I-there's got to be someway to get to this deal, some way to like, you know-

MR. KARLSTROM: To be part of it.

MS. BABITZ: Right, to be part of it. So-and Julian, you know, figured out this idea. So we got there and I ran upstairs to John Altoon's studio. He was teaching art up there. It was an upstairs room. I changed my clothes and put on this like artist smock. You know, one of those blue worker shirts that guys have on and nothing else underneath it. Gretchen was like, she wasn't going to say anything because the whole thing was to be cool then and not ask what anything is going on and it's still that way today.

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Juan Hitters Discusses his Album Photographs

Mayte Martin Interview

 

Though I have known of Mayte Martin for decades I only started listening to her recently. What a treat! Here is an interview with her from deflamenco.com:

One thing Mayte, your last names…what’s the origin?
Well, I’m a mixed bag.  My parents were from Catalonia and Málaga, my grandparents were from Murcia and Asturias…my father’s side is Andalusian, but on my mother’s there was a little of everything.  “Cadiemo” is a last name I haven’t seen anywhere outside of my family.

The reason I ask, is because of your background…to see who’s to blame.
I think my love of flamenco comes from my love of music in general.  The thing is, it was the first music that caught my attention.  The first thing that got me hooked was flamenco.  It made me feel emotions and cry, it made me want to sing.

Who was singing?
Marchena, Valderrama, la Niña de la Puebla.  Flamenco in the earlier lyrical line.  

They’re the ones who led to the great stylistic debate.
I don’t mean to say there aren’t two kinds of flamenco.  There are, and there always have been.  And they’re perfectly differentiated.  What’s absurd is to establish a differentiation of quality.  That’s crazy.  The style or form of things has nothing to do with that.  Marchena was flamenco and so was Caracol.  Each one had his own story.  The same thing with Manuel Torre and Chacón.

But look, when I started out I can tell you I discovered flamenco thanks to Valderrama, but it felt like something was missing, and after a time I understood.  I loved that cante, but needed…how can I say it?…something more funky, more visceral…so I went searching.  My brother Paco helped me, in those days he was accompanying me on guitar.  Together we investigated and came upon Agujetas, Chocolate, Caracol…in other words, everything that was missing.  That was the other side of the coin, but don’t think they were country bumpkins, what they were doing was plenty sophisticated in its own way.

But then, later on, I discovered la Niña de los Peines, and that’s where I saw there was someone who brought everything together, from my point of ear, she did everything and made it one.  That was Pastora Pavón.

“The end result mustn’t be a concern.  It’s the journey that matters, and how you feel about yourself.  The fruits of your labor will come later on, first plant the tree and care for it, and that tree is your truth.  If it isn’t your truth, what difference does it make if it bears fruit or not, or how big and lush it becomes?”

How old were you when that happened?
I was 19.  Had I discovered her earlier, I would have taken that step much sooner.  It was a kind of love affair, like when you meet the person you identify with.  That “mirror” as so many people call it.  In her I found what I considered flamenco to be.

Flamenco is elegant phrasing with a gutsy quality, and risking everything at each moment.

That certainly comes through in what you do.
That’s important.  Hard work and experience help you improve and express yourself better, but make no mistake, the main thing is to be free.  If I couldn’t be free on stage, I assure you I wouldn’t be in this line of work.  I can’t conceive of it. 

Well, many performing artists are pressured by the record companies…deadlines, collaborations, promotion…sometimes they miss being completely free, or so it seems at least.
That’s a consequence of the world we live in, but it cannot be a priority.  I’d like to be rich and famous, but that can’t be my priority.  It’s immoral for an artist to think like that…anyone who does is unworthy of being called an artist.  Art exists in order to be free, to release things that can’t be felt or done in day-to-day life.  It’s the sublimation of emotion, know what I mean?

I think only two things take you to that point: love and art.  That is what liberates you and shows you who you are, it gets things out of you that you didn’t know were inside.

If anything limits you, that can’t be.  You can’t be pressured because something you do isn’t commercial, or worrying about pleasing people because you’re insecure…none of that matters, you can’t go on stage like that.  The end result mustn’t be a concern.  It’s the journey that matters, and how you feel about yourself.  The fruits of your labor will come later on, first plant the tree and care for it, and that tree is your truth.  If it isn’t your truth, what difference does it make if it bears fruit or not, or how big and lush it becomes?

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