For the last few weeks I’ve been helping organize the first-ever Hey, Hot Shot! Confab + Print Trade. A bit last minute on notice, but the party is TONIGHT from 6-8:30 p.m. at White Rabbit (145 E. Houston St) and I hope to see some of you there. I’m putting this print of mine in the Print Trade, and am excited to walk away with someone else’s work!

We have lots of great sponsors who will be doing demos and giveaways including Arlo/Artists, Crumpler and Kickstarter. We’re also giving away a handful of 20×200 prints.

The Jen Bekman Projects‘ team and lots of artists, panelists, contenders, and friends-of Hey, Hot Shot! will also be around to mingle. Come by tonight and say hello!

Hey, Hot Shot! Confab & Print Trade!
When: TONIGHT, September 29th, from 6:00 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: White Rabbit, 145 E. Houston Street (between Eldridge + Forsythe) in New York City.

RSVP at RSVP@heyhotshot.com.

For 9 months from last October until July, we—like many of you at some point in your lives, I’m sure—watched nothing but The Wire. Now, we are not watching Mad Men. We have watched in the last week, and to great recommendation:

Gates of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978): Morris describes the American Dream through the two experiences of entrepreneurs operating pet cemeteries. He interviews the owners, the employees, the investors, and a number of the families who lose pets who chose to bury their animals in such cemeteries, interspersing the characters so their interviews operate like a dialogue with one another, though two people are never talking to one another within a frame. There are equal parts seriousness, irony and humor throughout and like in all Morris films, you think, “What in the hell could he possibly be asking his interviewees?”

Vernon, Florida (Errol Morris, 1981): Morris interviews individuals in Vernon, Florida, a Northwest town in Florida, highlighting its eccentricities. Featured are an avid turkey hunter, a man with a giant pet turtle, and so on. Interesting to know, is that the film was originally titled Nub City, named after initially focused on residents of the swamp-town who cut off their own limbs to collect insurance money (2/3 of all loss-of-limb claims in the 1950s and 60s came from the Florida Panhandle), but was changed after Morris received numerous death threats. This film is a follow-up (though not a sequel) to Gates of Heaven. A recent article about Vernon, Florida, was published in the St. Petersburg Times and suggests that Morris’ characterization of its eccentricities is not so far off the mark.

Encounters At The End of the World (Werner Herzog, 2007): Herzog and his cameraman travel to Antarctica. Herzog narrates with typical dry, German humor and explains this will not be a penguin film, but one about the dreams and lives of the people who live there. Herzog portrays nearly all men (one woman?) and the stories of how they ended up there, also comparing the construction-zone like living quarters at McMurdo Station a far cry from the conditions endured and way of life of the first Antarctic explorers, primarily Ernest Shackleton. The film is a combination of highlighting natural beauty with the irony of how in our desire to know it better, we also destroy it.

Also, unrelated, but also recommended! Shootbooth (Jacob + Dustin) & friends will be on Prince & West Broadway tomorrow, September 18th from 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. in two sod-filled spaces for Park(ing) Day. Also in their space: Brooklyn Raga Association, an original piece by artist / architect / furniture maker Hugh Hayden, beautiful hand-carved booksafes filled with unusual wares courtesy of Subports, an impromptu accordion performance, and Shootbooth’s 10K ballpit making prints for passersby (and jumpers-in). Go stop by and say hello!

Foods we ate at Hugh’s spherical snacks party this weekend:

Cherry tomato
Baby Idaho potato
Sungold tomato
Cheese puffs
Radishes
Concord grapes
Whoppers
Husk Cherries
Roasted brussels sprouts
Quail eggs
Fresh mozzarella balls
Mini watermelon
Baby gherkin cucumbers
Inferno peppers
Roasted baby eggplants
Roasted globe carrots
Glazed doughnut holes
Roasted baby beets

More photos on facebook.

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JBK and I spent two wonderful weeks in Berlin at the end of August and were lucky to have great weather, uber-gracious hosts, a great place to stay, and enough time to feel like we were really learning our way around the city. I’m just now catching up with my notes from the trip and wanted to share some places we visited and enjoyed. I’ve posted some more pictures online here, and will put up other bits of video and more photos as I have some spare time.

Food/drink/bars:
Prater Garten bier garden: Great outdoor beer garden in Prenzlauer Berg with both indoor and outdoor seating. Perfect place for classic and reasonably priced German food.
Cafe Ostfee: Cute cafe with lots of outdoor seating in Prenzlauer Berg. Big German breakfast with lots of fresh bread, jam, and coldcuts. This is where we first encountered the “wespen” — the wasps that have plagued Berlin this year and show up to hover around your jam every time you have a meal!
Pappa e Ciccia: Great Italian spot that was down the street from where we were staying. There’s an organic ice cream spot next door, but not as worth your while as actually eating the pastas available here. I had a great ravioli with fig and ricotta filling in a sage butter sauce. In the mornings, there are delicious “toasties,” breakfast sandwiches, and fresh bread, butter, and jam, which you can slice and fill up your own baskets with.
Vietnamese lunch on Auguststrasse:
Privatclub: This is a downstairs club with nightly djs and parties. Our friends were headed here to go to a Balkan Electro night, so we joined and had a great time. It’s a very intimate (read: sweaty!) place once the dancing gets going, but also a very comfortable size.
Bonanza Coffee: Recommended to me by Bryan Boyer, this is a super hip coffee joint on Oderberger Strasse right next to a great used vintage bike store. Not much food, but Class A coffee and good people-watching.
Kuchenkaiser: Classic German food in an old world garden setting. Popular spot in Kreuzberg for families/all ages. Huge portions of food.
Ankerklause: “Anchor Bar” that is right on the canal that runs through Kreuzberg. There is a covered outdoor area that hangs over the river and the interior is decorated with lots of anchor/sailor themed kitsch. Popular hang-out spot for drinks and young people.
Alpenstuck: An Alpine restaurant with a super super sleek interior, also recommended to me by Bryan Boyer. This was the trips very best (meaning we had multiple) wienerschnitzel and spaetzel. A wee bit pricey compared to an regular-night-out dinner. Located on a quiet street in Mitte.
The T Room: Amazing cafe run by a couple from Holland. Exposed brick interior with gorgeous natural light, beautiful furniture, and homemade tea and scones with clotted cream served on mismatched vintage dishware all day long… great music playing from the record player with stacks of records you can put on if you feel like, and piles and piles of amazing art magazines for you to read everywhere! Many were Dutch photo magazines, but there were selections, both old and new of publications from all over the world.
Cafe am Neuen See: If you go to Teufelsberg (see below), then on your way back you’ll ride through Tiergarten. In the middle of this big park, there’s a great cafe that feels a lot like the Boathouse Cafe on W.72nd Street. There’s a cafeteria with yummy pretzels, salads, pizza, all kinds of drinks, and it’s a lovely place to hang out.
El Burai: Berlin has a huge Turkish population so the city has a ton of donner kebab spots, but our favorite was a tiny place on Torstrasse called El Burai. The owner fried falafel to order and the tahini sauce and fillings were extra flavorful.
Rodeo Bar: Upscale restaurant/club that’s in Mitte in an old domed bank building. The interior is grandiose and worth peeking into even if we don’t eat there. One of the Junior Boys was dj’ing so we went to check it out; the food is pricey and probably not the best bet for a meal at that cost, but interesting if you want to experience the space and listen to some music.
Meierei: Amazing, amazing Alpine bakery that serves gorgeous (and delicious) apple strudel and plum tarts (among other sweets). There’s a big, beautiful backyard with tea lights and the interior of the bakery has a sleek design. On one wall they sell specialty products (jams, honeys, oil, vinegar, etc); it’s really a place you’re meant to sit at all day with a good book and a cappuccino.

Shops:
Kwikshop: A very kiosk-like spot with curated trinkets and objects for the home.
Do you read me?: A fantastic magazine shop in Mitte featuring the most comprehensive international collection of art and design magazines I’ve ever seen. I could’ve spent many more hours here browsing (and wish I had!).

Culture:
Hamburger Bahnhof: We got to see a neat collection of unusual Andy Warhol pieces here even though the main gallery was closed as the museum was preparing for a Paul Pfeiffer show. Also saw a Josef Beuys exhibit that was a bit of a drone for a beautiful day.
Pool Gallery: We went here specifically to see the work of graphic artist Andy Gilmore (Rochester-based), whose work we’d come across before leaving. Nice space in the middle of Mitte (big gallery district).
FIT: Berlin’s oldest petrol station, which is now a rotating installation arts and events space. Our host had her birthday party here and over the course of our trip, the installation revolved from neon pieces to a cello performance and more.
Bauhaus: Take a day trip down to Dessau to see the original Bauhaus school building as well as the “meisterhauses” of Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, etc. The town isn’t all that exciting, but the architecture is fascinating.
Mauer Park Flea Market: Berlin has tons of great flea markets that trump any I’ve seen in New York or the states for every category except clothing. They are massive with tons of fresh food, music, and a hot stop for furniture, kitchenwares, and tons more. Mauer Park is one of the bigger ones; we found great old glasses frames there, vintage kitchen stuff, and had delicious Turkish crepes.
Frank Gehry’s DG Bank: Gehry designed DG bank, located right next to the Brandenburg Gates and the American Embassy. From the outside, the building looks pretty ordinary, but from the inside, it mirrors the shape of a giant whale. (Personally found this underwhelming, but Gehry fans may like).
Holocaust Memorial: Officially known as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (whoa, heavy), this is one of the most remarkable memorials I’ve visited. Word is that many Germans dislike it, but I found the experience of walking between the “tombs” moving and thought-provoking. Interestingly, the graffiti-preventing substance used to coat each of the stones is controversially made by Tages-Anzeiger, a company that persecuted Jews and also made a chemical used in gas chambers during the Holocaust. Read the wiki entry for more info…
Clarchens Ballhaus: Both a restaurant and an all-ages century-old ballroom. We went here on our last night and it was the perfect ending to our trip. A few people mentioned to us throughout the week that this was really one of the only places in the city that appealed to people of ALL ages, and was genuinely fun and cool; the center of the room is open to dancing with a stage up front, there is a big garden out front with tables and food served during the day, and there is food and drink also served inside. The earlier crowd tends to be a bit older, then around 11, a younger hipper crowd comes in. We found this to be exactly the case when were were there. The food is so-so, but definitely stop by for the dancing/scene.

Other Must-dos:
Bikes: Rent bikes as much as possible! We rode hours every day, and it enabled us a lot of freedom on top of the fact that the city is SO so so bike friendly. You can take bikes on trains, there are tons of spots to cheaply rent bikes for the day or week, and there are bike lanes on every street in the whole city.
Potsdam: Take the train to Potsdam about 30 minutes outside of Berlin to see Sanssouci (Sanssouci Palace), which is larger than life and Versailles-esque. Also in Potsdam, ride your bike to the swimming spot sandwiched between the Heiliger See and Jungfernsee. There are great bike paths all around the lakes.
Drive: Rent a car and take a drive through the German countryside from Berlin heading South and avoid the autobahn. Make sure you stop at a German rest stop and be amazed at the astounding quality of food and cleanliness.
Badeschiff: Head over to the Badeschiff, a shipping container dropped into the river in the middle of the city. There’s a makeshift beach, food available, and the cost of entry is only 3 Euro. It was a beautiful day when we went, and crowded, but we could hop right in the pool without a line at all times.
Grunewald Forest/Teufelsberg: Take a LONG bike ride to the Grunewald Forest. In the forest, you’ll first come to Teufelsee, a small lake with a nude beach/grassy area, then if you follow the signs in the forest, you’ll find your way to the magical / creepy / amazing structures of Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain) and make sure you climb up to the top of the tallest tower! These are former radio towers that were used while the wall was up to intercept Russian and East German radio signals (and also has a Nazi camp buried underneath the mountain which was used during the wars). Since the wall came down, the towers have been abandoned, and now showcase a lot of graffiti worth seeing, and one of the best views of all of Berlin. It’s rumored that David Lynch is trying to buy the property to change it into a University of Transcendental Meditation.
Go to the grocery store: I love going to foreign supermarkets and Berlin’s were no exception. Try and find a “bio” market, which is something equivalent to an organic grocery or Whole Foods (but much more common). Make sure you check out the yogurt aisle in particular. The variety and quality of German yogurt was astounding to me (though I can’t say anyone else quite shared my enthusiasm). The flavors are also more natural tasting. We had: hazelnut, vanilla-poppy, mango, strawberry rhubarb, and straight vanilla.

JBK and I are off to Berlin on Sunday evening for a few weeks and have a schedule that is refreshingly empty. We’ll be staying in an apartment near the Prenzlauer Berg/Mitte area and are hoping to make a driving trip either to Poland or the Northern Coast of the country where we’ve heard there are beautiful islands and beaches.

I was last in Berlin in February of 2004 and my experience of the city was largely dictated by a cold apartment with a beautiful clawfoot tub that I couldn’t bear to even undress to get into because the coal oven heating the apartment wouldn’t light. I spent the week alternately shivering and having a blast at parties taking place during the Berlin Film Festival and eating donner kabab in the middle of the night. I’m excited to revisit in the summer, when I’ve heard it’s some version of urban heaven.

Please let me know if you have any to-do, to-eat, to-wander, or day trip suggestions. [mail AT youngna DOT com]

But first, if you happen to be in Philly tomorrow, I’ll be with the Shootbooth team working a photobooth like you’ve never seen before at the Mad Decent block party (featuring dj Sega, Diplo, Toadally Krossed Out, Maluca, Dirty South Joe, POPO, Brick Bandits, Blaqstarr, Nadastrom, Sammy Slice) all afternoon. Featuring: on-site photos, a giant multi-colored ball pit, and a Major Lazer giant photo-op head cut-out, and likely lots of sweaty dancing. Come out and say hi!

p.s. RSS is full of spam. Sorry! Need to upgrade!

Last night we had dinner at my and Jacob’s new favorite restaurant, Il Passatore. It’s across the street from a Hess gas station on Bushwick Avenue and Metropolitan Ave, and from the front looks unspectacular. Inside, there is a long, narrow room that’s crowded almost every evening, though when it’s nice out, like it was last night, it’s the twinkly-light filled back patio that’s full instead. The waiters are friendly and unhurried, but attentive and put down a basket of homemade bread and fruity olive-oil speckled in balsamic as soon as you’ve had a seat. The wine carafes are filled to the brim and nightly specials are scrawled on brown paper and attached to a clipboard. We’ve had a handful of fantastic homemade pastas — the tagliatelle with wild boar ragu, papardelle with fresh spring peas, fabulous ricotta gnocchi — but the dishes that really win me over, believe it or not, are the salads. I’ve tried to recreate these salads at home, and invite you to do the same. Excellent ingredients are key, because as you will see, they are simple, but if made well, the completely, and utterly, delicious.

Salad #1: Wild arugula with halved red grapes, toasted pine nuts, grape tomatoes, grated Parmesan cheese and balsamic vinaigrette
Salad #2: Baby spinach with blueberries, toasted pine nuts, fresh goat cheese, and a slightly sweet citrus vinaigrette (lemon-grapefruit combo?)

I’ve picked up a wild arugula, pea shoots, and a bunch of my favorite green, purslane, as well as a box of blueberries form the farmers’ market to try my hand at a variant of salad #2. If you have any of your own summer salad recipes, please do pass them along to me as well. I’m on a kick, and it’s produce season at its best.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing three completely different and breath-taking musical performances in the last week which would be a shame not to share with you. So, without further ado:

1. Last Friday, we caught the School of Seven Bells at Bowery, a trio that features the Guatemalan-born identical twin sisters, Alejandra and Claudia Deheza alongside Benjamin Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines. Their album Alpinisms has been a favorite all year since it came out, but the live performance is stunning — tight compositions with the pixie-sized Dehezas adding layers of undulating dynamic voice. See them in person if you have the chance.

2. On Sunday I had the pleasure of hearing an accoustic performance of Adron Parnassum in our friends’ Ben and James’ living room. She is, “a girl slash company who makes healthy melodic tropical music and pictures.” That healthy melodic tropical music is a set of tunes whose delicacy will unravel you; she uses her guitar and voice as instruments of percussion and sound effect in addition to the tunes she plays on the fingerboard. From time-to-time she plays in the city, but check her myspace page for live performances elsewhere.

3. And then last night, I had the privilege of seeing the amazing Max Zbiral-Teller, national hammer dulcimer champion, perform one of his five dulcimers in friend Zach’s apartment. Aside from the only other hammer dulcimer I heard having been played by a man in the 42nd St. subway station, Max is outright phenomenal on this instrument, which sounds partway between a harp, a piano, a cello, and a drum. He explained that he’s been playing since he was 7, and played us a series of pieces inspired by Senegalese music and sound — where he’d gone to study their left-right separate hand-drumming a few years back. He’ll be performing Friday night at 8 p.m. at the Chelsea Art Museum alongside a cellist and is well worth a trip out thre to see. See him performing here on youtube.

Late Monday afternoon we approached the city on our incoming from a weekend visiting friends and shooting a wedding in Amherst and Boston, respectively. Traffic came to a slow crawl about 30 miles out on the Hutchinson Parkway leading up to the Whitestone Bridge and we sat in the air-condition-less car, hoping for reprieve. We stared out at the evergreens and maples lining the left side of the highway, and noticed one strange and exceptional pine tree standing at least 30 feet above the others. I did a double-take, amazed by this wondrous! spectacle! of! plant!, so much taller and standing singular-in-species in the otherwise monotonous field of green. I remarked on the oddity to Jacob, who from the driver’s seat started to laugh…and laugh…and introduce me to the wonder that is cell phone trees.

Cell phone trees are fake trees that mimic real trees to mask cell phone towers. They are made, and placed (usually) with attention to regional tree growth, so in the Pacific Northwest you find many Douglas Fir cell trees, in the San Diego area you find broad-leafed, evergreen angiosperm tree varieties like the magnolia or avocado, and in the Northeast, you would fine short-needled pine cell trees. It has been suggested that there are 128,000 of these fake trees across the United States, which survive in any soil type, and are often un-discernible from the trees surrounding them. Church steeples, flag poles, and water towers also serve as common disguising zones for cell towers.

I’m have to admit I’m impressed by the effort exerted on part of cell phone companies to mask their trail.

N.B. [cell-phone tree art edition]
1. John Hogan Brighton’s Cell Trees
2. Cellular Phone Trees on Polar inertia

Last Friday, I had the chance to hear Jacob Holdt (he being the Danish vagabond who traveled the most poverty-stricken, racist parts of the United States in the 1970s with $40 in his pocket and created the book American Pictures) talk at the New York Photo Festival in DUMBO. He talked of many topics: his love affairs, joining the Ku Klux Klan, living amongst the impoverished black communities in America, touring with his book, bringing about change through love, his involvement in fighting global racism, and the many friends of his who during his life have been murdered or gone to jail. He has lost and loved and laughed often, and his stories share his complete lack-of-fear and penetrating idealism in trying to understand broken and violent communities, and the ways he has perennially lived with the idea that people who have endured pain early in their lives should have another opportunity to live—with less pain (and less hatred).

Holdt’s journey through the United States is in and of itself remarkable, but what caught my attention most, was the way he has visited recurring persons throughout his life–people who have become friends and his subjects, an extensive cast of characters that includes former lovers, a young boy with a proclivity for leaning on one arm, or a Klan member, and a man who went to jail for murder who Holdt helped get out and later became one of the directors of the American Pictures documentary (video and sound).

Many photographers make a single strong portrait of a person they only meet once, but I think many stronger and more intimate portraits are often born out of subjects photographed over a long period of time. I think of Wolfgang Tillman’s images of his then-boyfriend, the painter Jochen Klein, of Annie Liebowitz’s images of Susan Sontag, of Tierney Gearon’s photographs of her mother (The Mother Project), and of Mary Ellen Mark’s ongoing relationship with Erin Blackwell (aka Tiny), a woman she first met as a 14-year old homeless street kid in Seattle while making the documentary Streetwise in the early 1980s. Whether it is the photographer’s investment in the person (most of the examples above being significant others or family-members), having a collection of portraits of a single person—taken by a single person—nearly always translates into a surprising store of memories for recounting how both parties lives have had weaving paths that intersected again and again during moments the photographs were snapped.

Holdt’s series is most surprising, however, because there is always a power struggle happening between the photographer and subject, and here one could easily see his images as exploitative or humiliating as he captures many in their decrepit shacks, laying drunk, naked or caught in sexual acts. What makes it not feels exploitative is that he shows commitment to the people by participating in their lives over the course of sometimes 30 or 40 years, revisiting these same shacks and same people, with an outward dedication towards seeing who they have become and how they are doing. I recommend taking a long look through his website (and go hear him speak if you ever get the opportunity). I, myself, am on a hunt for a copy of his book, which has been out of print since 1977 when the KGB revealed they were trying to use it in a battle to cease humanitarian aid programs in the United States. If you find one, let me know.

N.B.
1. I suppose this is where I’ve been.
2. Two good shows opening this week: Christian Chaize’s Praia Piquinia at Jen Bekman Gallery (5/20, 6-8 p.m.) and Drawing Contemporaries @ Eyebeam (5/21, 6-8 p.m.)
3. Do not miss the excellent collection of American Museum of Natural History diorama scans from the early 1900s that are now available online.
4. The work of Estelle Hanania

A few of the spots we hit in Detroit:

Miller’s Bar for burgers
Louisiana Creole Gumbo
Feather Bowling at Cadieux Cafe
Russell Street Deli for enormous, delicious sandwiches
Eastern Market
Lou Anna’s Bakery
Driving around Indian Village
Cocktails at the Rattlesnake Club
MOCAD (Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit)
DIA (Detroit Institute of Art)
Supino’s pizzeria
Town Pump to see DJ next-door-neighbor Todd
Toast in Ferndale, MI
Heidelberg Project
Vietnamese sandwiches in madison heights, mi
Taqueria Lupitas
Gaelic League Irish American Club

A fascinating city with lots of desolate spots, and gasps of trying to stay alive while half the population has left in recent years. Businesses are few and far between with a huge number of vacant homes, schools, office buildings and businesses. Sidewalks were often empty, or riddled with those asking for money in the evening and we never encountered a really crowded spot the whole weekend. It’s jarring relative to the traffic on even quiet New York streets where you are hardly ever alone. We spent a lot of time driving around neighborhoods, examining houses, especially areas with a high percentage of boarded up (presumably foreclosed or abandoned) homes as well as standing homes where neighboring properties have collapsed or burned, devaluing all the homes around it. Detroit is a curious city now, in need of massive overhaul of its schools, roads, treatment of crime, etc., and I suspect will continue to be one as the economy either worsens or gets better in the next few years.

Almost two years ago to the day, I made a trip to Bolivia and spent three and a half months in a medium-sized city in the Andes working in a small orphanage. There were fifteen to twenty orphans there at any given time, all under the age of five, and about half of those under the age of two. During my time there, I wrote about my experience on this blog, and a woman discovered the post and contacted me from Denmark; she was to be the adopting mother of one of the children under the care of this orphanage. “Did I know her son?,” she asked, and “Was he healthy?” “Clean?” I told her yes, yes, and yes, nervous about revealing too much before she had this son in her hands, knowing adoption is complicated and a lot can go wrong.

She was informed a few weeks later that she would not be able to adopt after all, after waiting over a year for this child, and I felt both relieved for my non-disclosure, but also a real sadness, knowing that both a child and capable parents were losing out on forming a connection during a formative time in the little boy’s life. When I left Bolivia in late May of 2007, the little boy was still at the orphanage, now around 15 months old.

Forty-eight hours ago I got another email, this one from the Netherlands. A woman was happy to report she and her husband had newly adopted a son–their son–and believed I may have known him as a younger baby. It was the same boy–the one who wasn’t adopted before–and he is now in a new home, with parents, happy and healthy and much bigger and walking and talking. She asked if I might have any photos, images that might help explain and show a little of his three year history, so last night I searched my hard drives and found about a dozen pictures of the little boy I knew for three months, trying to walk, sitting on a swing, laughing, crawling, and growing older, little by little.

I have never quite known what to make of the images I captured in Bolivia. In many ways bringing my camera to foreign turf taught me a lot about the photographer I am, and the photographer I would like to be. It made me realize how comfortable I am shooting in New York; how easy it is to wield a large camera in this city; how a foreign country welcomes a camera with different eyes and ears, and how intimacy — in knowing a place and its people, is a task that takes years and years. After posting just a few of the images from that trip, I’ve long tucked those photos away and not looked them until just last night.

Last night when I sent those dozen photos to the new parents of the adopted son who I knew two years before they had the chance to, I felt my photos were valuable and indispensible to someone whom I will never know. That I will likely never see this child, meet his parents, or know the life they will have, is only a small aside. That I could help his parents learn more about the son because I happened to know him for 3 short months of his life, is a huge personal reward to have come of that trip, despite it being two years after the fact.

N.B. [Detroit + SXSW edition]
1. I’m hopping on a plane to Detroit tomorrow morning to see a friend and make some pictures. Please let me know if there are spots you recommend in the Detroit area for food, sight-seeing, secret exploration, etc. All I know so far is that we are definitely going feather bowling and that I’m quite excited.
2. My friend Josephine’s (half of the banjo/accordion duo known as Baccordio) music video, Where Are You Going, Elena? will be debuting this week at SXSW on March 13, 18, and 21st. See here for more info. (Full disclosure: I make a split second cameo).
3. Additionally, Ms. Jen Bekman will be speaking on a panel, Curating the Crowd-Sourced World on Saturday (14th).
4. And, also at SXSW, Dennis will be talking, using, promoting, demonstrating, and getting people excited about Foursquare.
5. Unrelated, but awesome: Character Project (11 photographers–including Mary Ellen Mark, Eric Ogden, and Richard Renaldi set out to document the character of America).

Attached Media: video/quicktime (13 530 ko)

This morning J received an email featuring the carcass of a burned out black jaguar whose front bumper and license plates had completely melted off. He showed me the photograph and with jaw dropped, reported that the car belonged to his brother’s girlfriend, who finds her home in Berlin. She’d left the office a few days prior and couldn’t find her car (a company car), so proceeded to call the police, who located it shortly afterwords.

The police concluded that her car was the the target of fire-storming — the unofficial term for cars burned by a team of anti-luxury car leftists who have been setting cars around Berlin on fire in protest of conspicuous wealth. Unofficial word along the grapevine suggests 300-400 cars were hit last year, and dozens have already been burned this year. The majority of burned cars have been Mercedes, though BMWs and Porsches are among the hard hit as well.

This site, Brennende-Autos.de offers an extensive map showing locations of burnt cars. I find this whole phenomenon both appalling and completely fascinating.

I will make my first trip to Pittsburgh next week for 4-5 days. Though I’ll be there foremost for some scheduled celebrations, I should have a fair number of hours for exploring, eating, seeing art, and the like.Please let me know if you have any favorite spots to visit, chomp, stroll, enjoy the view, or take in the air. Any recommended places would be much appreciated.

N.B.
1. The other night we danced with a woman named Kyoko, who turns out to be the Japanese photographer, Kyoko Hamada. Enjoying her work.
2. Hey, Hot Shot! Volume IV, Edition I opens tomorrow, 1/30 at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6-8 p.m featuring fabulous new works by Lijun Yiao, John Mann, Hosang Park, Cara Phillips, and Donald Weber.
3. Buchstabenmuseum: the museum of letters.
4. Studying the works by Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky.
5. Liking: Anonymous Postcard: Claims
6. Lapsus Magazine
7. Happy Birthday Audrey; portraits by Jacob.
8. La Paz, Bolivia by Stefan Ruiz: where I was almost 2 years ago.

I can’t remember another winter when it has snowed so frequently. In our new apartment, the living room windows stretch nearly 20 feet — the full height of the space — which creates the effect of being in a Colorado or Utah ski lodge. The windows look out onto blocks and blocks of backyards and clothing lines, shirts and socks often frozen in place along the rope. When the neighbors realize their clothes are being buried by little mounds of snow, they hurry outside and pull the lines in, so as the storm progresses, the clothing lines disappear one-by-one.

The neighbors directly to the south often grill with coats and hats on and the smell of hamburgers drift through our open back door. The side of their home–the one facing our bedroom, is a 50 foot wall entirely covered in ivy. The ivy reaches across the windows and envelops the chimney, and in the morning birds fly in and out of the ivy, landing in hidden nests. From certain angles, ivy is all we can see, and it is as though living in a garden and not in the city. It is so uniform in thickness and color up and down the whole side of the brick red home, it is hard to imagine the growth was long, steady, and organic, rather than being there from the very beginning.

The kids in the house two to the right have set up a teepee in their backyard for winter camping. The house one to the right has been struggling to dig up cement planters buried in their yard. The house to the left is bare with scaffolding.

The snow at night dims the sky, so we can sit in the dark and outside seems bright and brown, then purple, then gray, then brown again. The branches and telephone poles and ivy and steps off the balcony are covered in snow and creates the effect of watching a sleeping world. It is very beautiful.

N.B. [Winter edition]
1. Friend Dustin made an incredible 15-foot tall inflatable hand sculpture that was on view at 3rd Ward last Friday.
2. Richard Avedon’s Portraits of Power featuring one Mr. President Obama is on view at Washington D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art until January 25th.
3. Love in the First Person by Matt and Melissa Eich. Fabulous. Might-make-you-cry-warning.
4. Things I’m enjoying looking at: Rinko Kawauchi, LIFE photo archive, Wayne Thiebaud at Crown Point Press.
5. And lastly: Welcome, Barack Obama, our new President.

My year in cities (places I spent at least one night sleeping):

Brooklyn, NY*
Los Angeles, CA*
Niskayuna, NY*
Park City, UT
Portland, ME
Portland, OR
San Francisco, CA
San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua
Silver Spring, MD
Woodstock, NY

* = more than one occasion

It’s surely no 2007, but I’m still pretty pleased.

Also, made a big update to my portfolio; I hope you’ll take a look.

Have a wonderful new year and here’s three cheers to an inspiring, productive, creative, happy and healthy 2009.

xx youngna

Hi there.
Hope you’ve been having a wonderful holiday.

I’ve been upstate making homemade pasta, honing my pastry chef skills, cross-country skiing over frozen brooks and through the woods, knitting that long-ago begun scarf, taking long winter-walks, admiring the remaining fallen branches and trees from the ice storm (a few weeks past), wine-tasting, wine-mulling, learning fire-tending skills, watching movies, reading books, and staying up late thinking of projects to continue on, start, and finish.

Back to the city soon, a big move to our new digs in Greenpoint, then ready to trace a new blueprint for 2009.

Cheers,
yp

I haven’t anticipated a movie more this year than Milk, Gus Van Sant’s biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay city supervisor who was slain in 1978– a year after his election– by another (former) supervisor, Dan White. A.O. Scott calls Milk “a marvel,” the LA Times calls it “a powerful story.” We made a trip to see it last night, and “powerful story” it is. While imperfect, it is an impressive synthesis of hulking amounts of historical footage and information entertainingly interwoven to create a piece on both macro and micro levels — about the person (Milk), the place (San Francisco and the US at large), the time (1970s), and the issue (gay rights, prop 6). Given the recent passage of Prop 8, but also the election of Rob Manning as the first openly gay mayor of Portland, Oregon, the issues of the Milk era live ever-fervently; the relevancy lends a generous weight. In parts, the characters surrounding Milk feel theatrical, some of their motives for activism and involvement lacking the dimension one craves or knows that political and social activism needs. But Milk– and Penn AS Milk– are impressive as portraits of both a time and a person bathed in the awareness of being on the cusp of revolution.

N.B.
1. The Last Days of W by Alec Soth (click on arrows, not images at left)
2. Good things for the holidays at Yellow Owl Workshop
3. More good things for the holidays at a joint sale with artwork, clothing, housewares, and one of a kind items from independent designers this Sunday, December 7th, 218 Adelphi Street #3.
4. Please go see Joel Stoehr’s Tower of Babel, a sculpture of New York City re-imagined as a laser-cut museum board pyramid sculpture. At Pierogi Gallery at 177 N. 9th in Williamsburg through December 21st.
5. And, for my dad: a walrus named Sara that plays the saxophone

I was attacked by two guys outside my front door in Williamsburg this weekend as I came home from dinner with a friend in Carroll Gardens just before midnight. They must have followed me for a little while–perhaps all the way from the subway–but I was on the phone and didn’t notice anyone around, or following me. Just before getting to my front door, I realized somebody was behind me and turned around thinking it was a neighbor. I saw two guys I didn’t recognize walking at a trot just a step behind me, so fumbled with my keys so they wouldn’t follow me inside. They confronted me, asking for the time and money and when I ignored their requests and continued to nervously chat on the phone waiting for them to leave, they punched me in the face and head repeatedly, kicked me down, and stole my bag.

For whatever reason, though they had initially stolen my keys, they threw them back at my feet before disappearing down the street. I scampered for the keys, frantic to get away and inside, and found myself in my apartment with no recollection of walking up the stairs. JBK stayed on the other end of the phone line the entire time (from out of town), hearing me struggle, then scream, then hysterical in the aftermath, as I tried to explain what had just happened. He called 911.

I spent the rest of the night at the police precinct, hospital, and then finally came back home in the morning. I have some cuts and bruises to my ear and face, but nothing that won’t heal. The fright is ongoing, the scene imprinted on my brain, but I was lucky to have friends and family by my side the entire night, and every moment since the incident occurred.

Wherever you live, please be careful walking home alone, especially late at night. Call a friend to walk with you, or take a car to your door and ask the driver to wait until you’re inside. Call the friend you are going to meet to let them know you are on the way. The Right Rides service is also available for women, whom you can call and they will bring you home for free between midnight – 3 a.m.

On that note, please have a safe and happy and thankful holiday this week. I’m ready for a break to see friends and loved ones, but also ready to come home and beat this fright, however long and slow a process that may be.

xo yp

Soon after William Eggleston’s most recent monograph, 5 x 7, was published in January 2007, a friend invited me to a private book signing at Christie’s. The book was available for purchase for a very reasonable $45.00, and while you stood in line waiting for your 10 seconds to chat with Mr. Eggleston, the PR director requested that if you wanted your name written in the inscription, you needed to write that on a napkin before getting to the guest of honor.

Eggleston was drinking a glass of whiskey, which he poured freely from a bottle beneath the table. He wore a pale blue suit, a crisp white shirt, and a thin tie. He was visibly drunk. When it came my turn to have my book signed, he asked my name. I said “Youngna,” holding out the napkin, and he replied with a grunt and asked, “Well, how ’bout something else today?” I said, “No, that’s okay, Youngna is just fine,” and he replied, “Well, then you must be Korean.”

I paused, looking for a natural follow up (but thinking of none), still waiting for him to write my name (correctly) as he struggled with the sharpie.

“I go to Korea ALL the time,” he said.

I was glad he’d broken the silence and answered that I’d been there only once.

“Yep, that’s right,” he said. “I go to Korea ALL the time…It’s where I go to get the ladies.”

–
The 5 x 7 prints at the Eggleston retrospective, currently up at the Whitney, are among my favorites in the show. They are larger and more pointed in subject than so many of his shots, portraits more formal than those that fall within his famously described snapshot aesthetic. The most recent shots in his oeuvre are the most disappointing to me–he claims to be working with large, abstract forms, and always looking for the quirky. Unfortunately, the presentation is of something less unique in its time than the first 90% of the show. That disappointment doesn’t detract feelings that Eggleston is still transformative, and seeing a massive number of his images in a single building is happily exhausting.