ABOUT

Pierrot, Salt, Pepper

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A bunch of salt and pepper packets came with my egg and bacon on a roll. Interestingly, they were about the size of the thumbnails on my Pierrot 2.0 promo card.
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The Straitjacket

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My friends LuLu LoLo and Dan Evans are staging a production of The Straitjacket, a fictionalized play about Emily Dickinson in the Metropolitan Playhouse’s Another Sky program on American women writers.
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Murals (Prospect Lefferts Garden)

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Alex Katz Studio (Tribeca)

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Finishing up my last shoot of the year, I discovered some scaled-down maquettes of paintings used to design an upcoming exhibition of Alex Katz’s work.
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LuLu LoLo Visit (East Harlem)

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Alex Katz Studio

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Irving Kriesberg, 1919-2009

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We had nearly completed documenting over 60 years of his work, when he died on November 11th. An obit is on the NYT here.
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Lie Detector Test (NSB)

Many gigabytes of my video, sound, and body data were recorded by artist Paulette Phillips in Room 17 at Atlantic Center for the Arts. Ever the cruel sadist, Paulette forced us to tell lies under threat of high-voltage electronic shock as we were strapped naked to a medieval chair. Do I lie? I lie. A really interesting art project actually, and I was glad to be data harvested.
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Mein Baaden Meinhof

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Coincidentally, I was looking through a catalog raisonée of Gerhard Richter's work on the 32nd anniversary of the biggest events of the German Autumn on October 18, 1977. I am returning to a novel which takes some of its inspiration from the tragic, misplaced angst of the RAF.
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Irving Kriesberg in His Studio (West Village)

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Irving Kriesberg's West Village Studio

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Irving Kriesberg's Palette

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A blurred closeup of Irving Kriesberg's oil paint palette. More about the 90-year old artist, whose work I have been documenting, in future posts.
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Caravaggio Postcard (Bronx)

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Public Art (SoHo)

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Studio Finally Ready to Rock and Roll

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I finally set up lights and got some background paper up. Soon I’ll be shooting headshots and portraits here.
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Another Digital Manipulation Controversy

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Left, the “original”; right, the “altered” as it appeared in print.

Since my weekend NYT subscription is on hold, I missed this brouhaha at the Times Magazine over a series of digitally altered photographs. The photographer in question, Edgar Martins, presented his photos for a story called “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age” as actual documentary, unretouched images to his editors. The story ran on July 5th, then the pixel peepers started deconstructing the images, pointing out perfect symmetries and cloned pipes and staircases that went to nowhere. The Times retracted the story, apologized to readers, and banished Martins from practicing journalism at its paper. On July 31st, since the controversy ignited a great debate in imaging circles, Martins was generously invited to defend himself on Lens, the Times’ photography blog. Not much of what he says elucidates anything about why he did what he did, nor does he seem to understand the contract with viewers of documentary photography. The problem stems from Martins being an artist rather than a journalist, however much he seems to lie that his photographs are an actual depiction of reality. He is clearly more interested in aesthetics and theory than in pure documentation, something which I tend to share. The Times photography manipulation policy is very general:

Images in our pages, in the paper or on the Web, that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way. No people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (except for the recognized practice of cropping to omit extraneous outer portions).


It does not take into account selective sharpening, blurring, color balancing, dodging and burning, high dynamic range photography, and the dozens of other techniques, aside from cloning and montaging, which photographers use to enhance their images everyday. I’m sure we will be revisiting this issue many more times as technology matures. Very soon digital still and movie cameras will be able to montage and manipulate on the fly, further blurring the definitions of reality and beauty.
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LuLu's Final Bow (Astor Place)

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Got to see LuLu LoLo’s final performance of her one-woman show, 38 Witnessed Her Death. A really powerful show with dance and great music.
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38 Witnessed Her Death

My friend LuLu’s play, 38 Witnessed Her Death, is being showcased at the Fringe Festival. It’s a one-woman show with dancers choreographed by Jody Oberfelder. Read more about it here. These photos are from the dress rehearsal. More can be seen here.
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New Suburban Geometries Images (Santa Maria)

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Art in Odd Places 2009 Benefit (East Village)

After our shoot, LuLu and I attended the benefit party for AIOP 2009 SIGN which will take place on 14th Street in October. It was sweaty night, featuring dance by Edith Raw, burlesque by Minnie Tonka, and a cool backyard.
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LuLu as a Newsboy on 14th Street

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I made a series of photos to document my friend LuLu LoLo’s newspaper boy street performance project which takes place in October on 14th Street. Read about the 14th Street project here.
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Gandhi Statue (Union Square)

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Graffiti Art (Prospect Heights)

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Soapbox Gallery (Prospect Heights)

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I’ve been passing in front of a small window-front gallery on Dean Street on the way to my new studio. The photo above is a detail from Sandra Osip’s Eco-Effective installation at Soapbox Gallery.
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Dennis Oppenheim Opening (LES)

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At Janos Gat Gallery, Dennis showed a handful of maquettes used in proposals for some of his large-scale public art projects.
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Grafitti (LES)

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Recent Published Work

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Clockwise from top left: Photos from Tokyo Crossing series in Redivider, a photo from my Visual Haiku series in Shots, a short story, Second Act, in Cutthroat, a short-short, South of the Border, in Sonora Review’s David Foster Wallace tribute double issue, which is a great read, highly recommended.

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Some of my artwork photography has been featured in recent exposition catalogs for Alex Katz and a benefit show of a collaboration of 70s rock photographer Mick Rock and the artist Russell Young.
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New Studio

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I just signed a lease on a 900-square-foot space on Pacific Street in Prospect Heights. Lots of work to do to get it functional. More updates later.
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38 Witnessed Her Death...

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Publicity stills for Lulu LoLo’s one-woman show, 38 Witnessed Her Death, I Witnessed Her Love: The Lonely Secret of Mary Ann Zielonko (Kitty Genovese Story), which will play at the Fringe Festival this August. She plays three characters to tell the story of Kitty Genovese’s brutal murder: Winston Moseley (the killer, left), Mary Ann Zielonko (the lover, center) and A.M. Rosenthal, the New York Times editor, who wrote a book on the aftermath of the 1964 murder.
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Scintillation

SCINTILLATION from Xavier Chassaing on Vimeo.


This is a very beautiful stop-motion (over 35K stills) and projection-mapping photographic animation. Just gorgeous! The filmmaker is Xavier Chassaing. You can read more about the creation here.
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Chelsea

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Dumbo

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POTUS Sculpture (Borem Hill)

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Homage to Nadar Project

Last Tuesday and Wednesday I photographed performance artist LuLu LoLo as part of my Homage to Nadar project. I shot over 2000 frames in about 30 different expressions. There’s a lot of editing to do. But there are many great shots, including a few below.

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Suburban Geometry Series (Santa Maria)

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"Blow Out," 2009

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Mixed media: poop smear on turtleneck onesie. Edition of 1.
© 2009 Max Miles Takeuchi
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Painting in the Window

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Speaking of Books...

Virtual books, that is. This Japanese recycling and “ecology zoo” promotion website has some very cool 3D popup books which you can view at any angle. It’s something that would really scare W.
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Alex Katz in His Studio

I had the honor of shooting some of Alex Katz’s work for an exhibition catalog. While I was there, the artist let me snap a few shots of him working in his studio. It was quite a thrill watching him make his iconic, colorful work.
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LMCC Custom House Reading

Not a stadium crowd, but a fun night at the U.S. Custom House for LMCC’s final reading of our residency. Me, John Talbird, and LuLu LoLo read pieces from work created while in residence. Photos courtesy of Sean Carrol of LMCC.
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Photos of Photos

An Araki+Moriyama spread on the sofa...
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Ralph Gibson crotch shot...
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Another Pierrot Test

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Pierrot Redux

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These are from a project I’m doing with LuLu LoLo, an hommage to Nadar’s photos of Pierrot.
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Buddha Project

Lens Culture has an interesting feel-good webpage inviting viewers to submit photos of the buddha wherever he may be. This shot was taken during the Chinese New Year at Mahayana Temple on Canal Street in Chinatown.
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Statue of Liberty and Eliason Waterfall

On the way to Ikea Redhook via the water taxi. Lady Liberty and Olafur Eliason’s waterfall on Governor’s Island.
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Me & Muna

An extra while finishing up at Alex Katz’s studio...
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Opening in Chelsea

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Musée d'Orsay

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Musée Rodin

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The Americans Turns 50!

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One of the most influential photography books of all time is coming out in a 50th anniversary edition. No doubt about it, Robert Frank had a major influence on me. I view his balance of detachment, social commentary, and poetry nothing short of pure genius. The guy has/had eyes! And he never kept still, always moved on and innovated. The Americans is like Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, groundbreaking, iconic. Neither artist was foolish enough to rest on his laurels or repeat the past. That’s why they ended up being great.

Some of My Favorite Photos from the Book
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He was one of the first to use the flag compositionally, exploiting its graphic form in ways many Americans found offensive and unpatriotic.
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He photographed everyone, black, white, latino, rich and poor. Part of Frank’s gift was that he wasn’t dogmatic or biased. He seemed to treat all subjects equally, with dignity and an open mind.
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He was a formalist as well as a poet. This picture taken on the East River flashed in my mind when I was writing a couple of scenes in my novel about the ferry and Ellis Island.
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This picture is both compositionally and emotionally perfect. The elevator girl’s expression, the blur of the woman in the mink stole, the silhouette of the portly man with glasses, plus the angle of the composition adds movement and tension. The positive and negative spaces are just amazing, an interesting jigsaw puzzle, seemingly reconfigurable.

More on the 50th
For more commentary on Robert Frank and this anniversary, go here, here, and here. 2009 will bring a travelling exposition, starting at the National Gallery.
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LMCC Open Hours

A few pictures of Donna, Lulu, Brendan, Alison, Mike, Monika, Clive, and Mary from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Open Hours on Friday. Save the date for the real Open House on April 26-27. For more about the other artists, go here.
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Montgomery Mall (Hommage to Ragubir Singh)

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Framing—what else is street photography about? Windows within windows. Rectangles within rectangles. A grid of views. A bento box of subjects.
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Raghubir Singh, who took the above picture, is my favorite Indian photographer. He made a great book of pictures called A Way into India, which featured the Ambassador, India's ubiquitous version of the VW, as object and frame for his peregrinations through his colorful homeland. Check out some of his pictures here.
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Vijay in his New Studio

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National Gallery

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Propaganda Photos: Which Came First—Chicken or Egg?

If you haven't been following Errol Morris' indefatigable research into which of Roger Fenton's two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death came first, it is definitely worth a read (part1, part2, part3). Like a one-manned JFK assassination inquiry, Morris tries to refute Susan Sontag's claim that the photo with the canon balls on the road was staged, "a fake." This whole subject is fascinating for photographers like me who strive to document reality, but know that aesthetics often trump when the subject is mundane. Here are the two photos in question. Now, which was shot first and why?
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Dumbo Arts Festival

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Bill Sullivan MTA

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A fascinating, democratic series of passengers leaving MTA turnstyles.
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