Proper civilizations depend upon the rule of law, in my opinion.

It might not work as a general rule, though, because China is an impressive civilization, for sure. (I guess Russia is too, if for Dostoevsky alone.)

But since the times of Hammurabi’s code, the idea of a system of justice has long been at the heart of most idealistic, successful societies. (I’d include America on that list, though our justice system is heavily imperfect.)

Even when they’re functioning, laws require distinctions to be made, as well as decisions.

This act or behavior is permitted. But that one is not.

Sometimes, though, things get murky.

Even the idea of pornography, sexual imagery that is considered illegal for traditional methods of media distribution, is unclear as a category.

Famously, the US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart declared in Jacobellis vs Ohio that the standard was essentially: “I know it when I see it.”

Which means what?

Penetration is always porn, but boobs alone rarely are? Female frontal nudity is considered more acceptable than male, and why is that?

(Or the amazing “Broad City” girls can talk about pegging, on cable TV, but probably couldn’t use the word fuck.)

Speaking of laws, we’ve almost always kept our content SFW here at my APE book review column. (Safe for work.) Rob asked me to run it that way from the beginning, and then was open-minded as I experimented with showing a bit of nudity and light sexual behavior stuff here, years ago.

But it didn’t feel right for the audience, and we tightened up the restrictions ever since.

(One time, I specifically remember using my finger to tactically cover a hippie-dude’s-johnson in a photograph.)

I don’t mind the restriction.

I don’t think the column would be better if I could show sexually explicit photo books.

I’ve made plenty of “Boobs Sell Books” jokes over the years, but adding intercourse would not make my articles better, in my opinion.

One photographer, Luciana Pampalone, reached out to me recently to see if I’d consider reviewing her exhibition catalog.

She said the pictures were erotic, not porn. And there were enough images for me to present that lacked out-right nudity. (Another photographer sent me a sample recently that was too hardcore, and I had to politely decline.)

The self-published catalog accompanied an exhibition that took place from December 2017 to January 2018 at The White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton, New York.

The pictures were made over a long range, dating back to 1990, so clearly it’s a subject of passion for the photographer.

An opening statement tells us she’s had a long commercial and editorial career, draws inspiration from Helmut Newton and Deborah Turbeville, and that she “depicts women as strong central figures in her work, allowing them to take on the roles of heroine or harlot, captivating onlookers and creating complex black and white compositions.”

Now, I’m not going to photograph the nude shots, as is our policy, but there are more than enough that suggest, but don’t show. As to the ones that are too racy, there are a few that contain women’s breasts, a few that simulate a soft-core orgy, and a whole set showing women’s butts through fishnet stockings.

I’m not sure what I think of these pictures, honestly. They’re not exactly to my taste, but they are well made.

Who is the audience for work like this?

Art that titilates?

And what about the context, that they’re made by a woman instead of a man? Nudity is problematic for men these days, and rightly so in my opinion, but what are the rules that apply to female photographers?

(Kind of like Sofia Coppola can get away with opening “Lost in Translation” with Scarlet Johansson’s butt in see-through panties, but a male director probably wouldn’t make that move these days.)

To be clear, I kind of like this booklet. It’s honest, as the word erotic is on the cover.

It’s in the title of the project, for heaven’s sake.

If you don’t like those sort of things, you won’t look. And as the artist is a woman, the politics align with 2019.

It’s certainly something different, which I try to offer you on a semi-regular basis.

Stay warm out there.

Spring will be here soon enough.

Bottom Line: Cool catalogue of 30 years worth of erotica

If you’d like to submit a book for potential review, please email me at jonathanblaustein@gmail.com. We currently have a several month backlog, and are particularly interested in submissions from female photographers so we may maintain a balanced program.

Did you hear about the guy who choked out a mountain lion?

Some Colorado-mountain-runner-guy got attacked by a cougar, from behind, and fought back.

The second I read it, (the story made national news, and you’ve likely already heard about it by now,) I thought, “I bet that guy does Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.”

Or martial arts of some sort.

I should know, because last week, within 24 hours, I found myself put in two potentially neck-crushing choke holds, (a rear-naked and a guillotine,) and then a proper sleeper hold, in which I woke up on my knees, facing the mat.

(I hadn’t realized quite how vulnerable our necks are, but there you go.)

We always minimize the risks out there, else how would we leave the house each morning to drive a car, trust the subway, or ski down the hill? (Three people have died at Taos Ski Valley since New Year’s.)

But back to the dude who killed the mountain lion.

Can you just imagine how that scenario played out?

You’re running along, you’re fit, you’re strong, and then you hear something behind you, and it’s the VERY WORST CASE SCENARIO, as it’s a FUCKING MOUNTAIN LION.

It starts biting and scratching you, trying to eat you.

TO EAT YOU.
RED ALERT.
INSTINCTS, KICK INTO OVERDRIVE!

Now, how many of us, even those who go to fighting class on a regular basis, would have the peace of mind to get behind the mountain lion, to take its back, and then crush its windpipe and choke it to death, while practically tasting its fur in your mouth.

Your heart is racing, your mind is thinking, “this can’t be real, this can’t be real.”

But it is real.
You’re choking out a fucking mountain lion, and then it’s dead.

It’s over.

You’ve won. You fought for your life, and he’s dead on the ground.

Now, a story like that is interesting now matter how you tell it. I opened by telling you how it ends, and still we’re fascinated.

I didn’t drag it out, teasing with tension.

Does the mountain lion prevail?

Does our intrepid hippie-mountain-runner-martial-artist-guy get eaten alive, a cougar baby nibbling on his jawbone?

But that’s not how I told it. I lead with the ending…

We all enter the pop-culture-continuum at different times, but I remember when I first saw “Reservoir Dogs,” as an 18-year-old, and was introduced by Quentin Tarantino to non-linear narrative.

Just last week, in this very column, I said that a good book should have a beginning, a middle and an end.

Just last week.

But today, I think it’s important to consider the alternatives, like non-linear, repeating, or reverse narratives.

It’s easy to think of movies, like “Pulp Fiction,” “Memento,” “12 Monkeys,” or “Looper.” (Man, what is it with Bruce Willis and weird-ass narratives?)

Given how many books I see, sometimes it’s fair to wonder, is the artist thinking two ways here?

That’s certainly what I came away pondering, after looking several times at the excellent photobook “After the Fact,” by Tony Fouhse, published by his company, Starlight Press, in Ottawa.

(This is the winter of the Canadians, I guess.)

The cover is a dream-scape in silhouette of black on blue, with ravens and a tree and the sky.

This will be a repeating motif within, birds, and while I was OK with it, maybe it did seem a bit obvious.

Open it up, and there’s a globe. The North Atlantic Sea is prominent, and I think it’s a pretty damn smart way to ground the story.

Then, a disaffected portrait of a tall guy crammed under a short ceiling.

Then bleak, cold, yet undeniably beautiful landscapes of what I take to be Canada in Winter.

We start with a smart quote by Bertolt Brecht about singing in the face of darkness, which I took to mean that we need to make our art, to speak our peace, to sing our songs, in particular when we think things are going to shit.

(And of course many people regard our current situation as a particularly dangerous one, relative to the Post World War II era.)

Then, some redacted text, and then a slew of excellent images.

Like I said, the bird theme is a bit on-the-nose for me, and I normally don’t use that expression. But I’d also like to ask that people stop including pictures of trash on the street or sidewalk. (We had them in last week’s book too.)

What do you say, folks?
A moratorium on garbage in the street pictures?

But other than that, the photography is spot on.

The portrait of the dog in the muzzle?
Amazing.

The yellow brick road, the policeman’s gun, the bloody bed, the sad portraits, the public places, it all adds up to a feeling of dread and impending doom.

Impending doom is the same as maybe-not-yet arrived doom. You can feel it coming, but is there still time to affect the outcome? To hope?

There’s a guy in camouflage unfurling a wire of some sort. Mennonite women, a power-company worker at night, more sad portraits, dead-people feet, power washing a building, and then that little girl looking right at you, from the side, like a young-21st-century-Mona-Lisa.

Towards the end, the book’s title page, “After the Fact.”

Then, another quote, this time from Martin Heidegger, “The possible ranks higher than the actual.”

Idealism before realism, I suppose?

Next, another portrait of a guy looking away, (behind the hoodie,) the birds, and a cold Canadian landscape.

A last credits page, which quotes Joe Strummer, “The future is unwritten,” and states, unequivocally, “This book is a work of fiction. The real people, places and incidents portrayed are used fictitiously.”

The end.

Is it, though?

If you open it in the back, and start here, doesn’t the book make just as much sense?

You get opening quotes for context, and you’re explicitly told to see this as a work of visual fiction.

It opens similarly, motif wise, (birds/landscape/dude portrait,) and this way, it includes the title page in the beginning, where it would normally be.

Plus, it’s just so easy to flip-it back to front, given its design.

There are narrative waves and repeating motifs that work just as well this way, and even better, you can reverse direction whenever you want.

It’s a good reminder, perhaps, that we not get too rigid in our thinking. That books should be made this way. Or that.

Book making is a creative endeavor, and I’d like to hope we can continue to be surprised.

As as the Clash dude said, “The future is unwritten.”

Bottom Line: Smart, bleak Canadian story with a reverse narrative

To purchase “After the Fact” click here

If you’d like to submit a book for potential review, please email me at jonathanblaustein@gmail.com. We currently have a several month backlog, and are particularly interested in submissions from female photographers so we may maintain a balanced program.

 

I used to know Keanu Reeves.

It’s true.

Back in the 90’s, I worked on a couple of movies in New York, just before moving back to New Mexico. One of them, a major Warner Brother production, was called “The Devil’s Advocate,” and starred Keanu, Charlize Theron and Al Pacino.

I got hired as an office intern, was soon promoted to office PA, and then got a second promotion to location assistant. (Before I was fired in winter so they could hire a much more qualified person for the job.)

Because I answered the phones, made the coffee and took out the trash well before shooting, I was around to hear the gossip, pick up on the undercurrents, and generally make myself a part of the furniture.

Surprisingly, my fellow intern Sarah, who’d just gotten a film degree at NYU, told me she wanted to date Keanu, and then she went ahead and made it happen.

So it wasn’t that odd, in the end, to hang out in Keanu’s trailer and shoot the shit while he smoked, or keep him company while he was waiting for an actress to come in and test opposite.

The strangest thing was, though, that Keanu Reeves was insanely charismatic in person. He would do voices, and crack jokes.

Personally dripped off the guy.

But then, as soon as the cameras started rolling, he’d become stiff and wooden, and his line-readings made me cringe more than once. (Once a day, maybe. He was really bad.)

It was odd to see him behave one way IRL, but then freeze up, or shut down, once it was time to do his job.

At that point, in 1996, he was still known as the cute guy from Bill and Ted’s who couldn’t act for shit. (And I had to admit the reputation seemed appropriate.)

Then, after “The Matrix” came out, all of a sudden, he was a Sci-Fi action superstar, and his subdued on-screen persona made more sense. It’s hard to re-create the feeling of awe many of us had, seeing that film for the first time, but it obviously never would have worked with another actor.

Seemingly, after that, he went into another fallow period, and got super-into martial arts, so much that he directed a film about a Tai Chi fighter, and acted in an awful Japanese sci-fi Samurai film that ended in mass Seppuku. (Mercifully.)

Fast forward to 2019, and the world is eagerly awaiting the third “John Wick” movie, because Keanu managed to reinvent himself yet again, and his laconic, restrained acting is just perfect, when surrounded by the absurd, almost campy, but extremely-well-done action filmmaking.

While we all grow and change in life, (hopefully,) it seems to me like Keanu Reeves just can’t be understood outside of the context in which he’s seen.

Is he really a better actor as John Wick than he was as Neo, or Kevin, the literal son of the Devil?

I’m not so sure.

And what about that amazing personality of his? Does it change one’s perception of his wooden on-screen-persona to know he’s a hoot as a real guy?

I’m not sure of that either.

But my point today, if you haven’t gotten there yet, is that context really does determine most of how we receive our information, and make the judgements that imbue us with individuality.

It’s why you’re more likely to trust the same story published in the NYT over Fox News. (Or vice versa, if you’re conservative.)

Or why some people, who watched “The Apprentice” for many years, came to believe that Trump was a competent, intelligent, corporate titan. (If you haven’t, read the New Yorker piece on Mark Burnett, which offers a pretty fascinating context in which to view our President.)

Photo books, of course, the subject of this long-running column, rely heavily on context. In fact, I find myself telling students that if they don’t consider it properly, they have no shot at making a good book, much less a great one.

The way a photo book releases its information, teases out its narrative, and gives you what you need to know is as important, in my opinion, as the pictures themselves.

It’s what really separates an exhibition, in which you look at the pictures, (most likely big,) and then try to understand them as objects, from a book, which as I’ve written many times is an experience.

In fact, I was just talking with a book-designer-friend about the fact that even the number of pictures included will determine if a viewer looks at a book in one sitting, ingesting the entire message, or flips through a few pages, puts it down, and then picks it up another time and does the same thing.

Think of a photo book as a story, with a beginning, middle and an end, and the whole process makes more sense. (Unless you love non-sensical, non-linear video art, in which case, go crazy and make whatever weird shit you see in your head.)

I mention all of this because today, I spent some time with “A Habit of Self Deceit,” a self published book by Lorena Turner that showed up in the mail, unsolicited, last fall.

It’s important to me that we now show women and men equally here, as it allows us to present a much broader perspective than when I was mostly showing guys, because that’s what showed up in the post. (Let me say it again here folks, outreach is necessary to make change.)

But just as I don’t normally plan the themes that carry over from week to week, I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been a bit critical of some of the books I’ve reviewed by female photographers.

I doubt anyone else has picked up on it, (and my review of Josée Schryer’s book was glowing,) but as this is a column that embraces criticism, I guess it’s fair game.

This book fits the theme, because the individual images, and the style in which they’re shot, are pretty generic for 21st Century fine art photography. Just as I lambasted the Hartford-MFA-style earlier this month, there is a certain type of dry-but-poetic color photography that makes projects indistinguishable from one another, and I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Based purely on the pictures, I’m not sure I’d review this book.

But as I said before, just looking at the pictures misses the point.

“A Habit of Self Deceit” is sad, and as soon as you get into the narrative, that context envelopes the experience like a shrink-wrapped house.

It opens with a short statement in which the artist admits to having contemplated suicide, almost calling a hotline for help, before abandoning the idea. (The piece also misspells Diane Arbus’s name, which I took to be intentional, but what is that supposed to imply?)

The writing is immediately followed by a series of bleak-light pictures featuring things hidden, covered, wilting, and alone.

Boom!
Emotional tenor established.

There are more textual interruptions, each very-well-written, which share that the artist was estranged for her adopted mother for years, but now she visits her in a home for the aging and demented, as her mom no longer knows who she is.

We read a story about how her Dad is likely lonely, living on his own in a new home, and how he visits his wife each day. The story tells us that his own mother married her rapist, and that the family history is not happy in general.

The heavy tale weighs down the pictures, throughout, in the best possible way.

And then, at the end, there’s another text piece that discusses the book’s title, which derived from Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. (Obligatory intellectual street cred established.)

Add it all up, and I really enjoyed my time with this book, even though it’s sad, and made me feel glum until I took nice walk in the sun.

If I open it up again, and randomly pick a page, I immediately think, “That picture’s nice, it’s good, but it’s nothing special.”

Really though, so what?

In my personal and professional opinion, I judge the entire book not by it’s cover, but by its gestalt.

And this one is pretty good, all things considered.

Bottom Line: A poignant tale of family and loss

To purchase “A Habit of Self Deceit” click here 

If you’d like to submit a book for potential review, please email me at jonathanblaustein@gmail.com. We currently have a several month backlog, and are particularly interested in submissions from female photographers so we may maintain a balanced program.

 

For whatever reason, I’ve never been to Sweden.

(Though I’m sure it’s a lovely place.)

I’ve been to Copenhagen, though, so the sum total of my knowledge of Scandinavia amounts to smoking insanely good hash in the commune of Christiania, watching my brother annihilate my friend Pappy in several games of backgammon.

(Yes, he beat me too.)

Something tells me, though, there’s more to Scandinavia than hippies and board games.

I may not have been to Sweden, it’s true, but my neighbors down the street growing up, the Kappy’s, were half-Swedish, and proud of it.

This is probably the first time I’ve thought of the Kappy’s in twenty years, but Alma Kappy was 100% Swedish, and her extremely-blonde children carried on the stereotype as well.

I vaguely remember that Ed Kappy bought a Porsche at some point, as he was a successful orthopedic surgeon, but I’m absolutely certain they always had a Volvo in the garage.

Always.

Back before the internet, you learned about a country from International Day at school, (it was a thing,) the Encyclopedia Britannica, or from whatever heritage pride your neighbors exhibited.

(The Su’s across the street were Chinese-American, the Carducci’s to our left were Italian-American, and the Whiteman’s across the street from them were Jews.)

Discovering Volvos (and then Saabs) was a way of understanding that there were other places in the world, far from New Jersey, that made cars with different shapes and features. (The Swedes, apparently, were safety-conscious.)

Our cars may have gone from oversized hunks of metal with no seat belts to computers that do everything while we sit there numbed out on Spotify and Sirius radio, but their main purpose is still the same: to take us places.

Out here in the mountains of New Mexico, a car is pretty much a necessity.

Other places, though, cities with good public transportation and ubiquitous Ubers, can make car ownership seem a bit silly these days. (So say the Millennials.)

When I lived in Brooklyn, early this century, I had my trusty old Chevy Blazer, but almost never used it in daily life.

Good Ol’ Blazer brought me and Jessie to Jersey for the occasional weekend getaway, but other than that, I mostly just moved it across the road on street cleaning days.

Honestly, the whole city-car-ownership thing was less stressful than I’d imagined it would be, but then again, I never drove in the city.

Too damn stressful.

Mostly, Blazer sat there on Diamond St, waiting for me to come say hello.

I guess lots of people in Brooklyn park their cars and forget about them. Forlorn, alone, these pieces of vehicular sculpture await the observant passer-by who might ogle the proper Datsun, GTO, or Camaro.

The kind of passerby who might have a camera, perhaps, (not just a smartphone,) and who might appreciate the inherent beauty of, oh I don’t know, let’s call her Molly.

Molly got waxed and everything, put on her best face, but what does her owner do?

That’s right.

He bought a fuckin’ bike!
The nerve a this guy!

I name my cars, and would be willing to wager that many, if not most of the cars inside Douglas Ljungkvist’s “Urban Cars,” (the fun and cool photobook released last year by Unicorn in London,) are named too.

Orange Crush.
Yellow Betty.
British Blue.
The Undertaker.
Blue Velvet.
Zebra Benz.
Super Bee.

(That last one was real. The rest I made up.)

I’ll cut to the chase on the review here, and just tell you that I really like this book.

They made some great design choices, like the theme of printing a color complimentary to the car’s color on the background page.

Or the regular use of multiple image panels to break up the narrative, in addition to a few short quote pages, including this one by Jonathan Ive: “One person’s car is another person’s scenery.”

There’s an introduction by a guy named Dean Johnson, but they don’t tell you who he is, and I didn’t know. There’s an implication he’s European, (he says so,) and funny enough, Douglas is a Swede himself, so the whole story on Brooklyn cars takes on an international flavor. (When I turned the book over, I discovered a Dean Johnson bio on the back cover.)

Beyond the great design, smart pacing, and well composed photographs, I’m inclined to believe these pictures also serve as something of a time capsule.

Their purpose for being “saved for the future” as a book makes sense, as they lock in likely an 80 year stretch of global car design, and place it firmly in a place in time.

Namely, Brooklyn, New York, USA at the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

I know much of it was shot around my old neighborhood, and adjoining Williamsburg, and recognized the place, in particular the Army Navy store on Manhattan Avenue, which is fronted here by a sweet, two-tone cream 80’s Thunderbird.

There’s lots of graffiti art, and other small tags, including the genius “Rent My Mom.”

Now that I think about it, the severe, geometric, modernist compositions are definitely a nod to Scandinavian design, and probably help the book stick the landing.

I love that the car makes and models are listed at the back, and that there’s a multi-image panel of Volvos as a shout out as well. Hell, the one old sports car I couldn’t place was actually a Saab, so the Swedes won the day here for sure.

(Actually, the Chinese own Volvo now, and Saab doesn’t make cars anymore, so maybe we’ll call it a draw.)

Bottom Line: Awesome, fun book of car portraits in Brooklyn

To purchase “Urban Cars” click here 

 

If you’d like to submit a book for potential review, please email me at jonathanblaustein@gmail.com. We currently have a several month backlog, and are particularly interested in submissions from female photographers so we may maintain a balanced program.