Mix of the Week

And Everything Looks Worse in Black and White

01 Farm to Market - The Slow One
02 The Decemberists - Eli, The Barrow Boy
03 The Format - Sore Thumb
04 Miles Davis - Flamenco Sketches
05 Manu Chao - Mentira
06 Trip Shakespeare - If You Miss Me
07 Eva Cassidy - Autumn Leaves
08 Mae - Embers and Envelopes
09 Wilco - Pieholden Suite
10 The Mars Volta - The Widow
11 Smashing Pumpkins - Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
12 Wyclef Jean - Take Me As I Am
13 Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
14 Jesse Sharp's Quintet - Mike's Tune
15 Paul Simon - Kodachrome
16 Nick Drake - One of These Things First
17 Rufus Wainwright - Between My Legs
18 Vienna Teng - Harbor
19 Scholars of London - Or Vien Ca
20 John Legend - Ordinary People

Become Your Dream

While working on my graffiti photo essay and poking my head (& camera) into various corners of the city, I came across a series of James De La Vega's paintings in Spanish Harlem. I found him at his store in the East Village and unfortunately couldn't really interview him in the context of this particular project (he staunchly asserts that his work is art, not graffiti), but it was still nice to attach a face to the murals.

Photo Essay in Today's Spectator

I Guess I Have to Stand

Razor Wire, Branch, and Pigeon

Mousehole, Queens

Loose Goose

Mix of the Week

Can't Tell If This Is Fantasy Or Culture Shock Or Remnants of a Golden Age

01 Seu Jorge - Changes
02 Sugarcult - Saying Goodbye
03 New Grass Revival - Deeper and Deeper
04 The Magnetic Fields - Washington, DC
05 Kirsty MacColl - Autumngirlsoup
06 The New Pornographers - All for Swinging You Around
07 Dar Williams - We Learned the Sea
08 Alison Krauss - Stay
09 Taking Back Sunday - This Photograph is Proof
10 The Velvet Underground - Femme Fatale
11 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cold Night
12 The Kinks - Mr. Reporter
13 Fiona Apple - Angel (Acoustic)
14 The Get Up Kids - Long Goodnight
15 Le Tigre - Deceptacon
16 Bright Eyes - The Movement of a Hand
17 Belle & Sebastian - I'm a Cuckoo
18 Modest Mouse - What People Are Made Of
19 Nick Cave - Far From Me
20 Beck - Girl

Watch Your Step

You Say Tomato...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- In a March 17 story about protests planned against the Iraq war, The Associated Press erroneously identified Jeremy Straughn as a political socialist at Purdue University. He is a political sociologist.

Zoom

The Getty, Los Angeles.

Somewhere Over the Midwest

Broadway At Night

Focus is overrated.

Mix of the Week

I Got Me Some Cash, I'm Headed Back to L.A.

01 Mae - Sun (Acoustic)
02 Nick Drake - Place to Be
03 The Decemberists - Oceanside
04 Trip Shakespeare - Gone, Gone, Gone
05 Joni Mitchell - California
06 OK Go - Don't Ask Me
07 Of Montreal - Girl From New York
08 Q and Not U - LAX
09 Belle & Sebastian - Step Into My Office, Baby
10 Jet - Get Me Outta Here
11 Brand New - I Will Play My Game
12 Jon Brion - Here We Go
13 Yo La Tengo - You Can Have It All
14 Green Day - Holiday
15 Juanes - Damelo
16 The Youngbloods - Let's Get Together
17 The Clash - Lost in the Supermarket
18 Foo Fighters - Learn to Fly
19 The Rocket Summer - This Is Me
20 The Hissyfits - California

"Your Hate Is Not Welcome On Our Campus"

Photos from a lecture Norman Finkelstein delivered on Columbia's campus this evening entitled “Israel and Palestine: Misuse of Anti-Semitism, Abuse of History.”



I mind my own business when I'm on photo assignments. This is mostly because I like working alone (I firmly believe that almost all journalists are deeply antisocial, and in fact only speak with other people in order to better make fun of them in an appropriately cynical fashion), but also because it's simply more efficient to get in, take the necessary photos, and get out. I am also a firm believer in the 'more is better' principle, which means that I walk away from any given assignment with somewhere between 100 and 600 photos.



This evening was no different. Norman Finkelstein's visit to a heavily Jewish campus only recently recovering from last year's MEALAC controversy was, unsurprisingly, not well-received. There were protestors lined up outside of Columbia's Lerner Hall, and the Roone Arledge Auditorium was filled with students wearing fliers that read "Norman Finkelstein, YOUR HATE IS NOT WELCOME ON THIS CAMPUS." Photo ops were plentiful, and my soul rejoiced.



Ordinarily, at the end of each assignment I go through the hundreds of photos and pick 10 or so that I really like and send them in to The Spectator. One runs, and the others disappear into the ethers of my hard drive. From now on, however, I think I'm going to use this blog as a place to post photo runoff (instead of at SpecBlogs, where five photos of one subject quickly become tedious).



So, voila. The Daily News' photographer may have taken better photos than me, but those won't be circulated until tomorrow morning...

Overheard at the Oscars

"I do have some sad news... Björk could not be with us tonight. She was trying on her dress and Dick Cheney shot her."

Gallery Hopping

I was pretty horrible first semester about taking trips to art galleries around the city, but now that I'm actually working at one, I figure I ought to at least make the most important stops.

Static Museum Exhibits of Note:



MoMA:

John Szarkowski: Photographs
February 1–May 15, 2006

John Szarkowski was actually the MoMA's Director of Photography from 1962 to 1991 and helped to establish Lee Friedlander, Gary Winogrand, and Diane Arbus during his tenure at the museum. I was already inclined to like Szarkowski because he's my first semester Photo I professor Thomas Roma's mentor and friend, but loyalties aside, the exhibit is wonderful and certainly worth the trip. While I suppose one could argue that photography is in itself primarily an exploration of light and shadow, Szarkowski in particular pays detailed attention to shadowplay and also has a keen eye for framing strong horizontal and verticals lines. I realize that sounds incredibly inane and unimpressive, but go with me on this one.



Met:

Robert Rauschenberg: Combines
December 20, 2005–April 2, 2006

Robert Rauschenberg's 67 combines at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are bizarre mixed-media collages involving clocks, sneakers, baseballs, old newspapers, and other sundry esoteric items (like goats, for instance). Considered a member of the Neo-Dada movement, Rauschenberg is a successor of one of the worst artists in existence. Even though I tend to stay away from any art that somehow associates with Dadaism, I thought these were all fairly interesting and even meaningful (unlike, for instance, a signed urinal). At the very least, they're colorful and captivating. But if you're still bored, play I Spy with the explanatory placard's media list... can you find the can opener and the shoelace?

Embarassingly, the Met and the MoMA are the only two major galleries I've ever visited in this city, but I'm making it a personal goal to stop by the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and the Frick Collection by the end of the semester.

Mix of the Week

Taken Out of Context I Must Seem So Strange

01 The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic
02 Sufjan Stevens - Chicago
03 Ani DiFranco - Fire Door
04 Beck - Qué Onda Guero
05 Broken Social Scene - Lover's Spit
06 Damien Rice - Woman Like a Man
07 The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle
08 Simon & Garfunkel - A Hazy Shade of Winter
09 Tori Amos - The Wrong Band
10 The Black Crowes - She Talks to Angels
11 Lauryn Hill - Every Ghetto, Every City
12 The Format - Wait, Wait, Wait
13 The White Stripes - The Hardest Button to Button
14 Iron & Wine - Jezebel
15 Paul Simon - Kodachrome
16 Fiona Apple - Window
17 Rufus Wainwright - Between My Legs
18 Sheryl Crow - Mother Nature's Son
19 Coheed and Cambria - A Favor House Atlantic
20 Kylie Minogue - Come Into My World