Editing is letting go of even some of the good ones.

Separation is strange. I've been with the same, wonderful man since I was 19 years old. At 39 he decided that I needed to stretch my wings for reals.

I'm moving next weekend to a tiny one bedroom apartment in the museum district. I've never known bachelorhood and hoped I never would, but alas, here I am taping up boxes and ruthlessly editing out books I want to keep and books that need to find a new home. Special books I'm giving away. Chicano studies books and liberal political books will go to Sedition Books. Vegetarian cook books to the ex (I'm not a vegetarian, never have been, and god give me strength I never will). The rest to charity since I don't want to waste Half Price Books' time.

What's left are books on: photography, architecture, film, rock and roll, boxing, dictionaries, my Stanislaw Lems, my Borgeses, Treasure of The Sierra Madre and the Jim Thompson book Henderson gave me for Christmas. I'm also toting the Richard Meltzer books my treasured friend and film buff KB lent me including the hilarious little tome he co-authored with Nick Tocshes called Frankie Part I.



Speaking of KB, and-for-the-record, I'd like to correct my last Weegee blog (you knew I had to slip him in, right? Right.) which incorrectly stated that "Naked City" was his only photography book. KB proved me wrong by lending me "Weegee's People", 2nd printing on DaCapo originally put out in 1946. It's novel-thick with low quality images on every single page and short captions that tell a story of a city. I'm quite shocked at how similar my own zine is to it. In fact, first thing I'll do after I move is put out the third edition. If I can get five or ten zines done soon, I'll look for funding to put out a compendium, similar to his.

Man, hear I go yammering about Weegee again.

Look the man wasn't a genius in terms of IQ points, but Arthur Fellig the photographer-popularly-known-as Weegee paved the way for other low brow photographers like Diane Arbus and Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and Nikki Lee. Oh, and punk photography in general. And what I mean by that is he paved the way for low brow photography to be accepted by the grand poo pah of photography: art photography.

Weegee was ugly, poor, and obsessed with the blood and guts of his city. As a photojournalist, he got his hands dirty and wasn't afraid to break the sacred rules of journalism. He'd pose people and rearrange crime scenes for maximum impact. He wrote his own often lengthy captions and was even occasionally given license to write the articles that accompanied his photos in the newspapers he shot for. That was unheard of back then.

I finished up Weegee and Naked City by Lee and Meyer. Its a short book with a few plates but mostly words. The book analyzes the characters and circumstances that paved the way for his only photography book Naked City and his pioneering photo exhibit at the New York Photo League called Murder Is My Business. It's a terrific and easy read with a fresh approach to the man and his work. I was delighted to find out just how self aware he was of what he was doing. He the man himself is imbedded in his photos - sometimes literally - because he WANTED to be famous. He wanted people to know his name and made no qualms about it. A left leaning press was of course going to bring him on as an ally with his everyman appeal. He gave that movement street cred as much as he gave it a visual style. And being no dummy, he used this unique (but earned) respect to further his transparent goals of 1) fame, and 2) legitimacy among the fine art cognicenti. Frakkin' genius.

Weegee may have been opportunistic (how's that a bad thing again?) but he also took complete ownership of his photographs, and I'm not talking about copyrights (who cares?). I mean the man walked the walk and talked the talk. He came from the same mean streets of NY that he shot and is a prime example of the kind of photographers I admire most: those who live their art. Photographs aren't just images - that's a cynical point of view if there ever was one. Photographers are performance artists first and foremost. Self awareness to the point of obsession - 'Look at me looking at you'. We hunt and kill what we eat. Because it's only fair.

And further to the low brow point, he mastered the use of flash like nobody's business. Flash use has always played second fiddle to natural light sources or studio light that mimics natural light. But here's the truth art photography is too precious to embrace: it's HARDER TO MASTER flash. Certainly much more difficult to master than natural diffuse light. Which is secretly why high brow art hates it's use there I said it. I'll even take it a step further and declare flash-lit black and white journalistic/punk/street photography is as American a treasure as jazz or blues or dare she say it? rock and roll.

So hail to you, Weege. You punk.

Radio Interview with Weegee

I was poking around looking for information on Speed Graphic cameras, the camera synonymous with one of my fave photographers Weegee. Anyways, I stumbled upon this really great site dedicated to preserving sound interviews with notable Americans, among them a 1945 radio interview with Weegee just after Naked City came out (and unearthed in 2000). The site, called Sound Portrait, is pretty neat in it's scope - I like it's emphasis on the everyperson's document - Weegee is one of the few 'famous' people on there. Most, I like to hear the voices, the accents, the lingo and slang of the era. Seems like no one's got an accent anymore...