I've tinkered with making Polaroid panoramas, but I've never done it as well as Paul Schiek.

More of Mr. Schiek's elliptically delicious work can be seen at the Stephen Wirtz gallery site.

Angel, Chile
by Marcelo Montecino.

Check out Chilean Photographer Marcelo Montecino's incredible collection of vintage latin American photographs.

A photographer friend who shall go unnamed recently confided, "I'm bored with all the photography being posted to blogs out there."

Perhaps he's browsing in the wrong places...
Michael Daush
Aaron Tukey
Jesper Ulvelius
Yamasaki Ko-ji
Johannes Romppanen
Max Berggren
Jessie Chan Norris
Travis Ruse
Youngna
Alain Astruc
Dana Gentile
Eliot Shepard
Gustav Almestål

Tonight I attended a meeting of the New York Burger Club. There were no rules or minutes, just discussions of burgers and burger joints and of course eating of hamburgers. I was the new guy but everyone in the group was welcoming, friendly, and curious. "How do you like your burgers?" was always the opening line. My preference for well done was oohed and ahhed with none of the anticipated distain. Apparently I'm the first in the group to take my burgers this way and that was ok with everyone. One guy confided that each member of the group was on his own quest. Indeed everyone seemed to know everyone else's preferences for thickness, juciness, bun size etc. At one point after a long discussion of meat to bun ratios and whether the meat in tonight's meal had been frozen at some point one of the girls and turned to me and asked if I was ok, worried that it might be too much. "Are you kidding this is my internal dialog every time I pick up a hamburger," I answered. She and the others seemed to relax a bit. I could tell I was amongst friends. Photos from this evening can be found here.

About half of our beach snapshots look something like this.

I recently followed a link from the always interesting Proceedings of the Athanathius Kirshner Society to RAW Vision Magazine. Raw Vision is new to me but it seems it shouldn't be as each issue seems to hold something of interest... Whether it's Nigerian Cement Sculpture, Loy Allen Bowlin, Afgan War Rugs, Prison Tattoos, or Mediumistic Art, they've got my number.

As an aside, my wife on magazine subscriptions: "Somebody has to rethink the whole renewal process. I could do without the threats."

We're in our car sitting on Atlantic Avenue trying to cross the street into Fort Green, but people keep running the red light preventing us from crossing.

  Me: Aaarg. I think I have road rage.
  Jenn: We don't drive enough for you to have road rage. You have to earn it.
Another car runs red light.
  Me: Bastard.
  Jenn: It's not road rage if you're smiling.
  Me: (frowning) Son of a Bitch!
  Jenn: More like a road meow.

If you were a little punk rock kid in Texas in the early 80's you probably loved the Judys. Their albums are all out of print (I have the vinyl) but now through the magic of the interweb you can listen to their albums without your mom throwing them out. Start with Washarama (My mom destroyed 3 different copies of this one). Sounds almost cute now. (Links are realaudio only unfortunately.) Don't you think Guyana Punch is due for a good cover?

Now that it's less freezing it's time to do some gallery hopping. These are some photo shows I've want to see:

Paris in the 50's looks fun.

The always great Martin Parr has a show at Danziger Projects.

Hard not to get excited by a Michael Wolf show. More Michael Wolf on his own website. His images never fail to amaze.

If I make it uptown I'll check out the John Szarkowski at MOMA. I had never heard of Szarkowski until this piece on NPR.

The show titled 1968: All in a Dream intrigues. It's a collection of amateur photos from 1968 collected by a guy who worked at a photo processing lab in Boston.

Zabriskie is showing Tomoko Sawada's Schoolgirls. Her website.

Mark the new Sallie Mann show as another must visit.

I've been seeing an awful lot of images taken of taxidermied animals lately, but this image by Richard Barnesjumps out (at Hosfelt).

Anthony Lepore makes interesting images and I like his nice big prints but I'm not sure I love the work... they feel a bit cold to me. Emotionless.

I'm curious about the new Nan Goldin exhibition (no imageS). She's a photo hero of mine although I haven't been compelled by her recent work as much as I was by her early work... That said, is there anyone who could keep up that level of intensity through a career?

As an aside why are gallery websites so god awful, so.... 1995. And why so few images from your exhibitions? Here's a humble suggestion: 1) publish your homepage as a blog using movabletype or some other easy to manage blogware. This would allow you to stay up to date without a fuss and keep your audience up to date via rss 2) get good digital images of your artists' work and publish galleries using iphoto or aperture (this will give you professional easy to navigate, easyt to update galleries).

Jen Beckman gets all this already. Her site a) incorporates a blog b) has an RSS feed. My only suggested improvement would be to link images from a specific artist to a gallery by that artist (right now clicking images takes you to a page with only that image on it which is a bit disorientating)...

Anyway that's it. See you out there. I'll be the guy with the stroller and the camera.

Damn Sister Wynona Carr can sing.
p.s. Also why are Elvis covers in German so much fun? Actually I like almost anything covered in German. And I mean anything .

Today was my grandmother's birthday. Her name was Olivia Aurora Perez. This is a picture of her at the age of 6 in her Sunday best on her father's ranch. She never liked the picture and it was 8 years before she would have another one made. This image originally included 4 of her 10 siblings. Each of the 4 kept their torn portions of the picture until their deaths. Her curse was watching 9 of the 10 die before her. Often she would dream the deaths a few days before they would happen and wake up with eyes full of tears clutching her well worn rosary. She would whisper her own death was near each time she said goodbye to me. As a child I would cry, but after 25 years I stopped believing her and then of course it happened.

My grandmother spent a good portion of her life in the kitchen a fact of which she was most proud. When I dream of food I am always sitting at that small table prodding her (between bites) for another story of her father the bandit/revolutionary or laughing at one of her sharp observations. One of her brothers would say his 25 years of marriage had gone by "in ten minutes." "Ten minutes under cold water," she would whisper. She only finished the 6th grade but would always joke that she was more educated than my grandfather who only made it through the 4th. Her penmenship maintained the studied care of a child and sometimes she would use a ruler to keep her lines straight.

I was her favorite. She made no effort to hide this from my cousins or my brothers. I could do no wrong by her even though I managed to flood her house, crash my grandfather's car (at age 4), and nearly blow up a neighbor's workshop with homemade fireworks.

I look at her eyebrows and nose every day in the mirror. She smelled of rosewater and flour and she had the softest hands. I miss her.

Ever since we caught the trailer for Duck Season (Temporada de Patos), by the Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke a few months ago, Jenn and I have been eager to check out the film. Last night we finally did. The frenetic trailer misrepresents the movie somewhat. The film about boredom of pre-teens stuck in an apartment without electricity on a Sunday afternoon is presented with bone dry deadpan humor that recalls Aki Kaurismaki or Jim Jarmusch. The camera is stationary, the dialog slow , and the humor often found in the tiniest of glances. Boredom is hard to pull off on screen unless you plant a few ticking time bombs to keep the audience hooked and while there are plenty of ticking bombs here, they don't get planted until rather late in the game. By that time about a quarter of our audience had already checked out (the lady next to me was snoring loudly about 15 minutes in). Still there are plenty of laughs here (and ultimately some real emotion) especially if you are patient and speak Spanish (much gets lost in translation). Add strong cinematography, a winning cast of young actors, a great soundtrack and you have a fun little movie. Check it out if you are in the right mood.

Saturday was beyond nice here in New York City. You know it's a nice day when they wheel out the great-grandmothers from the doorman buildings and let them warm in the sun. Not too hot. Not too cold... No humidity. Yesterday it rained which was fine because it was warm friendly rain and then today I walked out and I could feel it in my bones, no doubt about it: winter has passed. Hello spring.

Powder blue poly suit with deep bell bottoms. Check.
Cool pose. Check.
Earth shoes. Check. (essential)
W i d e & high open collar shirt. No tie. Check.
Vest. Ummm.
Show off your garden. No. No! So not cool. Stop.

Ever wonder what the city might look like if it had not been touched by Robert Moses, modernists, or Donald Trump? If so I recommend The Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugh Ferriss. The illustrations in this manifesto published in 1929 are a tour de force of imagination. The writing is passionate and odd. An example:

BUILDINGS like crystals
Walls of translucent glass.
Sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.
No Gothic branch: no Acanthus leaf: no recollection of the plant world.
A mineral kingdom.
Gleaming stalagmites.
Forms as cold as ice.
Mathematics.
Night in the Science Zone.

Whenever I feel bad about our physical world (a trip to Times Square or up 6th Avenue will do it for me), I dissapear into this book.