New Orleans (Woman Eating), 2004 Collectively, the Shimmer books describe a chronicle of American experience circa 2004–2006, and the world presented, by and large, is a world of isolated figures, near-anonymous strangers moving past one another without much connection. By Michael Almereyda Arranged on a shelf, or stacked flat, the twelve slender books comprising Paul […]
Yes, we don’t so much like these “gross” ones, the odd color ones and the misshapen ones. By Doug Rickard There is an inversion taking place here in that which is Wrong. Yes, an inversion taking place as elements and features, constructed from “normal ones”, are twisted into creatures. Replace and deface, erase and retrace, […]
From the Working series By Gregory Crewdson A family of three carefully unfolds rolls of sod onto their barren front yard transforming it into a small domestic oasis. A man ascends a bare, undersized tree in an absurd attempt to prune its dead leaves. A young boy sits on his Big Wheel holding a toy […]
By Doug Rickard The “Epic Experiment to Break Ed’s Spirit” would begin when little Ed Templeton was just a wee young lad. A cast of characters were put into motion that would attempt to affect and influence Ed, to “deform” him and to warp and bend his pure and unblemished shape. The roles that they […]
David Hockney smoking, Bridlington, 2008 If one is properly exposed to it and assuming that one has an “eye” for these things, Juergen Teller’s “aesthetic” becomes very recognizable. Not quite so much as to harm the effectiveness but much. Yes, in his case, this is a good thing. If pressed for a brief description, one […]
The graveyard shift is no doubt a motherfucker. By Doug Rickard, ASX, June 2010 The graveyard shift is no doubt a motherfucker. You try to force your body and its natural clock over to an artificial one but it never really adjusts so you just live in a weird sort of phantom world […]
By Doug Rickard, ASX, April 2010 As the summer night falls and the crickets chirp, the sky slightly aglow from the street lamps, the stillness comes. And the stillness of the summer dark lays over the land like a warm blanket surrounding a child and it becomes a paradox. The blanket gives the impression of […]
Shootin’ range traps, “Holy F-K’s” and claps in THE GREAT UNREAL. By Doug Rickard, ASX, March 2010 Into the wind, and the never-ever-end of the great-wide-open beckons… so off you go and it gusts in ear and it whispers, “have no fear”. Down the road you fly… pulled forward as the dust lights […]
St. Rest M.B. Church, 3056-3058 West Polk St., Chicago By Camilo Jose Vergara An excerpt from Camilo Jose Vergara’s postscript to HOW THE OTHER HALF WORSHIPS (Rutgers University Press, 2005): For four years I had been attending Sunday services, Bible school, choir rehearsals, revivals, and anniversaries in the nation’s poorest urban neighborhoods. I attended services […]
While we as viewers are aware that Goldberg is as present in the scenes as the characters themselves, the teens seem to forget about him and allow him to record their most private moments. Raised By Wolves as a Non-Fictional Multi-Media Narrative By Sarah Wichlacz “It’s not like you can go home and watch TV.” […]
Untitled by Diane Arbus, New York, Aperture 1995 By Elsa Dorfman Originally published in The Women’s Review of Books, January 1996 Best known for her portraits of people who live on the margins of society – giants, midgets, freaks, transvestites, nudists – Diane Arbus is an undisputed master of photography. Her work is in every […]
Rwanda, 1994 From its size to its content, Inferno feels like a cenotaph, a monument dedicated to the memory of the victims. These are not the victims of natural cataclysms, these are the victims of human greed for power, violence, stupidity, and of man’s destructive impulses. By Bruno Chalifour, originally published in Afterimage, May 1, […]