smile, and wave

i'm easing into wednesday, a little later than i had planned (i've been having a little trouble sleeping).

maybe i was in the mood for something warm and sweet--i decided to listen to the jobim songbook (i always start with track 11-- ella swinging desafinado) while i brewed some coffee and checked emails and news.

after a time, oscar peterson's "wave" came on...i've heard this before of course, and i've posted different versions of this song before, but i'm not sure it has sounded more beautiful to me, than at this hour, in the half-light of this apartment.




(sweet photo of oscar peterson, too)

happy wednesday...

building conventions and conversation

abores laetae. liverpool england. via diller scofidio +renfro.

in an ongoing effort to use my free time wisely, i've peppered my calendar with several events related to architecture week.

as an outsider to the profession but someone with a growing interest in preservation and planning (and an abiding love for this town), these lectures represent an opportunity to hear the architects/artists/designers articulate their intent for a project, in the language of their discipline. i always expect there to be moments where i'm overwhelmed by the architecture jargon, but i always hope to come out with a notion or two for how to re-consider a structure or a space.

the week's festivities kicked off this morning, with the center welcoming elizabeth diller (of diller scofidio +renfro). her presentation focused on the firm's new york projects, from their earliest site specific art installations (which culminated in a 2003 mid-career retrospective at the whitney) to the grander architectural collaborations (recently, the high line and lincoln center). she spoke very little if at all about the projects' architectural or structural details, and more about their interest in the conventions of theatrical space and "visionality" (the culture of vision, "framing" vision, how architecture can allow or deny vision).

i've attended community board hearings for the preservation of the high line and felt like i "knew" that project pretty well from a preservationists' perspective, and i've had the hallmarks of the "new" lincoln center pointed out to me on a recent tour, but it wasn't until today, after listening to ms. diller and looking at the drawings and animations that i started to understand and appreciate the intent of the firm's work: to gather an audience through design that is both theatrical and ultimately democratic.

the team also presented designs for other architectural projects, some accepted (the museum of image and sound in rio), others rejected (the national museum of african-american history in dc), and installations like these joyful trees, in liverpool.

this bioengineering experiment created for the 2008 liverpool biennial is meant to turn the idea of public parks on its head. 3 trees within a grove were planted at a 10 degree bias on turntables that were set to rotate at different speeds. sometimes the trees kiss, or brush up against each other. as you stand in the space, the trees move past you....





this is growing on me...
what do you think?

***

tomorrow at AIA:

9-11AM
parks and recreation commissioner adrian benepe, discusses nyc parks...
parks & recreation manages 29,000 acres (14% of nyc), including nearly 4,000 properties ranging from washington square and east river parks to community gardens and greenstreets. custodian of 2.5 million trees, parks commissioner adrian benepe has emerged as a design catalyst in the bloomberg administration.

6-8PM (exhibition opening): context/contrast: new architecture in historic districts
new york is often imagined as a perennially new city, yet in the four decades since the 1965 passage of the new york landmarks law, it has become one of the strongest forces for historic preservation in the country. context/contrast asks how the commission’s charge of ensuring “appropriate” new architecture in historic districts has allowed neighborhoods to evolve without endangering the essential character that contributes to their public value and makes them worth protecting.

and, wednesday:

a tour of greenwich south
a lecture and guided tour of a newly installed exhibit in zuccotti park, depicting a visionary future for greenwich south. the area below the world trade center site, sandwiched between battery park city and the financial district, offers both immense challenges and unique opportunities for intervention and design, from subtle to grand, in scale and intention. leading design consultants from the architecture research office and beyer blinder belle will guide participants through the exhibit with bold provocations for the planning of lower manhattan.

autoportrait: willy ronis

willy ronis, autoportrait, 1951.© willy ronis, rapho eyedea via liberation.fr

i love willy ronis' self-portrait.
is it me, or is his shoe on the wrong foot?

i hadn't heard of mr. ronis, until i read of his passing in the new york times. but the images he's captured are very recognizable. there's definitely a population of new york girls, of a certain age (mine), before email ruled the way we wooed, that has wishfully penned a ronis postcard or two (or absent the nerve to send it, taped it to a wall or mirror somewhere in her apartment).

le petit parisien. 1952.

les amoureux de la bastille. 1957.

ah, those were the days...

***

i appreciate his inspiration and his intent:

“It is my contemporaries who most interest me, ordinary people with ordinary lives,” he told The New York Times in 2005, when a retrospective of his work at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris was drawing enormous crowds. “I have never sought out the extraordinary or the scoop. I looked at what complemented my life. The beauty of the ordinary was always the source of my greatest emotions.”

“I never took a mean photo,” he told The Associated Press in 2005. “I never wanted to make people look ridiculous. I always had a lot of respect for the people I photographed.”

link to the full nytimes piece here...

and a very nice video, via france 24....

a way of seeing...

helen levitt
new york, c.1939

via the laurence miller gallery.

i visited a museum with a cousin of mine (i can't quite remember which one--museum, that is) but i do remember the distinct moment she strolled through one of the galleries, barely looking at what was on the walls and said plainly that photography didn't do much for her.
she didn't appreciate it on the level of "art."

i didn't really pursue this with her--seemed to me, like any art, photography moves you or it doesn't. but it stung me that an entire discipline could be so easily dismissed. i also didn't have the language to defend it, and i was disappointed with myself on that score.

recently, i interviewed a comedian, who is also a photography enthusiast, and i asked him a very basic, but perhaps unkind question. the kind of question he's either been dying for someone to ask, or that he's been avoiding: what is it that you love about taking photos?

he told me it was a legitimate question, but tough, and that he'd get back to me a couple of days. i was on a deadline, so it turned out i wasn't going to be able to pursue this with him. i was disappointed, but completely understood. how do you explain photography? the things you see and feel that compel you? for some of us, if you haven't been forced to articulate it, and you care to get it "right," it doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

last night, i was reading the introduction that james agee wrote for helen levitt's collection of lyrical photographs, a way of seeing. and he gives me some of language that i've been looking for, speaks to some of the questions and feeling i've been trying to sort through, and offers much else to consider. if you are so inclined...

here are a few snippets:

"In every other art which draws directly on the actual world, the actual is transformed by the artist's creative intelligence, into a new and different kind of reality: aesthetic reality. In the kind of photography we are talking about here, the actual is not at all transformed; it is reflected and recorded, within the limits of the camera, with all possible accuracy. The artist's task is not to alter the world as the eye sees it into a world of aesthetic reality, but to perceive the aesthetic reality within the actual world, and to make an undisturbed and faithful record of the instant in which this movement of creativeness achieves its most expressive crystallization...

It would be mistaken to suppose that any of the best photography is come at by intellection; it is, like all art, essentially the result of an intuitive process, drawing on all that the artist is rather than on anything he thinks, far less theorizes about.

Almost no photographer whose work is preeminently worth looking at has managed to produce more than a small fraction of the work he was capable of, and the work, as a rule, has remained virtually unknown except to a few friends and fellow artists. This is true to a great extent, of course, of artists who work in any field. Yet distinctions, standards, and assumptions exist and have existed for centuries which guarantee a good poet or painter or composer an audience, if generally a small one; and these are not yet formed in relation to photographs..."


read the full essay here...

music (tuesday)

daru oda, via her myspace page...

i want to go to a bar and listen to a little live music.

i haven't heard live music at all this year--not one show! i was on a nice little tear last year (the feelies, sondre lerche, lani hall, shelby lynne, sondre lerche, she and him, sondre lerche) and had to pass on a couple of good ones this year (m ward at the apollo, maude maggart). i feel the need to get back.

i will be heading down to the rockwood music hall tomorrow night to check out daru oda's set is at 11pm. i heard her perform a few years ago with her pals, norah jones and sasha dobson ("the sloppy joannes"). she played bass and sang mostly backup/harmony (and did so beautifully. you can hear her singing lead, though, on hawaiian love song. bad video quality, but you get the gist). to be honest, i'm not loving the solo tracks that i've heard on her myspace page, but i am hopeful things get kick-ier at the hall. the dred scott trio goes on at midnite, and if i'm also feeling kicky, i may stay for that.

if you're similarly in the mood tomorrow night, or another, here's a link to the rockwood site.
and if you have better ideas, please do send them along.

shoot (me)

at the armando corral salon in the meatpacking district...
hope they will be happy with the (other) photos....

worth noting?

brooklyn. may 23, 2009.

thought for the day...

photo by erstwhile model and jewelry designer, michele quan (need i mention that i've been a fan of hers, for just about ever?) . via mquan.com.
and thank you to my sister for sending the link my way.

PIYM: lumberjack flapjacks...

thinking about making pancakes from scratch this weekend? seems like a nice way to start the fall season (aka, football season), no? cold mornings, warm kitchen...

jess has a new recipe and video for "lumberjack day," and even though accuweather is telling me the weekend will be a little summery here in nyc, i may try it out. i am a hungry girl these days. we ate the stack that jess made for the shoot--they were substantial, yet light, and a touch sweet. we ate them cold (!), with real butter and some exceedingly tart pomegranate syrup, the kind of tart that sends you a-wincing. the contrast (inspired purely by and for the photo shoot) is the right idea. but i'm sure a more traditional pairing, with a sea of maple syrup (and a side of crisp bacon) will be very good, too.

see a fine picture: simon roberts

camel estuary. padstow, cornwall. 2008.
photo via klompching gallery.

devil's dyke. south downs, east sussex. 2008.
photo via klompching gallery.

salcombe sands.devon. 2008.
photo via klompching gallery.

i will have to head out dumbo way, to see simon roberts' photographs at the klompching gallery. the thumbnails on the site are a pretty introduction, but i want to see the details and feel the effect of these in their proper, large format.

if you're interested in seeing them too, the show will run through october 24.

the klompching gallery
111 front street, suite 206
brooklyn, nyc 11201
gallery hours: wednesday — saturday, 11am—6pm

***

more about simon roberts via his site...
more images from his "we english" portfolio here.