Patriarchy and the photo not made.

This past weekend I happened upon a parade in Greenwich village called the Festival of the Chariots, one of India’s most ancient and popular festivals. It was cacophony of color and sound and I knew it would be a great location to work on making some new Touching Strangers. I rushed home and then back to Washington Square Park with my 8 x 10 camera. One of my main objectives was to cast a young Indian girl dressed in a sari ( to me they often appear as visions of loveliness) into a Touching Strangers photograph. As I have said previously on this blog these photographs are really challenging to make and trying to procure an Indian teenage girl, most likely raised in a traditional conservative culture to make a portrait touching another person proved even more challenging than you can imagine. After one awkward attempt where a girl backed out at the last moment and four more rejections, I finally found a group of girls accompanied by their mother who consented to my request. I now had one half of my photograph and went in search of the other. I quickly found two men that were tourists from Sweden, both handsome, blond and fair, and somewhere in their late twenties, who were up for the task. At this moment I start to work quickly, posing my subjects, framing the shot, and finding my focus. Behind the ground glass the scene I had created was of two beautiful girls with gorgeous hair and skin wearing vibrant purple and blue dresses standing in front of two handsome chaps with there arms folded around the girls, all in front of a large tent made of textured black tarp. I felt that feeling of magic that occasionally happens when making these images, that this performance was special and unique for all of us. At the very moment that I was ready to close the shutter a man that had been standing on the periphery burst into the scene and grabbed the girls out of the frame. I was devastated - it was over. Apparently this man was a part of the group that these girls came to the festival with and though he was not a relative felt that he had the authority to overrule the consent of the mother. This is patriarchy at its core. The distance between the behavior of that man and the horrible injustices inflicted by men on woman the world over is not very far at all...


Read about the experience from the mothers perspective here.

Here is the mother's digital shot of my sabotaged image.
©Dhanny Palma 2011

Cue

Regular Readers of my blog probably know I am a big fan of both BBQ and Southern/Soul Food. This weekend some of the best Pitmasters converge on New York City for the annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in Madison Square Park. Seth & I sampled some seriously delicious pulled pork and bbq ribs from pitmasters representing both Mississippi and Southern Illinois. If you are reading this today and love BBQ you might want to make a little detour...
On our recent drive down to Florida we made it a point to sample regional southern food. The highlight was the Lima Bean stew at Ernie's in Charleston, SC. It was one of the most smoky and flavorful stews I have ever had. The proprietors were incredibly welcoming and as sweet as the sweet tea accompanying our stew.
Not to be missed if you are in Fort Lauderdale is Tom Jenkins BBQ. The line wraps around and outside the door at this place and I found their bbq well worth the hype and the wait.

Ernie's




Tom Jenkins BBQ

Leviathan by Anish Kapoor

At the Grand Palais in Paris.
P.S. This was strictly a virtual visit to France.



images © designboom

I'm ready for some. You?

Illuminance - Photographs by Rinko Kawauchi

If you haven't seen the work of Rinko Kawauchi - check out her show at The Gallery at Hermès. Her work is really pretty and very seductive. Kawauchi uses a palette of soft pastels and illuminating light to create her lovely photographs. The new book of the same title by Aperture is really spectacular. Not only the photographs but the thoughtful pairings and sequencing as well as being beautifully printed make this book a must have.

Illuminance:
Photographs by Rinko Kawauchi
The Gallery at Hermès
691 Madison Avenue, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 751-3181
Friday, May 20, 2011–Saturday, July 16, 2011

Li Songsong

The best show of paintings I have seen in a while is by Li Songsong at The Pace Gallery here in NY. The paint bursting off of the canvas and the gradated panels of color all contribute to this unique and beautiful work. It's up through August 5 - catch it if you can!

additions to This Grand Show

see the project here.

Review of Shen Wei’s Chinese Sentment in this week’s The New Yorker

The New Yorker

GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN: ARTS

SHEN WEI

The photographer, whose radiant still-lifes of fruits and vegetables steal the “Moveable Feast” exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, shows color portraits and landscapes from his recently published book, “Chinese Sentiment.” Returning to China after years living abroad, Wei looked for traces of the country he remembered, so most of his pictures were made in towns, far from the bustle of Beijing. The work has a hushed, intimate quality, and not just because most of his solitary young male and female subjects are seen half-naked and at home. Even the landscapes are rich with emotion—loving and keenly felt. Through June 4.

Through June 4

COONEY
511 W. 25th St., New York, N.Y.
212-255-8158
danielcooneyfineart.com

Chinese Sentiment Launch Party and Book Signing

Hope to see you all tonight – Rain or Shine!
Please join us tonight May 24 from 6-11pm in celebration of Shen Wei’s new monograph, Chinese Sentiment, edited by Lesley A. Martin of the Aperture Foundation, with an introduction by Peter Hessler.
Tuesday, May 24 · 6:00pm – 11:00pm
Location
8-E Charles Lane NY, NY (off of Washington between Perry & Charles Streets)

Zach Galifianakis

Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion is one hour well spent. This guy is so funny, strange, and smart. I would say that his standup is comparable to a modern day Steven Wright. It is in many senses meta-comedy, somewhere between standup comedy and performance art. His appearances on talk shows are always a welcome diversion for me and I'd like to say right here and now, I love you Zach.

2011 NY Dance Parade-Goer

by Charles Boyd (my partner Seth's Dad /father in-law)

car wash, series 3

Matchmaker Matchmaker?

On Wednesday I made a Touching Strangers portrait at a beach in south Florida. This is around the 60th image I have made from the series. I should emphasize that they are incredibly difficult and challenging to make and I am pushing myself in new and interesting directions. Well, this last shot may have resulted in a rendezvous or even a romance for all I know, as the couple I paired ended up sitting together after I had moved on - and from what I could tell seemed to have left the beach together at the same time. This may be all purely fantastical thinking on my part (who knows perhaps they just liked talking to each other) - but it does touch on one of the themes of the work which is the very real human potential to connect to any random stranger. Did I mention that this was a nude beach...

Cupid Victorious
Caravaggio
1602-1603

Bruce Wrighton

I was recently exposed to the work of Bruce Wrighton at the Laurence Miller Gallery booth at AIPAD this past March. Working primarily in downtown Binghamton, Bruce Wrighton made street portraits with his 8 x 10 view camera that show the city's blue collar inhabitants with sensitivity and an brilliant eye for color. Making the work even more compelling is that the are imbued with the patina of the 1980's. The work has only recently been brought to light (by Laurence Miller working with Wrighton's widow) and the very talented Bruce Wrighton unfortunately died at the young age of 38 back in 1988. There is also a book titled At Home recently published by Only Photography of his humanist portraits and work from two other projects that I highly recommend. It is likely to sell out soon (as Only Photography does a small edition size of 500). To top it all off on the book's cover is an awesome photograph of a game room with the arcade game Donkey Kong in the corner.

Wrighton in Red...

Vava Voom

Dear Readers,
Please think about attending or donating to Visual AIDS for their Spring Benefit on Monday, May 16th at The Park. I will be given an award as an honoree and I would be extremely grateful if my readers would contribute to this really great organization. See the attached invite for more information.

on the road again...

Driving down south the next few days to make some new work.

Charlie Chaplin

Somehow I missed out on Charlie Chaplin movies until now. I have enjoyed the films of Buster Keaton and others from the silent era but until last week I had never seen a Charlie Chaplin film. That changed for me after seeing Modern Times. It's a great film! Chaplin is so funny, smooth, and he really embodies the comedic physicality that is so often attributed to him. The social realism of Modern Times might make you yearn for Hollywood to make more films today about economic and class struggles - which seem to always fall by the wayside in favor of the fantasies that they are selling.

Aaron Huey

I recently discovered the work of Aaron Huey. I learned that Aaron walked across the United States a few years back and what an all around amazing guy he is by watching his lecture at the Annenberg Space for Photography. You can watch his lecture here.
His work on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is important and really incredible.

Spring has Sprung - Easter Parade 2011

Touching Strangers - new work