Building A Girl

After my post yesterday I received an email from Kevin Purcell in Seattle pointing me to some related clues online. Turns out the letter I received from Marie Martinez was just the tip of the iceberg. This "young girl" has been sending out similar letters for years under various pseudonyms.

The letter below, for example, is almost identical to mine in handwriting, layout, and phrasing. But it's from 2010, by "Suzanne Lopez" at the same address in Paris.

Sincerely, Suzanne? WTF? 

But it goes back even further. Kevin sent a reference to similar letters being sent in 2008 from the same address, this time to a musician. Turns out all sorts of creative types have received them from various authors in recent years. 

OK. My bubble is thoroughly pricked. I knew I wasn't special before, but now I realize I'm especially unspecial receiving this letter. But the question remains, why? I'm beginning to think the signature/jpg theory is unlikely. It seems too crazy. Plus, how does a musician sign a jpg? But what is it then? Is it a devoted autograph hound? Or someone with a mental pathology like a pen-pal stalker? And what's up with the 16-year old schoolgirl routine?

Kevin suggested I GSV the address, which I'd already done. It's a residential location on the outskirts of Paris. The red dot.

Here's how it looks at street level. 



Tough to tell what's going on in there. Just a plain building. Is the building a girl? 

Oh well. I should probably just let this go but I can't. I'm too curious. Has anyone out there received a similar letter? Any idea what's going on? Are there any readers in Paris (Kramer? Patrick?) who'd be willing to drop in on 75020 Boulevard Davot to do some sleuthing, then report back? 

If you can dig up some info and send it to me in a nice handwritten letter from France, I'll send an autographed print. Thanks in advance.

It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal

I received the sweetest letter a few weeks ago. It was from a young girl in France. Somehow she had seen my photos, liked them, and wanted an autograph. 

I don't get asked for my autograph very often. Just about never, to be precise. And in a hand written letter from Paris? How cool is that? I was smitten. 

The letter came with a blank index card. Not only did I sign the card but I decided to send this nice young girl a signed print, just to show my appreciation for her appreciation. Like I said, I was smitten. I tucked the autographed card and photo in a mailtube and shipped it to France. Then I carefully refolded her her nice letter and placed it in a folder for safekeeping. My first fanmail souvenir! 

It turns out I'm not the only one to receive a letter from Marie Martinez. Today on Facebook a discussion thread by Jon Feinstein brought some others out of the woodwork. Toni Greaves, Dina Kantor, Brea Soulders, Amy Elkins, etc. All had received inquiries lately for their autographs to be written on blank sheets of paper. Some were sent as emails, some as letters, some from a guy named Neal and at least one (to Ben Alper) from my very own Marie Martinez. The scam, apparently, is that someone is out there applying these autographs to jpegs lifted from the internet, then selling them as signed prints.

Wha..? Is that possible? Can you make a sellable print from a shitty 72 dpi jpeg? Maybe you can if the buyer isn't very detail oriented. And maybe you can count me in that camp because some details in the original letter escaped my notice at first. Like the fact Marie Martinez never referred to photography or any specific image or where she had seen my work or any details at all really. It's a very generic letter, the type of letter that might easily be sent to many people. I wish I had noticed some of these undetailed details the first time reading the letter. But I hadn't.

There are few worse feelings than realizing you've been played. I'm a sucker. Marie Martinez, you got me. I thought we were BFFs but to you I'm just a JPG. 

I'm writing this post in the hope that you won't get others. Are you out there somewhere reading this? Are you real? What are you going to do with that signature? And what about the silver gelatin print I sent? Can you find a use for it? If you want more copies just print out a jpg from the web and apply the signature below. You probably won't know the difference.

-B

Peaches En Regalia

For those who enjoyed the recent interview here with Jeffrey Ladd, here's a hot tip. Ladd has taken over the Hatje Cantz blog for the month of October and is posting daily book reviews there through the end of the month. He's pulling material from a pretty wide range of sources, new and not so new, well known and not so well known. And it's all done in his inimitable, erudite style. If you miss the old 5B4, this might be the next best thing, at least for three more weeks. Highly recommended. Check it out.

ISIS: The Happy Years

With its call for a new Muslim Caliphate based on strict Sharia law, a series of well publicized civilian beheadings, and a multi-pronged guerilla war aimed against most of Western civilization, ISIS has established itself as a near universal bogeyman across the globe. Whether or not the entire group relishes the role of pariah is open to question, but it has come to apply to all its members. Sadly, even the group's photographers have gotten caught up in the fray.

ISIS: The Happy Years, currently showing at The Ritz Carlton in Dubai attempts to change all that. Drawing from the personal archives of ISIS members, the group show puts the recent run of bad publicity firmly in the crosshairs. ISIS photographers —both professional and amateur—were asked to submit work based loosely based on the theme "Happiness". The submissions were ruthlessly edited into a final grouping of 55, printed and framed locally, and are on display through November 15th, 2014 in the hotel's central ballroom.

The material pulls from an astonishing range of sources. Everything from tranquil desertscapes to Instagram selfies to funny camel teeth to teenage bedroom interiors to post-modern multimedia are represented. Clearly this is not your New York Times' ISIS. It's the new creative ISIS, and the show is meant to carry their artistic flame forward in a spirit of fresh exploration and inquisition.

The bare faced executioner Shakir Wahiyib is a common subject in the show. Abu Ka-Al Qam's friendly snapshot (shown below) is one of the standouts. Qam adopts the Instagram platform to lend his work a grassroots, confessionary air. The reference to Alberto Korda's Che photo is direct yet not heavyhanded. The soft pastel palette and matching beards disarm the viewer's natural skepticism, while Wahiyib's black locks are allowed the freedom to flaunt convention and make the viewer reconsider truly candid forms amid chaotic circumstances. The lettering on Wahiyib's epaulets, written in an unknown script, references Duchamp and Spiegelman.

Mohammed Al Ur-Iknit's portrait of Wahayib fronting paramilitary troopers is another favorite (shown below). This photo, displayed wallsize in the ballroom, depicts the brutal warlord in stasis with arms at rest. Ur-Iknit appropriates Baldessarian notions of obfuscation, specificity, and graphic forms in a world of disguise, while paying homage to traditional Islam proscriptions against the graven image.

The show contains many such winners. Unfortunately, at least from the standpoint of the show's organizing committee, the timing of recent events could not be worse. Miscoordination among ISIS managers resulted in the exhibition being scheduled just after the group's most recent campaign of unchecked brutal slaughter. It's the same old story. Sometimes within a loose terrorist network, the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. Trapped behind a seemingly endless series of negative headlines, ISIS: The Happy Years has received very little critical attention to date.

This is understandable, since gaining positive reviews for any artistic exhibition is tough enough. But that task is magnified when the leader of the free world publicly states his intention to hunt down and destroy your group. That's the sort of negativity which has a chilling effect on potential collectors. 

Compounding the problem is the partially self-inflicted wound of shifting monikers. Is it ISIS? Or ISIL? Could the group please make up its mind, choose one, and stick with it? Perhaps the lack of clear group label reflects internal dissension. Or maybe it's just a translation problem. Whatever the case, branding is important, and the lack of clear identifying tag threatens to dissipate artistic momentum. For this show at least, the name ISIS appears to have stuck. But one wonders, for how long? For that matter will the group even be around still in 10 or 15 years, considering their universal antipathy, lack of regional allies, and disputed sovereignty. One wonders if some other group might just supplant them eventually, destroying any possible artistic legacy. 

The chips may be falling against ISIS. It's safe to say they are not yet taken seriously by the art world. But if the political ambitions of ISIS completely overshadow its members' photographic endeavors it would be a shame, at least in this critic's book. ISIS: The Happy Years is well worth your time if you're in Dubai. Who knows when another show like this will come along?

Oscar Palomares: What Was He Thinking?

Oscar Palomares is a photographer based in Barcelona. More of his work can be found on Flickr and Facebook.

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Catalunya Square, Barcelona, 2013

This picture was taken last year during the major holidays of Barcelona. In these days in that square you could find differents tents. One of them was "defense of the animals" (basically dogs and cats). Some people were there with their pets and some of them were receiving bags. I observed these elements and the relation of the animals with the people and I thought that maybe something interesting could go, and I started to work for a little bit of time.

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Ciutadella Park, Barcelona, 2013

I like to go to Ciutadella Park. It's one of my favourite parks in Barcelona. A lot of times (especially on the weekends) something is happening there. In this case, a Sunday evening, the end of a party day for children was taking place. A great globe with a girl inside soon would rise to sky.

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La Habana, 2009

Some years ago, I was in La Habana for a month. I was doing pictures for me and for a Chilean magazine. I wanted to do something about the daily Habana. One day I was in the neighborhood of Centro Habana and I found a great group of girls training for volleyball.  I saw the two girls with similar clothes warming up, doing similar movements and I started to take some pictures. It looked nice.

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Catalunya Square, Barcelona, 2014

This is one of my most recent. It was taken last July, in the surrondings of Catalunya Square. I like to come here. Some times you can find interesting situations. Normally in the summer —over the last few years in the evenings— this place is full of Russian tourists waiting a bus to their hotel. Many of them are enjoying holidays in other close beach locations, and they come to Barcelona for a trip day. I saw the girl with the mobile, the jacket in her arm with the same yellow color as the mobile, the shirt... A lot of yellow... And I started to play with the elements. I took some frames until the girl went away with a friend.

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Sants, Barcelona, 2012

The traditional Sant Medir celebration (also known as "the sweet celebration") every year fills the streets of Barcelona neighborhoods with candies and delicacies. In the picture some children try to take all the candies they can that are thrown from horses and carriages. Like a lot of people, I usually find much more interesting here on the margins than in the parade itself. In this case I thought that the situation could have potential.

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Ronda Universitat, Barcelona, 2012

I found this situation one winter evening when I was close to coming back home. I was taking pictures all evening and was thinking to take the last (until the sun went down). And I found this. Click! Click! Click! Click! And then the girl, her mother (I think), the bus, and the ballon flew.

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Raval, Barcelona, 2012

One summer evening I was exploring the Raval streets, trying to found something interesting and I found one boy. He was playing with his basketball. I remember that I had a little time for try to equilibrate the image and play a little bit with the composition... We said goodbye to each other with a smile...

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Raval, Barcelona, 2012

Another picture taken in the Raval. I like this neighborhood. Photographically I find its narrow streets really interesting. The light in them, the mix of cultures (maybe it's the most multicultural neighborhood in Barcelona), the life... That Saturday I got up not too late and I was doing pictures for two or three hours. I liked the situation and I worked on it for a while. The final result was a bit better than I expected. Or rather, the fact I waited maybe made it better.

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Cathedral Square, Barcelona, 2013

Finally, one of my favourite pictures. I shot it in Cathedral Square, a place which I really like to come to. When I do my usual photo‐walking through the city center, it is rare I don't cross here at some time or other. I like the environment. Much life is here and you never know when you can find something interesting.

As you can imagine, I like complex images (also simple!) —to do them and see them with different elements working at the same time. In this case I tried to be as close as possible (as I do almost always) and integrate the maximum of possible interesting elements... And the final result I don't dislike. I'm explaining all this now, but in the moment everything is more unconscious, more intuitive.