/ i shot a portrait of google creative lab's the five a few months back at the blind barber in alphabet city. they were the minds behind the brilliant & innovative super bowl commercial, parisian love. the photograph was used for an article that appeared online at the advertising age website yesterday. you can check the article out here.

new show coming up in january at the redhouse in syracuse new york. my underwater photographs will be on display and i'm very excited for the show, especially as my dear friend gillian is in it as well! if you're in the syracuse area this winter, please do stop by to see it

i was standing with my sister over the patch of grave

and we were speaking about some very important things.

the boy is doing better at school. the youngest already chatters.

if you aren't mean to people, they'll be good to you.

the apartment's freshly painted. we bought a table, chairs.

a neighbor stops by sometimes, and says, 'your place looks nice.'

the plant that mother liked so much is in bloom.

i wanted to bring flowers but was afraid they'd wilt.

the air, tree, stone and earth all listen as we talk

and only the one for whom we bring this news can't hear.

but perhaps she stands behind us and smiles at life's affairs

and whispers, 'i know, my darlings. no need to tell me any more.'

/i was standing by anna kamienska, from the book goodbye to mother, 1959

/ beautiful new home!

park slope, brooklyn september 2010

/ persona, ingmar bergman 1966

'the fear of death and dying is not fear of the event but of the discovery that comes with death: what will i go through as i die and after my death? this fear is born of the everyday personality that we inhabit for this lifetime. it sees that death will be an end and fears it. but although your personality and form may end at death, the essence of you will not.

the fear of death is a recognition that life is fragile and that nothing lives for ever. what we have to change is the perception that this is a bad thing, for in fact it is not. the experience of death is like a filter that helps to purify our perceptions of death in order that, when we return in another life, each of us may live better lives.'



/ from the book 'the tibetan art of serenity' by christopher hansard, 2006

/ beautiful modernist jewelry by art smith

'lava' bracelet 1946 & 'half & half' necklace 1948, silver

currently on display at the brooklyn museum

beauty/idol, madonna

'for whitman, however, this same moment of transition was an occasion for unleashing the primitive impulse to sing of oneself. whitman's language betrays the same experiment in self-singing; for a prrimitive joy in words, in naming things, seemed at once to embody and to reveal some ancient truth. but this self-singing is a particular necessity for one to whom truth lay hidden in things, which, being named, spring to life.

"all truths lie waiting in all things. -- they neither urge the opening of themselves nor resist it. for their birth you need not the obstetric forceps of the surgeon. they unfold to you and emit themselves more fragrant than roses from living buds, whenever you fetch the spring sunshine moistened with summer rain. -- but it must be in yourself. it shall come from your soul. it shall be love."

this is the primitive speaking to the primitive, expressing the loss of tribal solidarity, the vast gulf and separation of all things, which, on the philosophic plane, is nothing less than the subject astir and seeking the primitive object from which it has been severed. but things might be reunited and the cleavages healed at least in idea; and in full consciousness of this possibility, whitman issued and openly proclaimed that "only hegel is fit for america," for in his work, "the human soul stands at the centre, and all the universes minister to it."

thus whitman, by using a higher plan of contemplation, or rather by descending to more primitive levels of experience, absorbed and revitalized all the meanings of which the arguments of the earth were but the abstract conceptions. man, standing thus once more in the open air, bereft of the sophistication of abstract idea, might then enjoy a more primitive and original relation to the universe.'

/ long excerpt from the chapter 'the romantic mind' from the book "the americans: the national experience, volume 2" by daniel joseph boorstin, 1965

whitman was absolutely brilliant, i'm in love

/ the son of adam, whats that in the sky 2010

'in every poem by matisse there is the history of a particle of human flesh which refused the consummation of death... as if the inner eye, in its thirst for a greater reality, had converted the pores of the flesh into hungry seeing mouths. by whatever vision one passes there is the odor and the sound of voyage.'

/ henry miller, 'tropic of cancer'

/ everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die, beautiful work by reuben cox

as i lay with my head in your lap camerado,

the confession i made i resume, what i said to you and the open air i resume,

i know i am restless and make others so,

i know my words are weapons full of danger, full of death,

for i confront peace, security, and all the settled laws, to unsettle them,

i am more resolute because all have denied me than i could ever have been had all accepted me,

i heed not and have never heeded either experience, cautions, majorities, nor ridicule,

and the threat of what is call'd hell is little or nothing to me,

and the lure of what is call'd heaven is little or nothing to me;

dear camerado! i confess i have urged you onward with me, and still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,

or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.

/ 'as i lay with my head in your lap camerado' from 'leaves of grass' by walt whitman

'a l'heure de l'observatoire - les amoureux' by man ray

/ but, oh! to love

new york new york, summer 2010

beauty / idol, angelina jolie

a tempest threw a rainbow in my face

so that i wanted to fall under the rain

to kiss the hands of an old woman to whom i gave my seat

to thank everyone for the fact that they exist

and at times even feel like smiling

i was grateful to young leaves that they were willing

to open up to the sun

to babies that they still

felt like coming into this world

to the old that they heroically

endure until the end

i was full of thanks

like a sunday alms-box

i would have embraced death

if she'd stopped nearby

gratitude is a scattered

homeless love

/ 'gratitude' by anna kamienska from the book 'the second happiness of job' 1974

/ ron mueck, hyper-realistic sculptor b. 1958 australia

t to b: 'spooning couple' 2005, 'pregnant woman' 2002, & 'old woman in bed' 2002

one of my favorite artists, so beautiful and poignant