Nan Goldin

Continuing in the mini series I seem to have started of photographers who influence and inspire me, I decided to feature Nan Goldin.

"Upon moving to New York City, Goldin began documentary photography of the post-punk new-wave music scene, and the city's vibrant gay subculture in the late 1970's and early 1980's. gradually being drawn in to the Bowery's hard drug subculture. These photographs, taken from 1979 to 1986, form her famous work The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.The snapshot aesthetic images depict drug use, violent, aggressive couples and autobiographical moments. Most of her Ballad subjects were dead by the 1990s due to either drug overdoses or AIDS, including close friends and often photographed subjects, Cookie Mueller and Greer Lankton. In addition to the Ballad she combined her pictures in two other series I'll Be Your Mirror and All by Myself."
"Nan Goldin's photographs, which pre-date the 'heroin chic' advertising craze of the 1990s, are forthright studies of herself and friends, engrossed in New York's East Village subculture in the early 80s."

Daisies

Ever since Sam and I watched Daisies with Kime and Annakim I have been hooked to the psychedelic film.









"Two teenage girls, both named Marie, decide that since the world is spoiled they will be spoiled as well.This freewheeling, madcap feminist farce was immediately banned by the Czech government".


come over and watch it with me sometime!

lustin'

ben made a comedy
i relate so much to this

butterflies

I had told my friend Robert (From CCA) about the movie Daisies and how there is a scene where the girls have butterflies on the walls.

Well when Robert left for Malaysia to live for 6 months he told me he would catch me an exotic butterfly. Being a smart boy who didnt know anything about catching and preserving a butterfly, he scourged the city looking for a butterfly to send to me. He eventually found one in a little case in the back of an antique store. The other day I got a giant envelope from far far away and under twenty layers of malaysian newspaper was my butterfly.

It might be the most beautiful thing I have ever owned

(this is just a picture i found online that closely resembles my butterfly)

oh wes

I'm working on a fall podcast as we speak, so expect that within the next few days
Every year whenever the seasons change i alway get a little melancholy because i want more than anything to have seasons!

If anyone is excited about seeing the Darjeeling Limited, you should ass go onto itunes and download "Hotel Chevalier"
It is a short that is the prequel to Darjeeling. It stars Natalie Portman and Jason Shwartzman, and is pretty amazing. Of corse it is no Royal Tenenbaums, but Mr. Anderson does wonders with film.

happy birthday jon!

One of my dearest friends in the entire world turns 23 today, and since I cant be with him today to celebrate with balloons, cake, and music, he gets his own post with lots of pictures (in case he forgets all the fun times we have had, and decides he needs to come home from seattle).

Jon's famous bear hat
Us as a giant omelet at the nature show we met at at MATT &KIM pool polaroid party One of the greatest nature show locations in existence And plenty of photo adventures I miss you sitting in bed with alley and I when I am sick, and that one time you made me drive your car on the freeway...
Happy Birthday TJ!

jenny gage

When my mother's friend Bette came to visit me the other day, and look over some of my photos, she gave me a list of photographers that my work seemed to be inspired by with out me even knowing it. The first name on the list is Jenny Gage who is often linked in her work with her husband Tom Betterton. To my surprise I found out she too is from Malibu. In a interview I read about her opens up with a quote which sums up my ideology of taking photos these days:

“I ALWAYS SAY, ‘I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU WITH YOUR CLOTHES OFF. I JUST WANT TO SEE YOU IN YOUR UNDERWEAR.’”

Gage produces photographic series, usually “set” in a single geographic location (Ventura, Jenny Gage’s photographs are like a fashion shoot gone terribly wrong (or terribly right, depending on your opinion of fashion shoots); one can discern nods toward the hyper-produced filmset photography of Gregory Crewdson (with whom she studied at Yale’s MFA program), the lewd, veneered, rec room underworlds of Larry Clark, the menaced feminist iconography of Cindy Sherman, everything laced together with suggestions of a flashier, cretin-free Diane Arbus (Gage’s subjects have all their DNA). A Gage photograph in which a woman kneels naked amongst the rushes reveals an alarming and unattributed protruberance—a breast? A third arm? A tumor? Lord knows—rolling out from beneath her armpit. Beauty turned grotesque and then back into a weary beauty—this is the gorgeously debased yet compelling Gage terrain. Looking at her work, an uncomfortable emotional and physical reckoning can occur. Repugnance, of course, is fascinating, and so are beautiful people looking ugly. This is not a petty schadenfreude, however, but a shifty poking at our own perpetual insecurities about façade-making.
California; Dolores, Colorado), and starring a “young girl” whom Gage has found (or stalked, by her own admission) in the town. These series are not meant to be factual documents of her subject’s life, nor are they entirely make-believe, but joint role-playing ventures that blend autobiography and fantasy—the fantasy of the subject, and the fantasy of the “watcher.” Gage’s oblique narratives are suggestive of sinister events about to transpire, or sinister events that have recently occurred, with the extent of the damage yet to be determined. The mood is always kinetically tense if subdued (the calm before or after the storm), and the tragedy feels fated—like participants in a Richard Yates novel, or a Greek myth, these “characters” are doomed to carry out the proclamations of some dark oracle. As is the case with many bleakly-inclined artists, Jenny Gage, in person, is a righteous hoot. She grew up in Malibu, California, but now lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she and her husband Tom Betterton (both in their mid-thirties) collaborate on everything from her photographs to films to commercial photography work.

for the rest of the interview, click here

for real

I must say, I am so so so excited to see this movie.

we can be matching

I was staring at this picture taken of me at CCA in the boy's room and I couldn't quite put my finger on why it looked so familiar.
This is Albert James, an old friend of mine.

please note the silly glasses without lenses and the green sweater

we are basically identical.

borrowed from my gurl at Monster

the print is amazing

this is it

new inspiration.

N.E.A.T.

See my photos in this months issue of N.E.E.T. Magazine!!!!

the article/layout is called "The Age of Adolescence" and starts on page 116, check it out!

N.E.E.T. Magazine

tennis pro

my new doubles partner...i wish

miss behavin'

So if you didnt know, this is my favorite magazine. It's only a few issues in but I have been hooked since its launch. The photo editor Brooke Nipar is awesome, and I'm just not saying that because I know her.

So this is the next issue, it's not out yet, BUT how amazing does M.I.A. look. I seriously want to be her, plus her new short blonde hair is killer!

also there is an article about the NYC band the virgins, who are just starting to get notice but have been on my radar for over a year, i even featured their music on one of my first podcasts!

Bottom Line: Go to your nearest magazine stand, barnes and noble and now urban outfitters and pick up a copy of MISSBEHAVE, you would be crazy not to.

a good day

I went to the doctors and waited 50 minutes in the waiting room, complimented a cute boy on his reeboks and sat with a blonde boy who looked extremely familiar, turned out it was Jesse Mccartney, yeah it was bizzare. I felt bad for him now that Zac Efron has taken his place. Got a lot of blood drawn, then went to pick up film at the lab, talked to a cool dude about art schools, went and saw Chris at work since no one else could hang out with me, came home and ate dinner and got malibu yo.
I got another roll of film back from costco, the above photo is from that roll taken in echo park on friday...there are more on my flickr...I think you can click on the photo to be linked to a small selection from the 3 rolls
or this link to the photos of me and annakim's dressup sesh
click here

Love is a legit pair of grillz.

and some of the greatest friends you will ever meet

how did you get so cute?

Some Rosebowl finds:

A Georgie Boy topThe cutest young couple

I took her picture, she took mine.

Holding down the shanty town

The boys who understand summer

And VERY friendly faces