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From the Guardian:

“As a foreigner in New York,” Eno explained, “I was surprised by how little attention Americans paid to their own great indigenous musical invention: gospel. It was even slightly uncool - as though the endorsement of the music entailed endorsing all the religious framework associated with it. To me gospel was a music of surrender, and the surrendering rather than the worshipping was the part that interested me. This idea has informed my music ever since: I guess it’s the reason I use modes and chords which are easy to follow and easy to harmonise with. I want the music to be inviting, to offer you a place inside it.”

“I think David responded to this with sensitivity and skill, and his natural edginess made those familiar progressions sound new to me.”

For Byrne the challenge in this “electronic gospel” style is to write songs that are “simple but not corny, basic but heartfelt. The results, in many cases, were uplifting, hopeful and positive- even though there were lyrics about cars exploding, war and similarly dark scenarios.”

I am not naive. I live smack dab in the middle of our mass consumer culture and know that every object, institution, idea and tradition carries at minimum a small stain of commercialism. This modern fact of life causes minor tremors of nausea when I ponder the specifics in detail, so mostly I avert my eyes and hum to myself. However, every once in a while there is a cataclysmic lowering of the bar that manages to catch my attention and drain the few remaining drops of optimism I have left.

Case in point, these two recent stories from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times:

Chew on This: Hit Song Is a Gum Jingle
Sharp-eared pop-music fans may have noticed a brief reference to an old chewing-gum jingle buried in “Forever,” Chris Brown’s top-10 hit. “Double your pleasure/double your fun,” the R&B singer croons in the chorus.

What listeners don’t know — and what Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. planned to reveal Tuesday — is that the song is a commercial.

A Product’s Place Is on the Set
In recent weeks, anchors on the Fox affiliate in Las Vegas, KVVU, sit with cups of McDonald’s iced coffee on their desks during the news-and-lifestyle portion of their morning show. The anchors rarely touch the cups.

Executives at the station, one of 12 owned by Meredith Corporation, say the six-month promotion is meant to shore up advertising revenue and, as they told the news staff, will not influence content.

Again, I am no Pollyanna when is comes to the pervasiveness of product placement and both of these events seem kind of inevitable, but I’ve always been slightly buoyed by the pretense that the content of music and news are sacred ground. Now it looks like all pretense has sunk and the race to the bottom has begun.

This got me wondering whether fine art might be the next sacred cow to tip and, more importantly, how I can ride that product placement vanguard all the way to the bank? I had it all wrong when I dreamed of mass merchandising my work. Clearly, the surer path to riches can be found by charging others to place their products in my work. Bridgestone Tires, please call me now.

Here now a musical editorial from our correspondent, Neil Young:

Over the past four weeks I have been aggressively focused on making new images for Domesticated. This typically involves weekday trips to Matamoras with my intern, Olga, to scout locations and work out the details and then a return trip on the weekend to shoot. The trip to Matamoras is about 200 miles round trip and on the weekend it can take upwards of 2 hours to get out there because of summer traffic.

I think I have a couple of new winning shots in the bag, but I want to make at least four or five more over the next couple of months. Every trip to Matamoras is an adventure.

The weekend before last we were shooting with rabbits. What a disaster. Rabbits are little bastards with sharps claws and the predisposition of a meth addict. Don’t ever be fooled by their cuddly appearance or their cute names. Little Bunny Froo Froo my ass. A couple of hours and endless rabbit scratches later we called off the shoot.

This past weekend was an experiment with fireworks, a raccoon and trash dumpster. After a visit from Matamora’s finest and a small dumpster fire, we again decided to quit while we were ahead and call it a night. It was almost 9pm at this point and we had been in Matamoras since 1:30pm. We were a little hungry and dubious of food possibilities at that hour so we set out for nourishment.

A short drive down I-84 and we found ourselves facing an unholy trinity of theme-restaurant options: Outback, Chili’s and T.G.I. Friday’s. Typically I don’t eat at these restaurants and when I do I feel like I need my stomach and my soul pumped. We rolled the dice and picked T.G.I. Fridays, the only major brand in the US with an implied “God” in the name. As we prepared to enter through the front doors we noticed the glowing restaurant sign which suggested the Friday’s in the name was not a reference to the day of the week, but some kind of of Dada-esque motivational acronym. Food-Real-Innovative-Drinks-American-You-Service. Genius.

We ate as fast as we could, put on the Black Keys and made the long journey back to the friendly confines of New York.

We will back at it again next weekend and the weekend after that and the weekend after that…

For San Francisco Bay fine art photography fans, two of our local night photographers are each having independent shows/signings this Friday night (August 1st).

Joe Reifer will have the reception for his show Toy Camera Dreams with Robert Holmgren at Lucky Ju Ju’s vintage pinball arcade (713 Santa Clara Ave, Alameda, CA) on August 1st from 7-10pm. Although most of us know Joe as a night photographer, this show will feature his daytime toy camera work which, I believe, will consist of 35mm film shot in a 6×6 Holga and cross-processed in some sort of out-of-spec color chemistry. Robert Holmgren’s work, I believe, consists of monochrome Holga photography. Although I’m familiar with both of their work on the internet, I’m looking forward to seeing both sets of work in real prints. The entire show runs from August 1st-30th.

(Oscar, by Joe Reifer)

On the same evening, just across the Oakland Bay Bridge, Troy Paiva will have a book-signing and slide show for his second book Night Vision: The Art of Urban Explorationat 111 Minna Gallery (111 Minna, San Francisco, CA). The book-signing will be from 7-9pm.

(Cover of Troy Paiva’s latest book: Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration)

Here’s the best news. If you noticed that both shows are on the same night at approximately the same time, you’re right. This means you only have to make one excuse to your spouse to get out of the house, and you can hit two receptions and see a total of three great photographers all in one swoop across the San Francisco Bay! What a great way to spend a Friday evening.

I will attend both receptions. If you see me there, please stop by and introduce yourself. I’d really like to know who is reading this out in the blogosphere.

I just received two copies of the wonderful new photo book, Hijacked Volume One: Australia and America. The book was edited by Mark McPherson & Max Pam and is an excellent survey of emerging photographers in Australia and America. They were kind enough to include eight of my photos over twelve pages in the book. Also included are friends Jon Gitelson, Lisa Kereszi, Bill Sullivan, Shen Wei and Grant Willing.

Mark McPherson has been quite the hustler and has managed to set up book launches and exhibits in New York, Berlin and Australia. The video below is from ABC Australia about the exhibit at The Australian Center for Photography in Sydney.

Pick up a copy today.

I just watched NAS perform “Sly Fox” on the Colbert Report and it immediately struck me that every time I visit or promote MySpace I am supporting News Corp, Fox News, The New York Post and the whole Rupert Murdoch evil empire. Screw that! I am done with MySpace. Just pulled the plug. And if you are sick of Fox News and their “fair and balanced” propaganda pap you should cancel your account too.

Flavia Sollner is a German-born photographer who works in London, UK and Oslo, Norway. Her portfolio of night photography includes work that is mysterious and seems to include more dark space than lighting. She writes:

(”The Tail of Our Purloined Breath”, by Flavia Sollner)

There’s definitely a difference between Flavia’s work and most of the contemporary night photography that we see in galleries and on the internet today. Most of today’s work seems to focus on heavy, careful lighting, whereas Flavia’s work seems to focus on the lack of lighting across the frame.

OK, that description may not make sense, but it’s the best I can think of right now. What do you think? Can anyone explain this more eloquently?

Found in Jorg Colberg’s Conscientious blog.

On Thursday I went to the opening of the I’ll Be Your Mirror…So You Can Break Into Endless Shards group exhibition at Heist Gallery. No air-conditioning plus a steady stream of hipsters usually equals bad news in my book, but I was hanging with Amani Olu, Tim Briner, Geoff Ellis, Greg Wasserstom and Ali Malone, so the evening turned out to be a blast.

We were on the premises to support Jon Feinstein and see his piece in the show. And what a striking piece it is (see above)! When I first met Jon and Amani a little over a year ago I thought they were a couple and told them they were very cute together. They still laugh about that today and then quickly change the conversation to their girlfriends and the Jets as they crush beer cans with their manly hands.

I see all kinds of things passed around on the net as facts, whereas they are really opinions. Sometimes there are such blatant misconceptions in photographic forums, that I wish I could throw an Argus brick (C-3) at the posters. Some gems go like this:
“I need a pro camera so I can take better photos”
“I want to sell my (insert camera system here) and get a ____ SLR, so I can take better photos”
“Old lenses are not as good as the modern lenses”
“I need to buy a Nikon F5 (or D200) because I want to do portraits and weddings”
“I need to go and spend about a grand so that I have the lights, etc. I need for portraits.”

and the list goes on…

This entry came about when I was looking through 5 rolls of processed black and white negatives on my light table, and had scanned some of them in already and viewed them on my monitor. I wasn’t in the least bit surprised that they came out so well, considering that I was using the following:

A 30-something year old Nikon FE that I bought for less than $50 on ebay, and a 40+ year old Nikon 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens that I bought used in 2003. The film was Agfa APX 100, developed in Rodinal, 1:25.

What was I shooting? Actually, it was whom I was shooting. My friend Kelley posed for me in my backyard for a couple of hours and I think I came away with pretty nice images. What myth did I dispel? Well, for one, the Nikon FE is getting old, as SLRs go these days, and this one is kind of beat up outside. It works well, though, and the metering is really accurate. So, it is nowhere near a “pro-looking” camera. The lens came from a sale at the UM Photoservices in 2003, as they were selling off a lot of older equipment in their transition to a digital workflow. That 85mm 1.8 lens is a wonderful portrait lens, and I snapped it up. You can see it has had so much studio use that the paint is worn off the barrel. You will also notice I have the matching lens hood. IMPORTANT. A lens hood on that lens is a great idea. Everyone should use lens hoods more often. I was shooting outdoors, so I didn’t need lighting — just some reflectors.

My shooting style for portraits is to crop in the viewfinder, so generally, my portraits fill the frame. I also like using natural light, but will use lights when I need to. Using the Nikon FE (it could be any manual focus Nikon, for that matter) with the 85mm lens is such a different experience than using my D70s. For one, the image is brighter, larger, and easier for me to see. Two, it’s just shutter speed and aperture and the meter. No other things to worry about except posing and making sure all the elements you want are in the shot.

So, let’s see. Can you tell if these were made with a “pro” camera? Of course not. If you have an image in a magazine, hanging on a wall, or in a book — nobody will care what camera you used (if they are not some camera geek). Neither will your client - if the images meet his/her expectations. So, my advice is to shoot, and shoot, and learn. At some point, you will realize that your camera doesn’t matter. It’s your eye and experience that provide better photos, not the newest wonder from Nikon or Canon, or Pentax, etc.