new york city

"we’re undergoing a sea change. I think that environmentalists are recognizing that as important as..."

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:58:07 -0400

“we’re undergoing a sea change. I think that environmentalists are recognizing that as important as wilderness is as a standard, as a baseline, sustainability is a very different baseline. I think our focus is moving from wilderness to sustainability. That’s not to say we have to destroy the wilderness to have sustainability. It’s just that, okay, we did that. That was the project that engaged us for 150 years. The project now is very much more the gardener’s project, or the farmer’s project, which is how to use nature without ruining it.””

- Michael Pollan, in an interview on e360. He makes some very good points on the need to move away from the fossil-fuel food chain toward a more solar-based food chain.

It’s official. I signed my life away this afternoon, and now we are proud owners of a very...

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:35:28 -0400

It’s official. I signed my life away this afternoon, and now we are proud owners of a very small (but hopefully very cosy) apartment in Brooklyn. Next adventure: the renovation. I’m meeting with a contractor tomorrow.

photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:00:25 -0400

photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans

Ryan McGinley is the hottest young photographer at the moment. He is the youngest to have a solo...

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:50:04 -0400

Ryan McGinley is the hottest young photographer at the moment. He is the youngest to have a solo show at the Whitney. He is shooting for the hippest fashion magazines, like POP. Sigur Ros’s video for Gobbledigook is inspired by his work, particularly the series “I Know Where Summer Goes,” which is a great title, but McGinley borrowed it from a Belle & Sebastian song. His work has been likened to those of Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, and Wolfgang Tillmans. In fact, McGinley’s work does bring to mind Tillmans’s, without all the rawness that makes the latter’s images so compelling. For his “I Know Where the Summer Goes” series, McGinley took 16 models, 3 assistants and some fog machines across the US and shot 4,000 rolls of film, giving him 150,000 pictures, from which 50 were selected. I find whole construct so hollow and cynical. Tillmans, Goldin, and Clark never had to rely on models. Their work is their life, which is what makes them far more interesting.

"The US, and especially New York, is a sort of a bazaar of the entire world. Everything is there,..."

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:32:10 -0400

“The US, and especially New York, is a sort of a bazaar of the entire world. Everything is there, mixed together. It’s a view upon the entire world, isn’t it?””

- Václav Havel, in an interview with the Financial Times.

Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence I’ve been...

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 11:09:04 -0400

Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Poetry of Silence

I’ve been reading a lot about this exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. He painted a lot of quiet and haunting interiors, all based on the apartment in which he lived most of his life. It reminds me of how Giorgio Morandi managed to make the most compelling paintings of the same few objects. I am intrigued by Hammershøi’s work and would love to see the show.

A few years ago, I asked my father to write down as much as he could remember of his life. He had...

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 08:36:00 -0400

A few years ago, I asked my father to write down as much as he could remember of his life. He had lived through so much, being involved in his youth with the Vietnamese Nationalist movement to gain independence from France, then fighting the war against the North Vietnamese for 25 years, escaping the country at the very last minute before the Communist takeover, and starting life all over again the United States in middle age. By asking him to write his memoir I was trying to hold on to him for as long as I could. He didn’t succeed in writing as much as I would have liked, but he did leave me with a small stack of paper detailing some major events in his life, written in his careful handwriting. I couldn’t really read this until now, when I have the space and time to do it properly. Through all his stories, what I gathered most is his immense love for his family and his country. He remembered the dress my mother wore the first time they met. He cried when he was asked to choose which 3 of his 7 children (one of my brothers was already studying in the States at the time) to be put on the evacuation list on the last days of the war. He described so vividly the landscape of the country in which he had grown up, which brought me back to his choice of tie on his last day, green “comme des rizières.” I dug out the journal I had kept on my last visit to Vietnam in 1995. My words seemed to echo my father’s. “Yesterday on my way to Cu Chi I couldn’t stop admiring the lush landscape fo the rice fields. It had rained all morning and when the sun came out, the green - beautiful warm green - stood out brilliantly against the sky. I was moved by the quiet splendor of it all.”

I realize that so much of my father is a part of me. He made it possible for me to be who I am and to have lived as I have. When I was twenty-one, I had my heart broken, and I thought I would never again feel such pain. Nothing compares to the pain I feel now from the loss of my father.

That man is gorgeous.

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:28:20 -0400

That man is gorgeous.

The Verve made a triumphant return to Glastonbury. I’m so...

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:27:28 -0400

The Verve made a triumphant return to Glastonbury. I’m so glad to see Richard Ashcroft in fine form.

Lily on her first day of school, 2005. One of my favorite...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:43:45 -0400

Lily on her first day of school, 2005. One of my favorite pictures.

Jeff Buckley singing Lilac Wine, one of the songs featured in Ne...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:42:20 -0400

Jeff Buckley singing Lilac Wine, one of the songs featured in Ne Le Dis à Personne. I’ve been listening to this song all morning. Buckley thought that Nina Simone did the best version of this song even though Eartha Kitt and Elkie Brooks had also covered it.

I saw this movie last night. It’s Guillaume Canet’s...

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:39:00 -0400

I saw this movie last night. It’s Guillaume Canet’s 2nd feature film, a thriller that’s really at heart an aching love story. As Canet explains, “C’était ma vrai volonté depuis le début, c’est d’ailleurs ce que j’ai expliqué à Alain Attal mon producteur. Je lui ai dit que si cela m’intéressait de faire ce film, c’était pour l’histoire d’amour. Du coup, je ne voulais pas le filmer comme un thriller: je voulais qu’il fasse beau, que cela se passe en été, que les lumières soient magnifiques, bref, que cela n’ait rien à voir avec les thrillers dans lesquels il pleut sans arret, et dans lesquels les personnages et musique sont sinistres.” It is beautifully filmed, and the music (with songs by Jeff Buckley, Groove Armada, and Otis Redding and an affecting score by M) is exquisite. Another big part of the film is also the love between fathers and children, which can be overwhelming. There is a chilling and moving scene in which Jean Rochefort’s character describes the terror he had of losing his son when he put him on the bus to go to school for the first time. I remember very well that experience with Lily, when she was not yet 4. If I hadn’t kept myself busy photographing and videotaping the event, I would have broken down and wept when she let go of my hand and stepped on that bus.

The 2,000 Watt Society

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 23:04:23 -0400

A project by scientists associated with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology to create a sustainable future. The goal is to reduce energy consumption by the average person to 2,000 watts. An average American currently consumes 12,000 watts, and most Western Europeans 6,000. However, according to the director of the project, Roland Stulz, “the 2,000-Watt Society is not a program of hard life. It is not what we call Gürtel enger schmallen (belt tightening), it’s not starving, it’s not having less comfort or fun. It’s a creative approach to the future.” The technology exists to use energy more efficiently and to generate renewable energy. Elizabeth Kolbert has written an excellent article on the subject in the current issue of the New Yorker, with a report on a small Danish village that is actually producing more renewable energy than it uses. Ultimately, a sustainable future will depend on our ability to cut energy consumption and to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, which will come at a cost and a great deal of effort, but as Kolbert points out in the article, “to put off change, however, will merely drive us toward it.”

See more photos of Peter Greenaway’s projection on...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:02:03 -0400

See more photos of Peter Greenaway’s projection on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at The Guardian. Watch an extract.

"If Leonardo was alive now he wouldn’t just be interested in film-making, he would be handling..."

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:56:00 -0400

“If Leonardo was alive now he wouldn’t just be interested in film-making, he would be handling high-definition cameras and would be right up against the cutting edge experimenting with holograms. He would be fascinated by the post-digital age. I am sure that he would support entirely what we are doing, which isn’t true of a series of academics who believe that this painting belongs to them and not to the world at large. This painting belongs to the laptop generation as much as it does to academia and we want to demonstrate that.””

- Peter Greenaway, on his one-off light and sound projection on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper in Milan. I don’t always love everything Greenaway does, but I do admire his relentless imagination. It’s interesting that he says the painting “belongs to the laptop generation” but I don’t think one can fully appreciate it, or Greenaway’s re-imagining of it, on video. It is something to be experienced in person, on the real painting, not a representation of it, much as the endless reproductions of it have rendered da Vinci’s masterpiece so mundane.

Photo

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:34:17 -0400

Anna Wolf is a photographer who makes wonderful little books....

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:33:34 -0400

Anna Wolf is a photographer who makes wonderful little books. They remind me that I too used to make books of my own, and I must really get back to doing them. I’ve been thinking about being more analog. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m doing in general. I feel the need to make things with my hands, to connect more with friends, family, and everything around me.

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2008 Flowers for you! As a reminder of the joys of summer, I just had to share this...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:28:15 -0400

FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2008

Flowers for you!

As a reminder of the joys of summer, I just had to share this beautiful rose by NY based photographer Ngoc MinhNgo.

You may recognise her name as I’ve posted on her beautiful work earlier on my blog here.

Enjoy! :-)
I just stumbled upon this post from a blogger that I’d never read before. It’s a really small world…

Brighton (where Lily and Julian are headed tomorrow), polaroid...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:04:00 -0400

Brighton (where Lily and Julian are headed tomorrow), polaroid by Andreas Laszlo Konrath. I’ve been thinking about why polaroids always make everything look so great. I have 2 SX-70 and a 195 Polaroid Land Camera that I absolutely love. Unfortunately, Polaroid no longer makes the film for them. Fuji still makes the pack film, but it’s too perfect. Fuji film doesn’t have all the strange color shifts, grains, and soft contrast that the Polaroid film did. I hardly use these cameras anymore but I can’t let go of them because they are so exquisite as objects. I pity the young photographers today who know nothing more than their digital Canons. Cameras used to be such things of beauty in themselves.

Sim Cass, the most handsome baker in New York City. I’ve...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:36:00 -0400

Sim Cass, the most handsome baker in New York City. I’ve known Sim since he was a dashing DJ dating the most glamorous young women in downtown New York. We ran into Sim at the New Amsterdam Market on Sunday. His daughter just graduated from high school, “with honors,” said Sim proudly, who also added, “I raised her!” I would be just as proud if I were a single parent who managed to bring up a beautiful and accomplished daughter in New York City.