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Monday 31 October 2011

Halloween: A Time to Read (Ghost Stories)


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October's "Bright Blue Weather": A good time to read!
: Albert M. Bender, 1936 [?], for Illinois WPA Art Project (Work Projects Administration Collection, Library of Congress)




Flash Player

Strange to turn to old ghosts, watch ourselves dissolve
In their eyes. They were not here to help us,
Merely to drag us back against our will
Into a dim becalmed past, then forward into
Occluded presents which yet feel too bright





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Emperor Go-Daigo, dreaming of ghosts at his palace in Gaigo: Gekko Ogata, 1890




Identification Tags

Ghosts do wear sheets but not for sleeping.

Sometimes people die while still alive
and then come back to life
but only partially. You can read the signs
around the eyes, which get
a dusty look like burned out hundred watt bulbs.

When they pass one another on the streets
there is a soft noise, as of muslin touching.





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Union Station waiting room, Chicago: photos by Jack Delano, January 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Spooks


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Untitled 2312-a: photo by Todd Hido, 1999 (Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery for Contemporary Photography, Cologne)



The moon coming through the curtains
makes geometrical patterns in bars
a calligraphic grid through which pass
the ever vigilant ones
the souls of “my” dead though of
course they’re no one’s
not even their own any more merely
messengers of the mirror negative
dispatched from a mute past
to efface a haunted present



White Noise

Still from White Noise, dir. Geoffrey Sax 2005


White Noise

Still from White Noise, dir. Geoffrey Sax 2005


White Noise

Still from White Noise, dir. Geoffrey Sax 2005


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White curtain in warm light: photo by Christoph Michels, 2006

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Untitled 1738: photo by Todd Hido, 2003
(Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York)
 
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Untitled 1726: photo by Todd Hido, 1996 (Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York)
1975-a_1996

Untitled 1975-a: photo by Todd Hido, 1996 (Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery for Contemporary Photography, Cologne)

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Untitled 2376: photo by Todd Hido, 2000 (Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery for Contemporary Photography, Cologne)
3510

Untitled 3510: photo by Todd Hido, 2008 (Kaune, Sudendorf Gallery for Contemporary Photography, Cologne)

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Untitled 1154-a: photo by Todd Hido, 1998 (Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York)

 
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Untitled 8350: photo by Todd Hido, 2009
(Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York)

Sunday 30 October 2011

"I Am An American" (East Bay Dislocations)


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Oakland, California. A large sign reading "I am an American" placed in the window of a store, at 13th and Franklin streets, on December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor. The store was closed following orders to persons of Japanese descent to evacuate from certain West Coast areas. The owner, a University of California graduate, will be housed with hundreds of evacuees in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration of the war
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority, March 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Berkeley, California. Residents of Japanese ancestry are closing out their businesses in preparation for the coming evacuation. They will be moved into War Relocation Authority centers to spend the duration
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority, 19 March 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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San Leandro, Alameda County, California. Brand new church -- Pentecostal. Solomon 11:1 "I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters."
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of Agriculture/Bureau of Agricultural Economics/Division of Economic Information, April 1940 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Contra Costa County, California. Entrance to Davis Auto Camp. Family with 10 children live in the trailer on the left
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of Agriculture/Bureau of Agricultural Economics/Division of Economic Information, 10 May 1940 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Real estate office, Oakland, California
: photo by Russell Lee, December 1940 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

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Street scene in Oakland, California. One person out of every eighteen on the streets of the East Bay area is Portuguese
: photo by Russell Lee, April 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

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Oakland, California. The day after the election:
photo by Dorothea Lange, 12 November 1936 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

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Newstand, Oakland, California
: photo by Dorothea Lange, February 1942 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

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San Leandro, California. Watering young plants on a farm in Alameda County, California, prior to evacuation. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority, 26 April 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Oakland, California. Baggage of evacuees of Japanese ancestry piled on the sidewalk. The Greyhound buses will soon arrive to take this baggage as well as the evacuees to the Tanforan Assembly center under Civilian Exclusion Order Number 28
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority, 6 May 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Oakland, California. Young evacuee of Japanese ancestry guarding the family belongings near the Wartime Civil Control Administration station. In half an hour the evacuation bus will depart for Tanforan Assembly center
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority, 6 May 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Oakland, California. Members of the Japanese Independent Congregational Church attend Easter services prior to evacuation. Evacuees of Japanese ancestry will be housed in War Relocation centers for duration
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of the Interior/War Relocation Authority, 5 April 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Hayward, California. A young evacuee looks out the window of the evacuation bus before it starts for Tanforan Assembly center. Evacuees will be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of Interior/War Relocation Authority, 8 May 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)

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Hayward, California. Farm families of Japanese ancestry are being checked into the evacuation buses which are enroute to the Assembly center. Their identification tags and numbers are inspected before entering the bus by a member of the Wartime Civil Control Administration Control Station staff. Over 400 persons were evacuated from this district on this date
: photo by Dorothea Lange for Department of Interior/War Relocation Authority, 8 May 1942 (National Archives and Records Administration)



Occupy Oakland: poster by Eric Drooker, 2011

Of All Places


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Sailor and girl at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Washington, D.C.: photos by John Collier, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Saturday 29 October 2011

John Collier: A Church in the Sky (New Mexico, Spring 1943)



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Mountains in northern New Mexico



View of the church, Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico



Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico. A Spanish-American village in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Trampas dates back to 1700 as a sheep-raising center. Due to the over-grazing and loss of range title, its inhabitants now work as migratory labor and at subsistence farming


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View of the church, Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico



The main altar in the church, Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico. There are paintings on the wall behind the altar



A Santo bulto and a painting of the Dolorosa in the church, Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico


Altar in the church, Trampas, New Mexico. The prevailing colors are grey and blue. A Coca-Cola bottle is used as a candle holder


Side altar in the church, dedicated to the Virgin and to Santiago Matamoro. Trampas, New Mexico



Plaza of Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico



Trampas, Taos County, New Mexico



Sangre de Cristo Mountains, New Mexico



Looking north from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Penasco, New Mexico




Village of Placita, near Penasco, Taos County, New Mexico



Placita, near Penasco, Taos County, New Mexico


Placita, near Penasco, Taos County, New Mexico



Chapel, Vadita, near Penasco, Taos County, New Mexico

Vista westward over the Rio Grande Valley from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos, near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico




Romeroville, near Chacon, Mora County, New Mexico



Valley of Chacon, Mora County, New Mexico



General store, Chacon, Mora County, New Mexico


Chacon, Moro County, New Mexico

Questa, Taos County, New Mexico


General store near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico



Village of La Alama, near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico



La Alama, near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico



Cerros, near Costilla, New Mexico



Placita, New Mexico, on the Rio Pueblo




Moreno Valley, Colfax County, New Mexico


JOHN COLLIER: I got interested in photography in the first place because of the fact that I had a career as a mural painter and an artist on the project under Dorothea Lange’s first husband, Maynard Dixon, a Western painter. And I decided to make that my career. For medical reasons I didn’t go to school and so I devoted myself to the fine arts. Then it became apparent that I had to find a place for myself in society and make a living and after a good many years of investing very deeply in both painting and writing I looked about for some means of exchange that would allow me to operate in society. I also was very disturbed because I was in the midst of the Great Depression and I was alarmed that the documentary material, particularly material that tended to be social propaganda, made very bad art. And I wasn’t at all pleased with painting as a medium for expressing my intellectual feelings about society. So I decided to shift to a medium that was more articulate and I turned to photography because it seemed capable of being able to handle the problem of documentation and understanding without getting involved with a decadent level of fine art. Also photography was a needed commodity, people needed pictures; they did not need my painting nor my writing. And under the pressure of the Great Depression I felt the necessity of contributing and being needed. And though I was an assistant on a mural on the WPA I didn’t feel it was an objective enough job. So I decided I should become some kind of a student of what was going on. Painting was no medium for this kind of introspective examination so I decided to go to my own cultural field, the Spanish Southwest where I had grown up, to try to work out some better understanding of Spanish-American culture. And the first project that I was involved with I prepared for by six months reading in the Bancroft Library at the University of California. I went into the Southwest and made a personally financed document on the Spanish-American sheep camp. And it was on the basis of this document that I was hired by Roy Stryker. I had shown the document to Dorothea Lange, and Dorothea Lange was a childhood friend of mine.
RICHARD DOUD: Oh really!
JOHN COLLIER: And I knew Dorothea Lange from the age of eight. She was not a child then, but I was. And Dorothea was my first introduction to the medium of photography, simply because she came to the family in Mill Valley to make a documentary portrait on assignment. And everybody was bored but me. So she made the document of me and turned it into the family, and so followed the assignment. So I knew Dorothea Lange, I was a photographer and knew about photography. After I had completed this document Dorothea Lange suggested that I send it to Roy Stryker along with other work. I sent it and forgot all about it. Maybe months went by and I ended up with one photographic job after another, finally reaching the bottom being a printer for Gabriel Milan’s, a very cutthroat photographic company in San Francisco. And I didn’t do well. One time a phone call came into the laboratory from Washington, D.C. And there was much excitement in the laboratory, and I was called out of my little dungeon where I was tinting gold-toned baby portraits and picked up the phone and couldn’t hear what the man said, having lifelong hearing difficulty. It was Roy Stryker on the phone, so I handed the phone to the nearest person, who was the boss. And the boss listened and he said, “There’s a crazy guy in Washington, D.C. who wants to pay you $2,300 a year. You’d better take it because I’m going to fire you.” So I took up the phone and I said, “Yes.” I didn’t hear anything else that he said, and immediately prepared to leave for Washington, D.C. But this was the climax of the concern that I had to do something about direct analysis and observation about what was going on around me at the time of the Great Depression.
RICHARD DOUD: Well, had you been aware of what Stryker and his people were doing before this?
JOHN COLLIER: Vaguely. But I was more aware of what people like Pare Lorentz had done on “The River” and “The Plow that Broke the Plains.”
RICHARD DOUD: Yes. But photography for you was sort of a rational approach to something, I mean it wasn’t an emotional type thing.
JOHN COLLIER: It seemed the right medium for somebody who wanted to go out and look astutely at what was going on around him. Painting did not seem to be the medium; writing could be the medium; but photography was more immediate.
RICHARD DOUD: Yes. Well I’m interested in what your impression was of this operation when you did go to Washington. Did this seem to be the kind of thing you had in mind, the type of thing you wanted to do, or –?
JOHN COLLIER: Well, I got to Washington and I met many stimulating people. Roy himself was extremely stimulating; naturally the file was very impressive. And I was ready at once to leave for the Southwest. It never occurred to me that I would work anywhere but in my own country. I had no feeling for the East; I didn’t like it, it was wet and dirty, cold, uninteresting as far as I was concerned.
RICHARD DOUD: It still is.
JOHN COLLIER: And I still wanted to get back West as fast as I could. And Roy wouldn’t let me go; he hung on to me and I did an awful lot of standing around. And finally it became clear to me that I wasn’t going to get back to the West, and I never got back to the West.
RICHARD DOUD: Oh really?
JOHN COLLIER: And the work I did for Stryker was – I made one major field trip to New England and then I started off on a very serious assignment of documenting the Amish in Pennsylvania. It started to go very well. It might have been a very important document, but the war interrupted it, unfortunately. I was working from the outside in, and had gone about it very systematically, working in the periphery of the Amish culture and finally making friends and photographing those elements of the life that were permissible. I had developed a very great rapport and was beginning to work on the personality factors of their lives when I was shunted off to a shipyard in Newport News to photograph building a battleship. This abruptly ended my activity as far as documenting that which I was most concerned about, with man’s relationship to his environment. I made a few interesting studies under the OWI including the Portuguese in Provincetown. It was a great deal of fun, but there were pressures. It was strictly a magazine-type job study. It did not involve the meandering, fulfilling effort that had been the character of FSA projects in the past. Finally, I was sent to the coal fields of Pittsburgh, not that there were any documents to show poverty, but to photograph the most modern way to get coal out of the ground. And I spent a murky month in Pittsburgh working in the coal mines doing a highly technological job of recording culture underground. It was a very exciting experience. It still was far afield from my involvement. I preferred that assignment; it was a truly typical one, an exciting one. And then I finally got an assignment to go West. The Office of War Information was concerned to get a record of the American Indian, and I had a sort of rapport in the Southwest so I went out primarily to record the democratic processes of the Pueblo Indians. Fortunately, it went the way of most Farm Security Projects; Roy quickly lost track of what I was doing and I went ahead and finally did a Farm Security-type job for him. The Indians weren’t the least bit intrigued at having their lives photographed at any point, even though I had a lifelong friendship with the Pueblo Indians at Taos. They promptly rejected any part of making a democratic record of their processes. So I never did make it. But at the same time there were important Farm Security Administration projects in Taos County, which included a very important medical cooperative in Cluny; a very typical wartime project under the farm Security Administration. I got permission to do a depth study of the project and they wanted me to do an even deeper project of the Spanish-American culture, so probably the only contribution I made to the files that was anything but industrial was the study of Spanish-American culture. It’s unique and stands out. Of course, I studied religion, the role of the Catholic priest, the role of the family, the role of the storekeeper; I made a complete study. There was nothing else like it in the file. But it was made long after the Farm Security had folded. It was a bootleg project. And after I got back from that project I went into the Merchant Marine. And that was the end of my relationship with the government.
Excerpt from an interview with John Collier at his home in Sausalito, California, conducted by Richard K. Doud, 18 January 1965 (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)


Photos by John Collier, Spring 1943 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)