Defying Gravity

I came across this photo, a collaboration between the artists Philippe Halsman and Salvadore Dalí, in an article on Flavorwire, Go Ahead and Jump: Philippe Halsman’s Iconic Photos. The text on the first page would lead one to believe that this photo, like the others in the series, are merely the artist taking advantage of what a camera does best: capturing a split second of action, freezing an instant too brief to really be appreciated by the human eye in real time. That would be utterly incorrect, of course: the photo is actually a masterpiece of planning and, ultimately, retouching. To see how it was done, take a look at the unretouched image on Wikipedia.

50 East 7th Street, 3rd Floor

One of the joys of doing site-responsive performance is that we're often in a position to discover things that most people never get to see. Case in point: this strange little installation that Catherine spied on the window sill of a building next door to Middle Collegiate Church where Peculiar Works held a staged reading this past Monday.

13th and Fifth Avenue

The photo on the right is one that I took yesterday of the corner that, when I first moved to NYC in 1987, looked more like the photo on the left. The Lone Star Cafe closed in 1989 but I did go there once shortly after I arrived—by myself, as I recall, although I'm not sure why: I've never been one to go alone to a bar very often and I didn't go to hear music. I don't think I was homesick, per se, but I may have just liked the idea of going to a Texas-style bar and drinking beer that I wouldn't have crossed the street to get back home (I'll drink a Lone Star if it's available in an NYC restaurant, like Marfa, but it's not a very good beer). The iguana stayed on the roof for a number of years until the building was converted to a deli in the '90s (I used to go there occasionally when I worked at a place down 13th Street a few doors) but it's been empty for four or five years. Now it's gone and I'm disappointed: it was a cool old building that will almost certainly be replaced by a high-rise luxury condo.

Floydada

A few images from Peculiar Works' workshop of my play, Floydada, last week at the Envoy Gallery in Chinatown. The impressive (and impressively extensive) black and white artwork covering the gallery walls is by Nicolas Buffe, a French artist living in Tokyo. The pieces for sale are actually less than half of this installation: between the paintings are design elements painted in black on the wall and then drawn in with chalk by Buffe; it really gives you the feeling of being immersed in one of his paintings. For our project, his mixing of classical images with contemporary pop culture icons made an unusual (but incredibly dramatic) backdrop for a play set in 1927 West Texas.

The photos in this slide show were taken on two different nights: the first, from house left, are by me; the second group, from house right, are by my PWP partner, Ralph Lewis.

Prince and Mulberry Streets

On Saturday, Catherine and I were out shopping for props and set pieces for the Floydada workshop this week. As you can see it was a nice, sunny day (the last one for a while, as it turns out—we've had almost nothing but gray skies and rain every day since until today). As we walked through SoHo, Catherine noticed the way the sun was hitting this tree, which is in the cemetery at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. This photo doesn't do justice to the dramatic impact that the sunlight made on the leaves: it was startlingly beautiful.

Second Avenue and E. 7th Street

This empty storefront was, until just a few months ago, Love Saves the Day—a very fun and funky vintage clothing/accessory/toy store. It had been around since the late '60s and is most famous for being the store in which Rosanna Arquette buys Madonna's leather jacket in Desperately Seeking Susan. It is not, however, just another casualty of the "economic downturn": its demise was brought about by the yet another East Village landlord's absurd belief that their storefront property is literally worth its weight in gold.

E. 4th Street, Near Second Avenue

For those of us who work Off Off Broadway, this photo needs almost no explanation: La MaMa ETC has been the been the cornerstone of downtown theater since Ellen Stewart founded it in 1962. This evening, as I approached the main theater on my way home, I was struck first by how the lights on the building made the cherry blossoms on either side of the doorway seem to be luminescent. Then, as I walked past the open doors, I was immediately attracted by the people working inside the tiny lobby—not by anything they were doing but merely from the visual image they created, framed in the doorway.

Cooper Square and East 7th Street

This building is now luxury condominiums (of course—it's hard to find a building in Manhattan that hasn't been converted to condos these days) but it was originally the home of Carl Fisher Music Publishing, well known to every kid who ever sang in a choir or played an instrument in an orchestra or band. In fact, I'm pretty sure I still have a couple of books of arias from my high school days going to U.I.L. vocal competitions (I wasn't very successful). The reflected light you see is from this building.

30th Between Broadway and Sixth Ave

As much as I love writing this blog, new posts just take more time than I can currently spare. But it makes me insane when I see that my last post was a week ago today. So I'm trying something new: I'm putting my camera in my bag to see if I can use photography to fill the textual void. It may not last—past tonight, actually—but it's an art form that really interests me and most of my photos will be of Catherine or New York, anyway: two subjects that particularly inspire me. If I can add a little anecdote or historical fact about the photos, so much the better.

Tonight, I was walking through midtown, on my way to meet Catherine after her rehearsal in the garment district. Walking up Broadway, I caught the neon sign of O'Reilly's Pub out of the corner of my eye. My anecdote: it's the unidentified setting of playwright Daniel Haben Clark's The Singing Lesson, a very popular piece at La MaMa and the Caffe Cino in the 1960s that starred Daniel's sister, Connie.

In Which I Change Careers and Become a Famous Photographer

Okay, not famous... and not really much of a photographer. I posted some photos on Flickr last November for a site-specific performance workshop with the Trinity/LaMaMa program that Catherine, Ralph and I led. Some of the photos were culled from the Internet, some I took here in NYC, and one was Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House in Los Angeles (left). We used the photos in an exercise to get the students to imagine contexts (what type of performance might you present here?), ways to uses a space, audience/actor relationships and so forth. I posted it, we did the workshop and then, quite frankly, I forgot all about it.

Earlier this, I got an e-mail from Emma at schmap.com informing me that my photo had "been short-listed for inclusion in the second edition of our Schmap California Guide, to be published at the end of May 2008." I guess someone trolled around Flickr and thought my photo was a good representation of Hollyhock House. Well, the voting is in and my photo was chosen... along with 14 other photos of the site, as it turns out. But, hey: they picked mine, too!

I think maybe I'll keep my day job... for the time being...