Jim Marshall exhibit and new book : photographs of the Peace Movement in the 1960s

peace: photographs by jim marshall

“the peace symbol as we know it today was designed in 1958 by gerald holto”

haight street san francisco 1967 (© jim marshall photography)

a new exhibit with previously unseen photographs by jim marshall at the san francisco art exchange (SFAE).

almost 60 years after the creation of the CND peace symbol, marshall’s body of “peace” photographs is a “beautiful and thoughtful reflection from one of the most celebrated photographers of the twentieth century,”

no on the travel ban oakland 1965

the exhibit is in celebration of the release of marshall’s new book jim marshall: peace, released by reel art press, according to a press release. the forward is written by street artist shepard fairey, the book’s text is written by peter doggett… and joan baez, provides the book’s afterword

peace walk for nuclear disarmament golden gate park 1962

free speech rally telegraph ave. berkeley 1968

marshall was one of the most recognized photographs in the history of music. he also explored the changing times of the 1960s, photographing the creativity and celebrity. he started documenting the CND peace symbol and peace rallies as a personal project, reel art press writes. the photographs had remained in his archives until now. the photographs were taken between 1961 and 1968 across america.

new york city photographed at newport folk festival in 1963

jim marshall 1936-2010

the CND peace symbol was designed in 1958 by gerald holtom for the british campaign for nuclear disarmament, reports reel art press. the symbol then spread from the uk to the us. marshall’s photographs document the symbol’s different meanings over time, starting as a symbol for “ban the bomb”-specific protests, and ending up as an international sign for peace. by xy

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s most beguiling photographs

hiroshi sugimoto – oscar wilde

curator ralph rugoff talks us through five of hiroshi sugimoto’s photos, revealing his fixation with humanity’s precarious place in history

“my camera is like a time machine” confessed hiroshi sugimoto, the japanese photographer, who, since the 1970s, has been radically rethinking and expanding the medium. known for creating large-format, black-and-white images, sugimoto’s works appear to freeze time as a means to investigate humanity in a deeper, metaphysical sense. in his own words, his work is an attempt to capture “the essence of time itself”.

for the first time in britain, a major survey of the renowned tokyo-born photographer is open at london’s hayward gallery. aptly titled time machine, the retrospective assembles key works from his 50-year practice, revealing his fixation with humanity’s precarious place in history. beguiling and uncanny, his shots veer towards abstraction; simultaneously attracting and confounding the viewer. they invite us to contemplate representations of reality, or something more transcendental – beyond our cognitive faculties.

in conversation with another, curator ralph rugoff argues that sugimoto “uses the camera as a tool for thinking”. below, he spotlights five key works from the artist’s five-decade career.

hiroshi sugimoto – polar bear, 1976

“works such as polar bear convince many people that sugimoto is a wildlife photographer. but the polar bear in this photograph is not a real one. it’s a piece of stuffed, taxidermy in a display at new york’s american museum of natural history which he visited in 1974. this is an example of sugimoto’s diorama pictures, which draw from the early history of photography – when 19th-century figures such as louis daguerre used staged, fake backdrops in their photography studios. cultural theorists such as walter benjamin would then describe the diorama as an early precursor of photography. sugimoto is thinking about how dioramas were historically used to deceive the viewer. he wants to make the polar bear appear alive again, allowing the fake subject to appear completely real after being processed by the camera. nevertheless, death hangs over this image. in that sense, his diorama works are all like memorials.”

 

hiroshi sugimoto – goshen, indiana, 1980

“one night, sugimoto was working late in the museum taking these diorama pictures. then the lyrics of a song came into his head, the line: ‘let the light shine on you’. he had a vision of filming in a movie theatre. sugimoto asked himself: what would it look like if i left my camera open for the whole movie? he imagined it would create this intense, glowing light. it’s almost as if the screen has sucked everybody out of the theatre into this kind of white void. sugimoto was thinking about movie theatres as secular spaces in which people look for a certain kind of collective emotional or transcendental experience. the movie theatre represents the sublime. and in this time, the empty movie theatre – devoid of people – paradoxically represents a void, which nevertheless feels very present.”

 

hiroshi sugimoto is represented by the marian goodman gallery

hiroshi sugimoto – lake superior, cascade river, 1995

“lake superior, cascade river is part of a series sugimoto started in the 1990s. i chose this photograph because it so obviously relates to painting, and in some ways, you could argue sugimoto creates work more like an abstract painter than a photographer. this could be a rothko. in reality, it’s an example of his seascapes, which he began in the 1980s. by the time he took this shot, he had probably photographed over 200 seas around the world. he took this photograph just before the sun rose, so you see the light from the sun that’s coming up; it’s going directly in the clouds, over the water, and then the water is reflecting that white light above it. i reference rothko because he was a big influence on sugimoto. rothko was a painter conveying rather than illustrating emotional states. that’s something that sugimoto has spoken about in relation to his work; he’s trying to project his own thoughts and feelings onto his photographs, rather than document things that already exist in the world. in that sense, even though we know him as a photographer, his work stands outside of photography. his work isn’t about documenting the world.” excerpts from an article in “another magazine”. by ac

 

Website of the Day | Donald Judd Library

 

 

some incredible work by the folks over at chips, friends to the south all the way in brooklyn (shudder). knocked it out of the park with this website. a quick tour through it, made available by the agency, can be viewed here, above.

 

digital floorplan

a bookcase for ‘japan’

 

detail view of that bookcase

 

every single book is listed, has its own data sheet, and is linked on WorldCat to find at your nearest library.

 

the donald judd foundation put this together, judd’s library is a space rebuilt all over in the desert and now available to us all online. i cannot overemphasize how priceless this work they’ve done is. truly a place to get lost.

here is the website – judd foundation – library – please, please, enjoy! by lsd

SPECIAL TRANSMISSION FROM GP – TO WATCH

 

our dear gp was kind enough to risk great danger and share these encrypted sequences – after much effort, and peril, we’ve uncovered their meanings.

here below is a full transcript of what was shared :

 

— begin transmission —

 

on the beach at night alone, directed by hong sangsoo

 

the worst person in the world, directed by joachim trier

 

irma vep (tv show), directed by olivier assayas

 

— end transmission —

 

take care gp, until then dear friend! by lsd

i’ll tell you what you are… a weekend movie

oldie but goodie: dogville by lars von trier and beanpole by kantemir balagov

two movies we will be watching this weekend. it’s required viewing.

you don’t even know nothing, yah you’re dumb as hell.

we’re smart as fuck. you like stuff for poors.

ok ta ta… lets see if i get reprimanded!!! by lsd

 

fruits magazine – covers – hold, not

 

so much more to find, hold dearly to what you have.

 

 

fruits magazine. a moment in time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

death, destruction, bury your paper goods. i’ll make no mention of the images coated on them, keep those safe at all costs. by lsd

de torres | Sade | nothing can come between us

 

it’s the feeling i’ve got right now.

 

but so often, how steadfast i should be. and the tired presses against the weak. the faint’ the brittle. come back to me, i would have to say so. even if it meant nothing to you. they’re just words. they burn some clarity away from assumption.

rightfully so, though once they are mine i make them what i want them to be.

 

 

or do you not think those things? or that none of this ever happened? instead that i was just so wrong, so plainly false. that i lived something flashing along a blunt edge, something in passing I held so close. placed a mark so off i could not walk it back. and that you gave it no second thought. that you did not leave at all. that could be possible too, i guess, and time makes me only wonder. is this still brave? do you need me more at all? maybe you know just how much I can hold and have never doubted. so you do not worry. and when you come back, i would not ever have either. you would find me as i said, calm. patient. proper. because I’d be right then, that i was once again foolish. pretending to something foreign only totally. and that is why. like a return. something i should expect to happen. and maybe you would never ask what i did in the meantime. and we would not wonder. that I could tell you i will not ask you either. and that would make you certain. that you would be sure to never again. because we are bound. by some glad marrow.

in a breathless cadence

 

 

 

 

for you to keep. i have all i can hold already. place them in my arms. like so. and it would feel like that i’m sure if this was ours. by lsd

 

Notre dame de paris | Collapsed Crane | 籠屋 | something that lasts

 

carry into the future something that lasts. like accidents, disasters, and cruelty do.

 

 

there too – i think about lean-ness and efficiency. desire to cut down ever-further toward a solid hardened state. confusing venture, no less impossible and vile.

 

 

little left but to take away is an irredeemable position. i wish no more. i take all. once it is mine. i surely dream.

 

 

they were just constantly flying in circles.
constantly flying in huge circles.
(laurie anderson, the beginning of memory)

what about the ten thousand year clock, or the pyramids of germany, the practice of caving. these mass projects of human dominance, in which we take into the unknown (profound or unfounded) the meager seed of our ingenuity. keep mine my own. let it be said that i was there once. such and such. as it were.

if we fit everyone in – just how much could we think, together? the box in the home becomes the home. and what if we stopped living entirely? i was recently told about tangential metamorphosis – how i could no longer be human only without transformation – a neutered permanent alter-state. conniptive reluctance. trespassing human crowding by removing ourselves from humanity.

 

 

and if it all went ahead, and then came to an end? do we have the chance to really see it through? lines drawn like aching joints do. by lsd

 

beethoven’s ode to joy | burne-jones’ golden staircase | it’s june now

the golden staircase, edward burne-jones, 1880

 

 

in no way do i feel remotely like this toward any of this.

but after the last post it only felt right.

 

i don’t care about the 21st, i don’t care about your seasons. this is summer. because anyway it’s all fake, julius and augustus – more like julyuck and augussuck as far as i’m concerned. june is the last real month preceeding five months of lies and smokescreens. september, october, november, december. you do the math.

and i can’t capitalize on this godforsaken website. they won’t let me.

and it’s beginning to become too hot for my morning bike ride through the park to my studio if i wear my backpack (which i must). so now i have to invest in a panier but the rear rack will have to be compatible with a mud guard, and both need to be quick release. that means making a big decision as to getting disc brakes or keeping my pad brakes that barely work (but do work). and i’m thinking of switching both cassettes and both derailleurs as they don’t work (for real), and i want disc brakes but that move away from pad brakes is spiritually akin to getting the new iphone every year. and what if my frame can’t house these things, and then i have to get a dumb new bike that i won’t love nearly as much.

my brakes work. i could use the work-out of not being about to shift gears. who cares if my back sweats i’m tall and strong. i want to use capital letters. they’re fine. capital letters work. i need a mudguard. it’s summer god damn it.

 

is what i would say..

 

but after looking at the golden staircase and resting my eyes on the masterpiece for a few moments – i want to wish you a great first day of june. i hope that you enjoy it and look forward to the months ahead. rocking and brimming.

the painting itself is perhaps the most potent representation of hope and tenderness in burne jones’ body of work. his pre-raphaelite ties are wonderfully displayed in the painting – yet he grounds himself firmly in the ideals of the movement, we can identify a master pressing to the edges. moving away from what was too often a retread of old virtues de facto we have here a painting of true invention. a thought that careens toward contemplation. then, true observation. wherein the players and their environment are in harmony. sublime. by lsd

Guibert | Satrapi | Tardi | Grandes Planches et Petites Planches

 

last year it was announced that emmanuel guibert had received the prestigious position of head of drawing and etching at the académie des beaux arts. two years prior another cartoonist was also elected to the same post. these two position elections mark the first time in the school’s history that artists from the world of bande-dessinée earned academic leadership positions.

 

 

guibert himself behaves rather atypically for a cartoonist, such that his work extends often off of the drafting table, and at times is not present in the bound product. his work is first and foremost reportage. reintroduction and rearragment of historical documents, biographical passages, and journalistic endeavors, to the greater public.

 

 

 

tooling with mark-marking then becomes a gesture in time-appreciation and time-depreciation, as the main bodies of the work (foreground, middle-ground, background, character) each behave with different autonomies. a beachy bank is not substitutable to the soldier warring along it. In the same way that the soldier to his enemy. and yet they are kindred in kind, just like the bank and the soldier are kindred in matter. the problem of representation and depiction in historical/biographical bd is taken head on by guibert in a rhythmic, systematic (bordering just so in an aesthetic) manner.
the relationships between the bodies goes beyond form alone. it all coexists, and yet is appreciable only when it is acknowledged as belonging to different planes.

 

 

 

marjane satrapi opens up the conversation in a wider manner with her seminal work persepolis.

 

 

autobiographical, belonging to her child-self, returning to far-away and long-away. the line in satrapi’s work is her hand, it is not representative in that sense – it depicts events. in that way then she is able to go wherever she wishes. she has flattened the dimension of time and space such that they are her’s to recover and pry into freely.

 

 

not much more needs to be said here about her work itself. it would be a disservice to the already extensive conversation that has surrounded the comic.

finally we get to tardi. who reaches past guibert’s body of work and satrapi’s persepolis. his work, if we are to continue holding these three together in our arms, neighbors satrapi’s later broderies. As both communicate with the deep past (the past not lived by the author) in an emotional capacity. both authors are trying to assess the past. such that the factual nature of either of their works is structure not content. it braces the emotive potential, the oniric potential of polemical and anecdotal issues, of their works.

 

 

tardi, son and grandson of soldiers, bears little resemblance to the patriot of today. for he knows it is person that makes country. it is then country that severs, massacres person. country is not an identity, it is a set of behaviors imposed on person. war happens upon person, not country.

 

note the slight gray variations in scenery, and even characters

 

tardi’s line is exquisite in its trustworthiness, it is free to wander with surgical accuracy the depth of human expression. he builds (seemingly from day one) a robust vocabulary of line that continues to serve him throughout his career – changing only to improve and clarify, not to reinvent. in that steadfast manner, tardi opens himself up in a way that an american might understand lynchian routine. do the same thing, eat the same food, appreciate the same landscapes, everyday – dream then, whole and free. ultimately tardi is the progenitor of sturdy lines out which limits seldom cross the reader’s mind.

 

 

each of these artists, i want to make clear here, operate with comparable sturdiness. the matter does not change between either. they are cut from the same cloth and it is a wonder that their sensibilities are so closely tender, for as reader it is the great gift of opening any of their books.

 

 

they are cut from the same cloth and it is a wonder that their sensibilities are so closely tender, for as reader it is the great gift of opening any of their books. by lsd

Salcedo | Genet | Luke | Incision as a two-way street

 

there are moments in notre-dame des fleurs that reverbate. they shake the terrain, and the words become buzzing entities. as gesture turns to caress and exchanges pronounce lullabies genet pierces his way in and out of the novel and the novel being told. i refuse to attempt a reading of his work beyond these observations. i refuse to remember the work through anyone else’s eyes and to accentuate other’s lives into the novel. knowing genet’s novel is simply to have read it an innumberable amount of times and to find in it the same tin soldier, the same procession, the same bed, and the same river bank. in that way the novel remains the same as genet wrote it. it is his to traverse and to tangle/untangle. this is his. i cannot wish more from it, as it expresses wholly the desire of his entrapment. willfully pressed against the most unsavory walls.

 


 

“oh luke, you wild, beautiful thing. you crazy handful of nothin’.”

“hell, he’s a natural-born world-shaker.”

 

 

compare to cool hand luke the condition of captivity. The softness of both genet and luke’s abject desires. in them both i find myself not wanting to go further, neither past the boundaries of what they provide nor into the grating dithering of peoples’ opinion.

salcedo anchors into the seed of this thought reassurance. that as she herself shares of her own work the status of secondary witness to violence. by way of building upon and reconfiguration she pierces the nature of the objects under her gaze, into testaments. their claims to violence solidified by the intervention she musters. enclosed or gouged, the object is preserved – so then is maintained its potential for ongoing intrusion.

 


pressing into the comet, trailing such as it is by lsd

Holly Herndon | PROTO | Extreme Love

 

lily anna hayes reading a text that might surely make timothy morton proud.

it moves me so profoundly.

it is everything but not all.

warm excess materialism.

i sure love it with all my heart..

prompting an unchanged discovery by lsd