Zoe Strauss

I am back and working on the new Las Vegas photos... ok, I wasn't working on them during the 20 hours I slept on Thursday, post-redeye flight home...BUT how is it possible to not comment on Larry Craig and his "wide stance when going to the bathroom."? That statement alone beats Mark Foley by a mile!




Family Friendly Image!

I was only pulled over once, but it involved a full search of my person and my rental car and included the question, "What's with all the loose cash?" after my pockets had been gone through.

I have written before about the demise of local television news broadcasts... but it looks like we're getting back on track, folks! Here's a hard hitting investigation getting to the bottom of why Larry Richette attacked his mother, Judge Lisa Richette. Albeit not articulated verbally, Larry's answer is obvious; "Because I am out of my fucking mind and should be committed." I think his response to the reporter's question would have been completely hysterical had he not actually attacked his mother and injured her to the point of needing stitches.

And I must agree with Larry's assessment of TV news; how could one better describe the lack of real news on our local stations other than just looking at a nude Larry Richette? It describes it perfectly.





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August 22, 2007
Philadelphia,
A man was charged with assaulting his mother - a 79 YO Philadelphia Common Pleas judge, and when a female reporter went to his home for comment, he flashed her.

Police said Judge Lisa Richette was assaulted Tuesday by her son, 48-year-old Lawrence Richette, in a domestic dispute at the judge's home.

The judge received treatment of a cut above her eye at Jefferson Hospital. It required four stitches.

When a reporter went to Lawrence Richette's home Wednesday afternoon, he opened the door in a robe, asked if the cameras were rolling and flashed the female reporter and a photojournalist for a few seconds. He closed his robe and said, "That's what I think of TV news."

I have been very, very busy working on a huge project, soon to be announced, as well as a bunch of shows coming up, but I've meant to write something about the large number of direct connections to my past that have cropped up in the last few months. I'm just going to acknowledge it now and save my long essay about personal history, formation of self and magical thinking for later.
So, first Sarah Trembath and Rich Garella show up at my house...and Rich moving around the corner! I went to Nicaragua with them almost 20 years ago. I love you both and I sure as hell wish you would move up here Ms. Tremblah. And then John Geary and Denise coming to the closing party at Silverstein...I lived with John Geary on Rodman St., also about 20 years ago, and I haven't seen him for about 18 years...I love you both, too. Then an email out of the blue from my friend Alkim Tuna, we were best friends in grade school...no one of quality doesn't love Alkim. She's awesome and I'm proud to have known that from the get go in Fran Danish's class. These are just a few of the people that have reappeared in my life since this May, and there've been several incidents in the same vein.

I received this letter and photocopied image 2 days ago...








I immediately looked up Harriett using the return address on the envelope and left a message telling her how grateful I was for her letter and that it was me in the photo.

It's pretty unbelievable that she recognized me from the photo in the Exponent, pictured below. After all it is a 26 year time difference and I was only 11 in the photo above.




Here's to Harriett! With much love and solidarity! Thanks.
And to Sarah and Rich, ¡No Pasarán!
And to John and Denise and Alkim. My love to you all!
You're goddammed right I live a charmed life. More later.

Just a heads up that Carla Williams has a number of posts up of great interest to me... with the latest post on Priceless #1 by Hank Willis Thomas. I'm a fan of Hank Willis Thomas, click on his name and check out his stuff.

“Nina Berman: Purple Hearts”

Through Aug. 30

Jen Bekman Gallery

6 Spring Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street
New York, NY
(212) 219-0166


Check out this article in the NY Times about the show “Nina Berman: Purple Hearts”

When I swung by the stadium to check out Mattress Flip, I did a quick run through of the field level and made some more images of "the how do I look" mirrors... as I go through the photos I'm finding that this is a difficult image for me. I'm not 100% about these photos and I'm going back and forth about the placement of the paint line of the opposite wall in the reflection. There's a lot of choices with these and one's not jumping out at me.

The printing is great on this... good job, Color Reflections, good job. My info will be up by the first game.
GO BIRDS!

I am fully aware that no one cares about this post at all. Not that it matters to me whatsoever, but it will only stay up for a few days at the most, so enjoy these photos now.

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When I meet someone from Philadelphia and I ask them what school they went to, I mean which high school...not which college. And sometimes I mean grade school. When someone answers with which college they went to, I most often want to punch them in the face. Amazingly, this is not a reflection of how much I enjoyed school...I never liked school at any age and I especially hated high school. Right, I know that's insane.

The thing that's the most nuts is that I want to know the school regardless of a person's age or the section of city they're from.



In celebration of Philadelphia public schools here's how "education" on my resume should really be read.

K- Grade 1. Albert Einstein Hebrew Day School- Las Vegas, NV

Grade 1: Solomon Schechter Day School- Philadelphia
Grades 2-3: Mayfair Elementary- Philadelphia
Grade 4: McCall Elementary- Philadelphia
Grades 5-8: Greenfield Elementary- Philadelphia
Grades 9-12: Philadelphia High School for Girls- Philadelphia


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Class of 87- Philadelphia High School for Girls


Here's me and the great Elle Cohen enjoying our 7E 5year reunion.
Update: Elle called me out of the blue AS I WAS POSTING THIS PHOTO.

Class of 83- Greenfield Elementary


Rest in Piece, Sam Ryan.

On August 19, 1839 Jacque Daguerre's photographic process (the daguerreotype) was presented to the French Academy of Sciences.

I have got to get a job, STAT. My immediate plan for money, winning the powerball, has failed once again. Fuck! Sadly, I'm not really kidding about powerball being my only plans for an immediate post Pew job. I'm going to be teaching a class at SVA up in NY next semester, Spring 2008, so I'm going to be bringing in some cash then but I've got to get cooking on the right now.

This one's for sure

Ernst Haas, Route 66, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1969, 20 x 30 inch Dye transfer print, Edition 28/50

Photo by Tony de Marco. Please visit "São Paulo No Logo" to see Tony de Marco's set of images recording the removal of all outdoor advertising.



It's like a beautiful dream. São Paulo has always been on my list of places to visit but now it's moved into my top 20.

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"In September 2006, São Paulo's mayor, Gilberto Kassab, passed the so-called Clean City laws. Fed up with the "visual pollution" caused by the city's 8,000 billboard sites, many of them erected illegally, Kassab proposed a law banning all outdoor advertising. The skyscraper-sized hoardings that lined the city's streets would be wiped away at a stroke. And it was not just billboards that attracted his wrath: all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses—even shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. "It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn't legal," reasoned Kassab, "so we have decided to go all the way."

The law was hailed by writer Roberto Pompeu de Toledo as 'a rare victory of the public interest over private, of order over disorder, aesthetics over ugliness, of cleanliness over trash...' "

From Business Week. Click to read the whole article.

We DID NOT win powerball, much to my surprise. I'm not kidding, I was already making plans on how to spend the money. FUCK!

Click above to take a look at some amazing photos of my #1 west coast dagger claiming Poseidon's throne. Her friend Rob Fatal made the photos.



A Dagger Masters the Sea
photo by Rob Fatal

I think of Ray's death every day, several times a day, but it's not an uncontrolled checklist of the day's events any longer. Lately I just have a wave of dread accompanied by seeing his face or getting the call but I'm able to move right back into the moment without an inventory of the day of his death.

The dread is something new and it comes on with no warning; I get an intense feeling of fear that I didn't have before. One thing's for sure...there is no way to ever articulate grief and no metaphor that could ever prepare you for it.

Brigantine, NJ











I'm printing these at 8"x12" and fairly dark...I never have any idea how these look on someone else's computer screen, but they are at the perfect brightness on my screen. I'll take a look at them, but I think they'll never be able translate to color copies.


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The Lakes, South Philadelphia






I don't know if I'm printing these. Below is the color of the algee in the main lake using the fill flash and the 2 above are made with no flash and the overwhelming orange of sodium vapor lighting.

"American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it."

"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them."

Night Time at the Jersey Shore
Brigantine, NJ




Day Time at the Jersey Shore
Atlantic City, NJ

This is show is going to be off the hook. I am huge fan of Eileen Neff; her work is transcendent. I'm genuinely so excited to see this exhibit that I'm getting the hell over the minute it opens and you know I'm going to try to bust in even before it opens.

Eileen Neff: Between Us
September 7 - December 16, 2007



Eileen Neff, Anecdote of the Tree, 1999-2000, C-print mounted on aluminum, 44 x 64 inches, edition of 5


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In the spirit of full disclosure I must mention that Ms. Neff's brother, Dr. Louis Prusack, DDS, was my pediatric dentist in 1976 and 1977. This is just a bizarre coincidence and unrelated to my love of her work, especially considering that I met Eileen Neff more than 20 years after my last appointment with Dr. Prusack. That family has high quality stock!

Dr. Harold Edgerton
Atomic Test
1952

"Developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton in the 1940s, the Rapatronic photographic technique allowed very early times in a nuclear explosion's fireball growth to be recorded on film. The exposures were often as short as 10 nanoseconds, and each Rapatronic camera would take exactly one photograph.

Edgerton built a special lens 10 feet long for this camera which was set up in a bunker 7 miles from the source of the blast which was triggered- the bomb placed atop a steel gantry anchored to the desert floor by guide wires. The exposures are at 1/100,000,000ths of a second....In another millionth of a second, a planet of fire exists,
silhouetting and dwarfing the Joshua Trees."






Sally Mann
Untitled
(Deep South #31) 1998


"Outfitting her large-format 8 x 10 camera with undersized and often damaged lenses, Sally Mann’s contemporary landscape photographs admit the light leaks and imperfections of the photographic process. Occasionally, a distortion becomes the central element in a work."

I am home from a one week vacation at the Jersey Shore. Here's some highlights from Mother/Daughter/Sister day at the beach.


Savannah Roberts, Sister


Zoe Strauss, Sister


Some Lady on a Postcard

One more day, and then then back to full force work.

The above title takes you to a new favorite of mine, but it's sexually explicit so I'm not posting here "as is" and I'm including an "adults only" disclaimer. The above link is for adults only. After making this image I went back and forth about it and I've decided that I really love it. I'm obviously unable to show it under I-95 and although it wouldn't be impossible to place it in a slideshow, it will very, very difficult to sequence this one without losing the images projected before and after. In addition, it matters where the slideshow would be shown and what audience would be expected to view the slideshow and on and on with the considerations of showing sexual contact as opposed to nudity.

All that being said, and despite that this image isn't under consideration at all for 95, I still love it.

Please click above to read "The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono."

Click above and watch all of them.

Shadow World by David Kessler.

I haven't been to either of these spots, but I'm thrilled that they've opened.

Yo Darkrooms

Project Basho

Do not miss world renown DJ Cosmo Baker (aka brother) at the Guggenheim tomorrow.


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Art after Dark: First Fridays at the Guggenheim
Enjoy a drink with friends, explore the galleries, and listen to some of the best DJs in town, all in the spectacular Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building.

Admission is $25. Free for all Guggenheim members!

August 3, 9 PM–1 AM
Cosmo Baker

One third of the world-famous Brooklyn based DJ collective The Rub, Cosmo is a true master of the mix. With his roots in the Philadelphia music scene where he worked alongside the likes of King Britt and the Roots, Cosmo Baker has inspired some of the biggest names in the DJ world. Having spun for everyone from Moby to Jay-Z to Death Cab For Cutie, he has an uncanny knack for mixing up the most diverse sounds, making you love everything he plays—even if you don’t want to!

In partnership with ST. GERMAIN

Media sponsor Village Voice


For more information, call 212 423 3535 or e-mail membership@guggenheim.org.

All Philadelphia High School students should be required to take a class about the history of Philadelphia, including a section on the history of the students' high school and a section specific to the history of the neighborhood surrounding the high school.

Students will need to read some of these books. And also work from primary source material. Actually, it would be great if someone could cull all of this information and compile a textbook that could be used as a basis for this class.

I know this is a long list...yes, I know that over 50 books is possibly 49 too many to expect high school students to read in a year...
but I'm still missing a ton of stuff, so please feel free to add some books that I've missed. I am especially interested in writing that addresses Frank Rizzo's mayoral terms and his intense racism and the racism of his administration. I think the only Rizzo book I own, "The Sayings of Chairman Frank," (which is a collection of Rizzo's most idiotic quotes) doesn't really count.

As an aside: my god, we've had some fucked up mayors. Please Lord! Hear our prayer and let Nutter be good.

Can someone please get working on a syllabus and lesson plans?


1. Still Philadelphia: A Photographic History, 1890-1940
by Frederick M. Miller, Morris J. Vogel, Allen F. David

2. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study
by W. E. B. Dubois, Elijah Anderson, Isabel Eaton
University of Pennsylvania Press 1899

3. Mermaids, Monasteries, Cherokees and Custer: The Stories Behind Philadelphia Street Names
by Robert Alotta

4. Philadelphia: A 300-Year History
by Russell Weigley

5. The Buried Past: An Archaeological History of Philadelphia
by John L. Cotter, Daniel G. Roberts, Michael Parrington

6. Attention, MOVE! This is America!
Margot Harry
Banner Press, 1987

7. Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 (Studies in Health Illness and Caregiving)
by J. H. Powell, 308 pgs.

8. William Dorsey's Philadelphia and Ours: On the Past and Future of the Black City in America
by Roger Lane. 490 pgs.

9. An Architectural Guidebook to Philadelphia
by Francis Morrone, James Iska

10. Philadelphia's Broad Street: South and North (Images of America)
by Robert Morris Skaler

11. The MYTH OF THE WELFARE QUEEN: A PULTIZER PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST'S PORTRAIT OF WOMEN ON THE LINE
by David Zucchino

12. Let This Be Your Home: The African American Migration to Philadelphia ,1900-1940
by Rowena Stewart (Foreword), Irene Burnham (Introduction), The Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum (Author), Robert Gregg (Author), Horace Boyer (Author), Allan Ballard (Author), Elise Jenkins (Author)

13. These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia
by Susan Branson

14. Philadelphia African Americans: Color, Class and Style, 1840-1940
by The Balch Institute

15. History of the Jews of Philadelphia: From Colonial Times to the Age of Jackson
by Edwin, 2Nd Wolf, Maxwell Whiteman

16. Violent Death in the City: Suicide, Accident, and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (History of Crime and Criminal Justice Series)
by Roger Lane

17. Philadelphia Stories: A Photographic History, 1920-1960
by Fredric Miller, Allen F. Davis

18. Proceedings of the third Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women: held in Philadelphia, May 1st, 2d and 3d, 1839.
by Pa. Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women

19. Not All Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Paperback)
by Karin Wulf

20. Philadelphia Then and Now (Then and Now Series)
by Edward Arthur Mauger

21. Philadelphia Ghost Stories
by Charles J. III Adams

22. History of the Philadelphia Electric Company, 1881-1961
by Nicholas B. Wainwright

23. Fever 1793
by Laurie Halse Anderson
(Juvenile)

24. An American Plague : The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 (Newbery Honor Book)
by Jim Murphy
(Juvenile)

25. An account of the bilious remitting yellow fever: As it appeared in the city of Philadelphia in the year 1793
by Benjamin Rush

26. Miracle At Philadelphia : The Story of the Constitutional Convention May - September 1787
by Catherine Drinker Bowen

27. Philadelphia: Neighborhoods, Division, and Conflict in a Postindustrial City
by Carolyn Adams, David Bartelt , David Elesh , Ira Goldstein, Nancy Kleniewski, William Yancey. 210 pgs.

28. The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth
by Sam Bass Warner Jr. 262 pgs.

29. The Turbulent Era: Riot & Disorder in Jacksonian America
by Michael Feldberg. 134 pgs.

30. Christ Church, Philadelphia: The Nation's Church in a Changing City
by Deborah Mathias Gough. 426 pgs.

31. The Transformation of Criminal Justice, Philadelphia, 1800-1880
by Allen Steinberg. 326 pgs.

32. Black American Street Life: South Philadelphia, 1969-1971
by Dan Rose. 279 pgs.

33. The Maritime Commerce of Colonial Philadelphia
by Arthur L. Jensen. 312 pgs.

34. Cities in American History
by Kenneth T. Jackson, Stanley K. Schultz. 514 pgs.

35. Penn's Great Town: 250 Years of Philadelphia Architecture Illustrated in Prints and Drawings
by George B. Tatum, Theo B. White; University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961

36. Women in the Nineteenth-Century Art World: Schools of Art and Design for Women in London and Philadelphia
by F. Graeme Chalmers; Greenwood Press, 1998

37. Reshaping Ethnic and Racial Relations in Philadelphia: Immigrants in a Divided City
Book by Judith Goode, Jo Anne Schneider; Temple University Press, 1994, 282 pgs.

38. City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves : Lesbian and Gay Philadelphia, 1945-1972 (The Chicago Series on Sexuality, History, and Society)
by Marc Stein

39. South Philadelphia: Mummers, Memories, and the Melrose Diner
by Murray Dubin

40 plus. Any of the Arcadia Publishing House books on Philadelphia neighborhoods

41. First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Early American Studies)
by Gary B. Nash

42. The Philadelphia Inquirer's Guide to Historic Philadelphia
by Edward Colimore

43. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840
by Gary B. Nash

44. The Irish in Philadelphia: Ten Generations of Urban Experience
by Dennis Clark

45. Colonial Ironwork in Old Philadelphia
by Philip B. Wallace

46. Voices from Marshall Street: Jewish Life in a Philadelphia Neighborhood 1920-1960
by Elaine Krasnow Ellison, Elaine Mark Jaffe

47. Rebecca Gratz: Women and Judaism in Antebellum America (American Jewish Civilization Series)
by Dianne Ashton

48. Jewish Quarter of Philadelphia: A History & Guide 1881-1930
by Harry D. Boonin

49. Building Little Italy: Philadelphia's Italians Before Mass Migration
by Richard N. Juliani

50. From Paesani to White Ethnics: The Italian Experience in Philadelphia (Suny Series in Italian/American Culture)
by Stefano Luconi

51. Chinatown Live(s): Oral Histories from Philadelphia's Chinatown
by Asian Arts Initiative

52. Dynamics of Ethnic Identity : Three Asian American Communities in Philadelphia (Asian Americans: Reconceptualizing Culture, History, Politics)
by Jae-Hyup Lee

53. Mother's House
by Robert Venturi

54. Old Cities/Green Cities: Communities Transform Unmanaged Land (Report (American Planning Association. Planning Advisory Service), No. 506/507.)
by J. Blaine Bonham, Gerri Spilka, Darl Rastorfer, American Planning Association

55. and 56. Urban Nomads and Still Home: Jews of South Philadelphia by Harvey Finkle

This is the same photo, with the bottom image slightly cropped and a slight skewing of the bottom left corner. I have a tendency to grid everything and Tiny Asshole Gang is no exception.