November 4, 2008

What a historic night.

Sarah Palin Gets Punk'd

From Jezebel.com, "Oh, dear. Looks like Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin totally got punked by a Canadian comedy duo known as The Masked Avengers, who somehow got a hold of the Governor and tricked her into believing that she was actually speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "You know, I see you as a President someday," the fake Sarkozy says, to which Palin replies, "Oh, I don't know, maybe in 8 years." Palin comes across as a super excited Sarkozy fan girl, and as the phone call goes on, the fake Sarkozy gets more and more obnoxious, ridiculous, and exaggerated, leading one to wonder how in the world Palin could have possibly fallen for such an obvious joke. It's not until the end of the call, when the Masked Avengers reveal the prank, that Palin realizes that been fooled, and the call ends quite quickly after that. Whoops! Update: The Palin campaign has confirmed the call and issued a response."

College for Fundamentalists?

During the past few weeks I've had the opportunity of assisting Amy Arbus (daughter of photographer Diane Arbus) who is teaching a course at ICP called The Narrative Portrait.

Last week guest speaker Jona Frank presented her work from Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League. It was a fascinating examination of Patrick Henry College that Amazon.com describes as "...the higher education institution of choice among politically far-right young people aspiring to enter the conservative power elite. The explicit mission of PHC is to cultivate leaders to take American politics and culture back to God through careers in politics and entertainment. Acclaimed photographer Jona Frank presents an honest intimate and eye-opening portrait of the school and its students. Frank's photos eschew cultural politicking of the left or the right allowing readers to draw their own conclusions about a school and a youth movement with the potential to produce many of tomorrow's leaders."

NPR's review states, " The ferociously conservative Christian right may be an unfashionable bunch this political season, but when it comes to the notion of a need for change, there are no truer or more fervently motivated believers. In fact, the recently founded Patrick Henry College is churning out these family-values crusaders in force.

Inspired by journalist Hanna Rosin's 2005 New Yorker article about Purcellville, Va.'s so-called "Harvard For Homeschoolers" (subsequently expanded in the book God's Harvard), photographer Jona Frank put aside her own lefty leanings and set out — with Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League — to find the shared heartbeat of Patrick Henry College's student body, a group of kids for whom the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog is the work of sinners and a game of sloppy beer pong immoral.

It would have been easy for Frank to frame her young subjects — many of them acne-riddled, most of them attired in bad suits or ankle-length skirts, all of them painfully clean-cut — as proselytizing geeks and rabid, would-be game-changers. Indeed, the school's founder, Michael Farris, has aspirations for his Christian charges that go way beyond living right and influence-peddling. He greets each class of freshmen with a dream: One day, he tells them, "an Academy Award winner will walk down the aisle. He'll get a cell phone call congratulating him. It happens to be the president of the United States — his old roommate from Patrick Henry College."

Photographer Frank's intentionally neutral approach carries much less of a chill and allows unflinching expressions, erect postures, small sartorial details and the students' own words to tell a story. Jeremiah, a recent PHC grad who lists Harriet Tubman and disgraced evangelical pastor Ted Haggard among his heroes, is photographed like a young Sam Waterston on the set of Law & Order, his preternatural sense of empowerment eerily convincing. James, 19, in a midnight black blazer, looks burningly at the horizon and recalls with fondness "being treated to pizza and ice-cream sundaes at John Ashcroft's house" on one of his class's quite unique school trips. In a section titled "Interns," Rebekah, 23, kicks back on the set of Fox News, while Craig, 24, looks positively snappish in the office of Republican Congressman Donald Manzullo, both students the beneficiaries of PHC's aggressive placement programs.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Take That Red States

Wise, wise words from Lady Bunny. I can't help but post the whole thing.

"DEAR RED STATES,

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us. In case you aren't aware, that includes California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.

Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms. Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq , and hope that the WMDs turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines, 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT. With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all
televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.

Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacredunless we're discussing the war, the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

Finally, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico.

Peace out,
Blue States"

Racism at its Finest

Unbelievable. How will be racial divide ever be bridged?

Art Gotham's Square Foot Show Election 2008

On Saturday I'll be in a group show at Art Gotham's Square Foot Show. This year, fittingly, the theme is Election 2008. It has been a fascinating election to watch, i.e. the way a train wreck rivets one's attention. As a Canadian, who obviously can't vote in this country, I can't help but question the two party political system (and yes, I'm discounting the Ralph Nader and Ross Perot types) and view it as devisive and deficient. For many disillusioned voters, the 2008 elections will be a choice between the lesser of two evils, rather than an affirmation of support for the platform of either candidate.

"Politics and art? As impossible a mix as oil and water? Not necessarily. Has there ever been a more powerful anti-war message than Picasso’s Guernica? The last year has shown that Americans want to engage in politics again. We do care what happens here and abroad. To celebrate the excitement now bubbling as the coming election approaches, Art Gotham chose the timely theme “Election 2008” for its biannual Square Foot Show, which opens Saturday, October 26th and runs through Sunday, November 9th. Artists were provided with 12x12 inch canvases, and asked to think politically as they create works for the show. Nothing like a tough assignment for producing amazing results. "

ART GOTHAM

THE SQUARE FOOT SHOW | ELECTION 2008

Opening Reception: Saturday October 25 | 3-8pm
Works on view until Saturday November 8

Location: 192 Ave of the Americas (6th Ave btw Spring & Prince)
Gallery Hours: Thursday-Sunday 1-6pm

Art for Obama auction

A BENEFIT ART AUCTION ORGANIZED IN SUPPORT OF THE OBAMA/BIDEN CAMPAIGN

Bidding began at 5 pm on October 1st through October 8th. See all the donated works here.

I would love to bid on the photos above but have the reality of rent and groceries to deal with.

ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS OF THIS BENEFIT AUCTION, from the event website:

MISSION
ART FOR OBAMA is an online auction of photographs to benefit the Obama Campaign. Fifty of the country’s most prominent artists and photographers have donated their work for this cause. The auction will launch on October 1st and will run for one week. All proceeds from the auction will go to the Obama Campaign, to the Democratic National Committee and to non-profit organizations such as MoveOn.org, which are currently devoting their energy to helping the Obama campaign. Proceeds will be distributed in strict accordance with Federal Election Commission regulations.

WHO WE ARE
ART FOR OBAMA is a group of five artists who have come together to help the Obama campaign. Because we cannot afford to make large donations ourselves, we want to bring together the leaders of our community to help create change. We are all unpaid volunteers.

Jill Greenberg shows her version of John McCain

Then Jill Greenberg shot the version below for her website:

When The Atlantic called Jill Greenberg, a committed Democrat, to shoot a portrait of John McCain for its October cover, she rubbed her hands with glee.

She delivered the image the magazine asked for—a shot that makes the Republican presidential nominee look heroic. Greenberg is well known for her highly retouched images of bears and crying babies. But she didn’t bother to do much retouching on her McCain images. “I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad,” she says.

After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”

What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.

The Atlantic didn’t select the diabolical looking McCain for its cover. Greenberg is hoping to license that image to some other magazine (she negotiated a two-week embargo with The Atlantic so she could re-license images from the shoot before the election).

Warned that the image is just the kind of thing that will stir up the anti-media vitriol in the conservative blogosphere, Greenberg said, “Good. I want to stir stuff up, but not to the point where I get audited if he becomes president.”

That said, she goes on to explain that she’s thought about replacing McCain’s mouth with bloody shark teeth and displaying the image on a billboard with the message that the candidate is a bloodthirsty war monger.

Given her strong feelings about John McCain, we asked whether she had any reservations about taking the assignment in the first place.

“I didn’t,” she says. “It’s definitely exciting to shoot someone who is in the limelight like that. I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.”

The follow-up from PDN, "After our posting Friday, media outlets around the country picked up our story. Hundreds of you (including, evidently, a lot of first-time PDN readers) posted comments. The reaction was overwhelmingly critical of Greenberg. Even among professional photographers, many said Greenberg acted unprofessionally.

Atlantic editor James Bennet released a statement saying Greenberg "disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated images she has created for her Web site of John McCain." He told Fox News that the magazine would not pay Greenberg for the shoot and was considering legal action. The writer of The Atlantic's cover story, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote on his blog that Greenberg "betrayed this magazine, and disgraced her profession."

Bill Hannigan of VAUGHAN HANNIGAN tells PDN today that the agency is no longer representing Greenberg, a decision that was "mutually agreed upon." UPDATE: Greenberg has also left the Montage Agency and is now repped by ArtMix Photography.

(With the upcoming Election 2008 Art Gotham show coming up in October, I've been looking at how photography and images of the candidates have been used. This one of John McCain certainly has me chuckling.)

Tina Fey is back