Excusado in Distress (My Workplace Bathroom) 2 March 2020
The above image is a “Guerilla Gallery” piece. I sometimes make reference or temporary prints of my own and others’ images for a variety of working purposes. For prints and their related notes that I want to preserve, I may make a plain-paper printout on a standard monochrome laser office printer, add notes on the back, then laminate the page so that it can be stuck on my wall or in a 3-ring binder. Far less expensive and faster than making “real” prints. One such image is the classic “Excusado”, originally photographed by Edward Weston in 1925 when he and Tina Modotti were living in Mexico. However, when the paper accidentally was fed through the laminator at an angle, the paper jammed and resulted in a crumpled, damaged lamination. So I decided to post this piece on a stall door in the third-floor bathroom of my workspace building, a venue I had previously used to post prints of scenes inside and outside that bathroom (hence, the notion of the “guerilla gallery” whereby I anonymously place pieces in random public or semi-public locations).
Here we can see Weston’s “Excusado” original:
Excusado, 1925 (Edward Weston)
By the way, this image is also used to grace the backroom at the rear of our house, and I was considering placing a copy on the door of each bathroom as signage for the convenience of our potential guests.
The rear bathroom with Excusado
I also considered using as signage for bathroom doors the Alfred Steiglitz photograph of Marcel Duchamp’s (in)famous “Fountain” sculpture from 1917, but I guess I prefer Weston’s take on bathroom appointments.
“Fountain” sculpture by Marcel Duchamp, 1917 (photograph by Alfred Stieglitz)