Happy Hog Rot

photo by Jack Delano

The Denver Post’s always-interesting photo blog recently published an array of color photos, taken between 1939 and 1943, by photographers commissioned by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. See them all on the Denver Post’s Plog.

The photo at right was done by Jack Delano, one of the famous FSA photographers recruited by Roy Stryker to document the Great Depression, its aftermath and other Americana. As such, Delano was on the same team as the likes of Dorothea Lange and John Vachon (Vachon, interestingly, was “rediscovered” recently when a series of his very rare Marilyn Monroe photos from the 50s was published this year). I also find it interesting that Delano was also a composer of music.

Photograher David Guttenfelder has been photographing the war in Afghanistan for the past seven years. Here, the Denver Post publishes a portfolio of his outstanding work on its Captured photoblog:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2009/10/30/photographer-collection-david-guttenfelder-in-afghanistan/

photo by Roy DeCarava

Roy DeCarava, the first black photographer to be awarded a Guggenheim grant, died recently. I remember him mostly from his photographs of Harlem neighborhoods and jazz scenes, which I encountered during my early years in photography. NPR offers up this tribute and story on DeCarava and his work.

Just learning today that Jim Carroll died on September 11, I slipped down to my basement vinyl music stash. There it was, his 1980 album, Catholic Boy, containing the only piece that I had remembered: “People Who Died”. Carroll may have been a one-hit wonder with that number, but along with being a punk rocker of that era, he was a poet and authored the Basketball Diaries book that was turned into a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Here, now, People Who Died:

Almost every time I hear this song, I am reminded of Tulsa. Long out of print as far as I know, Tulsa was a book of photographs by Larry Clark, a drug addict who documented the sex-guns-drugs life (and death) of people around him in that Oklahoma city. The book, incidentally, was published in the early 70s by Ralph Gibson’s Lustrum Press. Not long after that I came to meet Ralph, whose own photographs as well as his publication of others’ work had become of great interest to me (and will probably be explored in future posts here as time allows).

Several months ago, niece-in-law and fabulous designer Chika told us about Isabella Rossellini’s wonderful scientifically-accurate videos of insect and marine sexual life. Here’s an example:

See more: http://www.sundancechannel.com/greenporno/