~ Curator…Archivist…Historian…World Leader in Infrared Flash Street Photography…Landmark Artist's Books…Underground Social Documentary Photography…World Record Holder
That should be no surprise. Tearing down tent camps will not fix the problem. Most homeless people don’t live on the street from choice.
Tear down the tents and the homeless will just sleep under the stars…
In the old days families were more generational close-knit and people had safety supports. An old gal told me during the depression 3 families lived in a small house to get by. Nowadays everyone is on their own more or less. No support other than the concrete.
During 2016 I have been sending in a minimum of 4 posts a month, scheduled every 7-9 days. Starting in October 2016 I will be reducing my posting schedule to a minimum of 3 posts per month or 1 post every 10 days.
Due to a lack of time and being overwhelmed with photo projects I had to initiate these changes. I am a photog not a writer.
Just in the area of artist’s books, I have completed or am working on about 115 books. Then I have many, many thousand photos in the Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection that need to be scanned and organized. On top of that I have many tens of thousand photos I shot over the last 3 to 4 years I have never even looked at yet…just no time.
As was the case prior to this change, I may send in quick, off the cuff posts if they fit into my schedule. So, 3 posts a months is a minimum and not maximum.
From America in T-Shirts artist’s book by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
“I’m working as hard as I can and can’t get ahead…”
That was a comment on one of the photo forums. Well, welcome to the world of being a photog! In a world of 2 billion cell phone cams and $29 inkjet printers from Wal-Mart that is just how things are.
We all have to decide how much of ourselves to give to our art. There is no guaranty we will ever achieve anything with our art. Over the millennia, that is how it has always been with artists for the most part.
…from Scape Martinez
“Never give up! Don’t listen to the haters. Don’t try to be an artist unless you can work and live in isolation, without any thanks….bleak, but needed until you get to the much lauded place.”
The thing is, few if any will ever get to the ‘much lauded place.’ But, if we do our art for love and for the therapy of making sense of our world, we are never disappointed. Once we develop expectations we are sunk – for expectations are pre-planned resentments.
Just by chance was walking round last night near the waterfront. I heard some rocking music so wandered over. The Lucky Chops were giving a free show. Luckily had my cam with me. Only saw part of the show, but what I did see was hot. Here is a shot of ‘Little Dicky’ on sax.
From developing his prints in hot chemicals to melt the emulsion to jacking off on his photos for his Spermanko series. The creative genius of Araki never ceases to amaze me…
Concept and Post Processing from found photographs by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
I don’t do much with ‘mental masturbation’ photography. But, this ‘Araki popping out of a vagina’ was renting space in my head for some time and I wanted to get it finished. I would have preferred it with Araki pulling himself out with his 2 hands by grabbing the labia, but that is beyond what I can do.
I have a lot of ideas in my head that could be drawn. Sadly, I have zero talent for drawing or painting.
The photo of ‘The Birth of Araki’ was done as a cutout composite with found photographs. The next photo, from the turn of the century, clued me into what can be done with cutouts. I’m an old film photog and don’t know how to use Photoshop, I’m strictly Lightroom, so went old school with the cutouts.
Araki has changed directions somewhat with his work. His Higan series is more Winogrand…ish in nature. It is not really anything up my alley, but you can Google it if you like.
One thing is for sure…Araki enjoys his work!
<><><><>
Flappers
A forthcoming 6 volume artist’s book series by social documentary photographer Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
I would love to own an M246! (Side note about reluctance to walk around with gear worth as much as a car: I might still not own an M246 even if it were *easily* affordable)…
I use the quote above only as an introduction to the topic, and intend my question as directed toward RFF members in general, not specifically to the one quoted.
Do you feel nervous about carrying expensive gear? This issue is mentioned from time to time, so it appears there are a number of us who share this concern.
What is your feeling about this? Are you inhibited from buying expensive yet affordable gear because of a sense of vulnerability or risk?
__________________
<><><><>
Sure, I worry about losing my gear. Whenever I go out to shoot I think about how much of it I want to risk. I don’t live in a great area, so I think about protecting my gear at home as well.
In the old film era days I didn’t have to worry so much. I could buy cheap, stripped down, used Nikon F bodies for next to nothing. One time my Nikon gear got stolen, so I replaced it with a used $75 Pentax Spotmatic until I saved up some $. Nowadays some of this digital gear is priced through the roof.
Early on in my social documentary career I realized physical attacks were an ever present danger. As such, I had to put a little effort in learning how to maintain my safety. I’m more concerned with not getting injured or killed than losing gear. Still, I can’t afford to replace my gear, so I’d also like to hold onto it as well as my life.
Getting into altercations is an ever present danger for me. If you look at my photos in this blog you will see I am a very aggressive shooter even though I’m in my 60’s. Consequently with cam in hand and aggressive work habits, trouble seems to always follow me.
I got a bad neck and bad back, so I am not one for wresting a guy on the street. I am also at a disadvantage in that many times I have a camera strapped to my wrist and a backpack of photo gear on my back. To equalize things, I carry self-defense weapons for defending against an attack or to ward off a theft. Irrespective of my age and health issues, if need be, I can snap a neck or bust a head open like a cracked egg with a collapsible baton. That is the beauty of weapons…they are the great equalizer, they add power to the powerless.
From guns to batons to magnum 4 oz. cans of pepper spray…I’m armed for answering a wide range of threats with self-defense actions. I generally carry weapons more for my protection than losing a camera. I wont use high priced gear in known bad areas.
If I am shooting in dangerous areas, I use 12mp to 16 mp ‘disposable’ cameras and get my pack value down to $250 to $600 – I leave the high $$ gear at home. My cheap Pentax bodies start at $90 to $120 and 50mm manual lenses at $25. Couple that with a crapper $29 flash and that is about as disposable as I get.
Luckily for me I am not a anal fanboy of any one brand of cam. I can generally get along with most of the cams out there. That is where my nearly 50 years of experience has paid off.
I use a Think Tank Street Walker most of the time. For more stealth I use a cheapo $15 Walmart backpack with camera skins for protecting the gear. If you can find a cheap backpack with a waist belt for extra security that is great. No, it is nowhere as convenient as the shoulder bag. But the backpack does allow me to keep my gear and life safe, so that is all that counts.
Here is the bottom line…for street work, staying low key and having something secure that wont work against you in a fight…the backpack wins hands down. How would you like an attacker to take your shoulder bag and choke you out with the strap? A thief can pull a shoulder bag off your shoulder in an instant and take off. Getting a backpack off your back is much harder. If they get the pack off your back, maybe then can beat you with it, but at least you wont be choked out with the pack.
≈ Comments Off on When history must distill what defines underground comix into one creative genius that is the alpha and the omega of that genre…there can be no argument, dispute or question…that name is CRUMB!
I had written a book review for Amazon about a Robert Crumb comix compendium, but they refused to publish it. So I have expanded it some and sharing it here…
Through the years underground comix have showcased the work of many creative artists.
Green was studying painting at the Rhode Island School of Design when in 1967 he discovered the work of Robert Crumb and turned to cartooning, attracted to what he called Crumb’s “harsh drawing stuffed into crookedly-drawn panels”. He experimented with his artwork to find what he called an “inherent and automatic style as a conduit for the chimerical forms in [his] own psyche”. He dropped out of an MFA program at Syracuse University when in 1968 he felt a “call to arms” move to San Francisco, where the nascent underground comix scene was blossoming amid the counterculture there. (Wikipedia)
Brent Boates (cover)
From Bikers’ Mardi Gras artist’s book
Sometimes photogs can find something naturally occurring that parallels what is in the comix. Here is my version of Amputee Love…shot candid in a campground.
Lee Marrs
Aline Kominsky-Crumb (Married to Robert Crumb)
Bill Griffith
Jim Blanchard / Goad
The Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection was very fortunate to aquire the oringal artwork, preliminaries and related ephemera to Trucker Fags in Denial comic book project. Here is a statement written by Jim Blanchard for a forthcoming artist’s bookby Daniel D. Teoli Jr. entitled: Trucker Fags in Denial: A Closer Look.
I first became aware of Jim Goad when I saw his incendiary self-published magazine Answer Me! in the early 1990s. I loved it and sent him a package of my publications. He liked them, so I contributed artwork to Answer Me! numbers 3 and 4, including the Hitler cover to number 3.
In the early 2000s, Jim wrote and asked whether I was game to do a comic story he had envisioned called Trucker Fags In Denial, featuring the exploits of two obese, closeted gay truck drivers. It sounded like a hilarious idea to me, especially with Jim Goad writing it. At first, I was wary of taking on the project, because I knew how much hard work it was to create good “comic” art. Continuity is crucial, and it requires accurately drawing and inking characters, backgrounds, word balloons, and lettering over and over again, something I really hadn’t done before, other than the few, short experimental comics I did in the 80s and 90s. I had served as “inker” for cartoonist Peter Bagge’s popular alternative comic Hate, but never had the responsibility of drawing, inking, and lettering a book-length narrative comic by myself.
If memory serves, it was a year or so after Jim initially asked me that we began work on Trucker Fags In Denial. Jim was hired as managing editor for Portland, Oregon strip club ad-rag Exotic magazine, and had more or less free rein. We would produce one page of Trucker Fags In Denial per month for Exotic mag. Only having to create a page a month allowed me to take my time and dial the art in properly. Jim would send a script each month with very specific visuals for each panel, and dialogue. We produced twenty eight pages in twenty eight consecutive months, and I don’t remember him ever complaining about what I came up with, or asking me to change anything, apart from minor adjustments.
I feel like we made a great collaborative writer/artist team. Seattle comics publisher Fantagraphics Books, whose roster includes everything from Peanuts and Dennis The Menace to Zap, published and quickly sold out of two printings of Trucker Fags In Denial in 2004 and 2005. The thirty two page comic now fetches $40-$50 on Amazon. It would mark the last time I worked in the comic medium.
Manuel ‘Spain’ Rodriguez
He picked up the nickname Spain as a child, when he heard some kids in the neighborhood bragging about their Irish ancestry, and he defiantly claimed Spain was just as good as Ireland (Wikipedia)
March 2, 1940 – November 28, 2012
John Howard
Various artists.
Various artists
乳房和阴道的中国爱情是传说
Bob Fingerman
Petra Waldron and Jennifer Finch
あなたは猫の上に何の力もありません
Anata wa neko no ue ni nani no chikara mo arimasen
Tits and Clits was an all woman publication with many great contributing artists…Joyce Farmer, Lyn Chevely, Roberta Gregory, Lee Marrs and Trina Robbins.
Mary Wings
Roberta Gregory, Melinda Gebbie, Carol Tyler, Mary Fleener, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Dori Seda, Phoebe Gloeckner, Penny Van Horn, M.K. Brown, Diane Noomin, Phoebe Gloeckner, Carol Lay, Caryn Leschen, Leslie Sternbergh, Dori Seda, Mary Fleener, and Krystine Kryttre
Comix have evolved a lot over the years – now there’re called graphic novels!
Rosetta is a collaboration from many artists around the world – Ivan Brunetti, David Choe, Dave Cooper, Renee French, Tom Hart, Michael Kupperman, David Lasky, Lat, Matt Madden, Megan Kelso, James Kochalka, John Porcellino, Ron Regé Jr., Sara Varon and others. Wrapped in a jam cover by Dave Cooper, Marc Bell, Miriam Katin and Ron Regé Jr. (Description from Amazon)
Most of Rosetta does not interest me…but Britney was such a cutie pie I had to buy it!
<><><><>
But…when all is said and done and history must distill what defines underground comix into one creative genius that is the alpha and the omega of that genre…there can be no argument, dispute or question…that name is CRUMB!!
Robert Crumb is not only the godfather of the underground movement, he is also one of the most prolific, talented and creative cartoon artists ever. His body of work could easily fill a Crumb museum or two.
Concept and Post Processing from found photographs by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
I don’t do much with ‘mental masturbation’ photography. But, this ‘Araki popping out of a vagina’ was renting space in my head for some time and I wanted to get it finished. I would have preferred it with Araki pulling himself out with his 2 hands by grabbing the labia, but that is beyond what I can do.
I have a lot of ideas in my head that could be drawn. Sadly, I have zero talent for drawing or painting. If I had more money I’d contact Crumb to see if he wanted to draw me a shot of Araki popping out of a gapped open vagina. I mean, what better else to define Araki? And probably Crumb as well!
The photo of ‘The Birth of Araki’ was done as a cutout composite with found photographs. The next photo, from the turn of the century, clued me into what can be done with cutouts. I tried to hire a Photoshop expert to do the piece, but they never came through. I’m an old film photog and don’t know how to use Photoshop, I’m strictly Lightroom, so went old school with the cutouts and did it myself.
I had written to Araki to make me this photo and send me a low res digital file so I could make a small print to hang up on my wall. But, Araki is too goddamn high and mighty for a reply. That is how it goes with many a famous photog, pretty much all of them. Anyway, it all worked itself out and is no longer renting head space.
From the Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection
This brings up another concept to discuss…working things out by getting it all out. Crumb did a lot of this ‘art therapy’ in his work. It is not anything new, if he was a poet he would write a poem, a photog does a photo, a writer types a book, a musician writes a song or lyrics and a choreographer would design dances to get it out.
Crumb with a model of Devil Girl
One of Crumb’s classic comics is A Bitchin Bod. The story unfolds over a few pages, I’ve only included a small snip.
In it, Mr. Natural has transformed the Devil Girl into a zombie like body sans head. The head has been pushed into the body. Mr. Natural shares his bod with Flakey. When Flakey’s conscience gets the better of him, Mr. Natural reaches in and pulls the head back out by the tongue, restoring Devil Girl. To the delight of the lesbian separatists, once restored, the Devil Girl sets out to kick ass.
<><><><>
An early influence on Robert’s art was his brother Charles.
Charles was a very talented artist. Here are a couple of his pieces. Sadly his mom trashed his artwork after he committed suicide.
A video clip of Charles from the film Crumb
<><><><>
Robert Crumb – Biography
Robert Crumb was born in Philadelphia on Aug. 30, 1943, to a Marine father and Catholic mother. His family moved frequently during his childhood, and moved to Delaware in 1956 when his father retired after twenty years in the U.S. Marine Corps. Robert’s mother often behaved erratically and was probably manic depressive. Robert was a faithful Catholic until he was sixteen. His biggest influence during his youth was his older brother Charles, who loved comics and who co-wrote many of the comics they produced as children. Crumb was anything but popular in high school and felt alienated.
“I was one of those social rejects, but then, you know, a lot of people were — nothing unusual about being an outcast in high school.”
Edit by DDT: Robert had another brother named Maxon as well as some sisters.
Maxon had artistic talents as well, although mostly what he is known for are his paintings.
Here is a short clip on Maxon telling the ripe peach story! For info on the sisters, see the film Crumb! (end of edit)
After graduating from high school, Robert spent a depressing year at home, mostly drawing, and talking endlessly about the meaning of life with Charles, who never did leave home. He finally left for Cleveland in 1962 to live with his friend Marty Pahls, and soon found work with the American Greetings Corporation as a color separator.
He was promoted within a year to the Hi-Brow Department, and drew hundreds of cards over the next several years. His job as a commercial illustrator would have an effect on his future work. My boss kept telling me my drawings were too grotesque. I was trained to draw ‘cute’ little neuter characters which influenced my technique, and even now my work has this cuteness about it.
In 1964, Crumb lost his virginity with Dana Morgan, who he married later in the year. They honeymooned in Europe for six months, while Crumb continued to mail in his illustrations for American Greetings.
“I started taking L.S.D. in Cleveland in June of ’65. That changed my head around. It made me stop taking cartooning so seriously and showed me a whole other side of myself.”
After a temporary breakup with Dana, Robert traveled to New York, Chicago, and Detroit during this acid-soaked period and created many of his future characters: Mr. Natural, Mr. Snoid and Angelfood McSpade.
In January, 1967, Crumb suddenly left Cleveland. “I escaped to San Francisco when I met two guys in a bar who said they were driving west.” Dana followed him there, and they eventually settled in Haight-Ashbury. Crumb drew “Zap #1” and “Zap #0” in the fall of 1967 and sold them on the street in 1968 (out of Jesse’s baby carriage). So marks the birth of underground comics with Crumb as its most recognizable force. His son Jesse was born at this time, in April, 1968.
Robert continued to draw and travel throughout the rest of the decade.
“I was all over the map in ’69. I didn’t spend much time home. I was chasing women all over the place. I lived for a while in a hotel on Mission Street. That’s where ‘Big Ass’ and ‘Snatch 3’ were done. I was so mixed up. I stayed a couple months with Gilbert Shelton and a gang of Texans in Venice, California. I was in Detroit, Chicago, New York. It’s amazing I managed to turn out so much work in that chaotic time.”
In the last months of 1969, Crumb received a $10,000 advance from Ballantine Books for a “Fritz the Cat” book. He used that money as a down payment on a plot of land north of San Francisco in Potter Valley where he, Dana, and baby Jesse moved. In 1970, Crumb began a five-year, on-again off-again relationship with Kathy Goodell, who lived in San Francisco. In the same year, Crumb’s wife gave permission for Ralph Bakshi to use Fritz the Cat in a full-length feature film. Crumb, entirely dissatisfied with the project, soon after killed Fritz the Cat, a character he had created in adolescence.
In the first few years of the decade, Crumb continued to traverse the country and draw. But by 1974, Crumb moved from what had become a commune in Potter Valley and settled down in Madison, California with his new girlfriend, Aline Kominsky (later to become his second wife). He stopped smoking marijuana at that time. He drew a “Mr. Natural” strip which ran in “The Village Voice” for about a year (later compiled as “Mr. Natural #3”). He also started playing banjo and mandolin in the Cheap Suit Serenaders Band, which usually performed in the Bay area.
His revolutionary character Frosty the Snowman (Arcade comics in the mid-seventies) may have brought the wrong sort of attention from the government, because by 1977 Crumb was embroiled in a legal battle with the IRS.
In 1981, Crumb produced and edited a new comic magazine called “Weirdo” which included the work of other artists. Aline’s and Robert’s daughter Sophie was born at this time. In the mid-eighties, Robert decided to let Peter Bagge (and eventually Aline) take over the job as editor of Weirdo so that he could spend more time doing his own comics. While still contributing to “Weirdo,” he created the “Hup 1-4” series in the late 1980’s and early 90’s.
By the end of the 1980’s, with suburban sprawl increasing, the Crumbs became disgusted with America and, at Aline’s instigation, decided to leave. Robert exchanged some of his sketchbooks for their new house in the south of France. Crumb’s friend, Terry Zwigoff, filmed Robert and his family before they moved and the resulting documentary “Crumb” achieved some success at the box office in America and some countries in Europe.
Except for the occasional expedition to Paris or America, Crumb has nestled himself in the south of France, where he is hard at work on a long-term project illustrating the book of Genesis. He owns almost five thousand 78 RPM records in his collection. His son Jesse lives in Northern California. His daughter Sophie lives 45 minutes away from her parents. Aline is pursuing her interests in comics, painting and sculpting.
Within a couple of hours of joining the Rangefinder Forum someone PM’d me telling me self-published books ‘don’t count’ – that only commercially published books count. He then went on to say donating unsolicited photos to museums doesn’t count, that I have no critical reviews, no one-man shows and on and on. He did his best trying to tear me down. He was a photography teacher at an art school. He didn’t give me his name or the school’s name…but I can only hope he was more positive with his students.
Well, I’m used to online critics, especially ones that like to do their evil in private, so it was no big deal for me.
This type of negative thinking is all over the photo forums…especially if you do something different or on a different wavelength.
A camera fondler on one of the forums had asked “Do mistakes count?”
André Kertész gave his verdict on mistakes…the accident that broke his glass plate in the photo above ‘made the photo’ and he was proud of it!
This photograph (actually one similar, since the original was a one-of-a-kind) was the first photograph I had accepted into a museum in the early 1970’s.
The story behind it is an interesting one. I had taken the photograph with a Hasselblad 500CM in the coat room at the company I was working for as a process cameraman. I didn’t like one of the work prints I had made at home, so I trashed it partially processed.
When I was emptying the trash can in my darkroom later that week, I noticed the print of the coat hanger had become solarized. It had also developed an interesting stained patina from the chemicals. So, I pulled it out of the trash and finished processing it. I dry mounted it and put it in my portfolio.
A while later, I was showing some of my prints at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. (Back in the day, you could actually get the curator on the phone to set an appointment!) The then curator of photography liked the coat hanger photo and it was put in LACMA‘s permanent collection. I was a young kid of 19, so I didn’t tell the curator the story behind it. Nowadays I know better and would not be ashamed of the backstory.
There are many stories in the art world how mistakes turned into masterpieces.
As writer James Campbell (Author of This is the Beat Generation) wrote: “He’d (Kerouac) would make a mistake (typing On the Road) and this would lead him off into a possible part of a new paragraph, into a funny riff of some kind.”
Within a few months after I joined Rangefinder Forum the controlling prick that runs things gave me a lifetime ban. It was no great loss getting the boot, very little useful ever comes out of that forum other than your typical camera fondler topics. And in reality it works out better for me as I can read the forum and comment exactly as I want to on my blog without censorship and repercussions.
Always remember, there are no photo police or head photo accountants to say what counts and what does not count. Many times the only thing holding you back from getting that iconic shot is your ego, fear and your pet prejudices.
Unless your a camera fondler or a constipated anal perfectionist, the job IS to get the shot…get it any way you can!.
