Wednesday, June 17, 2009

dogseat, the photographer

ERIC HARVEY BROWN - also know as dogseat on flickr.

ERIC HARVEY BROWN - also someone who is indescribable in words. So here is a picture, this is from a set of his called "365 dogseats" — 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogseat/sets/72157612080947336/

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I can't remember which pictures I saw of his first. I think it was one of his pictures about an event called the Phagwah.

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this is probably it.

this is another picture of the event that got in the NY Times.

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Somehow, even then I could tell that he was someone that would be really really fun to follow. I couldn't decide though if I wanted to follow him for his pictures or the way he seemed to be someone so like a rockstar. He just — he just seemed to be too much to overlook. His collection called "365 dogseats" should be mandatory flickr viewing. More than almost anyone I have come across on flickr, 

(and I realize that the flickr world in NYC is a vast and unknowable galaxy of photographers)

Eric Harvey Brown seems to me to be the photographer to follow if you want a real and human and unretouched view of some part of humanity that is brave and unkempt in this age of plastic surgery and unrealistic beauty/handsome standards.

like this:

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I never saw anything on flickr like that. A guy who posts a picture like that to flickr — well this is a guy you can trust. You can trust any picture this photographer takes, because there is no attempt at self illusion. That is what I adore about dogseat. Even his name dogseat conjures up visions of, well, dogs seats, perhaps rubbing against your nice clean carpet of human illusions about our bodies and our functions and our silliness.

this is another picture you can trust:

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it's of a cat called "Smut." I highly recommend the Smut collection. It's endearing in it's backwoods charm. You will giggle and wish there had ever been a Saturday morning cartoon about such a cat. Precious.

this is another picture you can trust:

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haha oh Eric, Eric, B. How lovely to trust. Photo "DSC_4690.jpg" is a pooptacular statement of nature's (and a dogseat's) vernacular.

Not all photography should be a grand statement. I feel that the language of photography is ill-served by the idea that the photographer should be invisible and that the world of photographic coverage should look like a stock photography catalog, all smooth and smell-less and unhairy and overgroomed. Eric Brown is the best ever reminder of that concept to me.

so if you want to see the unkempt underbelly of NYC photography, you should seriously follow dogseat. he's everything alot of people aren't.

this is my favorite picture of Eric, it's a self portrait, and it is beautiful.

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had to put that in here. he doesn't always take pictures of the smeary unbeautiful. This is a shot of his from his latest trip. He want to Alaska to compete in a Beard and Moustache competition. (He came in Fourth, here is the set of pictures from that wonderful and witty competition — http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogseat/sets/72157618730271109/

I think that this is my favorite shot from that trip.

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That's all Folks!

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