BOOBS, JOCKEYS, BOOBS, JAZZ, BOOBS.

This is Angie Pontani.

 

When I saw her perform, it was like she was a huge shaking and snapping eraser, erasing all the ignorance and residual ideas I had about burlesque. She was performing a tribute to Blaze Starr. (Whose real name is: Fannie Belle Fleming!) I had forgotten about the Governor Long story, of which Blaze was a huge part. A woman who moved like that in the 50s would just be able to take over. It was fun to watch now. Back then, I can only imagine.

 

All this is about how I learned to live. I’ve learned how to live by jockeys, by jazz, and recently I have thought about life in terms of burlesque.

I am afraid that asking people to read between the boobs sounds too clever, which it is. Yet, when I think about it, I really have the feeling that that is just too close to the very truth of what I am doing now. Next to slapping advertising pasties on a pair of a neoburlesque star's climactic assets, the idea of slipping a couple of worthy souls between some slammingboobyflesh in the hopes of getting some deserved attention for some other interesting interests seems like an idea anyone could at least imagine some entertaining consequences... of.

 

This is Calvin Borel.

 

 

Calvin Borel has won 3 of the last 4 Kentucky Derbies. This is unheard of and unheard of. Just for that I think he deserves alot more attention, just because it really makes no sense that profoundly worthless "personalities" (that is a word I don't even trust anymore) really can effortlessly segue into comfort and applause and gain far far more attention than someone who really should be thought of as more like hmmm... like — christ if this was baseball, this guy would have been on magazine covers forever. He won something three times (in four years) that any jockey would really just do anything to get... once… in a lifetime of riding. He can't read, he can't write... but the horses he rides and he himself, have become something... freakishly wild. And yet he’s almost unknown.

 

What I am really into saying is that perhaps even more attention to be paid to really looking at how people spend their DVI (disposable visual income). Because it can’t be good for people to consume so many really pretty defective, completely subpar people (stars) the way we do. And we miss certain real badasses, like John Velazquez, Edgar Prado, and Calvin Borel. Just the basic knowledge that someone won 3 Kentucky Derbies (with even the smallest touch of semi-understanding), is inspiring.

John Velazquez is badass.

This is Jo “Boobs” Weldon

 

Yes, shooting just the boobs could be seen as a transparent gimmick... at the very least, if I was a guy I might be perceived a pervert. But there really is something that I am trying to say with my own version of burlesque portraiture. I am saying that there are things and subjects right under the radar that perhaps should be focused on... like the boobs of burlesque have been under the radar in a way. They have always been there, they are still the focus of the performance, but yet there has no photographic focus (to my knowledge of course) on the simple exclamatory glands themselves. As a comment, as pretty, as witty, as anything. Burlesques breasts seem to be the breasts of exclamation and attraction itself. So I am just adding alittle bit of punctuation I think to my work... it is actually quite a challenge shooting good boob shots. In a burlesque show, they are always moving around so much... sometimes the high speed boob shots don't look good at all. Maybe the last word in any writing on burlesque should end with the tits, I mean that is the so called “reveal,” in a burlesque performance — the end of the story. I really do wonder why noone just focused on the boobs… there has always seemed to be a lot of boob fans… aren't the tits enough?

Really, I have checked so many pages of flickr burlesque shots and googled and checked out burlesque photography... sofar, I haven't seen a single shot that just focused on the succulence and artistry. Where's the S&A? Please direct me towards the truth if I am in error!

 

About Jo “Books” Weldon:

 

The stories of burlesque (as every burlesque performance is a story) — they end in so many ways. They pretty much end up all at the same places though, so it’s really all about how to get there. And how to get there and what to wear on the trip is all in Jo “Books” Weldon’s first book, The Burlesque HANDBOOK. This book is just released from Harper/Collins, and Jo writes with such candid flirty eloquence about burlesque choreography and acting — she tells us that it sometimes has more to do with Bugs Bunny animation than well… what you might expect. The artist R. Crumb in the 1994 Zwigoff documentary mentions a real “crush” he had on Bugs Bunny. That two different artists involved in very sexual expressions both gained such powerful influence from Bugs Bunny is super touching to me. If you were gonna be anyone in any of those old Warner Bros. cartoons, there really is no doubt that that is who to be. But as an example of how to work a burlesque routine — and the specific animation in particular that she uses for THE example, will be instantly recognizable to a substantial demographic — we’ve all seen it — I find an animation to be a GENIUS model for how to move in a burlesque performance. I will never look at Bugs Bunny (or perhaps movement itself) the same way again. She is dead spot on. The parts where she talks about her animation influences/references was a surprising revelation. I mean you know, if Bugs Bunny entered a burlesque competition, you know the wabbit would win. No DOUBT. If you’ve recently gotten into burlesque, you won’t have a good understanding of burlesque if you don’t read this — it seems that there are not many good books on burlesque. I actually find that easy to believe. I have just started getting really interested in the neoburlesque scene... so it was so great to have all this information all there... really. Great book Jo! Nice world ya got there.

 

Jo Weldon is a revolutionary, in the art of telling a good boob story. It is hard work, that is one thing I see with her, she gives everything to the book, to what she does… She totally works her boobs off. I admire that. A lot. That is what I love thinking ad writing about... people who work really hard and just rock on what they do.

 

This is Meschiya Lake, I probably don’t need to intrioduce her to some people.

 

 

I really doubt that there is a better world to watch in New Orleans than Meschiya Lake’s. I’m a New Yorker, and I felt like I’d fallen down a rabbithole when I visited last October to take pictures for her newly released CD “Lucky Devil.” New Orleans is so exquisitely different. It’s grotesque what is happening now… we thought we had enough to deal with with Katrina which doesn’t look… so… bad…………… now. It’s like when there was a big herpes scare, in the 70s or something… and that really seemed to freak people alittle judging by the coverage, but then AIDS happened and herpes seemed almost okay. To me, this is, thanks BP, pretty much, like watching something taking a huge shit in the ocean right in front of us. That is how I see it. It’s like a Bosch nightmare to me. Real grotesque human nature. We are all getting a nice close look up the stinky smelly ass of human nature.

 

You know Meschiya Lake would take your mind offa that. She is the party in New Orleans that we all should have wherever we are.

 

The CD? — I immediately want a glass of red wine and some NOLA chow. I’m not a dancer! I just really like the daydreamy fantasies I have about living in a little depression era looking Walker Evans lookin little apartment with a little victrola or radio playing this... and then I just keep seeing and wondering how noone had that voice yet! Meschiya’s voice is so different. And I love hearing those instruments like I like walking around and looking at flowers and trees. If flowers and trees had tattoos, or a whole city, or the world, tattooed with the Chrysler Buildinglike spires and dots and the family wings and the mermaid tails of the tattoos she gots. I feel like there is something different about the tattoos of Meschiya Lake. Like if cities had tattoos, New Orleans would have them, somewhere… but it can’t, she has them.

 

 

 

Neo-burlesque, the Neo-Depression,

I’m suspicious that progress is just an illusion now, I have been for years, but now I am really into the world that has trombone players named The Butcher.

Meschiya Lake looks cool. She looks tough, she looks sweet, she looks. She just dresses herself.

 

The salty sweatiness of the song Lucky Devil is molassesy and almost stumbly, very lovey. It actually sounds kindof hellish… in a really comfortable and soothing way, like the poppies in The Wizard of Oz.

 

If you don’t check out the credits before you listen, around the third song you might sortof have a feeling like “wow, I didn’t know anyone sang things like this then…” and those for me were her own compositions. They are a chick being real, in so many ways.

 

I’m sure whatever she is doing as I write this is totally doc worthy. That’s just what she is like in real life. It’s been hard for me to know of her, and also see so much real SHIT on TV and go damn, this is what is interesting? I mean the evidence is that it must be right? But it just has to be some crappy programming we humans have that we should look at, because I really it distracts from reality. Kim Kardasian — everytime we see her, what she is really really doing is distracting us from a very scary reality. She and her sisters are fembots, scarier than the ones in The Million Dollar Man.

But Unce Jack? Tuba Skinny? Chief Sitting Voelker? They are there for you. They have Meschiya’s back, they have yours too.

 

If I didn’t have the people I follow like I do, I would be so bored. I would not get the coverage I want out of the coverage there is. That is why I am doing what I do. I want more coverage of the subjects I like… I think that they are good enough to share too. I want to share the jazz world with the jockey world and the burlesque world with both. Today I got a message on facebook from a horseracing fan asking what burlesque dancing is. I liked that.

 

This is Legs Malone. The girl with the 341/2 inch inseam.

 

 I hadn’t seen Malone in awhile. I had some investigating to do. 

Hmm, last time she was on myspace was 12/28/2009. My birthday is actually the 28^th of December so I thought that was cool. 

Let’s see, I missed a lot.

Whole lot of Sugar Shack, The Legs Malone Show… oooh I missed so much. And after investigating a bit more I found she has a very intelligent background. Not surprised. In the picture I took of her in 2008, she gave off such an earthy cool charisma. Now, she looks like the Manson chicks would look like if any of them had actually been charming, too bad she hadn't been one of them, maybe she could have told them the WAY TO GO. 

She has a very distinctive catlike face. She’s like if Catwoman from the Batman TV series, Julie Newmar, had had a lanky Steve McQueen lovechild.

 

I think she is worth following.

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/

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.

this is probably it.

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

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:

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:

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:

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.

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.

That's all Folks!

GRAND CENTRAL JASON

It made me so jealous. When I saw it in the "contact" sheet of pictures that you get in flickr, I just wished I'd taken it soooo badly. I have been trying to get something like that of Grand Central Station's gods and goddesses for so long! And there they were! 

The colors are exquisite and the composition and framing are perfection. The Gods have spoken.

Jason is a lensjockey who covers the city and shoots the real city. His eye is simple, direct, subtle, clean, energetic, and it is no wonder that his pictures are often used by those who wish to show a simple yet eloquent idea about the city.

Readers of gothamist, CURBED, THE NEW YORK OBSERVER — web sites about this awesome city — are familiar with his images. 

Images like:







...images like these, with their smart poetry and clean lines — these are images that describe the simple truths of the city — the beautiful truths of the city we all walk around in each day. I often imagine Jason Kuffer walking around the city with his eyes forever opened to the delicious tidbits any real New Yorker cannot help but nibble.

It took me awhile to appreciate his images, they are so unlike my own. Jason Kuffer's images whisper where my own images are more aggressive. It took me some time to understand his own language, but now that I know it I love it. His pics are like sushi to me, little raw tasty elegant portions of the city.

*smacks lips* hahaha

have a taste! It's on Jason!

(that's him!)

Sometimes he sees something like this that is just so freakin unbelievable though, he definitely has range...



I mean look at that! He can go from a whisper to a proclamation about this city. Effortlessly.

As lensjockeys go, "Digiart2001 | jason.kuffer" deserves attention. He's active and has a great sense of style and humor, and he gets around. I suggest that you follow how work. You will see the small and the monumental... in ways that embrace you. And this beautiful city.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digiart2001/

Thanks Jason for your pictures of this city I love so so much.
lensjockey

FIRST REVIEW OF LENSJOCKEY MAGAZINE

Here it is:

I picked up a copy of your magazine at the DUMBO photo fest this afternoon.  I read it on the train going home.  I was very impressed.  On the front cover there's a price of ten dollars.  Is that how much you charge people for the magazine? Or is that how much you pay people to read it?  Cause I read the whole thing and want to know where I can go to collect my ten dollars.  I never read such drivel.  And the photographs in the magazine, well, what can I say.......... drek.

— Hasifleur Wagibigit

fair enough I'd say - yet it has been very strange seeing the really angry responses that I got personally... for what really is a valid effort at presenting a fun, original and different look at a part of the NYC photography scene... perhaps it is right in the end that negative attention is still attention. In the spirit of punk — it seems right! I mean, this wildly named person will probably not forget the LENSJOCKEY name! And if you want to see for yourself how awful my magazine is, you can see it at St. Mark's Bookshop in NYC and at McNally Jackson Booksellers!

I told my friend Steve in Texas about this letter and he immediately said that the name was made up hahah. I love that someone hid their name while writing me this. That's a pretty good one, I never thought of that. I guess it would also have to be someone who sortof knows French, some sort of European something... a worldly wit of some sort. The truth is though, that if someone wants to make up a name to tell me they think my magazine is bogus, or too expensive, with such silly (and rather unseeing) venom, well, I still have to think that no matter what, they know I'm doing something, they will always be able to change their minds later. Because it is not just about that 2nd Issue of LENSJOCKEY. People really did think punk was awful when they were confronted with it. That's a real effect. Just looking at my magazine as an experiment, I feel like it is a success.

LENSJOCKEY CONTENT

You can't start a magazine without really trying to define your content. Looking towards the third issue of LENSJOCKEY, I am struck by how different my view of the photography scene is. I mean really, where IS the punk rock photography magazine? I mean punk rock in the profound way, maybe not so much underground as just such a different viewpoint, and not even mad... just fucking punk rock.

I didn't see it at the NY Photo Festival. I was concerned alot with getting my own ideas out, but even while I was doing that I had to see what was out there around there... and nothing caught my eye... and my eyes are sortof trained to look for that now because of what I am doing myself.

To me, punk was raw, imperfect, noisy, human, shiny, dirty, cheap, colorful, and said fuck alot. I of course have not seen attempts at this sort of a magazine, one reason being that I have been spending so much time working on my own, which is isolating. But I did go to the NY Photo Festival this year and I didn't see anyone else's ideas about photography were like mine. I just didn't. At all. Great design is really important in the photography world, I guess to a certain point it has to be - like expensive clothes, but I don't see a jamming sensibility. Is it out there? I will look again, while content becomes an issue for my own magazine.

I want to find the stars. I have always loved finding a star to focus on before they become bigger. I'm sure alot of people are like that, gallery owners for one instance, but really, why is there not a magazine that focuses on photographers more like stars? Them in front, illustrated by their pictures, you know, like you don't hear songs in Rolling Stone. Something in relation to that idea. that you've seen the pictures, you know, maybe, but not seen who the person is, it's a fine balance maybe, hey for me this is an experiment about an idea.

When I would be handing out my magazine, and talking to others I noticed that there was always — with everyone — a genuine surprise at what I would say to them. And what I would say to them was "Rolling Stone for photographers" — that's how I would start talking with most people I met. Just as a response, the way that I would get genuine surprise mixed with an involuntary sort of a "noone has ever put those two things together but it sounds like something" means something to me. It was like I was testing a switch at the festival. That was a particular interest of mine there, to test that psychological recognition switch with alot of people. I needed some feedback that was exclusive of what others thought of me. Something independent of personal issues and biases, or as close to that as I could get. Knowing my own limits too, and being honest about my own biases, like who I felt comfortable addressing, all sorts of things. I even got some really super negative reactions - that is all I can call them. For instance, one person came up to a friend of mine, another photographer who was handing out some copies - and made a huge point of saying he thought he'd just throw it out, like, right in front of her, in her face. As an insult, really too aggressively. He wanted her to know exactly how stupid and worthless it was. It's a fucking magazine. Why so angry about a magazine called LENSJOCKEY that has been given out free? I guess you can't ask for your money back since it was free. So being insulting about throwing it away is the only alternative left for an enraged recipient of a free publication. 

The responses just made me think that truly, having a magazine that attempts to follow a model like Rolling Stone, having a personality focus for a photography magazine, is really a new idea. That's what I saw on the faces and the responses I got. The third issue? 

What is the content that I feel worth backing up in print? What WOULD a Rolling Stone for photographers look like? I am trying to accomplish this idea. I know that I made a first impression on many, good or bad. the name recognition has to be there — for more than a few people who attended the NY Photo Festival this year the name LENSJOCKEY is out there in it's own imperfect way — what will I do with Issue #3?

FROM JOCKEYS TO LENSJOCKEYS

By Holly Van Voast

Boy am I burned out. What a week!

Issue 2 of LENSJOCKEY magazine was about struggle and love and pictures and people — photographers. At The NY Photo Festival 2009 — just last week! I got reactions ranging from disgust and meanness to genuine feeling and encouragement. All those things came from the same group. (And some of the genuine feeling and encouragement came from the top — William A. Ewing — just sayin.). I met people who listened and people who didn’t. I saw my nightmare and my triumphs. I triumphed over the fear of putting myself and my own ideas out there in front of the hip tough crowd of New York City photographers.

I’ve done it before. 

When I went to the racetracks in 2002, and started my seven year involvement shooting candid portraits of the jockeys riding in New York City, I had no idea what it would really lead to. And that crowd is a tough crowd too, that was good training. I went to the tracks cold, just like I did to the NY Photo Festival in 2009, seven years later. Cold and unknown, and not looking like much to so many. I really went from jockeys to lensjockeys — really. 

If I don’t tell this story, it won’t get told.

These are the pictures I took of those jockeys — 

I saw them in a way that was exclusive of the horses they rode. 

Over seven years I collected a group of portraits that were never-before taken of the men who I loved who rode the horses at 35 mph, and exploded from big metal banging gates on those horses in search of a win. 

There’s a TV show now, and the races get alittle more press these days, but when I started going, it was a ghosttown of a world, totally forgotten and insulated from the city around it. Totally.

God, I loved jockeys. 

I’d go to Aqueduct racetrack – sometimes on both weekend days — a 2 hour ride on the subway at least — just for one or two shots for a high. 

I never bet on the horses… 

I bet on jockeys — I thought they deserved way more attention than they got.

I still do. I can't shoot as much there as I used to — the magazine work takes up so much time and I got involved with a completely different scene for a time, but there are more and more people shooting jockeys now. Raymond Haddad — who shot the author photo for the second issue of LENSJOCKEY #2, was a friend of mine when we worked together at BMG/Columbia House - years ago, and he started to see what I did with the jockeys then. He saw a book I wrote, he read what I wrote online and off about the jockeys that I loved, the ones that I portrayed — and he saw my pictures. He loved my pictures. He can shoot there now more than I can, and that hurts, but he has become known in his own way for doing what I started in 2002. I see people shooting from the spots that I shot from, places where no professional would want to shoot from... now it is common, when I did it, I had it all to myself. I really felt like I had it all to myself. I have a priceless collection of men who rode from a time that doesn't exist anymore at all. I have the best collection of Norberto Arroyo Jr. portraits, a great collection of Edgar Prado portraits — John Velazquez, Pablo Fragoso, Alan Garcia, Mike Luzzi, Channing Hill — it seemed like such a golden time to me.

This is a picture I took of Alan Garcia in 2005 where he rode in a stakes race — The Gotham — at Aqueduct. He rode most of the race with his right foot completely out of the stirrup. That's what a jockey means to me. Just bombing down the track even if your foot is out of the stirrup. He almost won that race. It was pretty spectacular. he wasn't winning the race here though, I just wanted to shoot him because he was in the Paraneck Stables silks and he was a favorite jockey of mine. If that is the only racing shot I ever get, that would make me happy.

And that's how I feel about LENSJOCKEY magazine. I'm riding with one foot out of the stirrup and I might not win, but that is how I'm riding my life.

you can see my collection of jockey portraits on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lensjockey/sets/72057594063826614/

and even earlier pictures:

http://finalturngallery.com/g2/main.php —scroll down to the bottom! To the album titled 

"The Woodless Wood Day" I posted my portraits there for years before going on flickr. It's disorganized, but those pictures are to me the soul of the start of interest in jockeys exclusively, there was nothing like that, noone had ever followed these men with a camera like me. I feel so lucky to have shot what I got at all the tracks I shot at. It is in the spirit of jockeys that I conceived of LENSJOCKEY magazine. Truly.

I started something at the tracks just focusing on jockeys, and I want to start something now with the photographers I see in New York City now. It's the same thing for me. Eric Brown is just like a jockey to me. He just uses a camera. btw - he's about to enter a contest in Alaska with his spectacular mutton chop sideburns. Good luck Eric!