St. Vivian the Obscure

Saint Veronica – Rob Clemenz SaintsforSinnersToday’s blog addresses the piece of writing I worked on today. A well-overdue review of a book about Chicago’s Vivian Maier. Vivian, if you don’t know about her, worked as a nanny for most of her life and semi-secretly made a vocation of photography. Through the middle of the 20th century, Vivian snapped pictures of people on the street, self-portraits, urbanity and urban decay, and, as a strange sidebar, newspapers and documents, page by page. Vivian seemed uninterested in earning a living as a photographer. Good as she was, photography seemed more of an obsession than a means of self-expression. Afflicted with hoarding syndrome that grew worse with age, Vivian took tens of thousands of pictures, printed some, but mostly  sacked away thousands of rolls of undeveloped film. When she died, few folks knew she’d been a serious photographer.

Then certain men found her photographs after buying the contents of several unpaid storage units. Vivian was declared an unrecognized genius (some of her photos were quite nice, possessing Weegee-esque and Arbusian aspects), the price of her photographs soared, and Chicago adopted her as one of our many weirdo saints (St. Veronica, shown, is the official shutterbug saint for the Catholic Church, by the way). The book I read did a good job of discovering where Vivian came from, what much of her life was like, and why she took photographs. Finding out who she really was, however, will always be an impossibility. Especially now that others who stand to profit from her work most benefit from defining her.

You’ll see.

künstwerk

Reprinting a couple of pieces of mine from the months after September 11.

künstwerk

Review of the here is new york photo exhibit

February 4–March 30, 2002

In the shaky days after Sept. 11, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was roundly misquoted as describing the WTC attacks as the greatest work of art ever. Not so. German, with its knack for single words with myriad meanings, allowed the good professor to describe the day’s events as former angel Lucifer’s Künstwerk. Literally translated as “artwork,” the term more accurately denotes one’s handiwork. In Stockhausen’s approximation, Lucifer represents intelligence used to destroy creation, the devil’s creativity untinged by love.

On display Feb. 4 through March 30 at 72 E. Randolph, here is new york: a democracy of photographs displays 1,500 professional and amateur photographs of the days before, during, and after the attacks. The original exhibit emerged from a single picture posted in a New York store window, more photos being donated in the weeks afterward by dazed Knickerbockers, and applied one after the other like bandaids to the communal wounds. Stacked along the walls and dangled overhead in the Chicago gallery, the prints grant the viewer a visual experience approximating a fraction of the sensory overload felt by Manhattanites on an otherwise a beautiful early fall Tuesday.

Aesthetically, the day helped. Even here in Chicago the sun shone and the air was as crisp as peppermint. Weather favors the recording of tragedy. Challenger exploded against an azure sky, twin curling forks of smoke spiraling like DNA helices about a fluffy white plume. The Hindenburg gorgeously exploded against an early morning rain shower, brightly immolating and consuming itself into a crippled metal skeleton. Despite myself and watching safely from home on 9/11, I couldn’t help but be struck by the awesome sight of the towers burning like matchsticks and winnowing down against a perfect blue canvas sky. While the surface message of the show is one of endurance, American rah-rah, and cuddly solidarity, the unspoken theme is that of the aesthetics and disturbing beauty of destruction. Allegory or otherwise—your choice—Lucifer used his palette to present an “artwork” few will forget. here is new york, then, might be considered the coffee table book version of the whole hellish exhibit.

The late-January press review bore all requisite solemnity, though was largely unmemorable. A batch of suits and ties thanked us, the press, for coming; the show’s beneficiaries, the Children’s Aid Society WTC Relief Fund were cited (proceeds from the sales of selected prints go to them); and the names of the sponsors, Marshall Field’s and the Target store chain were repeatedly dropped. No one noted the unwitting inappropriateness of Target’s bull’s-eye logo being prominently displayed on the podium.

There were firefighters, of course. Not since the Iranian hostage crisis’ embassy workers has an occupation been so in demand for photo-ops and pull-quotes. The firefighters acquitted themselves nicely, of course, with the just-doing-our-job dignity that should come with their profession. Our own fire commissioner, the wonderfully named James Joyce, with his lived in face, stated that as he looked at them and they at him, they shared the ineffable emotions only the men and women in helmets and rubber raincoats can feel. The firemen themselves—names of Jeffrey Straub and Anthony Barone, and imported from NYC Engine 6—looked bright and shiny in their dress blues when they took the stand. Following the outline given them by the event organizers, an accidental note of unscripted emotion occurred when Straub, flanked by a photo of himself  leaning against a car shelled by WTC detritus, explained what he was thinking at the time. Thinking about his fellow firefighter—and next-door neighbor it turned out—who had lost his life that day. A PR emissary takes the podium afterwards, thanking Firefighter Straub for sharing. It was “very emotional,” she needlessly underscored.

I’m sorry if I seem unnecessarily picky about proper tribute. The event is impossible to cheapen, but even the best-intentioned tend to overdo it. Solemnity can be spread so thick it becomes as overwhelming as the grey dust still coating Manhattan. The press review preliminaries, gratefully, ended, and we were left alone to survey the wreckage.

The number of photos was the first thing I noticed. As a first-world nation, we enjoy the luxury of documenting life down to the second. Cosmopolitan vacation spot New York provided an army of shutterbugs that day. Anonymity is the rule, regarding the photos’ authors, but degrees of professionalism seem easy to differentiate. Reasons for taking photos in the face of apocalypse are harder to pin down.

For the professionals, it was just part of the job. It was for Bill Biggart, whose shrine rested in back. The last picture of Biggart’s life is glorious yet horrific: It shows one side of the North Tower exploding into balsa wood splinters. The shot, splendidly framed, was obviously taken while looking up. The same fragments that Bill captured probably buried him. The next photo shows a pile of photographer’s tools—cameras and light meters scorched black, a singed and melted deck of press passes lying beside them.

The amateur photos are, as stated, relatively easy to identify. Varying levels of exposure, poor framing, and unimaginative composition abound. The tragedy, however, adds gravitas to the most banal shots. The exhibit isn’t about ability, it’s about the view through several hundred different eyes. En masse, the pictures all “work”—individually and as a collective.

Two images recur. One is of dragon’s fire bursting from the towers’ guts: A bright yellow fusion heart is at the center, burning brighter than the sun; the fringes of the holocaust are flushed with the colors of autumn leaves, slowly burning black. The other is that of the spectator, gazing upwards, one hand holding a cell phone against the ear, the other slapped against the forehead in disbelief.

Against the west wall, photo #6068 shows American death shrines in the style of Mexican Dia de los Muertos ofrendas. Bright orange posters surrounded by half-melted candles create an impermanent memorial to the unknown dead. One poster states, “I never met you. I will never forget you.” The other laments, “I don’t know you and I miss you already.”

In other photos, America’s bipolar reaction is documented. Peaceniks beg for cooler heads, marching with neatly rendered placards reading, “It’s Time for Reflection Not Revenge” and “Break the Cycle of Violence.” Opinions grow less tolerant closer to Ground Zero. The photos of dust, while visually dull, linger with me. The impact of the planes, the explosions were the media money shot. We didn’t see the dust on TV. We thought it was all fire and falling bricks. Photo #5681 stands out most for me. A William H. Macy clone dressed in blue Brooks Brothers and carrying a briefcase runs through a grey blizzard of lung-clotting dust. Office building dust jams up his day’s clockwork, the very materials in which he daily dealt business. Ironic that. Photos #1240, 1237, and 5192 show further capitalist paralysis with piles of Gap shirts and jeans and Perrier bottles buried in ash. Dust anesthetizes, rather than eradicates the City that Never Sleeps. Dust also provides a ready medium for rage. “WELCOME TO HELL” offers the back window of a Honda Civic in photo #1118. On photo #87, a “NUKE THEM ALL” graffito virtually screams from an opaque store window. Throughout the exhibit the dust messages debate, sentiments ranging from “Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War” to the less poetical “REVENGE.”

Moving on, certain photos help me recall a vow I made 25 years ago. On a grade school career day I stood in front of my class, dressed in a yellow rain slicker and a plastic fireman’s helmet—an Independence Day promo piece handed out by a local insurance agent. Words immortalized by fourth-graders before and after me tumbled from my mouth: “I want to grow up to be a fireman, so I can put out fires and help people.” Looking at picture after picture of dust-covered firefighters, burned-out eyes staring from beneath battered black helmets, I wanted to renew that vow. Photos #3383, 5247, 5234, 2424, and so on show walls of other firefighters, EMS techs, doctors, nurses, and just plain good Samaritans, in varying stages of exhaustion, human endurance stretched to a rubberband’s snapping. It’s all here, every emotion, every reaction. Photo #2763 shows two burly firefighters practically in a lover’s embrace. Unwitting comedy is achieved with a Scientologist counselor attempting to comfort a firefighter who looks like he’d rather be somewhere else enjoying his bottle of Poland Springs water.

Many of the photos, it must be pointed out, are disturbing. In #2840 blue-gloved medics handle a woman bleeding as red as her shirt. Beyond shock, her eyes are sealed with rust-colored dust. Still, for every image of a battered, bleeding, and broken human being, there’s a more reassuring and recurring image, that of an extended hand.

E.B. White, best known for Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, provided the ideal title and coda of the show in his 1949 piece “Here Is New York,” which presciently describes the urban inferno to come: “A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions. The intimation of mortality is part of New York in the sound of jets overhead, in the black headline of the latest edition.”

Mr. White’s chilling clarvoyance aside (his assessment of the Big Apple’s vulnerability itself a fabulous example of the melancholy poetry of destruction), the effect of the original exhibit rested in its spontaneity, its proximity, and its participatory nature. While effective, we as Chicagoans miss the real power of the original show. Unlike street cows, this bit of city art doesn’t travel well or translate accurately. The gallery offers us a before, but we lack an after with which to compare it. It is our good fortune, of course, that we’re deprived of ashes from which to arise. New York, however, in characteristic braggadocio, shows the horrors it’s lived through and, six months later, has risen above.

Originally published in the Chicago Journal .
®2002 Dan Kelly

Deco

I won’t say where, but I recently encountered one of the coolest security guards in the world.

I was visiting a lovely Art Deco edifice a while back, and I wanted to take a few pix of the sedately ornate lobby, which featured the inevitable slim, half-naked figures that decorated the era’s most fashionable elevator doors. My picture-taking finger itched madly, but I held off and approached the security guard’s desk first.

As I’ve learned over the years, asking permission to take photographs isn’t just polite, it’s pre-emptive. Some buildings have rules against snapping pix, and security personnel will shut you down the moment you pull out your camera or phone. Reasons vary. It might be a licensing issue, or for security purposes, or simply because they don’t like shutterbugs cluttering the hallways. Most building owners in the Loop don’t have a problem with tourists and architecture buffs looking around—at least in the buildings worth commemorating. On occasion the guards are into it. I’ve had rent-a-cops chat me up, gleefully pointing out particularly pretty features, and sharing historical factoids—some even let me know it was okay to walk up a flight or two for a better shot. These folks know that while they may be running a business, the structure is their public face. Why not show how damn pretty they are?

Others aren’t so welcoming, covering up their buildings like a wizened duenna shielding her charges with curtains and scowls. Some, to their credit, instruct the guards to let people know they can look, maybe even touch… but NO pictures. Usually though they’re not friendly about it. In one building I asked sweetly if I could take a few pictures of the breath-takingly ornate lobby. I was not only sternly told no way, the guard followed me around, ensuring I didn’t capture the elevators’ and mailbox’s souls with my black magic eye box.

Because I am secretly feisty, however, whenever I’m impolitely denied access, I get crafty. I equate buildings and their lobbies with public art—accessible and unavoidable should mean photographable. So suffer me a few snapshots, yes? If a guard is particularly snippy and not terribly observant—and I’m not talking about restricted government buildings, banks, or places where you have to be buzzed in—I come back later and take a few shots from the belt. Buildings, particularly old ones, were created to meld commerce with art, and were thus imagined and constructed to be seen and enjoyed by the public. I have a theory that modern business architecture of the mid- to late-20th century purposefully became boring and soulless to counteract this belief. At some point the corporate sphere said, “We don’t want people to like our buildings. We want to be able to tear them down whenever we wish. Above all, we want them to say, ‘Go away. You don’t belong here.'” Every day I look out my office’s window and see Trump’s blue glass phallus and Mies van der Rohe’s big ol’ domino, and I think, “You may be admired, but you will never be loved.” Of course, they snottily answer back, “What makes you think we give a damn?”

So, the coolest security guard in the world… I ask him, politely, if I can take a few pictures.

“No, I’m sorry, that’s not allowed,” he replied, nicely enough.

“Oh…” say, a touch dejected. “Thanks, anyway.”

“But, you know, maybe I’ll just walk around the corner over there.” and he gestured to a spot about 30 feet away. Then he took off for a few minutes.

“Aha!” I said, brightening.

He left, and I took a few quick pix for my files. The ornamentation was limited, but tasteful and lovely, and while the building isn’t one of the famous ones, it has that 20s Chicago charm lacking in the surrounding glass and steel beasts. Later research revealed that it was made to honor the ideas of Louis Sullivan and John Wellborn Root. I think I’ll make a few calls and see if I can get a tour. in fact, I’ve been toying with the idea of trying to get into Chicago’s tallest pre-1930s structures.

The guard returned and I gave him a silent thank you. He nodded. Good man. Good man. Preservationists and architecture aficionados everywhere appreciate your discretion, sir.

Mr. Dan Kelly’s Pop Bottle Collection

I collect pop bottles. I can’t recall when I started, but I wouldn’t doubt it happened around Christmastime in 1996. I drove up to Michigan with my girlfriend (now wife) to meet her parents for the first time, and quickly discovered that not much happens in Grand Haven and Muskegon during the winter months (unless you’re a outdoorsman, which I’m not). When I wasn’t chatting with my future in-laws, playing board games, reading, drinking, or watching cable TV, I was concentrating on a spot on the wall, wondering how the natives kept from going mad.

Then my brother-in-law, an antiquarian, took me along on a search of his favorite shops along US 31. I’d sorta-kinda went antiquing before in Chicago on Belmont Ave., but everything I wanted was prohibitively expensive. My antique scores mostly came from garage sales and thrift shops, but again, in Chicago, pickings were slim.

Grand Haven, Holland, and Muskegon, however, provided great deals on nifty old stuff—and there was so damn much of it. I’m sure the perpetually lousy economy up there was part of it, but the fact that suave urbanites like myself rarely came through the area probably helped. On that trip my brother-in-law picked up an old oil-powered slide projector while I found a Medinah Shriner’s fez, a few comics, and an unusual pop bottle. I can’t remember which bottle was my first, but I bet I based it on my current criteria for collectability:

1. Applied-color label (that is, labels applied directly to the bottle, not paper labels; though I do have a few of the latter).

2. Beautiful/interesting/crazy art.

3. Favorite pops from my youth (RC, Dr. Pepper, Kayo, Crush, and a few more obscure sodas)

3. Optimistic names, or names that otherwise promise health, social status, and happiness.

I have about 138 bottles right now, give or take, and I built a display rack for them that currently sits in my basement. I’ve been meaning to photograph and share them on the site, but I could never quite figure out how to properly shoot pictures of the clear ones with raised images and labels. I came across a site about taking pictures of fine crystal, and they suggested building the following set up.

That’s two sheets of black matte paper from the art store, and two pieces of cardboard painted white. The bottom black matte paper has a hole cut into it, and it (currently) rests on a large camping flashlight. I want to build a better base with a brighter, electrical bulb, but for now, this will do. See the results of my first bottle photo session below! Comments? Suggestions?

Young Weegee

I bought a tripod, and while explaining to Nate what it was for and how it worked, he asked, “Can I take your picture?” Sure thing, buddy. Nate kept taking pictures, but from my perspective he wasn’t holding the button down long enough. Turns out he was doing just fine. He even adjusted the tripod correctly. I only wish he’d had a better, less sweaty and weird-haired model.