Wall Street
The Wall Street Alley, Bakersfield, CA, c.1987
I was racking my brain trying to remember the name of the Californian photographer who Slim hired to do the cover for “Here Comes a Lily.” It was Ed Homich. Thanks to the Californian for digging through their file; they published several other images from that shoot. The Californian has done a remarkable job of printing facts rather than hearsay about Slim. The article by Robert Price will probably expire soon, so if you’re at all curious I’d read it now. It cuts through the melodrama to more tangible facts. It was a good memory jog. I forgot that Phil Lutrell gave Scott the name “Slim DeWayne”—I went to Foothill High with Phil, and later worked with him at Sun Stereo. Price implies that Phil was the source of the Hank Williams allusion. Not as I recall; that was Scott’s own modification of the gift, dropping the “DeWayne” in favor of “the Drifter.”
I didn’t know Ed Homich, but I remember that when he put his Leica M6 up for sale other photographers from the Californian warned me against buying it—“Ed just drags his cameras on the strap behind him.” It’s strange the things you remember; I couldn’t remember his name, but I’ve got a picture of him shooting pictures around here somewhere…
It’s also strange what you can find around here. I was looking at the Half-Price Books on Ford Parkway and ran across Bakersfield Picture Album compiled by Chris Brewer and Don Pipkin in 1986 from various sources. There were a few interesting shots there; including some of the infamous Wall Street Alley.
June 27, 2007 11:41 AM | Comments (3)
Ken and Lydia
This afternoon I went to the Weinstein Gallery to see the selection of Mapplethorpe photos before it closes. I was surprisingly impressed, both with the exhibition space and the things on the walls. I hadn’t seen any Mapplethorpe prints in person before now because I’m not really a fan. However, the pieces on display made me reevaluate that. Mapplethorpe’s use of the body as a sculptural object never struck me as particularly new or interesting, but I suspect its because the most frequently published examples are those that are most closely aligned with the modernist/Westonian heritage (well crafted examples of “the thing in itself”). These pieces were different; they were well-wrought to the point of being overwrought. That was much more exciting. The blacks became like a reverse halo, with the darkness spilling over into the backgrounds.
Overall, the impact was closer to William Mortensen than Edward Weston. The veins on Ken’s arms in one of the shots were in such high relief as to resemble a Rodin; the over-the-top use of body paint made the bodies resemble dolls instead of people; the use of color was garish and cartoon-like. The artificial nature of the images just shone from the plain white walls and creaky floor of the gallery. It was silent as we looked around, but eventually a man came up from the basement, said hello, and then proceeded across the street without any interference in the viewing experience. It was a beautiful show, indeed.
The photograph in the 2000 article matched the appearance of the man from the basement; it was taken by Daniel Corrigan, the photographer whose show I saw yesterday. The design of Corrigan’s photograph is much the same as several of the thousands that came flashing across the hi-def TV screen. The Mapplethorpe photographs, on the other hand, were distinctive. Not what I was expecting, and unlike any of the others that I had seen in reproduction.
