Thursday, July 12, 2007

Finally back in the city and getting back into the grind of NYC living.

Last night I went to see the photo show "Easy Rider: Road Trips Through America", a group show over at Yancey Richardson. It's up July 11 - August 10, 2007. It's got some really amazing folks in it. I went to go hang out and support my friend William Lamson who's got a piece in the show. Others included are Jeff Brouws, Tim Davis, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Allen Ginsberg, Frank Gohlke, Ernst Haas, Todd Hido, Jodie Vicenta Jacobson, Lisa Kereszi, Justine Kurland, Dorothea Lange, Danny Lyon, Nathan Lyons, Christian Patterson, Mike Smith, Ed Ruscha, Lise Sarfati, Vicki Sambunaris, Stephen Shore, Rosalind Solomon, Alec Soth, Mark Steinmetz, Joel Sternfeld, and Garry Winogrand and others.

Most of the images gave me an immediate and strong case of wanderlust. Images that resonated with me longest were the familiar ones that I had never seen in person such as Garry Winogrand's Apollo 11 Moon Shot and Mitch Epstein's Cocoa Beach I, Florida. Justine Kurland's Baby Pictures (sleeping in a van) image wasn't familiar to me before last night but I found it beautiful and haunting.


A snippet from the press release (this one in particular because I'm a big Kerouac and Ginsberg fan):
"The open road as a symbol of freedom is exemplified in Allen Ginsberg's 1964 shot of Neal Cassady at the wheel of Ken Kesey's Merry Prankster bus; Cassady's incessant cross-country journeys were a primary inspiration for Jack Kerouac's definitive Beat generation novel On the Road. Having spent four years riding with the motorcycle gang the Outlaws, Danny Lyons produced the book The Bikeriders, which emblazoned motorcycle counterculture onto the American psyche and inspired the film Easy Rider."

And now onward..
to our own wanderlustagraphy images of the open road, the abandoned fast food chains and the eerie nightscapes of America.

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