Eat Your Heart Out Gary Winnogrand / Diane Arbus / Lee Friedlander / John Szarkowski / etc...

As summer comes to a close, I've begun to archive the Gitelson family photographs. When my grandmother Esther died in 1997, I inherited her archive of family photographs (being the photographer of the family). After many years, I've finally begun to scan all of the images, many of which are starting to decay. The above picture is of my grandmother Esther Gitelson. This one goes out to Minneagrapher Colleen Mullins.

Hey Hot Shot

I just received word that a selection from my series "Dream Job" will be featured in the show "Hey Hot Shot" at Jen Bekman Gallery this September 13 - 16. If you find yourself in NYC during those days, swing by the gallery and check out the show.

If It Were Left Up To Me

When I returned from Guatemala in 1997, I was really confused about what to do with myself. That being the case, I drove up to Boston to visit my friend Cable. Cable has been one of my best friends ever since the sixth grade. We met in gym class where our lockers were next to each other due to the proximity of our last names in the alphabet. We both had Led Zeppelin patches on the back of our jean jackets and have been friends ever since.

During my visit, Cable tried to convince me to move up to Boston so that we could spend time together and work on our art (Cable's always been one of my biggest influences). On my way out of town the following week, my head was still cloudy about what I should do.

Somewhere on the Mass Pike I popped in a cassette (yes, a cassette) that I had dubbed off of Cable and the song "If It Were Left Up To Me" by Sly and the Family Stone came on the stereo. It was one of those weird experiences when you hear a song at exactly the right moment and something clicks in your brain. By the songs end, I had made up my mind to move to Boston where I was to live for the next four years and develop my ever lasting loyalty to my beloved Boston Redsox. This one goes out to Cable, hoping to do the same for you as you once did for me.

In A Land Far Far Away ...

Next month, fellow Chicagraphers Brian Ulrich, Matt Siber and I are flying to Munich where we will be exhibiting our work at Galerie f5,6. The three of us met the director Nicole a few years back in Santa Fe and have been working on putting the show together ever since. The above image is the postcard that I created for the show. If in Munich . . .

The Visitation of Papa Git

Chocolate Lover

I was looking through some old hard drives today and came across this video that I made in 2003 back in Grad School. At the time I was really interested in found materials and when I stumbled across a torn piece of manuscript, making this movie seemed like the obvious thing to do. Because the sheet of text was torn, sentences were abruptly cut off. Chocolate lover features me (as the man on the stairs), Donna Rickles as Kendra Ann, Dustin Mertz as Cameron and Jen Davis as Sharon. I'll be posting more lost videos as I unearth them in days to come.

Radi-O-Go!

Each morning I have to sit for roughly three hours in order to watch all of the surveillance video from the previous day. That being said, I'm always looking for new things to listen to in order to pass the time. Three of my favorite radio programs are This American Life (this weeks edition is about the dark side of the art world . . . spooky!), Radio Lab (find out if Ghengis Khan's your daddy) and Sound Opinions. Check them out free on line . . .

Blast Off!

This morning I launched my newest project: The Garbage Can Project.

Stolen, Damaged or Burned?

You Are Beautiful

You Are Beautiful, my favorite Chicago art coop (?). Believe it or not, I actually always feel better about things when I see these pieces in the public spaces around my neighborhood. What art should be, I encourage you to check out the site, You Are Beautiful. The best of the Chi.

Fabrication

As mentioned in previous blog entries, I am currently working on a public art commission for the CTA (transit authority) here in Chicago. This is a first for me in that I have to rely on an outside company to fabricate the piece which will consist of glass and mosaic panels. Last friday I drove up to Evanston with Joanna from the Cultural Center and Amy from the CTA to look at the first of the fabricated pieces and it was just amazing to see! The piece consists of 42 glass photographic panels as posted above. I was worried that the quality might be shotty since they are being produced in Atlanta and the shipped up here to Illinois but the images looked AMAZING!!!! As good as any photographic print. The studio also created a life sized drawing of the wall for us to examine (10 feet tall by 45 feet wide). The two shots above are of the grout lines which when viewed from a distance are a street map of the neighborhood surrounding the station. So phase one being complete, I'm sure there will be many more CTA related posts to follow. Cheers.

Tit Muncher

When I arrived home this afternoon, this sticker was on the gate of our driveway. Apparently someone thinks that I'm a Tit Muncher Puffy Nipple. Yum?

Rambla On

For anyone who has never been to Barcelona, there are tons of street performers who line the sidewalks of La Rambla. This is my interpretation of this man's interpretation of a tree, camera work by Robin.

Innmotion Festival, Barcelona

Last week I returned from Barcelona where I exhibited for the first time outside of North America. Innmotion is a performance/video festival and they exhibited both the poster and the video for my piece "The Quitter." The festival held at the CCCB right behind The Museum of Contemporary Art and it was just amazing. Quiero a regresar Pronto!

Passing the Time in Barcelona

Robin and I arrived in Barcelona early tuesday morning to attend the Inn Motion Festival at the CCCBwhere I am exhibiting both my poster "The Quitter"and my video by the same title. During our first night in town, we spent the evening walking through the Gothic District where the streets are narrow and old and just amazing for strolling and getting lost. As we were walking, I started to notice surveillance cameras on a number of the buildings, a very strange contrast between the old and the new:
On the following morning, Robin and I headed off for the Museu d'Art Contemporani where they have a great show up called: A Theater Without Theater. The absolute highlight for me was the projection of Rene Clair's 1924 film, Entr'acte. I had read about this film a few years back in Calvin Tomkin's amazing bigraphy on Marcel Duchamp. There is a famous scene of him playing chess with Man Ray, this film is amazing!

Houston, 2007

Passports and Nostalgia

Yesterday I mailed my passport to Philadelphia in order to get it renewed. This was my first passport and I feel sad to part ways with it. I remember looking through my Grandmother's passport when I was a kid, looking at all of the places that she had traveled. That was back in the good ol' days when you used to get a stamp for each country, back before the EU. As I was getting ready to send it off, I started to look through all of my stamps and felt a real sense of nostalgia for my own travels over these past ten years.

Growing up, my family never traveled abroad. We would vacation in Maine or Massachusetts, mini golf and yogi bear as opposed to The Eiffel Tower and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. During my last semester of college, I was offered a job teaching photography at a youth program in Guatemala City for the following year. I had to get vaccinated, started listening to "Learn Spanish in Twenty Days" cassettes on my drive to work and most excitingly, I had to get my first passport! Here we have a photograph of young git, ready to conquer the world, naive as can be. I had never been in a place where the primary language wasn't English, had never taught before, wasn't sure where I would be living once I got there, and got bored listening to the language tapes and figured that I would figure Spanish out once I got there. It wasn't until the week before my departure that it hit me how scary the transition was going to be.

These were the first stamps that I ever received. I departed for Guatemala on the morning of August 27, 1997. I cried on the plane, I was terrified.


When I landed I was met by my soon to be co-worker/friend Daniel who took me in a taxi up to the town where I would be living for the next eight months. The house that I lived in was supposed to be for language students but in reality, it was a boarding house for travelers of all walks of life. The house became the center of my life in Guatemala, it was full of wonderful people who became some of my best friends and consisted of an open walled kitchen and a concrete courtyard that was lined with six bedrooms.


In order to work and live in Guatemala, I had to leave the country every three months for a few days in order to renew my visa. How often in life are you required by work to go on a paid vacation? The stamp on this page is from a visa trip that Daniel and I made to El Salvador towards the end of my stay in Central America. We stayed our first night in San Salvador, which was a pretty dangerous city at the time. We stayed in a cheap hotel next to the bus station and didn't leave our room all night. The amazing thing about this hotel room (besides the cockroaches) was that the toilet was in the shower:

The next morning we departed for the beach town of Zunsal where we stayed for the next two nights. The town consisted of one restaurant/bar and the view from our balcony was amazing:

Another Visa renewal stamp was the trip that I made to Belize with Daniel and my friend Laura (my best friend from college, she was down visiting). We stayed in a tiny village named Placencia that consisted of a small concrete walkway, some huts and two restaurants/bars (I've heard that it has been very developed since). We spent three days drinking beer, laying around and swimming. This is the only photograph that I have from our trip to Belize, Laura and Daniel and I lounging on the beach:

Oddly enough, my best friends in Guatemala were all Europeans. As soon as I returned to The States in March of 1998, I immediately began to plan a trip to Europe so that I could see them again. I had been a literature major in college (specifically 20th century European fiction) and had been dreaming of visiting Europe for a long time. On 4/29/00, I finally boarded a flight to Europe and I was ecstatic (the small black stamp on passport page 13). Before September 11th, it was a lot easier to travel as a photographer. This footage was actually shot on a super 8 camera during my first flight to Europe:



I landed at 6am in Frankfurt where my friend Ute came to pick me up. We then took a train through Switzerland to get to Milan where we met up with our friends Carlo, Henk and Eliana. A few days in Milan and a few days in San Remo. Italy is my favorite place on the planet.

From San Remo, Ute and I rode a train to Paris where we hung out for the next week:

For the final stretch of our trip, Ute and I took the train to Brussels to visit our friend Lucy. My favorite part of Brussels was hanging out on the rooftops. The angles of all of the buildings really appealed to the classical photographer in me and on our last day, I made this home movie of some laundry blowing on the clothesline:



The last stamp on page thirteen of my passport is from my trip to St. Martin in 2001. My friend Ben has a beach house there and we spent a week laying around, smoking cigars and drinking lots of rum and tonics. This was my first time seeing "Blue" water and the snorkeling was out of this world!

Last summer I married Robin and the two of us took our honeymoon in Portugal. We flew into Lisbon where we spent a few days walking and eating. Our hotel was in the old part of town and at night we would eat luxurious dinners. One of the most amazing memories from our trip to Lisbon was the spontaneous music that would occur in the restaurants and bars:



From Lisbon, we rented a car and drove to the Algarve (Portugal's southern tip). The beaches and fish were incredible and the asses . . .

The last stamp in my passport was from a trip to Montreal in February 2006. I had a show at Dazibao (my first show outside of the US) and flew out with Robin and was met there by my parents. This was a really amazing trip because it was my parent's first exposure to hearing a language other than English spoken as the predominant language.


I've since been to Toronto but mysteriously I never received a stamp. The other day I went to CVS to get a photo taken for my new passport:


I hope my new passport brings as many great adventures as my old one did. The first stamp will be from the trip that Robin and I are taking to Barcelona this July.

Homage to Michael Spano

I discovered Michael Spano's work a few years back and really fell in love with it. His use of special multi-frame camera's allowed him to tell a complex narrative on a single sheet of film. I was in grad school at the time and was trying really hard (and often unsuccessfully) to figure out how to create a successful grid/storyboard. I bought his book Time Frames and still enjoy looking through it every now and again.

As "The Garbage Can Project" has begun to evolve, I have had to think about Michael's work once again. We currently have five garbage cans outside of my apartment and my camera can only fit two of them on screen. In order to film (almost) all the cans, I've had to resort to some nerdy technical creations. The other day I set up a second camera out of our other front window and figured out a way to get them both to record onto the same VHS tape using a split screen technique. The effect creates a panorama of sorts and allows me to film four garbage cans at the same time. "The Garbage Can Project" will be launched on the web by June 1st (fingers crossed). After talking about this project for over a year, it will be a big sigh of relief to officially present it to the world in it's proper format. Here is a clip from yesterday featuring my new, Michael Spano-style double image recording. Enjoy: