There is a piece on an upcoming retrospective of Lee
Freidlander at MOMA. It is going to be massive, over a 1000 images if I
remember correctly. He started out shooting what became classic images
of jazz musicians and became one of the most influential “street” and
landscape photographers ever. I think that he and I have a similar
approach to photography, we see taking pictures as solving puzzles,
trying to figure out and make sense of what we see. This exhibition may
be what makes me give in to my stepsister Kelly and come visit NY
city…
In a much lighter vein, a former Ithaca college
friend made the arts and leisure section of the paper. My favorite
memory of Terry Jinn happened at a practice of a band that was trying
to come together. They were a bunch of Communication school students
with disparate ideas of what good music was and with varying degrees of
talent. During one of the many break downs I suggested a cover
the band could play. The result was Terry, about as geeky and
straight-laced looking a Korean guy as you can think of, standing in
the corner hammering out the chords of Black Sabbath’s “NIB” while the
rest of the band argued. He was always a funny guy and has been in the
improv scene in NY city since graduation. On the second page on today’s
NY Times, you can see him impersonating “The Edge” of U2 in a piece of
guerrilla theater. A group of improv guys decided to recreate U2’s
“Where the Streets Have No Name” video several blocks and several hours
away from U2’s concert on a rooftop in NY city. They pulled it off
spectacularly, many thought it was U2, and many others enjoyed it. Art
imitated life down to the police coming and shutting them down. Terry
seems to have escaped without legal repercussions, but the organizers
got slapped with misdemeanor noise violations. I’m so proud of Terry:-)
Isaac