Journal entry....July 6, 2009

I’m writing from my very own desk at the SFMOMA Marketing department. I started here last week and we are currently ramping up for a soon to be released Richard Avedon retrospective. Today I stapled together bits of the press packets and snuck some peaks at the info along the way. Most of my work has been unrelated to the art, which is sad but expected. I did get to go behind the scenes while the Avedon exhibit was being constructed. It was pretty amazing – the cases lifted off old Rolling Stone copies, the elusive prints lying casually against the temporary walls. The trip made me impulsively decide I wanted to be in museum construction, none of this marketing business! Those guys get closer to the pieces and potentially the artists than the curators even! I guess I’ll have to enroll in technical school…

I’m not so sure how I feel about Avedon – maybe I just don’t appreciate the novelty of his work in retrospect. Also, his self-portrait (someone takes himself a bit too seriously….) and his series on the American West reek of pretentiousness to me. I remember seeing the American West series displayed at the Cantor Arts center 2 years ago and I was irked by the word choice in his titles. He made it very obvious what he was trying to say about his subjects – why is this guy so dirty, and what’s with that kooky look in his eye? Title informs us he’s a homeless drifter; Why are these buxom ladies photographed? Avedon says: they are only 14! Such a pity! How come this young man and their dad are dressed so nicely? We are informed of their location – couldn’t be any other church but Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints somewhere in rural Utah. Avedon seemed to be seductively commenting from the position of an elitist photographer about the bitter truth of a stigmatized west. He didn’t present the “common man,” he presented what people in East Coast cities wanted to see – what would tug at their heart strings while also reaffirm cultural & intellectual hierarchies.

So that’s my opinion…what do you think? Any thoughts on Avedon? Am I way out of line?

Blonde Negress

Bison in Golden Gate Park

The Lanyard by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Popovi Da: Red Fox makes siena, black together