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Super excited to announce a partnership with writer and photographer Keith Roland. His work will be featured on ALSO THAT on a semi-regular basis. This first series is from his visit to New York City.
Driver
“Keith Roland is a visual artist and writer searching to encapsulate in art what ideas roil in his mind. His creations are a paradox between desire to tame and desire to set free those thoughts that rumble forth through the camera or onto the page.”
There is only one Daniel Horowitz. He's a wholly unique individual full of brilliance and wit and talent. His writing style reflects this as he blurs the boundary between prose and poetry. I read his book becuz and I was spellbound. I'm excited to be able to share his writing and photography today.
Daniel Horowitz writes poems and plays and novels. He also takes photographs. His most recent book of both poems and photographs is called becuz and available on amazon (link below). For more of his photography see danielhorowitzphoto.com. Daniel is available for freelance portraiture and other photography work around Boston and later this year New York. These three poems are a sampling of some of his obsessions : Americana gloom, outdated symbolism and confusing eating for sex. To get in touch with Daniel for any reason please email horowitzsdaniel@gmail.com.
becuz in black and white ($5.50) : http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1522822364?keywords=becuz&qid=1453581905&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1
becuz in color ($15.00) : http://www.amazon.com/becuz-Daniel-Horowitz/dp/1519498187/ref=tmm_pap_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1453581905&sr=8-1
a small autobiography
on the day I bought leather boots,
wore my leather jacket near the mirror
and didn’t play it safe even under all
that dead skin made pretty
So the biggest-of-all time hurricane set to smash Mexico,
it’s been downgraded to a “tropical depression”—me too.
Last night in Boston the cracked hand-in-deep-stuffed-pocket
chills came howling down from the haunting Canadian Alps
past the glooming doom-stricken upper burbs of Boston town
to blow clean and dead like the sand-blasted surface of the
green ungrinning moon the famous barebone streets of Boston
proper which the original daddies of this country had to toss their
paper umbrellas and fold forever their lawn chairs to huddle
holster-to-holster and come up with “oh well now that we can’t
play in the yard I guess we aughtta invent liberty : hey whadda say
Jeff, Benny, Ham, Slim Jack Johnson and The Ramblers?”
I am standing like a tragic James Dean type and my left foot,
I left it crushed between the brake pedal and the clutch.
I’m looking out at the thick night which conceals things like
poison shivs, parties, brained rats and the spooky breath of vampires.
I am thinking about the variety of human life. Socks do little
for me. Lollypops cannot be depended on. And the layer
like stone dust of junky symbolism that snores rancid on each object
I inflict on my eyes makes heavy sneezes like Howitzer shots.
I’m a great kaleidoscope as well as a pair of windup lips :
a photographer and a poet, a farmer and a practice clown.
Listen to me speak : the “obfuscation” of the “visual plane”
in my picture is the “aesthetically good” confusing “neighbor”
of the “slang-drivel” in the “grammatical defenestrations”
of my past “experiments in the expedience of thought.”
Language is a funny thing but it is not a joke until you crack it…
Why am I standing? Action is a outdated scare that lives in my muscles
like a “You’re dead” from John Wayne a.k.a. Genghis Khan :
it knocks like a bone’s rattle when news arrives of gunslinging
or wooing or circus heroics… I am only standing : not moving,
my hand is on my hip but I have no weapon. I only wanna look
good… Hold the pose. My lips are red. My hair is classic.
My clothes, my body parts, the steel bible in my chest pocket
to catch a bullet and make a miracle : I am the last cowboy.
I’ll walk out, clinking with bells and belt buckles and quarters—
I’ll go into plains, the chill will roll over me but my organs
will have grown hard like blisters and I’ll win : I’ll kiss everybody
and lay all my enemies low. I’ll be very cool. The wind’s picking up…
The Last Cowboy doesn’t wear a hat he looks and looks and
in order to have the appearance of sophistication and depth
he puts the gloomy ocean of sadness in his eyes as their sparkle
when he looks at you, right—ha ha haha haha ha hahaha haw ha ha.
I.
A European sits in the lap of another European
turns almost completely facewards
pulls his tie increasingly flatteringly—
Nobody can stand anymore.
Someone says off-camera,
“Impeccable dress is a dead
(and by dead I mean slaughtered)
art”
Pigeons go casually extinct around these people
who appear to be shining shoes and bottling
marmalade.
They stick fingers in their eyes and nostrils
and press their cheeks as if they were someone else’s
cheeks.
A pigeon falls dead soundlessly into a splashing martini glass.
Like dolls, laps are switched around and behold!
—Sequins are invented without ceremony in the distance.
II.
For just this reason, tying knots in cigar smoke,
A portrait of a monarch mourns things like
Elephantitis.
Paint is made to understand by violence a color
Like gray.
Portraiture is consumed by starch-armed perusers
Smiling like virginal old men.
Kimonos are wheeled in, a piece of glass is
Thoroughly masterbated—to solve this problem.
III.
Bedding unchanged, a boa constrictor rears lavishly
Fearlessly, with circular lenses, smoking a lollipop: lime
The genius photographer orders the snake curl up
On a fur coat, crumpled.
The snake answers, similarly,
Like a serpent confused for a penis
“There is nothing more theatrical than dollar bills.”
It is a photograph.
“BODY: If we knew how our body is made,
we wouldn’t dare move."
—Flaubert
We’ll combust. Faintness creeps like a pang
an ingrown toenail—drift: my tummy… And you
standing still, staring at produce like a thigh. Grumbling,
our burn—sweating at cornucopia, hot river gods—
peanut butter’s goo and nut meat, warmth:
texture of the womb—pastas well cooked
give under feral teeth, pleasing—iced cream,
salt on pretzels, salt’s slight burn, throat’s gulp
its physicality—consumption. Gulp. Consumed.
Hunger at the hardness of a fresh pepper, red
like you. Meat’s sponge and animal dung appeal:
also warmth, organ meat’s scented faint piss—
animals, burned to our burn: chewing, alive…
Like all gluttony it is only the indirect flare of desire
to have the world reduced to a few monumental objects:
a mountain, a bowl of beans, a truck, you my dear, and my mouth.
I'm pleased to share the work of an up and coming photographer named Katrina Castro.
This collection of work I present to you is a representation of my summer as well as my growth as a photographer. When I returned home to New Jersey for a few months, I had the opportunity to intern for a bit under a wedding photographer. I was able to learn plenty about different sources of lighting, how to utilize it, and giving it a purpose in my photography. I was also able to see a little “behind the scenes” of shooting weddings, with all the hustle and bustle. But what really stuck with me the most were the small conversations about perspective I would have while working with the photographer. He had such great appreciation for what he learned from watching documentaries and reading articles about science, famous people, etc… It really inspired me to get back into reading as well as watching shows with substance. What I really took out of my experience was to stay open minded, don’t be afraid to take risks with your work, try something new instead of keeping the same technique/style. I used my summer back at home to my advantage photography-wise. As you can see from my work, I pretty much take pictures of anything, but my main forte is photographing portraits. I was never a really big fan of taking pictures of landscapes, architecture, or basically anything that didn’t have a face. But I would say I’m pretty versatile with what I do. Eventually, I would love to photograph weddings. This month I had the opportunity to learn a bit from those who did enjoy photographing my least favorite things. We head back to the topic about perspective once again. Photography is perceptual and conceptual to me. What can you physically see that some people may see differently? What can you feel emotionally from a photo that some people may feel differently? I find that’s the beauty of art, there’s no right or wrong. An artist is constantly learning, discovering, and thinking. As an artist myself, I am still learning, discovering what I am capable of with my photography.
Shot in NYC/Boston.
Also: Bonus walking gif:
My main man Keith (who you may remember from his 2014 guest post Technicolor Wonder) makes his return to ALSO THAT with his new series of multimedia art.
Check out his blog Skeleton Assembly, LIKE his brand-new Facebook page, and pick up a print from his Society 6 page.
“Some photographs just never really get old to me. They continue their life in so many forms, and within the mind. Something one contemplates while sitting alone, gazing out into space, or across the seemingly infinite ocean, or even when taking the next photograph.
I decided to breathe new life into some of my favorite photos with a little bit of mixed media, basically, I took my adult crayons (oil pastels) and began drawing on them. The first few came out nice, but really had no defining characteristics other than being drawn on. However, I came up with a series to begin, completely by accident, after drawing a mask over one of my shots. So without further adieu, here is the beginning of my series of masks...”
