becky lee is probably the only person in the world who holds a drum stick in her strumming hand to play a floor tom while playing guitar, kick drum, and kick snare as she sings.
thursday morning, the photo club held their call for entries for the annual exhibition that will be in northlight gallery, opening february 2nd. this year we were able to get joel meyerowitz to jury the show, and he was generous enough to do it in an open format where students were allowed to watch and listen as he explained the thought process behind his selections.
when he got to mine, he flipped one over and looked at the other three. then he picked two of them up and showed them to everyone and discussed them more thoroughly than he discussed any of the other photographs that were submitted. "these are poetry," he said.
(photo: robert brandan martinez)
"they have a sort of dingy cinematic feel; not beautiful by any classic convention." then he tugged on his coat and said, "but they grab me and pull me, and make me want to know more about the photographer. they speak to something within." he went on to say "photographs like these give me hope for the future of photography."
after the jurying was over, meyerowitz went back to my prints and talked some more about them with the curator. he said he wanted to know who the photographer was. sitting a few feet away, i told him that i was. he said he likes them and i thanked him.
a short while later, after saying goodbye to some people as they were leaving, he returned to me and said, "your photographs really speak to me. not everybody's do, but all of yours did. i really enjoyed all of them. i considered the third photo for a while, but the two that i picked worked especially well together. that doesn't mean they were your best photos."
(photo: nicole gomez)
in the evening, barrett honors college hosted a lecture by meyerowitz.
after the lecture, i had drinks and conversation with mike lundgren, christian widmer, and betsy schneider. i mostly listened and took notes. my favorite quotes were
"she smears shit on her nose her head's so far up her ass."
and
"associating photography with the masses is the death of photography."
