I Was My Only Option

I was at an artist's residency (Yaddo, in Saratoga Springs) in January, and started a whole new thing. I started doing self-portraits, something swore I'd never do. I hold the whole genre in contempt. All those imitation Cindy Shermans. Irritating, self-absorbed artists like Laurel Nakadate and on and on. Well, it's official. Now I like them all, for the most important, compelling of all reasons: I'm doing self-portraits myself! It's fun! Now I can practice sucking my stomach in! Holding my shoulders back! Oh, the vanity! There was nobody else to use as a model at the residency, which strictly enforces "quiet hours," during which you can't approach another resident to beg them to come pose for a minute. Besides, they are all pretty busy with there own work. I was my only option!

Note: I haven't really been blogging much for the past year or so. My plan is write a lot more in the coming months. In that spirit, I redesigned and renamed the blog more in accord with my new vanity. Goodbye, Brand New Unfinished Projects. Hello, Pelle Cass, the blog. (I thought about naming it Mr. Pelacus, which I have been called occasionally when people read my first and last name as one. I've also been called Pearl Katz, Pelé, and many other minor variants. My favorite is, although it wasn't at the time during middle school, "Dictionary." In any case, I was more often called "Poindexter" for my manly glasses and bold, decisive mien.)

A new picture and preparing for Houston

Couple and Bridge, Boston Public Garden

Here's another new picture, the same bridge as my previous post, photographed on an entirely different occasion. I am trying to do something a little different from the other pictures in this series. Mostly, it's moving away from cramming the frame with every possible figure and varying from having a strict conceit for each work. It's too late, of course, for these pictures to appear in my HCP show. It's in a few weeks, and I will confess, pessimist (or, as Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan describes his main character, "a cosmopolitan, a Jew, and a depressive") that I am, that I am preparing feverishly for the disappointment of it being over.

Amost Time to Go

A stack of announcements just came from the Houston Center for Photography. Always a happy moment! We're going to Houston on Wednesday for the opening on Friday. The weather in Houston has broken from 100-plus degrees down to the 90's. It's fall-like in Boston, so I think we'll enjoy the warmer weather.

Bridge

Here's a new picture. Over the past year and a half, I've been going back and forth between working on this series (Selected People) and a series of abstractions (Artist's Statements). It's unusual for me to do two series at once, but who says I can't? I guess I'm excited to be showing Selected People at the Houston Center for Photography in September, so it makes me want to extend the series.

This picture almost makes me blush. It depicts what I don't like about taking pictures: being conspicuous. I took about 200 pictures to make this composite, and these were most of the people who noticed me. It was a busy summer afternoon, and the tourists were streaming across the miniature bridge in the Boston Public Garden. I must have photographed well over a thousand people. But pretty much only these people's eyes flicked across me and my little camera, which was perched on the stone railing of the bridge. There is no way to know if they were annoyed, as they appear to be. And they are not really staring at me, since I am standing and the camera's lens, which they are looking slightly down at, is at waist level. They may have been frowning at their companions or at the perfect summer day, for all I know. But they certainly capture something about photography.

You're Invited

Shipping News

I haven't blogged for a while. Sometimes I feel like it, sometimes I don't. Do I now? I do. Because I'm very excited about my upcoming show at the Houston Center for Photography. Is the opening September 9 at six, I think? Almost definitely. Is it in the main gallery? Yes. Do I have 22 pictures from the series Selected People? I do. Are Jason Dibley, Christian Cutler, Bevin Bering of the HCP fantastic? How can you even ask? They are. Is there a mighty exhibitions committee behind all this, mysterious as it is benevolent, which deserves my gratitude and affection? True, truer, truest.

The picture above is of the little entryway to my apartment. It's filled with 249 pounds worth of pictures in 15 boxes. A strong man would be happy to weigh this much and 15 is my lucky number. (13,603 square inches of pure, clean, fresh photo. A retail value of $29,700.) The boxes are addressed to the HCP. They will get there maybe on Wednesday (it's Friday, now) and Jason, Christian, and Bevin will put them on the wall. You can stand there, dear reader, and look at them as much as you like, if you happen to be in Houston this fall and are inclined that way. I will be there for the opening. I will be happy and talkative. The UPS man is gone now, my boxes in his truck.