Welcome To The Jungle: My State Of The Union Address

As part of a soon to be released series of collages titled "Perception Is Reality" I have gathered the following data statistics. Organized into statistical groupings to provide context and a better understanding of their significance, these data sets paint a horrifyingly clear portrait of the political, social and economic crisis that currently has our country in a stranglehold. Despite what President Obama may say tonight in his State of The Union address and whatever the GOP will say in response, here is my State of The Union presented by the numbers in the form of fact checked statistics. Welcome to the jungle...



THE NUMBERS DONT LIE:


US Corporations are currently sitting on nearly $2 Trillion dollars in cash.

In the past decade Fortune 100 companies have laid off 2.9 Million American workers and hired 2.4 Million oversees.

More than a $100 Billion a year is given by the US government to businesses in loopholes, credits, and incentives.

More than 80 of America's largest 100 publicly traded companies make use of offshore tax havens, which cost US taxpayers $100 Billion a year.

60% of US businesses with profits of $1 Million are structured as "pass throughs" and do not pay US taxes.

Corporate tax collections in the US in 2010 amounted to just 1.3% of GDP, in 1952 it was 6.1%

General Electric earned $14.2 Billion in profits in 2010 and paid zero dollars in US taxes.

GE laid off 21,000 American workers and closed 20 factories between 2007-2009 and more than half of GE's workforce is now outside the US.




Mitt Romney paid a 13.9% effective income-tax rate in 2010 on $21.7 Million in reported earnings.

Newt Gingrich paid an effective tax rate of 31.7% on a reported total income of $3.16 Million in 2010.

President Obama paid an effective tax rate of 25.3% on $1.8 Million in earnings in 2010.

Under 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's tax plan, which eliminates taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, Romney's effective tax rate would be near zero and only his speaker fees ($374,000) would be subject to a 15% tax rate.

From 2001 through 2010, the Bush Era Tax Cuts amounted to $2.6 Trillion in lost revenue and we have spent more than $400 Billion on increased interest to finance the debt created by the Bush tax cuts.

Between 2001Q4 and 2007Q4, the US economy experienced the worst economic expansion since WWII.

If the Bush Era Tax Cuts expire at the end of 2012, $3.8 Trillion will be made in new revenue in a decade.

The US national debt is currently $15 Trillion.




An average of 750,000 jobs were lost a month between December 2008 and April 2009. By the time job losses stopped, a year after Obama took office, The Great Recession had cost the economy 8.8 Million jobs.

50,000 factories in the US have closed in the past decade.

6 Million manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past decade.

American manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at 19.6 million jobs. Today there are only 11.8 million manufacturing jobs, a decline of 40% since the peak.

Private sector Union membership in America is 6.9%, down more than 20% from 30 years ago.

The US has a $500 Billion trade deficit in manufactured goods.

The service sector, for which our economy is based, accounts for only 20% of world trade.




In 2011 nearly half of America's public schools didnt meet federal achievement standards, the largest failure since No Child Left Behind took effect a decade ago.

On a state level, the highest failure rate of 89% was recorded in Florida

In 2010 Florida Governor Rick Scott cut $1.35 Billion in education spending from the state budget.

Today, workers with just a college degree and no further degrees are less likely to get work place health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979.

In 1979 the average college graduate made 38% more than the average high school graduate. Today, the average college graduate makes more than 75% than the average high school graduate.




From 2004-2009, 85% of growth in Research and Development workers employed by US based companies has been abroad.

56% of the world's engineering degrees awarded in 2008 were in Asia, compared with 4% in the US.

57% of US doctoral degrees in engineering in 2009 went to foreigners, mostly from East Asia and India.

More than 40% of Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. These companies generate more than $4 Trillion in annual revenue.

The US awards annually only 85,000 H-1B visas for highly skilled workers. More than that number have been know to apply on the first day of application.

1.1 Million deportations have occurred since President Obama took office. This is the highest number in 6 decades.

There are 21.3 Million Latino voters in the US.

More than 1 in 10 Americans lack a government issued ID.

As many as 5 Million Americans will find it significantly more difficult to cast a ballot this election.

Ronald Regan won relelection in 1984 with 7.4% unemployment.




More than 220,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are out of work.

Total cost of Iraq War = 4,400 American lives and $800 Billion.

Less than 1% of American population is in active military duty.

18 war veterans commit suicide everyday. 1 every 80 mins.

22% of all suicides in the US are former service members.




With Facebook's IPO the company has been valued at $100 Billion. Facebook has 3,200 employees.

McDonald's stock is also valued at $100 Billion, with 400,000 employees.

According to labor statistics, if all current jobs openings were filled tomorrow, nearly 10 Million Americans would still be jobless.




Average after tax income for the top 1% of US households has increased 275% from 1979 to 2007. While those in the bottom 20%, income grew only 18%. (Annual income of $343,000 or more qualifies as the 1%)

In 2010, the top 1/5th of US households collected 50.3% of all the nation's income. The lowest 1/5th collected just 3.3% of the nation's income.

The richest 20% of Americans own more than 80% of the country's wealth, while the poorest 20% own 1/10th of the country's wealth.

49 Million American are living in poverty, the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been publishing figures on poverty.

Nearly 97.3 Million Americans fall into the low-income category, defined as earning 100-199% of poverty level ($11,282 for an individual and $24,343 for a family of four).

Combined, 146.4 Million Americans, 48% of US population, are poor, either living in poverty or classified as low income. (US population: 312 Million)

25 Million Americans are unemployed or without full time work.




Unemployment benefits last 99 weeks and cost the US $156 Billion in 2010.

Average duration of unemployment is 41 weeks, the highest in 60 years.

From 2005-2009, Millionaires collected $74 Million in unemployment benefits.

Unemployment in Spain is 22.8%

Unemployment in Germany is 6.8%

Eurozone countries account for 40% of Germany's exports, China only consumes 7%.

Youth unemployment in the European Union is 22.1%.

Youth without education, employment or training cost countries in the EU €2 Billion per week.

Youth unemployment in Spain is 48.7%

Black youth unemployment in America is 46.5%




Median household income in the US has fallen 6.4% since 2007, the year before the recession.

The Chinese save 40% of their incomes, Germans save 11%, Americans save below 4%.

152 Million Americans shop in the 3 days following Thanksgiving.

American holiday shoppers, both retail and online, spent a record $52.4 Billion on Thurs-Sun Thanksgiving weekend.

Credit card balances crept up to $798.3 Billion in November.

1% of small business owners have an adjusted gross income over $1 Million a year.

China has the second largest amount of Billionaires in the world, the US is first.




China invests 46% of its GDP in its future, while the US invests 12%.

In the early 1950s, US government devoted about 1.2% of GDP to infrastructure, by 2010 that amount had fallen to just 0.2%.

Federal spending on research and development dropped from a high of nearly 2% in 1964 to 0.9% in 2009.

The current federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers, aka the 0.000258%, fell from 30% in 1995 to 18% in 2008.




For the past 30 years health care spending costs grew 2% faster than the US overall economy.

In 2009, 50 Million Americans under 65 were without health insurance.

In 2010 the US spent $2.6 Trillion on health care.

Medicaid accounted for 22.3% of state spending in 2010.

10,000 Americans retire everyday.

By 2030, there an estimated 80 Million people to be on Medicare.

Baby Boomers born in 1946 turned 65 in 2011. (Baby Boomers: born 1946-1964)




In 2010, CEOs at the largest US companies made on average 343 times the pay of the average worker.

In 1978, CEOs made 35 times the pay of the average worker.

In Germany, CEOs make on average 11 times the pay of the average worker.

The financial services industry spent $2.3 Billion on federal campaign contributions from 1990-2010. This is more than what the health care, energy, defense, agriculture and transportation industries combined spent on campaign contributions.

Wall Street has spent $5 Billion on lobbying efforts to deregulate the banking industry.




28% of American mortgages are underwater.

In 2010 there are 10 Million vacant properties in America, up from 7 Million in 2000.

Only 11.6% of Americans moved between 2010-2011, the number of Americans who moved in 1985 was 20%.

Households with more than $1 Million in income claimed more than $27 Billion in mortgage interest deductions.

90% of the 115.9 Million homes with TV in the US subscribe to basic cable.

$12.5 Million was spent on Iowa Caucus television ads.

Rick Perry and his super PAC spent $4.23 Million on television ads in the month of December.

Perry earned 10.3% of votes in the Iowa Caucus, costing him $332 a vote.

Minimun wage in Iowa is currently $7.25. A 40 hour work week before taxes at this rate is $290.

The average American collected $295 in weekly unemployment benefits in 2010.




Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning rose by 5.9% in 2010, the largest amount on record.

Land temperatures have risen 1.8 degrees since 1950.

The total economic loss of global natural disasters in 2011 was a record $380 Billion.

House Republicans voted 168 times (as of Oct. 15, 2011) this year to undercut clean air and water laws while blocking efforts to limit global warming, protect public lands and guard against future oil spills. They have been called the "most anti-environment congress in history."

The cost of 100 Senators and 435 House of Representatives is about $2.2 Billion a year, $7 per capita.

There are 249 Millionaires in Congress and the estimated median net worth of a current US Senator stood at an average of $2.56 Million.




76% of Americans say 2011 was the worst year of their lives.

69% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Congress has a 9% approval rating.

Newspapers: The Voice Of The People

The Bumpy Road To Fiscal Sustainability

So I was wrong about Europe. My doubts about the ability of Europe's leaders to actually come up with a realistic debt solution were averted yesterday with the announcement of a plan to take the necessary steps to avoid a Greek default with immediate, yet temporary and uncertain, relief by ordering Europe's weak banks to raise more capital to protect against future payouts to investors via credit default swaps and ease fears, for the time being, about the possibility of bailouts for Italy and Spain with the $625 Billion bailout fund called European Financial Stability Facility. The stock market was eagerly awaiting the outcome of this decision and the announcement of hard numbers to be thrown on the debt crisis fire which in recent weeks was verging on an uncontrollable wildfire. All a result of bickering amongst Europe's leaders about which wealthy country would bare the brunt of rescuing its debt crisis and investing in the E.U.'s future....sound familiar?

And boy did the market respond upon hearing the numbers that came within earshot of what every economist and financial reporter said were needed. As better than expected third quarter reports from American businesses recording unexpected profits and exceeding quarterly expectations coupled with signs that our economy was growing amidst recession fears (GDP grew 2.5%, consumer spending rose 2.4% in 3Q, as jobless benefit claims declined last week) the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 339 points and October is on pace to be the biggest monthly percentage gain in nearly 25 years. The very definition of Bear to Bull. The Euro also rose yesterday to $1.41 on the dollar from a low of $1.31 earlier this month.

But here is the biggest news and most important thing to be aware of. Private sector big banks, who originally agreed to 21% "haircut," agreed on Thursday to accept a 50% loss on their credit default swap holdings of Greek government bonds. This is fucking huge. Big banks actually being held accountable by European leaders and agreeing to take a loss. While Greek losses are relatively small in comparison of other credit default swaps this is still very significant and one can make many broad conclusions of where things can go from here. For one, this will cause investors to seriously consider the value of European bonds and the security of payouts should they default. Which in turn, if our Congress (with a 9% approval rating) and the super-committee can actually put country over politics in a lame duck season and come up with a bold debt plan by the Nov. 23 deadline, the implications of its success take on a whole new meaning and coincide with the momentum of the European debt plans and could potentially be turning point for our own economic recovery.

Here's why. The result of these actions abroad will now cause the default insurance market to plunge, vindicating our own 2008 predatory sub-prime mortgage housing crisis which was the result of big banks like Citibank, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase selling investments, made out of mortgage securities, to their own customers and then in turn betting against them via derivatives, and making huge profits when the housing bubble burst and homeowners defaulted on loans.....as the taxpayer picked up the tab on the bailout payments. This whole system is flawed and the SEC, thanks to Congress, has barely been able to implement any real regulations on the banking industry. So by the simple act of the big banks agreeing to the 50% loss (which I assume was made because the result of that minor loss would be negated by the profits made with the success of Euro bailout news and plugging the hole in the dam of continued Greek debt losses which would only grow larger) all in the name of a short term solution. This will have a profound impact for months to come (and I imagine send the market back down soon enough) and will end resulting in a symbolic self-regulation domino effect ultimately making these investments no longer profitable and eventually fade away into a long list of financial crimes of the past.

However, in the short term, before the flame completely extinguishes, I imagine a quick flood of investors flocking to 10 and 30 year U.S. government issued bonds which are at all time interest lows. Despite the recent downgrade, U.S. bonds are still a gold standard. Even if inflation rises in the aftermath of this recession, the long term yields and profits will out weigh any inflation caused by further potential government stimulus, as many foresee a third round of quantitive easing. And this is a great source of much needed revenue for the U.S government....but pulling back, it's a bit troubling that the only way our government seems to be able to generate new revenue is by selling its own debt.

So the fourth quarter has a lot to offer and surely will impact not only the 2012 election but also the pace of our economic recovery...like there actually is a difference between the two. We shall see how this affects American companies 4th quarter holiday season profits, jobless numbers, 2012 GDP forecasts, how banks react to finding themselves caught between a rock and hard place, but most importantly we get to witness how this impacts our politicians. The actions of Europeans leaders calling the banks' bluff and playing hardball, refusing to bail out the banks and call for further measures of austerity, is a source of great promise and hope for the prosperity of the taxpayer and middle and working class families. Their actions will surely fire up the Occupy movements at home and hold our own leaders to a new standard.

As Europe's leaders flirted with the high-bar of ineptitude firmly established by our politicians this summer, the great seed of fear was planted in the garden of nightmares. Not of a double dip recession or tumbling stocks, but something far worse, a rapid spiraling downfall of Medieval proportions into the depths of our own ignorance and selfishness—human beings not being to learn from their own mistakes, repeating failure after failure and allowing cannibalistic human greed to consume our own future as we merge into the fast lane on the highway to hell. Left turn merge diverted for now, but we still cruise along in the middle lane, well over the speed limit, as the holes in Europe's sovereign debt solution remain to be filled. With plans to reduce Greek debt to only 120% of GDP by 2020, we shall see what curves and bumps remain ahead on the road to fiscal sustainability.

Perception Is Reality

....And Our Disconnect As A Society Grows Deeper

If you are reading this blog, I will go ahead and assume that it's probably pretty safe to say you read several other blogs on your Google reader or whatever feeder, you have a Facebook page, Flickr account, and maybe even a Twitter account. Depending on the commas in your bank account and what kind of pictures you take you probably have a 5D, or at least some kind of digital point and shoot. iPhone for sure. Do you have an iPad yet? Now I ask, as I get to the heart of this blabbering tirade, how do you access your information? And with the seemingly infinite and over saturated amount of information that is just a mouse click away, what do you filter through and actually read on a daily basis? There is a lot to sift through these days. At times it seems, despite the Twitter updates and breaking news text messages, that no matter how connected we all are, we are never really up to date with anything except a headline. The world is broadcast in nearly real time. Boom....earthquake in Haiti, 20 minutes later there are pictures on some refreshed website of people hurt and the massive destruction.

At what point has the Internet destroyed us? At what point has new online media and technological advances made the news abstract? Are images today of so called "news" ultimately abstract as the story, the before and after (aka content), do not have time to catch up before there is another barrage of brand new images or headlines flashing on some screen? Shit, nowadays, everyone is a photographer, you got a 5D and a Flickr account, you good to go kid. Literally. With 14 year old paparazzi and however many thousands of images being uploaded a day to Flickr, I can't help but to think that words and in-depth stories have been replaced by pictures and 140 character constant updates and that our lazy "my brain stops working at 2:30 so I have a 5 Hour Energy" society could care less. Our celebrity obsessed para-social culture could seemingly care less about long term stories, such as how lives are transformed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina 6 months down the road, "yeah man, I get it, I saw those pictures of the flood waters on the evening news, but, hey, by the way, did you see last night's American Idol?"

But let's not completely dismiss the words. In fact, the words are a monstropolous beast of their own. The age of the Internet has allowed all of us a platform to preach our gospel. And depending on how loud you can yell and how fucking deep you can reach into the depths of your own retardation and pull the ugliest rabbit out of the hat, you just might get yourself national media attention for a week. "Yeah, Billy Bob let's burn us some of them Korans, we'll show 'em Muuzleems whose boss." And so in an age when voices, that 20 years ago would have been dismissed as the schizophrenic in the park yelling to himself, are brought to you live via the holy Internet and served up as breaking news with sprinkles on top, we can't seem to get enough. And us Americans can barely decide between a number 2 and a number 5 combo meal at McDonalds for dinner, we don't need all these loud voices telling us about Tea Parties, why it's ok to make exceptions for religious freedom, and why we should repeal health care reform.

We find ourselves, as Americans, as a society, in an interesting place right now. As technology has begun its take over, we are amidst a transition. Facebook has not yet taken over America, which it will in 5 years...or sooner. Instead of logging on to Safari or Firefox, everything you could ever want and need will be through Facebook: shopping, news, social "interaction," games, movies, etc etc etc. 13 years olds today spend more time in front of a screen than anything else except sleeping and so our future inevitably will become a Facebook world. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about it all. As I dive profoundly deeper into my research about the newspaper industry, the Internet, social media, I have come away with a unsettling feeling about our society as a whole. Now let me interject here before I go any further. Don't get my wrong, I am sitting here typing this on a new computer, I have 3, in addition to one of these phones that buzzes incessantly and requires the same attention that a small child or pet demand. Yes, the Internet is a glorious machine, perhaps the fire and wheel of the 21st Century, but when something is gained there is usually something sacrificed.

The newspaper industry enters that equation as we march into a digital era. I come from 5 generations of newspaper men. My great, great, great grandfather started the York Daily in 1870, and this tradition has continued down the line. The newspaper industry is my family business. And journalism will never die and will adapt to new technology amidst the erosion of print as it has done with the advent of radio, television and now the internet. But the transition has been difficult as papers have been struggling to recover from decade long consolidations into national corporate chains as new owners have stripped newsrooms to skeletons of their former selves in an attempt to boost profits and in the process reducing many great papers to mere satisfactory papers. The pressure and stress to produce a daily quality product with depleted staff and resources is nothing new for many papers across the country. But the bleeding can only last so long as the fight to hang on creeps toward an ominous prevail or die deadline. As we lose reporters, editors, newsbeats and sections of papers to buyouts, layoffs and bankruptcies, we lose coverage, information, and a connection to our cities and our society, and, in the end, we lose ourselves. Blogs like this that serve a specific audience written by fools like me somehow just dont sit well right now. I have a conflict of interest as full time professionals compete against unedited, unreliable amateur online outlets and citizen journalists for readership. My energy and my voice and this thing that I do, dont belong in this platform right now. As our connection to the buzz of our cell phones and refreshed web pages provides the latest developments on the marital affairs of famous golfers and young actresses' court appearances, our disconnect as a society grows deeper. And so I am disconnecting from this connection and pulling the plug on this blog.

Thank you for reading my lunatic ramblings over the years. Come find me at the bar.

Raise Your Glass To The Good And The Evil

New Orleans, I raise my glass to you, the greatest city in the world, have a cold one on me. It's been a long 5 years. Let's have a drink and a laugh, sometimes that's all we can do.














Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink of the lowly of birth
Raise your glass to the good and the evil
Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Say a prayer for the common foot soldier
Spare a thought for his back breaking work
Spare a part for his wife and his children
Who burn the fires and who still till the earth

And when I look into the this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of gray blue
Black and white
They don't look real to me
In fact, we all look so strange

Raise your glass to the hard working people
Let's drink to the uncounted heads
Let's think of the wavering millions
Who need leading but get gamblers instead

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio

And when I look into this faceless crowd
A swirling mass of grays and
Black and white
They don't look real to you
Or do we look too strange

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag taggy people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth

Let's drink to the hard working people
Let's drink to the salt of the earth
Let's drink to the three thousand million
Let's think of the humble of birth

-The Stones

Found New Orleans Rhyme Book, 2005

Extra Extra!! Down These Mean Streets Newspaper Now Available Online

A million thank yous to all who came out for my opening and have supported this work. I owe you the world. For all those who were not able to make the opening and want a newspaper for $5, CLICK HERE.





Down These Mean Streets Newspaper
16 page Tabloid Newspaper
8 color pages, 8 black & white pages
Featuring images, journal entries, maps, and notes.
Signed by the artist.
$5.00
BUY HERE




THANK YOU!!!!!

Tonight Is Finally Today!!!

After many weeks of sleepless nights working, planning and preparing for tonight, I am very excited for the opening of my first solo show at Michael Mazzeo Gallery. Please join me for the opening reception tonight! You don't want to miss this one folks, I promise you.

Tonight!
Thursday June 10th, 6-8pm
"Down These Mean Streets"
Michael Mazzeo Gallery
526 West 26th Street, Suite 209
NY NY 10001
212.741.6599
www.michaelmazzeo.com
www.willsteacy.com


On display will be:

-22 photographs, some of which I have never exhibited before.

-An installation that highlights my working process with journals, contact sheets, maps, research notes, newspaper clippings, found objects and the wrench I carried in my back pocket.





-A signed newspaper made specifically for this exhibition that will be available at the opening for $5.



-A special limited edition print will also be available with a signed newspaper for $50....get em while they last, these have been flying out.

Edition Details:
$50
"Tony, San Francisco, 2010"
Edition of 50
Signed and numbered on back of print
Archival Pigment Print
Image size: 6.5" X 8"
Paper size: 8" X 10"





To learn more about Down These Mean Streets please check out these recent online features:

-Daylight Magazine Podcast

-Conscientious Extended

Solo Show At Michael Mazzeo Gallery

I am very pleased to announce a solo show of my project Down These Mean Streets opening at Michael Mazzeo Gallery on Thursday June 10th, 6-8pm (526 W 26th, NYC).

The exhibition will include brand new photographs I have never shown before as well as a special limited edition newspaper (available at the opening) that is part of a larger installation on display exploring my working process through journals, research notes, contact sheets, shot lists, influences and maps.

This 3 year long project in which I have walked at night from the airport to central business district of American cities examines the collapse of a post-industrialist American inner city as years of neglect have left our cities with limited resources to fix themselves and neighborhoods to crumple. By addressing the overwhelming loss and despair that prevail in our urban communities my intent is to reveal an intimate look at what our cities have become and provide a foundation from which change and plans for the future can be made as problems and issues cannot be solved if they are not first identified; we must look inward at ourselves.

Back To New Orleans

The picture some dude drew of me on the V train today. I smiled, said thanks and gave him 5 bucks. Off to NOLA for a while.....I just may never come home.

Watch Treme Tonight!

Don't forget to watch Treme tonight.



Very excited to have a bunch of photographs in the opening sequence of the show and when David Simon says things like this you know it's gonna be fucking brilliant. There are only a few whom I trust to dive in and tell the story of a post Katrina New Orleans and David Simon is surely at the top of that list.


“New Orleans to me … it’s a triumph of American urban culture. It’s the best an American city can be, and also the worst in a lot of ways. It has created a culture that has gone around the world. If you look at what our greatest export would be — culturally or politically or socially — from the American experiment, you’d have to put African-American music probably at the top of the list. You can be anywhere from Katmandu to Johannesburg and you walk into a bar and if they’re playing a tape machine they’ve got Michael Jackson or (John) Coltrane or Otis Redding or something (playing). That whole notion of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale meeting European instrumentation and arrangement comes from about 12 square blocks in New Orleans. So this is a city that’s essential in the American psyche, and yet we all witnessed the near-destruction of it. It was the closest thing to the destruction of an American city since the San Francisco earthquake. It’s coming back on its own terms as best as it can, with a lot of concern from some quarters, but a lot of indifference from much of the country. And that’s a fascinating story to me. In a way, ‘The Wire’ implied what was at stake with the American city, but ‘Treme’ is actually an examination of what it is — what living as disparate, different people compacted in an urban area can offer.”
-David Simon

5'10" 215 lbs.

Treme

I am thrilled to have a bunch of photographs from my work in New Orleans featured in the opening sequence of David Simon's new HBO series Treme which premieres April 11. Everyone who reads this blog probably knows how much of a Wire fan I am and how much I admire and respect David Simon and it is a great honor to be a part of his new series. Everyone who reads this blog probably also knows how much New Orleans means to me. Sometimes it is difficult for me to express in words the way I feel about New Orleans without going on and on, but I tell people who have never been there before that I have been all over America and New Orleans is unlike any other city I have been and every time I am there it feels more and more like home and gets harder and harder to leave. Simon eloquently describes this feeling in a recent Times article and it is fucking dead on:


“There's a thing about being capable of a great moment. This city is capable of moments unlike any moments you’ll ever experience in life. To see an Indian come down the street in full regalia on St. Joseph’s Night on an unlit street of messed-up shotgun houses and one burned-out car, and he’s the most beautiful thing on the planet, and everything around him is falling down. It’s a glorious instant of human endeavor. It’s duende from the Spanish, chills on the back of your neck, and then the next minute it’s gone. Lots of American places used to make things. Detroit used to make cars. Baltimore used to make steel and ships. New Orleans still makes something. It makes moments. I don’t mean that to sound flippant, and I don’t mean it to sound more or less than what it is, but they’re artists with a moment, they can take a moment and make it into something so transcendent that you’re not quite sure that it happened or that you were a part of it.”

A big thank you Karen for making this all happen.

The New Yorker Fiction Image Request

Happy to have an image in The New Yorker fiction section this week.



I love getting The New Yorker fiction image request emails. The descriptions of the image they are looking to accompany the writing are always so much fun to read and so often the most perfect and beautiful thing I will read that day. Here are some of my favorite New Yorker image request descriptions from recent years. I originally made a story out of the selections which perhaps I will post later, but there were just too many good ones to leave out. Winogrand once said, "There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described."


-A man walking a white pit bull in the city – ideally with one front leg missing
-A woman hiding behind a door - ideally with a red umbrella
-A charred grilled cheese sandwich – the bread is blackened, but the cheese hardly melted.
-A man smoking a cigarette outside looking at the stars
-A woman’s shoes covered with snow standing on a braided rug
-South end of the strip where there are cheap motels, fast-food, pawnshops, bail bonds, storefront churches, sprawling parking lots – kids hanging out there
-A table with handmade animals for sale – including a giraffe, and a Noah’s arc.
-A woman in her 40’s – details of aging skin on the face, pale, drawn, covered with too much makeup – heavy blush, dark lipstick – deep reds and purples
-A boat crossing a lake (ideally Prussian blue), either in rain & rough weather or good weather
-A chainsaw in a forest
-Details of female hands drinking coffee in a diner
-A cigarette extinguished under a silver high heel
-A sexy scene seen through a keyhole
-A woman’s hand extended with a blue pill
-A tall, skinny red head outside in the snowstorm in the beams of a trucks headlights – the snow catching in her red hair glowing in the backlight like a halo
-The hotel receptionist behind the bright green glow of the computer screen and with blue lacquered fingernails
-A woman in a wraparound red dress & red heeled toeless sandals on a dusty Irish road
-A Holiday Inn sign in a snow storm on the side of a road – both with and without a “No Vacancy” sign – dark or dusk
-Red roses on a coffin

A Product Of Our Environment: A Preview Of What I'm Working On For Aperture

So last summer in the midst of a project I was working on called Down These Mean Streets, The Aperture Foundation contacted me saying they wanted to meet. They wouldn't tell me what it was for and I had to submit to a portfolio first. So I did. Fast forward to a couple weeks later, some meetings had, a proposal written, I get an email saying I got it. I was one of five photographers (the others being the incredibly talented Gabriele Stabile, Thomas Holton, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Shen Wei) selected to document the New York City Green Cart Initiative. This commission is in partnership with the Tisch Illumination Fund, The Mayor's Fund for New York City and the Department of Health and provides underserved urban communities with ready access to fresh fruits and vegetables via hundreds of independently-owned Green Carts stands.



One of the things that I was intent on showing in the work I made for Mean Streets was the lack of healthy food options and the ever abundant liquor stores and fast food chains and I wanted to continue this exploration. So for this commission I will be photographing in the geographic locations within the 5 boroughs where the highest reported instances of poverty, obesity, diabetes, illness related to poor nutrition and people living without health insurance overlap with the locations of the Green Carts. My goal is to create a visual record of the food options that surround the Green Carts within this geographic overlap. I’m interested in the impact the fruit and vegetable carts will have on these areas and how they will compete against one of America’s most addictive drugs: fast food. As our country adapts to a changing economy and we debate healthcare, the weight of these national issues can be seen on a local level through the Green Cart initiative and its influence on New York City’s most economically deprived neighborhoods.

It is exciting to be a part of this project and it is so important that commissions of this nature are put into action which demonstrate a commitment to explore social issues through the medium of photography and continue on in the vein of the great work done by the WPA photographers many years ago. There is no time since then more important for this than right now.



-To see a preview of all 5 photographers' work please visit the Aperture Foundation website.