Shawn Records's Top Ten

I met Shawn Records a couple weeks ago when he came to New York. We met at Aperture and then got some beers with a bunch of other photographer people. Shawn is a photographer and has a blog too, be sure to check both out.

"Ten things I recently learned from this box of stuff I brought back from my grandmother's garage, now that she's in a nursing home:"

10: Wilma played basketball:



9: Oak Creek Colorado has amazing rainbows:



8: The Boy is a whole Menagerie:



7: A Log:



6: My great-grandmother (?) liked weddings, flowers, and puzzles:



5: Weippe?:



4: Stan played the tuba:



3: Kenneth's team was 7 & 5 that year:



2: I don't know exactly what it is, but there's definitely something to learn from this:



1: He that perseveres will conquer at last:

Charles Guice's Top Ten

Charles Guice is an art dealer and the director of Charles Guice Contemporary.

"I’ve had dinner with my share of luminaries and newsmakers—from artists and choreographers to writers and musicians—but I’ve always had a secret list of unfulfilled dinner dates. In my “past life” as a corporate hack, I’d sometimes have to facilitate meetings, and began using this list at the time (then comprised only of the top three) as an icebreaker. At first, I’d suggest people living or dead—at least until the time someone told me he’d like to have dinner with his twin, stillborn children. But think of it as your own “my dinner with Andre;” the chance to sit down for two or three hours with someone who fascinates you and whose company you truly believe you’d enjoy. Then, in this era of six degrees of separation, figure out just how many degrees you are away. I was never able to bring anyone together, but just imagine how much fun it would be if you could."


10. Paul Krugman

When Paul Krugman began writing for The New York Times, I can honestly say I became interested in economics. Krugman’s columns, on subjects ranging from taxes to foreign policy, were required reading for me, and he was, by far and large, the only person whose opposition against the Iraq invasion I gave any credence. That Krugman supported Hillary Clinton is another matter, but if we could simply skip discussing that one topic, a two-hour dinner would likely be far too short a time.


9. Ron Santo

Being a Chicagoan, I’m a life-long Chicago Cubs fan and, aside from Ernie Banks, no one player represents everything I remember about the team from the year I cherish most—1969. Although the Cubs would eventually lose to the Mets after leading the Central Division through that August, I’d race home from school to watch as many games as I possibly could. I loved going to Wrigley, and even at an early age held little regard for the lowly White Sox, who played on the city’s South Side. You can hear Santo doing the play-by-play on the radio broadcasts these days, and I’d rather listen to him than watch the television broadcast. For me, dinner with “This Old Cub” would make up for all the years the team has never made it into the World Series.


8. Pedro Almodóvar

Suffice it to say, my beliebte filmmaker, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, is long dead now, so I’m onto my second favorite, Pedro Almodóvar. From Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and High Heels to All About My Mother, Talk to Her and Volver, his works continually rank as some of my most favorite films. My Spanish surely isn’t up to the type of in-depth conversation I’d truly like to have—I know he speaks English—but I’m sure I’d make do, even if I had to rely simply on pantomime.

7. Dawn Upshaw

If you don’t know who Dawn Upshaw is, you’d only have to hear her sing once to remember. One of two sopranos on my list (see Cecilia Bartoli below), Upshaw was named as a MacArthur Fellow in 2007. Unlike many performers who I will typically hear only once or twice, I’ve heard Upshaw perform numerous times. She’s also from Northern Illinois, and since we’re not too far apart in age, I’ve always wondered if we’d ever bumped into one another when I lived there. Listen to Knoxville, Summer of 1915 or Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3. Of course, a dinner with Upshaw would only be complete if she sang for her supper.


6. Jessye Norman

When I met Jessye Norman, albeit briefly during an autograph signing, I didn’t consider myself to be much of an opera fan. My mother had wanted to become an opera singer, and it may be because I was routinely dragged to hear classical music and taken to the opera—most likely when I was too young—that I thought I couldn’t like anything resembling the operatic voice. But Gustav Mahler’s Song Cycles and choral symphonies would change this opinion forever and, later, Norman’s recording of Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs (Vier Letzte Lieder), at least for me, became the gold standard for this work. But my taste, at the time, was limited to operatic singing, and my true love for opera, unfortunately, would come some time after we would meet. So when Norman urged me to come to the San Francisco Opera where she was performing that evening, I promised her that I would but never went. It was my loss. Now I consider her to be one of the greatest voices of our time, and to be able to talk with her over a quiet dinner would be one of life’s greatest gifts.


5. Björk

Many people remember Björk as the dark-haired, diminutive singer who wore the outrageous swan dress to the Oscars in 2001. But I’ve followed Björk since her days with the Sugarcubes, and own almost every album she’s released since. Her first and only acting role, as Selma in Dancer in the Dark, was—in her own words—her last, yet when I saw it, the same man who had laughed aloud when she first began to sing in this Lars von Trier musical, was audibly sobbing by the end. I love her voice. All Is Full of Love? Violently Happy? Perhaps, too, Possibly Maybe, Pagan Poetry, or Stick Around for Joy. I could listen to these over and over, and have more times than I can count. But it was in an interview where she spoke on the existence of faeries that I knew I’d gladly spend an hour or two to talk with her.


4. Kate Winslet

I wasn’t going to add any actors to this list. Actors are continually in the limelight, and very few truly seem interesting beyond the celluloid screen. Add to that, while I’ll admit to having a number of favorites, how do you narrow it to just one or two? Then I realized that there are a select few that I’d see almost any film for, and Winslet tops the list. My Winslet crush is one of my guilty pleasures—I’ve been a fan since Titanic, and have seen everything she’s done since including, dare I admit, The Holiday. Oddly enough, I could barely watch her in Sense and Sensibility. Who, I remember thinking at the time, was that awkward teenager, and why was she ever cast in that otherwise entertaining film? But by Hideous Kinky, Iris, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I was thoroughly hooked and a sucker for all things Winslet—and happily report that I still am.


3. Cecilia Bartoli

If you’ve never heard of a mezzo-soprano, or struggle to remember the name of any opera without wincing, listen to Bartoli’s 1992 release, If You Love Me (Se tu m’ami). Bartoli had her U.S. debut in Berkeley, and I was actually on my way to hear Dawn Upshaw when I noticed the announcement for that first Bartoli concert the following week. Vowing never to be swayed again by “a pretty face”—the last time I did was by Sheena Easton—I didn’t go. My mistake; it took years just get a ticket after the reviews from that first concert. In the intervening years, I planned trips to New York and Austria to hear her, even in the dead of summer. When I finally did have a chance to hear her—this after actually meeting her during an autograph signing—I sat in the second row (the first row was empty) with Bartoli literally standing directly in front of me the entire concert. According to Bonnie, the friend who called the night before with an extra ticket and rescuing me from “the boonies” where my original seat was, I scarcely breathed until the intermission. I think I’m still holding my breath.


2. Barack Obama

As with actors, I hadn’t planned to add any politicians to my list, but this is due more to the fact that there aren’t as many that I’d want to spend a meal with, and not because there are so many that I consider to be my favorites. Like him or not, Barack Obama has changed the political landscape in the U.S. His speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention almost brought tears to my eyes, and his speech on ethnicity in February did. Like many, I was a little unsure about him when I first heard him speak in person in early 2007, and had actually planned to vote for Clinton. But I feel an excitement about the future of this country in a way that I never have, and it is his candidacy that has done that for me. For all intents and purposes, I’m only one degree away from Obama. My friend, Tim, went to Occidental with Obama. But when they ran into each other years later in Chicago, neither could remember how they knew one another. Too bad; that’s one marker I’d surely call in.


1. Arundhati Roy

Roy wrote the novel, The God of Small Things but is arguably better known now as an activist. I actually met her shortly after her book was awarded the Booker Prize—and virtually alone—but was too nervous at the time to engage in more than a brief conversation. Yet as much of a fan I am of Roy’s book, it is her “activist” leanings that draw me to her most. For it was from Roy that I first learned of Enron—years before its subsequent financial collapse—and the extent to which multinationals have wrought havoc in Africa, India, and Central and South America. I don’t always agree with her politics; during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, her voice was one of the many that I mistakenly “tuned out.” But Roy has been at the top of this list for years, and will likely remain there for many more to come.

Paula Tognarelli's Top Ten

Paula Tognarelli is the Executive Director and Curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA.

"My ten last photography book orders at Amazon"

1. "The Art of Frederick Sommer"
2. Harry Callahan "Eleanor"
3. Emmet Gowin "Changing the Earth"
4. Lisa Robinson Snowbound
5. Lili Almog "Perfect Intimacy"
6. Rebecca Norris Webb "The Glass Between Us"
7. Elizabeth Hevert "The Travelers"
8. Mari Mahr "A few Days in Geneva"
9. Mari Mahr "Between Ourselves"
10. Richard Misrach "Chronologies"

Brian Sorg's Top Ten

Brian Sorg is a photographer living and working in Chicago, IL. He has
been documenting the life of a young man named Davey for the past
three years. [Brian-I am obsessed with this project, I hope you win the Blurb contest!] This project among others can be viewed at
www.briansorgfoto.com.

BRIAN SORG - TOP TEN THINGS THAT HAVE BROUGHT ME HAPPINESS IN THE PAST WEEK:


10)
Brad Troemel's recent post on Tom Green.

9)
Aphex Twin: Windowlicker on YouTube:



8)
"Astronaut Fall" by Nicholas Gurewitch:




7)
Meeting this kid at a wedding who had a Terry Richardson shirt on that
he bought at a second hand store for 50 cents. He didn't have a clue
who he was:




6)
This "Don't Look Now" trailer:




5)
Getting soaked on my bike while the sky was completely blue:




4)
Finding this photo my Dad took of me. It's like a Bill Owens / William
Eggleston time warp:




3)
Getting lost in suburbia and seeing these two dogs:




2)
Drawing this picture of my Grandpa and I from 1985:




1)
Working non-stop on a submission for the Blurb photo book contest:

Amy Stein's Top Ten

Amy Stein is a photographer and teacher. She lives in New York City with her husband and two very large cats.


Amy’s Top 1 of Top 10 Lists Found On a Google Search for “Top 10”

1. Top 10 Shirts To Get Arrested In

I am the Law!



2. The Top 10 Most Fascinating Urinals

Stockholm-Arlanda Airport



3. The FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives

Robert William Fisher (altered photographs)



4. Top 10 Deadliest Animals

Australian Box Jellyfish



5. Top 10 Dunks

Julius “Dr. J” Erving



6. Top 10 Strangest Lego Creations

Lego Pinhole Camera



7. Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

German Scientist Spits Flaming Spores



8. Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth

Eaten by von Neumann machines

A von Neumann machine is any device that is capable of creating an exact copy of itself given nothing but the necessary raw materials. Create one of these that subsists almost entirely on iron, magnesium, aluminum and silicon, the major elements found in Earth's mantle and core. It doesn't matter how big it is as long as it can reproduce itself exactly in any period of time. Release it into the ground under the Earth's crust and allow it to fend for itself. Watch and wait as it creates a second von Neumann machine, then they create two more, then they create four more. As the population of machines doubles repeatedly, the planet Earth will, terrifyingly soon, be entirely eaten up and turned into a swarm of potentially sextillions of machines.



9. Dubai Top 10 Attractions

Gold



10. The Top 10 Video Game Animals

Chocobo

Jeffrey Ladd's Top Ten

Jeffrey Ladd, born in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania in 1968, moved to New York City in 1987 to study photography at the School of Visual Arts. He received his B.F.A. degree in 1991. Ladd’s photographs have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums, including the International Center of Photography, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Soros Foundation's Open Society Institute and the Howard Greenberg Gallery. In 2007, Ladd started 5B4 Photography and Books, a website dedicated to reviews and discussion of photography and art related books.



"Most people now know me for writing about photobooks on my site 5B4 Photography and Books. Since it would be too predictable to give a top ten of books I have decided to look back on ten formative moments I experienced while living in Phoenix Arizona from 1971 until 1984."


1. Sometime in the mid-1970s my parents explored transcendental meditation and they took my brother and me to a TM center in Phoenix. We were individually “taught” how to meditate and while I was being told my mantra I didn’t understand what the woman had said and I was too shy to ask her to repeat it. So instead of meditating at home I would be sitting in my room wracking my brains trying to figure out what mantra she had given me.

2. At 9 years old I decided to make a small garden in our backyard and I grew only radishes.

3. One time at the community pool in Heritage Heights where we lived, I dove underwater to the bottom, turned over and flipped birds with both hands at my mom’s best friend Charlotte Smith who was supposed to be keeping an eye on me. When I surfaced, she was standing at the edge of the pool looking directly at me with a funny expression.

4. One Saturday in 1979, my parent’s took me to “Park and Swap”, an outdoor flea market in downtown Phoenix. I was bored until we stumbled across a guy who was selling dozens of issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Before that day I owned only two issues which I cherished; one that my grandmother had sent to me from New Jersey, and the other I had stolen from a kid at school named David who was mildly retarded.

5. I was riding my bike following my brother speeding downhill on his Logan Earthski skateboard (with Gullwing trucks and Sims 70mm wheels) when he got the speed wobbles and fell. Upon getting up we saw that his right wrist was broken. After looking at it for a second he said in a weak and quivering voice, “That’s not right” and then burst into tears.

6. Easter Sunday 1979 my family went to play miniature golf at Golf and Stuff near the Metrocenter Mall in Phoenix. While I was kneeling on the ground to see where the balls went under a huge replica of London’s Big Ben, my brother accidentally knocked my right eye-tooth into a fine powder with his putter.

7. Once I was at a friend’s house watching TV with him and his twin sister. I was sitting on the edge of his bed and his sister was lying next to me. I had rested my arm on her head with my hand dangling near her face to annoy her. She put one of my fingers in her mouth and started caressing it with her tongue. With my heart racing I carefully glanced at my friend who was engrossed in an episode of Gilligan’s Island. Gilligan was being hunted in the “Most Dangerous Game” episode.

8. Tim Caserta, Lee Hernandez and I discovered the cool, red glow that comes from emergency flares so we bought a bunch and would go out at night into the desert and run around with them. One night, some of the burn-off from a flare made a small round hole in my corduroy pants. My mom thought it was from a cigarette and she grounded me for smoking. She asked me if I thought she was stupid after I explained that it actually came from us running through the desert with lit flares.

8. I had a fight once with Tim Caserta and after a week of not talking to him I decided to make friend’s again with a present. I went to his house with one firecracker and told him I had to get rid of it because my mom was going to do a total clean up of my room and I was afraid she’d find it. We tried to light it off but instead it just fizzled out and left a burn mark on his garage floor.

9. Around 1980-81, Tim, Lee, and I would dress in dark clothes and go out at night on “missions” we called “commando-ing.” This would usually involve jumping people’s fences and running through their backyards or stealing things from their carports. Those nights would usually wind up with us stealing cases of soda from Al Flander’s van. For some reason Al never locked his van.

10. Phoenix, Arizona, 1983: I attend my first hardcore show at Madison Square Garden in downtown Phoenix with two friends -- Rob Munsey and Lee Hernandez. The bill was: True Sounds of Liberty, the Crucifucks, Jody Foster’s Army, Conflict (Az), and Poet’s Corner. “Mad Garden” was a venue known for cage match wrestling. When booked for music the bands played within the boxing/wrestling ring enclosed on all sides with a chain-link fence. At punk shows, instead of stage diving, the crowd would climb the fence and leap off into the slam pit. This particular show was the last to happen in that venue. Rumor had it that since it was the last show, the crowd was going to tear down the fence and trash the place. That didn’t happen. I sat nervously through the show with Rob who had sprained his ankle skating an abandoned pool in the desert. While the Crucifucks were in the midst of “Cops for Fertilizer”, I saw Lee slamming in the pit and I wanted to jump in too but I was too intimidated. Instead, I told myself I should stay with Rob and keep him company.

Michael Itkoff's Top Ten

Michael Itkoff is a photographer and a Founding Editor of Daylight Magazine.


Michael Itkoff's Top Ten T-Shirts


10. Columbus Day Sucks! I love subversive use of everyday objects and this take on the $50 is pretty sweet. This shirt was made by my friend Phil Preston on the Akwasasne Mohawk Reservation. Phil teaches at the Akwasasne Freedom School and presses shirts under the moniker Rising Nation. I actually traded Phil a few hours of Photoshop lessons for this shirt.



9. I picked up this mashup of Boston graffiti a few weeks ago in a Cambridge thrift shop.



8. This shirt is made by L’atlas a Parisian graffiti writer. I am not sure if you can get this shirt anymore but it is one of my favorites. The front has Latlas written in his signature font and the back features one of his twisted maze/barcode designs. I actually tried to have Latlas design a faux barcode for Daylight but it never happened….



7. The Labold Brothers are old friends of mine whonow design and sell shirts in Philadelphia. I was in a punk/ska band called Mindset and Jimmy used to be in a rival band called the Beefcakes. His brother Greg danced around in a cow outfit. Good times…



6. We are the world. We are the people. I barely remember that day but I do remember holding hands with strangers in the middle of a road somewhere for a long time. And I still have the shirt.



5. In Thailand in 2003 I rented a Jeep with my friend Danny and drove through Northern Thailand to the Burmese border. During the drive through the hills we were stopped at a Thai army checkpoint and hung out with the guys for a bit. I traded a torn Sarah Lawrence College shirt for this one. Unfortunately it has shoulder pads so I don’t wear it very often…



4. I got this one from a copy of Grand Royal magazine years ago. It was an iron on patch with the GR logo and a big Moog keyboard but its pretty worn out.



3. An ex-girlfriend got this for me in a thrift shop. It is really broken in and comfortable so I still wear it all the time.



2. This is a taxi service in Philadelphia. I do not know how I got this shirt but it is the softest piece of clothing I own. I love it.



1.The lettering for this shirt was hand stitched by my mother in the 70s as a gift for my father before they moved down to Philly and got married.

Shelley Rice's Top Ten

Shelley Rice is an art critic and historian who teaches in both the Photography and the Art History Departments at New York University.

Ten Days in a Life

"What I like about my endless lists: they level everything. Some of these appointments are practical; others are important business appointments or trips. Some of the people are famous artists, editors or writers, others are in service professions. One of them is my cat, and another is actually getting married at the scheduled time. The idea of a Top Ten becomes amusing in this context, and is almost negated by the onslaught of Trivia."

10.Friday: Write

9. Saturday: Write
Feed Birds

8. Sunday: Asia Arrives 12:30
Write
Dinner: Claudio's

7. Monday: Library (return book, print essay)

6. Tuesday: Jitney 11:50
Jen (keys, orchid)
Diane 6:00

5. Wednesday: Nancy 8:30
Gym class 10:00
Allison/Linda/Berlioz 6:00

4. Thursday: Borja 11:00
Sergio 2:00

3. Friday: Rob and Clewert 7:00

2. Saturday:Laundry
Lorie 6:00

1. Sunday: C/A leave for Australia
Mary 3:30

Joerg Colberg's Top Ten

Joerg M. Colberg published the photography blog Conscientious and lives in Northampton, MA.


Jörg’s Top Ten


1. Pelikan Fountain Pen

I can’t walk by a stationary store. I’m obsessed with finding yet another nice pen, ideally extremely fine, ideally extremely nicely designed (and I’m happy to settle with one out of two usually). Unfortunately, there is no correlation between this obsession with pens and my own handwriting, which is more or less illegible for most people (sadly enough me often included). Of all the pens I own, my Pelikan fountain pens are dearest to me (I don’t like the design of Montblanc pens, so when I was offered one for free, I turned it down) - that even though in elementary school, where one was either a “Pelikan” or a “Geha” kid (depending which company’s fountain pen one would use) I was rooting for “Geha” (the folly of youth, I suppose). Those had little ink cartridges, though, unlike the fountain pens I use now.



2. The Wedding Present – Seamonsters

After this album came out (1991, I believe) I listened to it every night, for many months, and I still love the sound of it (only good when listened to extremely loud). I had forgotten about it for a while until I was exchanging some emails with Alec Soth about his book Niagara, and we ended up talking about sad love songs. Turns out we both have a weakness for those, and thinking and emailing about sad love songs brought back Seamonsters.



3. Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art.

Frankfurt (Germany, the river Main one, not the other one) has one of the finest modern-art museums I’ve seen, and I go every time I’m there to visit my friends who live there. I just love the architecture and the way how there are constantly new views, and in between all of that there is, of course, the art work, with usually very good shows up. But even if the show isn’t great, the building itself never disappoints me with its shapes, lights, colours…



4. Francis Bacon (the painter)

The big 1996 (or so) Francis Bacon retrospective hit Munich while I was working on my Ph.D., and just because I thought that for once I should try to see some “culture” did I go to see it, on some Sunday morning or afternoon, and what I got to see I’d never forget. Bacon’s haunting imagery has always made me want to paint myself, but I’ve never even remotely succeeded in painting anything I would like – and then photography came along.



5. Photobooths

What can I say? Isn’t it obvious? Oh, and I love how Francis Bacon used photobooth strips to paint from.


6. “–“

I love the dash (“–“) or whatever it’s called, because it allows me to so nicely break up the flow of my writing – maybe for effect, or maybe because I never properly learned to write English. Back in school, I never bothered to focus too much on how English was supposed to be written – it was bad enough I had to learn if from people viz heffy accents, and I suppose I then created my own rules, which might or might not contain a fair amount of German using English vocabulary. I’m a big foe of the kind of writing where each sentence is a new paragraph, and I especially despise sentences that are only one or just a few words.

Like this one.

Hideous.


7. Books

I love books, not just as carriers of information, but also as physical objects. I read a lot (and very fast), and it has got to be a book or at least printed on paper (Longer articles, found on the web, I print out, to read them from the paper – I just can’t read from the screen very well). There’s something special about the tactile feeling of handling a book, and it usually smells nicely. I will never buy any of those “ebook” devices – only people who don’t read could possibly invent something like that. And I hate…

8. Telephones

I’m just not good with them. Maybe it’s genetic. My mother is impossible to talk to on the phone. She constantly claims she can’t hear anything. I’m almost as bad, except that over the years I’ve learned to wing it. I’d rather send/receive an email.




9. Lebkuchen and Stollen

“Lebkuchen (or Pfefferkuchen) is a traditional German product baked for Christmas, somewhat resembling soft gingerbread.” And “Stollen is a bread-like cake traditionally made in Germany, usually eaten during the Christmas season as Weihnachtsstollen or Christstollen” If it wasn’t for Lebkuchen and Stollen I really couldn’t care less about Christmas.




10. Thomas Bernhard

Thomas Bernhard’s convoluted, seemingly angry, absurdly exaggerated, repetitive rants always make me laugh very hard. On the surface, they appear to be so bitter, but in reality they are just funny and incredibly witty and human. I can’t imagine reading them in translation, but to get an idea one might read Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint” (another writer I truly love) and then imagine things even more over the top – minus all the sex. That would be Thomas Bernhard.

Darius Himes' Top Ten

Darius Himes is an editor, publisher, lecturer, photographer and writer based in Santa Fe. He founded Radius Books with partners David Chickey, Joanna Hurley and David Skolkin after being at Photo-Eye for almost 10 years.

"My top ten list is drawn from a two-volume set titled The Great Ideas, a Syntopicon, which was developed by Mortimer Adler during his tenure as Editor in Chief at the Encyclopedia Britannica and specifically as an accompaniment to a set of "great books of the western tradition" stretching from the pre-Socratics to the late 19th century philosophers and linguists. These two volumes can be summarized as a topical reading of the Great Books, using a set of just over 100 "great ideas" that have been pursued and written about throughout human history. Want to know what writers of the western tradition for the past 2500 years have said about "Beauty", "Infinity", "Love", or "Will"? Turn to these volumes (check your local used bookstore or www.abebooks.com).

These two volumes have been extremely edifying in relation to the arts and contemporary photography. It's been invaluable to be able to trace the different conceptions and understandings, as well as subtlety, of far-reaching, universal concepts and then both think about and discuss those ideas and how they play out in the world in front of the camera lens.

I've selected 10 "great ideas" and suggested a photobook (or 2) that I think somehow embodies the bigger concepts. I hope you all find these thought-provoking. I'd love to hear suggestions of other books you think fit these themes." [Check out Darius' Blog for more]



10. UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR
Alleverythingthatisyou by Mike and Doug Starn. The Starn twins have been creating works that deal with the full range of "particulars" of several given "universals". The universal "snowflake" is catalogued and explored in all of its glorious particular diversity.



9. SIGN AND SYMBOL
Nakazora by Masao Yamamoto. Yamamoto's work has intrigued me for many years now. He is digging deep into spiritual concepts, using the ephemeral details of this world as signs and symbols of something bigger, something beyond the material...



8. REVOLUTION
Telex Iran by Gilles Peress. The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 was brilliantly captured by this daring French photographer. But as with any revolution, many dark deeds go unrecorded



7. NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY
In Praise of Shadows by Hiroshi. Sugimoto is exploring large concepts with intelligence and heart. This simple little book contains a couple dozen photographs of a burning candle. each image is reproduced on mylar so that it is completely transparent which emphasizes the nature of the contingency of the flame. By necessity and definition, the nature of a flame is to flicker and blow or burn out eventually. To me, this book sums up necessity and contingency.






6. NATURE (and TRUTH)
Bird Watching by Paula McCartney. I first saw Paula's work last year at Review Santa Fe. it stopped me dead in my tracks with a combination of beauty, elegance, comedy and a dose of surreality. "Nature" and the nature of "Truth" are swirling around in this artist's book.



Zara's Tales by Peter Beard. The legendary photographer compiled various stories of his African adventures that are his daughter's favorites. It's fantastic reading and gives a glimpse of early conservation efforts in eastern Africa.



5. LIFE AND DEATH
There are numerous books that could be listed to exemplify LIFE and DEATH. Here is one. Moksha by Fazal Sheikh. Sheikh's book deals with the role and status of widows in traditional Indian society. Their life is determined by the death of their husbands. It is a moving, touching, question-provoking book.




4. HISTORY (BEING & FATE & ONE AND MANY & WISDOM)
Dead Man, a film by Jim Jarmusch. Simply put, this is a superb, metaphor-laden, literary film. The real lead in this movie is not Johnnie Depp, but Gary Farmer (an actor who lives here in Santa Fe). Farmer plays an Indian who goes by the name of Nobody, and who recites the poetry of William Blake to Depp's character, whose name is William Blake just not the William Blake that Nobody assumes he is. I think I want to write an essay about this movie. The soundtrack/soundscape by Neil Young is stellar and moving.





3. HAPPINESS
This picture of my nephew (my brother's son) and my two nieces (my sister's girls) and their Grandfather (my father) sums up this great idea.



2. FAMILY
Domestic Vacations by Julie Blackmon. Julie is the oldest of nine children, all of whom are married, have children and live with their families in a two mile radius of where they grew up. Radius Books just published this book on Julie's work and the book launches at photo-eye in Santa Fe tonight, June 27th.



Bill Jay's Album. Bill Jay has been photographing fellow photographers and historians for over 30 years. This handsome volume presents a family album of sorts--Bill's photographic family.



The World from My Front Porch, by Larry Towell. "When I was an adolescent, my father once scolded me for wanting to drive to Florida with a friend. It was too far from home, and I would be corrupted by the distance. I was 16. He hated travel. The world was his front porch."--Larry Towell.



1. VIRTUE AND VICE
There are so many books that portray the darker side of the human experience, but the fact that virtue and vice are linked as great ideas--as the opposite poles of a very long, imaginary line--makes finding one particular book difficult. Whenever I reflect on this passage it makes me think about the usefulness of the contrast between the two. "Beautify your tongues, O people, with truthfulness, and adorn your souls with the ornament of honesty. Beware, O people, that ye deal not treacherously with any one. Be ye the trustees of God amongst His creatures, and the emblems of His generosity amidst His people." An extract from Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah